Greetings. Welcome to the TechPrecision Corporation Fiscal 2024 first quarter financial results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note, this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Brett Maas, Managing Partner of Hayden IR. You may begin.
Thank you. On the call today is Alexander Shen, Chief Executive Officer, and Bobby Lilley, the Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I'd like to remind our listeners that management's remarks may contain forward-looking statements which are subject to risks and uncertainties, and management may make additional forward-looking statements in response to your questions. Therefore, the company claims the protection of the safe harbor for forward-looking statements as contained in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ from those discussed today, and therefore, we refer you to a more detailed discussion of risks and uncertainties in the company's financial filings with the SEC. In addition, projections as to the company's future performance represents management's estimates as of today, August 21st, 2023. TechPrecision assumes no obligation to revise or update these forward-looking statements.
With that out of the way, I'd like to turn the call over to Alexander Shen, Chief Executive Officer, to provide opening remarks. Alex?
Brett, thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Customer confidence remains high, driving a strong backlog increase. Total consolidated backlog is at a strong $46.3 million as of June 30, 2023. First quarter consolidated net sales were $7.4 million, 4% higher when compared to $7.1 million in fiscal year 2023 first quarter. On a consolidated basis, we had a net loss of $527,000. Our Stadco subsidiary reported strong revenue growth with net sales of $3 million, or 26% higher than the same period one year ago. Stadco gross profit improved, reporting a loss of $588,000 versus a loss of $1.023 million from the same period one year ago, an improvement of $435,000.
Ranor reported net sales of $4.5 million or a 5% decrease from the first quarter of fiscal year 2023. This decrease was due to a less favorable mix. First quarter net sales for Stadco compared favorably with the same period a year ago. Our losses have narrowed year-over-year. We expect gradual improvement in gross profit and gross margin. We expect to deliver our strong backlog of $46.3 million over the course of the next one to three fiscal years with revenue growth and gross margin expansion. We will continue to focus on tactical execution and risk mitigation, driving both subsidiaries to fully comprehend, successfully manage, and successfully meet customer expectations, enabling continuous recapture and continuous retention of customer confidence.
We can all clearly see the positive results of this focus, evidenced by the continued high customer confidence which enabled our strong backlog growth. We remain highly focused on cash management, a critical piece of risk mitigation, and continue to manage and control expenses, capital expenditures, customer advances, progress billings, and final invoicing at shipment. I would like to turn the call over now to our CFO, Bobby Lilley, to continue with the review of our first quarter results. Bobby?
Thank you, Alex. Net sales for the first quarter of fiscal year 2024 were $7.4 million, or 4% higher when compared to the same quarter. Sales were $6.7 million, or 7% higher than the prior year period, due primarily to less favorable project mix at Ranor and unabsorbed overhead at Stadco. Due to the higher costs, gross profit was $694,000 or 15% lower compared to the same quarter a year ago. SG&A expense decreased by $101,000 or 7%, primarily due to cost reductions at Stadco. Operating loss was $580,000, or 4% higher than the same quarter a year ago. Interest expense for the first quarter increased by $10,000 due to more borrowing under our revolver loan and higher loan cost amortization.
We ended the quarter with $2.3 million outstanding under the revolver loan. Moving on to our financial position. Cash provided by operating activities was $115,000, and cash used for capital expenditures was $1.9 million. Financing activities provided net cash of $1.5 million. Our total debt was $7.6 million on June 30th, 2023, compared to $6.1 million at the end of March 31, 2023, as we borrowed an additional $1.7 million under the revolver loan. Cash balance at March 31, 2023, was $272,000, compared to $535,000 at March 31, 2023. I'm sorry, that's June 30, 2023, was $272,000. Working capital was $4.9 million at June 30, 2023, compared to $5.6 million at March 31, 2023.
With that, I will now turn the call back over to Alex.
Thank you, Bobby. For those on the call who may not be very familiar with our company, TechPrecision is a custom manufacturer of precision, large-scale fabricated components and precision large-scale machined metal components. The components that we manufacture are customer designed. We sell to customers in two main industry sectors, defense and precision industrial, predominantly defense. We do most of our work in industries that are highly sensitive to confidentiality, which preclude us from speaking publicly about many things that a company not operating in these fields might discuss. As such, there are real limits as to what I can discuss, and sometimes those limits change. Please understand that my saying that I am not allowed to discuss that is based on customer requirements and the environment in which we conduct business.
