Thank you for standing by. My name is Kathleen, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the M-tron Investor Update. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press the star one again. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Cameron Pforr, Interim CEO. Please go ahead.
Yep. Thank you, Kathleen. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for attending our Industries Update this morning. We're pleased to speak to you about our preliminary earnings release for Q4, and also the annual preliminary annual results for 2024. We did post those last night to the SEC and 8-K and put out a press release on that, so hopefully you all have a copy of that. Just a note, we do expect to file our 10-K with our audit results on or about March 26th or 27th, later next month. We're very far down our audit process and don't expect substantial changes. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Cameron Pforr. I joined M-tron this past September. I was recently named Interim CEO, having served over the past several months as CFO.
Just a little bit of background, and then we'll get into more of the company, which I know is what you're more interested in. My background's 30 years of experience in technology company management and advisory roles. I spent the last 15 years running companies from startups with less than $1 million to software companies with over $100 million. Of those companies, we've sold two of them, one to Cisco, one to Red Hat, returned significant returns to investors. I also have a lot of combined corporate finance M&A experience as an investment banker and also as an advisor at Bain & Company. I've raised about $12 billion in equity and executed on over 30 acquisitions and hope to bring some of that experience here to bear.
Today we're going to talk about the give you an update on the health of the business, talk about the direction that we're taking things forward, and answer any questions you have about the business and our recent announcements about rights offerings. This morning we did put out a press release that we're going to shift gears there and move towards a dividend warrant. The goal there is really to distribute value to our shareholders in a fair and equitable way. We've kind of refined how we're doing that. I think this is probably a better tool to do that. I'm pleased to be joined this morning by Linda Biles, who's our EVP of Finance and also our Chief Accounting Officer. Linda, if you could just introduce yourself and then maybe go through the safe harbor statement. I appreciate that.
Good morning. I'm Linda Biles. I'd like to go over our safe harbor with you. Information included or incorporated by reference in this presentation may contain forward-looking statements. This information may involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause our actual results, performance, or achievements to be materially different than the future results, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by any forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements, which involve assumptions and describe our future plans, strategies, and expectations, are generally identifiable by use of the words may, should, expect, anticipate, estimate, believe, intend, or project, or the negative of these words or other variations on these words or comparable terminology. Examples of forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding efforts to grow revenue, expectations regarding fulfillment of backlog, future benefits to operating margins, and the adequacy of cash resources.
Actual events or results may differ materially from those discussed in forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, including without limitation, the risks outlined under risk factors in the information statement contained within our Form 10-K filed with the SEC on March 25th, 2024. In light of these risks and uncertainties, there can be no assurance that the forward-looking statements contained in this presentation will, in fact, be accurate. Further, we do not undertake any obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements. As a result, you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. With that, I'd like to turn it back over to Cameron.
Yeah. Thank you, Linda. Okay. I'm going to start the presentation with the MPTI overview slide, which you should all have from our website. I really just wanted to give you a brief update on the company for those of you on the call that it's new to. We were formed in 1965 and listed on the New York American Exchange in October of 2022. We've been focused on the aerospace and defense markets since the acquisition of PTI in 2004. There was a fairly significant shift in the business, not in terms of its products, but in the markets that it went after. Today, we're an American-made defense contractor specializing in robust engineered frequency and timing control and filter applications. We have about 2.9 million shares outstanding, and we also enjoy broad employee ownership.
At the end of 2023, we distributed 183,000 options to our valued employees based on their tenure with the company, really to reward their behavior over the years, their contributions. We are really pleased that they're shareholders in the company and strong believers in what we do. We are well-positioned to continue to access long-term value creation opportunities, and we will talk about some of that today. If we move to the next slide, some of the key takeaways that we wanted to share with you today. We continue to perform well and announced our preliminary earnings for Q4 in the 2024 annual period last night. We are a unique American story, I think, founded in 1965 with tremendous, tremendous engineering skills and capabilities. It has been built out over the years to serve our nation's defense sector and other key markets such as avionics, space, and satellites, and the commercial sectors.
