Okay, we're going to allow a few seconds for the room to populate. Good morning, everyone. My name is John Franzreb. I'm an analyst here at Sidoti & Company. Our first presentation of the day is Vishay Precision Group, ticker VPG. For those who are not familiar with the name, Vishay is a manufacturer of sensors and sensor-based systems across a variety of end markets. We are fortunate to have with us today the Director of Investor Relations, Steve Cantor. Steve will do a brief presentation and then allow for Q&A. Should you have a question, please send it in the Q&A dialog box, and I'll present it to the company. With that said, thank you, Steve, for being with us. The floor is yours.
Great. Thank you, John, and good morning, everyone. It's great to be here and tell you about VPG. First, before I do, I just want to remind everyone I will be making some forward-looking statements, so we encourage you to read our SEC filings carefully to understand any risks associated with those statements. So fundamentally, VPG is a sensor company, and I don't need to tell you sensors are everywhere. They're proliferating. They continue to proliferate. They're in our homes, our cars, our offices, our factories. And we think that trend is a long way to go, especially with the adoption of and implementation of AI and AI technologies. So we expect to see even more sensors being developed and deployed over the next several years. So it's a good space to be in.
So what we do and the value that we create for our customers is really to provide products that help their products or processes become safer, smarter, and more productive. And the way we do that is we focus on the highest-performing products in our categories. So in terms of precision, reliability, consistency, these are all key factors of why customers come to us. And the way we think about it, maybe in a little bit different terms, is what's called the data value stream. So the data value stream is simply the process in which real-world data like temperature or force or weight or pressure, those are all things that we measure. It's the process in which that real-world phenomena is digitized, and then that data then kind of moves downstream, becomes analyzed, or to actually drive certain functions.
For critical applications, which much of what we do, much of what we address, where safety or precision, reliability is really important. If you don't get that first step right, everything downstream could become a problem, which is particularly critical if you're talking about safety. We've been doing this for a while. We became a public company in 2010. Many of our businesses were actually operating and serving customers well before that with predecessor companies. We're very well established, and our brands are very well known and very highly regarded by customers around the world. We operate globally. We serve a broad cross-section of markets, as you can see on this slide in the chart on the right-hand side. We think we have perhaps one of the most diversified sets of end markets for a sensor company, certainly of our size.
As you look across these markets, there's a portion of them which I think of as more industrial kinds of markets, which we have been serving for many years. For example, in our industrial weighing segment, we make various weighing modules, load cells, force sensors, which are used in part to weigh ingredients that go into various manufacturing processes, whether for a pharmaceutical company or a chemical company or food and bev company. We're also involved with the steelmaking process, which I'll talk a little bit more about later. The other markets, such as test and measurement, AMS, and even in that other category that we show here in the upper left portion of the chart, these are much more tech-driven.
And so, just to give you an example in test and measurement, one of the key markets we serve is in the semiconductor equipment sector, particularly in the test part of semiconductor equipment. So these are really high-tech processes and products where they really require the level of technology that we can offer them. Also, you'll see other kind of tech-driven markets in the other category, such as medical and even consumer. So it's really this diversity that works, we think, works to our advantage in terms of consistency and means that we're not reliant on a single market. We operate in three business segments, as I'm showing on this slide: sensors, weighing solutions, and measurement systems. And the way you can think about this is sensors are more like components. Weighing solutions are modules, so they have additional componentry around them.
Measurement systems are really standalone kind of application-specific systems. They're really doing one thing or addressing one set of applications, but they're doing it really well. We think that these segments really offer us a nice blend of both growth and profitability. Sales channels include distribution, direct, and OEM. Distribution represents about 30% of our sales. Another 30% is direct to customers. About 40%, which happens to be the most rapidly growing channel for us, is to address OEM customers. As I'm showing on this slide, fiscal 2023 was our second-best year in our history, and that followed the best year in 2022. Thus far, in 2024, we have seen a slower year, certainly slower than we anticipated going into it. This really, we believe, due to a variety of factors, including continued slowdown in the industrial markets around the world.
Some of the cyclical markets that we address, such as semiconductors, such as steel, have moved off the bottom of the cycle, but certainly have not fully recovered, and in some cases, it appears that that recovery off the bottom has stalled a bit, and then above and beyond that, we continue to see cautiousness on the part of some of our customers, and that's really reflected through what we're seeing through our sales through the distribution. We have seen some recovery in orders in some markets. It has not been all uniform. In fact, in the second quarter, we did see growth in some areas, but the recovery in orders really reflects more of a replenishment of inventories, which happen to be at levels which are historically low and which historically have typically triggered a reorder activity on the part of our customers.