Even though I have read the last statement at every conference call for the last several years, we continue to get questions, both written and oral, or hear about individuals making statements that what I'm saying is not accurate, that it is the board silencing me, or that I alone am making these decisions. As I have said repeatedly, over and over again, we are not the ones making these rules, not me and not the board. The decision as to what we can say is based solely and completely on rules, rules from our clients. These are not my rules. These are not the board's rules. There are many things we would love to speak about, but we are restricted. It is the same for all of our direct competitors. Over the last several years, we have made great progress by performing good work and following instructions.
This has led to about a threefold increase in stock price since the present board took over. That is a winning formula. As a final point, I do not see these clients changing these restrictions anytime in the near or even distant future. So please do not expect anything to change. Where we can speak about it, we will, but we will not jeopardize our relationships with our clients, and we will not jeopardize the future orders we want and expect to receive from them. TechPrecision is proud and honored to serve the United States defense industry, specifically naval submarine manufacturing through our Ranor subsidiary and military aircraft manufacturing through our Stadco subsidiary. We aim to secure and maintain enduring partnerships with our customers.
Overall, in both the Ranor and the Stadco subsidiaries, we continue to see meaningful opportunities in our defense sector, as evidenced by the strength of our backlog. We are encouraged by the prospects for growing our revenue and increasing profitability in future quarters. Operator, you can open the line for questions.
Thank you. At this time, we will be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press Star two if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. The first question comes from Rob Straus, private investor. Rob, please proceed.
Hi, Alex. How are you today?
Good. Thank you. You?
Good. The first thing, I guess, is to welcome, Bobby Lilley as our CFO. Congratulations, Bobby, on your new position.
Thank you.
I have a number of questions, Alex, of course, you'll say what you can and can't comment about. The first one is on Ranor. We're certainly dealing with the predictability of that business from the standpoint of, as you stated, product mix. I'm curious on two fronts. Number one, how predictable is our product mix for that business? Secondly, how does volume and pricing get incorporated into the health of our Ranor performance?
How predictable is the product mix? Well, I don't forecast, so we won't be predicting anytime soon. I think that is, has been my mode of operation, so that should not be a surprise. Correct?
Understood. I was not asking for you to predict to the broader audience, but I was referencing internally, given that we have a backlog that runs off, I think you say, over one to three fiscal years. Does the backlog that we have make the product mix operationally for you predictable, or is that not as clear, or the outcome?
The strength of the backlog does not increase the strength of any predictability of something that's lumpy and unpredictable. We do our best every day with different factors that change the predictability. Product mix, certainly, is a factor. There's many different details that go into product mix that cause it to be to affect how we perform. Overall, when you smooth it out over a much longer period of time, and not quarter by quarter, then your predictability or the product mix impact smooths out over time. Our reporting requires us to report quarter by quarter.
Okay. A couple of questions on Stadco. In a previous call, it was clear that we were having, some equipment issues. Are you able to update us on the status of that equipment getting back up and running and making any other, general Stadco plant, comments as it relates to that plant running, as you would expect at this time?
Well, running as I expect or running as I want it to, don't coincide very much when we are still inside a turnaround situation. Number one. I would like it, I want it to perform better and break down less. The many years of deferred maintenance certainly impacts what happens to our equipment. The specifics of the threats internally, that deferred maintenance for over a period of years, has caused these specific threats that caused our problems last quarter that we reported, have been dealt with. That doesn't mean there's no more specific threats. What it means is that those specific threats have been attacked and neutralized, and with a very low probability of them happening again. These machines are complicated. There are many threats. Just because I dealt with one or two, doesn't mean there won't be any more coming up.
I will tell you, the ones that I have attacked and neutralized, those will not be coming back anytime soon. It's difficult for me to predict inside a turnaround how this is going to play out and predict what else is going to break down. I guarantee there will be breakdowns. Absolutely. What are they and how much are they? I would like to know the same thing. What our goal here is to retain customer confidence and continue to deliver good parts on time, and balance that against any malfunction and still continue to resecure customer confidence and keep it. We do that every day. This is still a turnaround, but as you can see, the losses are narrowing. That's the key point. I hope I answered your question.
You, you did, and I think it's good news that the equipment, failures that were reported recently, are in fact solved, and that's, I think, an important point. Just two more points on Stadco.
Just to, just to make sure we all understand each other on the call, for all the listeners and for all the future listeners that will play back the recording. These specific threats that impacted our earnings last quarter that were reported, have been attacked and neutralized. That does not mean there are no more threats left, but those specific ones, it's very likely they won't be coming back anytime soon to plague us. We've neutralized them.