In the commercial sectors, we play strongly in the telecom area and also in test and measurement. I think what's really unique about us is that we're vertically integrated with the capability to start with a raw crystal and complete it all the way to produce a finished oscillator or filter. We're really one of the only companies in the market that supplies both oscillators and filters. We do this in terms of how the manufacturing process uses CNC machining and surface mount assembly. We have a full suite of tests and screening capabilities to ensure robust designs, and we have high-quality products. In the production of these components and subsystems, they're really designed to be very high tolerance markets. As much as art is a science, we depend upon our highly skilled and motivated workforce based in Orlando, Florida, Yankton, South Dakota, and Noida, India for assembly.
I really appreciate all the work that they do and the diligence they bring to the job. We have a global customer base, including many of the industry leaders in our key markets. Many of our customers, most in fact, really have been with us more than 10 years. At the end of 2024, just at the end of the year, we announced two big $10+ million contract wins. One we received just in the last days of 2024. The second one we received at the very beginning of 2024. It strengthens our pipeline. We also expect to have several other large contracts like that coming in over the next quarter or two. The momentum continues for the business. We supply many of the key defense programs for both the United States and our allies.
This includes a broad set of applications, including precision-guided munitions, communications, radar, electronic warfare, drones and UAVs, and even space and satellite applications. All these applications require really high tolerance products. The integration and communication between systems is ever increasing. It is really increasing the demand for our products. Despite the recent discussions in Washington about potential defense cuts, we have seen no slowing of our engagement with customers or our sales processes. They all remain on track. I would say there is not even a slowing down of those processes. We expect bookings and revenue in the coming few years to remain strong. That will really be driven by the replenishment of U.S. stockpiles and also the increase in expected European defense spending, which I think there is a lot of discussion about.
If you look at the European stocks, a lot of the European defense stocks are up quite a bit. Most of the European countries spend over 60% of their defense procurement budgets acquiring from U.S. defense suppliers. In addition, another note I wanted to add is that the Pentagon has been very explicit about carving out some key programs out of any discussion of budget decreases in the U.S. A lot of these are in areas that we play a key role in. They have discussed explicitly carving out key air defense systems, precision munitions, and missile programs, which we are a large part of. Autonomous vehicles, so drones and UAVs, where we play. Some of the surface ships and other platforms where we are a key supplier. They are also kind of key priority areas for our growth.
In addition to the defense sector, with the resolution of the strike discussions at Boeing, we expect to be able to fulfill orders to supply a large backlog of Boeing and Airbus airframes out through 2041. I believe the common word on the street is that there'll be 80% more airframes or 80% of airframes being replaced in those years. We expect to have strong tailwinds there. In terms of margins, I want to talk convergence a little bit. Our margins remain strong with gross margins around the 40% mark for the quarter and over 46% for the year. This is really a thousand basis point increase over the past three years. We're getting a lot more leverage out of the model and dropping more cash to the bottom line.
This is the result of our product mix, also improving just our manufacturing efficiencies and reducing our inventory usages and being more efficient with our raw product. We ended 2024 with a strong balance sheet, and we expect cash to accumulate significantly throughout this fiscal year. There are some remaining options to be exercised by our employee base, and they would account for an additional up to about $3.6 million of cash potentially if they're exercised this year. I wanted to talk a little bit about where we're taking the business. The business itself, the core business, remains very strong. I do think we're going to spend a little bit more time in the future exploring the use of partnerships and acquisitions to provide inorganic growth to the company.
We talked briefly in our press release last week about also an investment in a group called Connectivity Partnership, which will be making investments in RF communications companies in a number of sectors, many of which we do not participate in. This gives us a window into new market opportunities. I will go through that in a little bit more detail. I expect you will see over the next couple of quarters announcements detailing our progress along those lines. We are really seeking to expand our product portfolio, gain new customers, and increase our traction in growing markets. Most importantly, we want to consistently grow our EBITDA and EPS for our shareholders. When we look at acquisitions, we are looking at creative transactions where MPTI can provide value to the combined entity, whether that is through our strong sales network, our manufacturing capabilities, or engineering talent.
The goal is to acquire companies and bring them to our margin profile as quickly as possible. Given the large fixed transaction costs and legal advisory fees and just the time it requires from our team for the integration work and diligence, we're trying to concentrate on potential transactions that can add meaningfully to the EBITDA to our bottom line. When a company has meaningful technology, it's a little bit too early for development cycle, and its development cycle will provide that earnings profile we're looking for. We need to partner with it for development of products, for manufacturing of products, and for sales and assisting their sales. We can participate through a potential investment by Connectivity Partnership and then either exercise a right in the future to acquire or partner with that business to drive revenue for those firms.