But really, what's important on this slide is on the right-hand side, which is our three to five-year targets for the company. And we have strategies and plans and have taken steps to achieve growth in the low teens. I should point out that that growth target is both a combination of organic and inorganic. You can think of that as about half and half. So the organic piece is certainly something that we've been working on for the last year, year and a half, very aggressively. But as we achieve that revenue target, we expect to achieve those operating metrics that you see in terms of gross margin, operating margin, and EBITDA margin.
We think that in terms of the gross margin activity. Actually, let me go back here just one second before I move ahead. We've actually made some great progress in terms of putting in place manufacturing infrastructure that really offers increased efficiencies compared to what we had maybe three, four, or five years ago. The evidence of that really is the fact that we were able to achieve a record-level gross margin in the first quarter of this year, so a record-level quarterly gross margin in Q1, really unmuted revenue levels. We take a great deal of pride about that. That has really come as a result of moving manufacturing to lower-cost centers, implementing more manufacturing automation, and really increasing the efficiencies of some of our manufacturing processes.
So we think that that is in place, and it will enable us, as we recover our revenue levels and get to that growth target, to achieve these metrics that you see on the right-hand side. So in the big picture, how do we expect to grow organically? It's really captured on this slide. Historically, we focused primarily on niche markets. These are really good markets where we have number one or number two positions in. But as we think about some of the external factors and external trends that are driving demand for new kinds of sensors, and in terms of the kinds of investments that we've been making internally to both improve our manufacturing efficiencies as well as increasing our business development activity, we believe that we can now address larger and faster-growing markets. And so we have been very active in that.
I'll talk a little bit more in a few minutes about some of our business development initiatives, which we're very excited about. But it's really this convergence that we're seeing between what's going on with some of these external trends, many of which you're very familiar with, with the investments that we've been making internally. And let me talk now a little bit more about some of those external trends. So again, you're familiar with all of these: electrification, digital transformation, industrial automation, defense, and space technologies. So all of these, we think, are offering us increased opportunities in the future, both today and in the future, I should say. So first, let me talk about electrification. For VPG, it's not just about EVs, although we do have some plays related to electric vehicles, such as the safety testing of vehicles and the testing of EV batteries.
But it really goes beyond that to new kinds of products which are now relying on electric power, which previously didn't. So just to give you one example, we've been working with electric aircraft manufacturers, electric aircraft, which are now called eVTOLs, which stands for Electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing systems. So you may have seen some prototypes on videos. So there's a number of companies that have been developing them. It's not clear how soon we're going to see these flying around. Many of these companies are developing them for air taxi kinds of applications. But these are real products. They're being tested. They've already generated, for VPG, a few million dollars of revenue alone just in terms of the testing of these. But I think it gives you an example of some of the activity that we think the whole trend of electrification is driving.
We also are involved in e-bikes, and as you see here on the slide, the safety testing of EVs and the testing of EV batteries, so the next trend, industrial automation, it's not a new trend, but it's one which we believe is accelerating really for a few reasons, not the least of which is the pain that the world experienced coming out of the pandemic and the supply chain and labor shortages that we all contended with, but also in terms of driving greater efficiencies, and so we're seeing more and more automation. We ourselves are adopting more automation in our manufacturing. I've highlighted a couple of examples here: robotics, really for a whole range of purposes, industrial, medical, as well as general-purpose applications. We've talked publicly about an engagement we have with a leading maker of a humanoid robot.
We're now deep in discussions with a second maker of such a kind of robot. So this is something which has already generated almost $1 million of revenue related to prototypes for the early phase design of these robots. So we are very excited about the potential that this has certainly going forward. But we're also involved with other kinds of industrial automation equipment, such as agricultural equipment and construction equipment. And so we see this as an important trend, which is only going to get stronger as we go forward. So Defense and Space, it's not a trend per se, but it's certainly one that's growing in terms of technical development, especially given the conflicts that we're now seeing around the world. We're involved in a number of areas related to Defense and Space.