Understood. Thanks for the clarification. A couple of other questions on Stadco. First, in the Form 10-Q NT that was filed, there was a comment made about the ongoing efforts to integrate Stadco. I'm not sure if the the verbiage was, the integration is not yet complete, but something to that narrative. Could you help us Could you help us understand what that means and from your perspective, what you have left to go, regarding the Stadco integration?
That's a very complicated and difficult question. There's all facets of integration that need to happen. They have never had a parent company. Ranor has always had TechPrecision as the parent company. They were not a public reporting entity. Now they need to report into and roll up into a public reporting entity. Those are major pieces.
Do you think that the Stadco opportunity is as great today as you thought it was when the acquisition was made two years ago?
I don't need to think. The facts are there. This is not based on-
That's confirmation.
That's not based on my thoughts. The facts are there. The opportunity, solid.
Okay. I'll get back into the queue and let someone else come on and ask some questions, but hopefully I'll be back. Thank you so much, Alex, for answering those questions.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Kris Tuttle with Blue Caterpillar. Please proceed. Chris, your line is live. Okay, we'll come back to Chris. We have a question from Ross Taylor with ARS Investment Partners. Please proceed, Ross.
Thank you. Alex, could you give us an idea of how much production was lost at Stadco over the prior two quarters due to these equipment issues? Not dollar amounts, but % of capacity, % of run rate, something of that nature.
A little difficult to give you a pat answer right now. Because that would take into some different assumptions of what if. I'm not trying to avoid answering the question.
Do you think that when you look at it, did we lose 4 weeks of production, 8 weeks of production? What I'm getting at is if you look at the numbers in Stadco-
It's not a straight line. The problem is, it's not a straight-line analyst answer is the problem.
Mm-hmm.
There are different moving pieces. If many of them collapse, which one did what? It's hard to understand because there's a number of different pieces of equipment. It's not just one or two.
Mm-hmm.
There are, there are many. Double handfuls. Really need a much more... Need a lot of time to break it all down and analyze it. I usually spend my time neutralizing threats after I see them, so that they don't happen again. I can probably, you know, phrase it in a way that tells us we probably lost maybe somewhere around $250,000, maybe $125,000, maybe $250,000, something like that. That's what I think for the last quarter. Again, it's difficult to go back and try to predict what could have been. It's all in the past. My focus needs to be moving forward, and my focus needs to be, if I kill a threat, it needs to stay dead.
Okay. What I'm, what I'm trying to understand is, the last call you made, the comment that you've never failed at a turnaround. You've done an amazing job with Ranor. It's been an unparalleled success. While we understand it's your famous description, lumpy, you know, you've been able to push operating margins there into the mid, upper 30s, and that's something to be commended. Stadco is not showing anywhere near that kind of traction. When you bought the business, I would have thought, and comments were made around the time, that it was a very similar business, so therefore you should be able to generate similar investment performance on that business. I understand there are certain cost functions. For example, we carry a, you know, a 4% or 5% lower operating margin for Stadco than we do in Ranor.
You've lost a fair amount of money. We're two years into a turnaround in this business. The last two quarters have been the worst quarters. How confident are you that we're gonna get back to where we're operating, you know, break even or above, as you were prior to the last few quarters overall as a company?
I, I will take you back a little bit to my previous statements. The gross profit has improved. If we compare this quarter with the same quarter one year ago, an improvement of $435,000. Okay, we lost $1.023 million from that same period one year ago. We are closing the gap, and that is a fact. We will continue to close this gap.
How long does it take you to close that gap?
I don't know.
Do you close it in this fiscal year?
Ross, please, I can't forecast that.
My guess is that you probably have a forecast for it somewhere, but I won't go into that. I would assume your board wants to understand where things are going and how quickly they turn. You've talked about that. You guys basically have almost a nonexistent investor relations effort. It's an area that really definitely needs to be improved. We get a lot of the line that you can't talk about things, but to me, the business here is, while very complicated to execute, not that complicated to understand at a high level. You have two divisions. Each of these divisions has a series of known programs that it's involved in. Each of those divisions is watching known programs ramp. There are things that are gonna drive business higher in each of them.