I want to turn next to the next slide and really speak to our Q4 results. You saw in the press release that our preliminary revenues were up significantly in the quarter over the prior year. It's a year-on-year increase of between 17.9% and 20.7%. It remains the third year in a row that we've had near 20% growth on the revenue line. In addition, our quarterly gross margin was also strong. We expect it to be in the range of just shy of 46%-48.5% or 47% for the fourth quarter. That's up 200 basis points from the fourth quarter of 2023. 2024 has continued to be a very, very good year for the company in terms of its execution.
If you look at the fiscal year results, revenues are expected to be between $48.9 million and $49.2 million in 2024, compared to $41.168 million in 2023. This represents an annual growth rate of between 18.8% and 19.5%. As I said, that will be the third year of an annual growth rate close to approaching the 20% mark. I think these results really reflect the strength of our strategy, the dedication of our team, and really the trust our customers have placed in us. We continue to execute on their behalf well. We have not finished our tax provisions yet. Otherwise, we would provide operating income and net income. They are expected to remain close to the same percentages that we saw in Q3 and the long-range goals that we have outlined in prior investor presentations. No radical changes on that front for Q4 or for the annual results. Okay.
Okay. We're next going to move to some of the investment highlights. This is really just, I think, a repeat of what you've heard in the past if you follow us, but I think it's tracking well. We are seeing strong revenue growth and expect that to continue. We're now in the phase of the company where we're generating a lot of cash, and we expect to drive earnings up throughout the period. We have long-term contracts and loyal customers in very, very attractive and large end markets. At this point in time, this is something we've talked about a little bit. We've become a critical part of the U.S. supply chain, the mission-critical supply chain. For our aerospace and defense business, which is close to 70% of our business this past year, it's in the mid-60s to 70%, depending upon the quarter.
We're 85% of that is program-driven at this point in time, which means we're part of long-term contracts for programs of record in the Defense Department. That is critical because that helps you weather budget storms like when things are going through late budget approvals. We're still able to benefit from that because we're on program of record. Any continuing resolution can fund further purchases of our products. Those programs of record typically last 5-25 years in the defense sector. Just an example of that is in this past year, the Patriot missile system, which is a stalwart that's used around the globe and is in the news quite often, was up for a redesign. They've decided that there really are no competitors, and it's quite effective still. That program has been extended again without a redesign.
That's going to be a program that's well over the 25-year mark. We also feel we have compelling financials with the organic growth that we've shown over the past year and the improvements we made in the business. Now we're looking more at an inorganic growth strategy to complement that. Lastly, we have a very strong management team. Linda is a part of that, Bill Drafts, who I think will be on the next call when we do our 10-K earnings release in March. He'll also join us. He's our President and COO. Both of them have a long tenure at the company and a clear understanding of our business. We work well together to support our employees and also our shareholders. Okay.
I'm going to turn towards the opportunities for growth slide and talk a little bit more about our M&A strategy and our partnership strategy. We're really focused on improving our market position through acquisitions and for more products and entering new markets or else gaining key customers. Our organic growth has been contributing to this. If you look out in the past year, we've had over 30% of our revenues are generated by new products or products developed within the last several years. We're continuing to hire engineers, additional engineers to help us make good progress penetrating markets and penetrating programs. We're looking for inorganic methods as well to accelerate that.
In terms of the type of profile of companies we're looking for, we're looking to companies that have moderate to strong revenue growth and also have positive cash flow, that they fill key product or technology gaps, they can bring new customers or end markets or help us accelerate into new markets. They also support our desire to move more into solution sales. We've been doing that on our own. We're selling subsystems now and modules as well. Acquisition or partnership is another key way to do that. We also want to find companies where hopefully we can also leverage what MPTI has already built and honed over the years to help accelerate their traction. Lastly, there is a slide here which shows some of the technologies we're looking at just to get a feel for it.
We're open to ideas of companies you're aware of that you think might be a good fit. Really, the key here is to add additional products and technologies to our portfolio. This gives our sales reps additional products and their line cards. It helps solidify our engagement with customers and helps us move more into the subsystem space. Some of the areas we're looking at are RF amplifiers, mixers, power dividers, couplers, phase shifters, diplexers, and wave guides. We're also looking at subsystem providers and also people who provide sensors or key components of avionics and other areas like that for growth. The last thing I'll leave you there is we're looking at companies that do have revenues that are growing their revenues, but they might need some improvement there. And that already have an EBITDA.
They're already offering EBITDA and probably are in the $2 million-$5 million EBITDA range. This is something that we think we can acquire and integrate well. It'll also be a meaningful driver of our EBITDA numbers and our EPS. Lastly, I think it's important to consider, we are a publicly listed company. We have a lot of flexibility in how we can finance acquisitions. We're accumulating cash. We have the ability to borrow. We already have a line in place with a third bank, and we're looking to expand that. We can raise capital from our investors, our current investors, or issue shares to target shareholders. We prefer to use those first methods just to enhance the return to the current investors in the company.
Lastly, I wanted to mention another thing is that we went through a strategic committee process or review this past year. We looked at acquisition targets and identified quite a few. We also tried to identify if there are other companies in the marketplace that maybe have similar size or even larger than us. They're interested in going public and using our listing as a means of providing liquidity and also serving as an acquisition platform. That is something we're not against. This is something that we would consider if it's going to provide meaningful returns to our shareholders.
Really, our goal as a company is to become two to three times our current size in the next few years to continue to gain market share and market presence and to increase the number of types of products our reps have on their line cards and grow our earnings. That is the update on the business. I did want to talk briefly about the offering, the rights offering, and now this morning's announcement about a warrant dividend, just to clarify that for some of you. We are going to turn it to questions from the groups. Many of you are aware that we announced a rights offering last week. The goal of that was really to distribute value to shareholders. We are at the point now where we are generating cash that helps drive our business and fuel growth of the business.
We appreciate your interest and investment in the company. We wanted to reward you for it. Given the volatility of the stock and also some of the feedback we received and just the engagement that we've done with shareholders and stakeholders, we thought we should look for an alternative way to approach that. We did this morning announce that we were canceling the rights offering. We were going to use another vehicle similar to that called a warrant dividend, which is essentially a right, but it's a longer-term right to provide that value distribution to shareholders. That was our goal. With a warrant dividend, it's essentially a right to buy a share. For every shareholder record, they'll receive a warrant dividend. The warrant, for five warrants, you're allowed to purchase one common share of stock. The warrant dividend itself will remain open for three years.
Once it's declared, we have a record date, we open that, we distribute the warrants. It'll also have an early trigger. We spoke this morning in our press release about the strike price of the warrant being $47.50. That would be something you would act on at the end of the three-year period unless during the course of the next three years, our stock trades up to the 50s and the average VWAP of the company for 30 days is $52 a share or greater. The warrants are going to be tradable on the New York Stock Exchange and transferable. I think that's really key to understand. This is really key to the concept of distributing value to the shareholder.
What it does is it gives you the ability to either take your warrant and sell it to another individual or to keep the warrant and exercise it over time and participate in the growth of the company and your investment in the company. We will, in the short term, in the near term, be announcing just the record date and making further announcements about this. I did want to just update everybody here on the call. Okay. I think that's what we wanted to cover on today's call. We are happy to open it up to questions from the audience and welcome your feedback.
Okay. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, simply press star then the number one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue.
If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press the star one again. Your first question comes from the line of Anja Soderstrom of Sidoti & Company. Your line is now open.
Hi. Thank you for taking my question. Congrats on the nice progress here. Just in terms of this capital raise you were doing and you're canceling now and doing this warrant thing again, is there something imminent for you in terms of M&A, or does this support that, or what are you seeing in the M&A market?
Thank you, Anja. Appreciate you joining today. No, there's not a deal that's imminent that we're going to announce in the next week or so, but we are seeing a lot of opportunity. The desire was to, one, distribute value to our shareholders.
An added benefit is that it would, to the extent that people exercise the warrant or exercise the right, when we were envisioning that, is it would put more capital on the balance sheet. It would make it just a little bit easier to do acquisitions of size. That is some of the and really execute on that strategy. It could be JV partnerships. It could be acquisitions. We are going to continue to make investments in the business regardless of how much capital we raise. I think we will see some opportunities in the acquisition market as well. Having some more capital on the balance sheet, as we continue to accumulate capital as well, will just help make sure that we can do acquisitions with a higher cash content than shares. That provides a better return to our investors over time.
Okay.
Thank you. In terms of those large contract wins you've been announcing, are those with the same customer or are they with different customers? You're also alluding to other sizable contracts in the pipeline and also if they are with the same customers or different customers.