We look at it figuring each business, each division, Stadco and Ranor, should be able to produce $35 million, $40 million, $45 million in revenues. Those divisions, should you've shown you can produce high 30s operating margins in Ranor. My assumption is you can produce probably high 20s towards 30 in Stadco. If you get that, you get a blended rate around 32%-33%. You have a business that would therefore produce operating income of $24 million-$28 million annually. You have your SG&A and other expenses. You back that down, you get $14 million-$18 million in what should be free cash flow annually, which comes out to $1.50-$2.00 a share in free cash flow. I actually just laid out your thesis, I did not once talk about something that any of your customers will be upset about.
I didn't reference any programs, although the programs are public knowledge. I didn't reference run rates, although the demanded run rates for these programs are public knowledge. I didn't comment on the pressure to increase the run rate in one program, but that's public knowledge as well. I think you need to do a better job. You're really running three turnarounds here, Alex, in my mind. You're running the turnaround at Ranor, at which you have succeeded wonderfully. You're running a turnaround at Stadco. It hasn't gained traction yet, but from listening to you, you're comfortable and confident that it will gain traction. When it does, I would expect we'll see a rapid improvement there, just as we saw in Ranor. The third one you're running is you're the CEO of TechPrecision.
While you said the stock has tripled since this team came together, the fact is, this stock is basically showing at or under the levels it sold at in each of the last two, three years, even going back to 2019. That's not acceptable, and that's part of what's causing this whole effort. The failure to actually better engage your shareholders is part of why that's happening, is because it's increasingly difficult to get professional investors. You up listed, I would believe, to attract professional investors, people like myself. You're not gonna find yourself able to do that until you learn a bigger way to engage. You don't have to talk specifics. You don't have to give things away.
As I just demonstrated, you can talk about the TechPrecision story and not say anything that Electric Boat or Sikorsky or Boeing or Newport News or anyone else would be upset with. I just wanna strongly encourage you to make that effort, cause that's one of the three turnarounds, and that's judged not by you and not by the board. That's judged by the market, and the market will tell us when you've succeeded in that, the greatest of all turnarounds that you're embodied with, which is that of being CEO of TechPrecision. Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Kris Tuttle with Blue Caterpillar Investments. Please proceed.
Hi there. Can you hear me this time?
We can.
Okay, terrific. I, I did have a couple of questions. Good to see at least the numbers moving in the right direction, so that's good. My question-- one of my questions is on your, your input costs. I'm, I'm not sure I understand, like, how volatile-... And, and how changeable are they from quarter to quarter, year over year? You know, are those things that you have embedded in your contracts to offset? I'm just, I'm just curious how you handle, handle the volatility of the input costs, if you have those.
Could you please define input further?
Well, anything that, I guess, is part of your cost of goods sold. You know, not, not including the people, but, you know, metals, materials, fasteners, subcomponents, subassemblies, those kind of things.
Okay. Predominantly, we are a custom manufacturer, that our core capability is complex, critical welding and fabrication, and complex critical machining. Those services, not so much what you were talking about, materials, metals, maybe to a certain extent, but not so much. As far as a lever and a factor to really enhance, that's, there's no low-hanging fruit there.
Okay. Yes, I understand what you're saying. Thank you. I did wanna ask again a little bit about this, you mentioned closing the gap over time, and, and, you know, maybe the way to ask this is if, if you can imagine for a moment, you know, your, your operations running at the, you know, at the state that you are 100% satisfied with them, are we, you know, halfway to that? Is it more or less than that? I'm just, I'm just trying to get a feeling for, you know, when you, when you look at overall operations, you know, kind of where are you-- where is it today in relation to, you know, where you would like to see it sometime in the future?
I think we would all like me to give that answer, including myself. Whatever answer I give, it's going to be some kind of a wrong answer. I have a hard and fast rule that we shall not forecast a business that's lumpy enough to bite me right in the buttocks.
Mm-hmm.
Therefore, rendering any type of forecast on the weather is probably not a great idea. I'm going to stick to what works. What we need to do is concentrate, and for example, there is a problem, there was a problem this past quarter with absorption. Well, we need to have better absorption, which means we need to have better throughput to do the absorption. So the concentration needs to be blocking and tackling every day, so that we have more, more manufacturing output to do the absorption. Otherwise, we will continue to have unabsorbed overhead at Stadco, as we described earlier.
Okay, fair enough. I'll, I'll leave it there, and we'll look forward to more progress down the road. Thank you.
Kris, thank you.
I'd now like to turn the floor back to Alex for any closing remarks.
Have a good day, everyone. Thank you very much.
This concludes today's conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.