Yeah. Yeah. Those were with two different customers, with two of our larger customers. We do have a number of other contracts that we expect to sign in the next few months. It's really a variety of people in the avionics and also in the airspace and defense space.
Okay. Thank you. The connectivity partnership, how are you going to be working with that? Could that be also helping you source deals to absorb into M-tron eventually?
Yep. That's a great question. Yeah. The connectivity partnership is something that's been discussed at this affiliate for several months.
I think there's a large market opportunity for investment in the area. They are establishing a team of seasoned investors and operators who know the space as well. I anticipate they're going to have pretty strong investment returns. Part of the interest on our part is that we focus on several markets where we're really trying to drive our revenue. We don't have a broad view of all the markets where RF plays a role, right, or where connectivity plays a role in communications in general. Connectivity Partnership is going to look at a broader set of vertical applications than we do here at M-tron.
I think it'll give us a good window into some of those market opportunities and allow us to invest through the partnership in some companies that we might not have come across, but also gain knowledge of new market opportunities in areas that we should consider in the future for growth. I think in terms of how does it benefit our shareholders, we're looking at it two ways. One is I think it'll generate significant investment returns to us over time. Also, I think it'll give us the opportunity to partner with or acquire companies that we may not have come across on our own. We're going to have a strategic role in the fund, but we're not going to be running the fund. I anticipate that we'll have a right of first refusal on potential acquisitions of companies that come across.
There may be a lot of companies that, frankly, are too small for us to buy at this point in time. If Connectivity Partnership can support them, wonderful. We will partner with them to drive revenue for both firms, or maybe we will look at acquiring them down the road. I think it is twofold, really. It will generate good returns on our capital as well as give us opportunities to acquire or partner with companies that we might not have seen yet.
Thank you. You mentioned you expect strong revenue growth to come to them with a strong backlog in these contracts. Do you expect it to be the same magnitude as the near 20%, or where are you anticipating the revenue growth to be in the next coming year?
Yeah. Yeah.
We've been guiding people to, in terms of what we feel we can guarantee, is a lower number. In the 10% growth range, we do have a desire to grow higher than that. If you look at the last three years, I think we went into every single one of those years expecting probably 7-10% growth. We were pleasantly surprised with how we came out. This year is shaping up strongly. We're doing well in Q1. I think we do have a good chance at exceeding that. I don't want to predict 20%. There are a lot of headwinds in the market in terms of the dialogue that's going on in Washington and other places. I don't think it's going to impact us, but there are a lot of changes in front.
I think it's kind of prudent to stick with those numbers for now.
Okay. In terms of the growth margin, you also been talking about 45% before, but you've been beating that every quarter now. How should we think about that going forward and the product mix there?
Yeah. I think we're going to stay in the high 40s, to be honest. It'll bounce around a little bit from quarter to quarter. I think something in the when we gave up the long-term model we were talking about, I think 45%-48%, I think that's reasonable on a quarter-by-quarter basis. I expect our margins to kind of remain where they are.
Okay. Great. That was all for me. Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay. Your next question comes from the line of Chip Rewey of Rewey Asset Management.
Your line is now open.
Good morning. Thanks for taking my call. First question, again, and I'm just not that familiar with what's going on. Could you put into context what the Connectivity Partnership is? What sort of funding is the company committed to for right now? How big will that fund be? Just to clarify, that is the fund where your former CEO is taking a senior advisory role. I have some follow-up questions.
Sure. Thank you, Jeff. The fund itself is just being established. They are right now in the market, building their team, talking to potential investors, and also identifying and building out their deal flow. It is not set in stone yet in terms of the size, the way they will raise. I think they anticipate raising about $200 million-$250 million, so a substantial amount of money.
We look at being a part of the GP. So we would have some benefit from the carry on those investments. We haven't determined yet the size of our investment. I don't expect it to be a meaningful amount of cash on our balance sheet. I do think, given our position in the market and getting in early with the fund, we'll have a meaningful return there. We'll let people know that as it becomes more solidified.
Okay. You mentioned, I think, that you'll have a right of first refusal. I mean, I see this fund a little bit as a competitor of your own M&A activities, potentially.
Yeah. That's a good point, Chip. That's one of the reasons why, as we work with them, we are looking to establish a right of first refusal. It's not a point of competition for us.
We're really trying to delineate the types of things that they would look at and the types of things that we would look at. For anything that's really in our wheelhouse, we would have the ability to transact ahead of them. If we looked at it and we chose not to, then I wouldn't see any reason why we wouldn't let Connectivity Partnership potentially get involved.
Okay. Changing gears to the second topic, I appreciate your comments on the continued cadence of activity at the DOD and foreign military replenishment. I think that makes sense. My question is, there's a strong organic growth path at the company. Can you talk about the hurdle for acquisitions as far as if you do, and you've said you'll look at bigger, and you use the word accretive. Accretive over what time? Immediately, year one, and on what metrics?
EPS, cash flow, adjusted EBITDA? That would be helpful. Secondly, discuss your incentives, if you would, since you're new to the company. Now you have a new role, so changing quick. Are your incentives in cash? Are your incentives in stock? How are the other members of the C-suite incentivized, and how are you going to get paid? Are you doubling the company with kind of equity at stake, and how much kind of skin in the game for a successful accretive growth path for us as equity holders?
Okay. Do you mind just repeating your first question? I've got the second one down.
The first question was the accretive nature of deals on what metrics, basically.
Yep. That's fine. Thank you for that. We've been looking at doing accretive deals. We look at it on an EBITDA/EBITDA basis.
We have been really limited to looking at things that are accretive almost immediately. We are not looking to make big bets on new technologies moving into production levels of manufacturing. For things that are more on the come, we would look probably more towards partnerships or forming of JVs as a way of sharing in the benefit of helping them grow their business or grow our business. That is some of the metrics. In terms of the size, we are really trying to buy things that have a couple of million, at least, of EBITDA, if not more. We do find, though, that when we look at the marketplace, I would say currently our margins are 5-10 times higher than many of the companies we look at.
We are trying to find situations that are not going to drag down our margins over time and where we can have an impact on that and hopefully improve their margins more and closer to ours and keep our business model the way it is. We think we have a pretty successful model at this point in time. We are really trying to export that. In terms of incentives, you had asked about that. Right now, the senior team is incentivized through salaries and performance bonuses that are cash-based based on the company's performance against plan. It is not really based on our stock performance, to be honest. We do participate as equity holders. The senior management team either has, most of them have, restricted stock, which vests for a three-year period. They benefit from that.
There are periodic grants of stock or restricted stock to management team members.
Okay. That's helpful. I would just, I can let you go. I think the one thing I'd like to see as a holder, since you are kind of targeting good and aggressive and that's positive growth targets, I think the bonus should be more equity-based to align you with holders better. I think that will be received well if you can look at that next go-round or next cycle and change that. If you're successful, probably it's better for everybody on the team anyway if you do that over the longer term if you're successful. I would look forward to that change.
Okay. Appreciate that, Jim.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of James Tivy. Your line is now open.
Yes. Good morning, Jim.
James, your line is now open.
Yes. Sorry. Good morning. Thanks for taking the call. Hi, Linda. Welcome, Cameron. I have a very granular question related to gross margins.
Okay.
In your Q3 earnings release, you mentioned that margin improvements were due in part to improved production efficiencies from previous investments. I know today on this call, you talked about efficiency overall materials, which relates to crystals. Can you provide some clarity on the statement? It was not something we previously had seen. Are these investments capital or human in nature? How does the crystal yield actually fit into this efficiency, improved efficiency in your production?
Yeah. We have not talked about what our crystal efficiency levels are, but we are dedicating resources to making improvements there just because it is such a large portion of our COGS.
We have both consultants and engineering talent we've brought on board to help us do that, as well as we are making investments in machinery to aid that. I don't know if we can say more than that, but it is a core area of focus for us. We're also trying to be just more efficient in our purchase of inventories as well, since that can be a large number as well.
Okay. Thank you. That's all I had.
Yeah. Thank you, James.
That concludes our Q&A session. I will turn the conference back to Mr. Cameron Pforr for the closing remarks.
Thank you very, very much for joining the call today and your interest in the company. I'm hoping that clarified a lot of things that may have arisen in your mind as you've been reading some of the press releases recently.
We are really committed to providing shareholder value and doing that in a number of different ways. One way to do it is the warrant dividend now, which is what we're trying to pursue. We do realize we kind of stubbed our toe on the rights offering and hoping to make that good for you over time and appreciate your support of the company and kind of be in our mission. Also a big thank you to our employees who are on the call and their dedication to what we're doing here. Thanks for your time.
Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.