The majority of what we do here is related to space, such as in the command and control of satellites. We're also involved in the testing of different space rocket systems, as the reentry system shown here on this slide. The second picture to the right of that, which shows what looks to be like a crash test dummy, are actually specialized mannequins that we developed for the U.S. Army to help them develop better ways to protect our soldiers in combat. We're involved with a number of missile and defense systems, as well as in the development and design of both commercial and military drones, both for air, land, and sea. Digital transformation, really, it's the process of applying digital technologies to products or processes that didn't need it before. One example related to digital transformation is in consumer electronics.
It's an area that is actually fairly new to us. If you looked at the company five years ago, we did almost nothing in consumer. And now it has been one of the most important markets for us, certainly in our other market category. We're also involved in semiconductor equipment, as I mentioned, both on the test side as well as the front end. And then we're also involved with supplying products for telecommunications, including data center and fiber optics equipment. So I hope that gives you a flavor of some of the trends that we think are driving our opportunity set long term. But what we're doing ourselves in terms of how we're capitalizing on it is really and what we are driving towards is really captured on this slide. So on the left, you can see a number of key competencies.
These are things that we continue to invest in and develop, such as our innovation, using our deep technical expertise. For example, a lot of our technical sales are done on an engineer-to-engineer level, and we are leveraging that. Actually, that's one of the things that our customers really appreciate, and we're continuing to look for M&A. We just completed a deal, which I'll talk about in a moment, a small deal, but we continue to look for others, and we think we have a great platform and certainly a balance sheet to do that, and then, of course, we're continuing to focus on our operational excellence. I mentioned the improvements in our manufacturing efficiency that we've achieved. We have some additional projects that we're going to be implementing over the next few quarters here, which will add even another few million of cost savings to our business model.
But really, what's important is really on the right-hand side of this slide. So these are the metrics that we ourselves use to really assess how successful we are with sorry about that in terms of implementing our strategy. So certainly, revenue growth, operating leverage, both in terms of margin, and I'm showing here Adjusted EPS, and then cash flow. And so as we continue to drive these strategies, these are the things that we think will drive our shareholder value. I mentioned one of the priorities for the company has been to increase our business development activity. We have a very full pipeline of opportunities that we're now addressing. We continue to add to that. I'm showing here on this slide just a selection of some of the opportunities that we're excited about. We've talked about the humanoid robot, but we also have received an order for a surgical robot.
So medical robotics is another area that we're focusing on. E-bikes and high-end bikes is a key business opportunity for us. Missile systems, inventory management systems, ceramics testing is something that we currently don't do, but is a market that would expand our opportunity set for our high-end R&D tools, which right now are being used to develop new metals. And then aluminum manufacturing is a market which we don't address right now, where we can leverage what we do in the steel manufacturing to this whole area that we don't address. I mentioned this company that we just recently acquired called Nokra. Nokra uses laser-based systems to measure the thickness of sheets of steel as it's being manufactured. This dovetails really well with our existing business called KELK, where we are actually monitoring and controlling the rollers that roll that steel into sheets.
So it's operating in the same environment and is another really great product that we can offer our existing customers. It's a small business, but one that we think we can grow by leveraging our strong brand and distribution. And we expect it to be accretive in 2025 with very healthy margins. So hopefully, I've given you a little flavor for VPG and the opportunity set that we're currently addressing and some of the macro drivers that we see driving our business. We have a solid balance sheet. We have a net cash position, a great platform, great market positions. And so we're very excited about what's ahead. And with that, I will turn it back to John for Q&A.
Thank you, Steve. If you have a question, please put it in the Q&A dialogue, and I'll address it to Steve.
Steve, I'd like to kick it off with one of the overhangs on the stock in recent quarters has been a below 1.0 book-to-bill. Can you kind of talk to what's been the problem and when do you expect that book-to-bill to kind of reverse the current trend?
Yeah. So this has really been unprecedented in the company's history to see the number of consecutive quarters that we have seen a book-to-bill below one. I think it may be seven quarters now. And it's really been very surprising to us because typically, when we see our inventory levels or inventory levels of our products that our customer reaches a certain point, historically, we've seen reordering. And in fact, many of our customers do have semi-annual or annual orders that they place.
But we've seen this cautiousness on the part of customers really persist, which has been, I would say, exacerbated by some of the cyclical slowdown that we've seen both on the industrial side of our markets as well as some things like semiconductor and steel. So I'd say we feel like this will turn. We're not sure exactly when, but we think that we will see some recovery maybe start going into 2025. But at this point, it has been very surprising to us to see how long this cautiousness has gone on on the part of our customers.
In recent years, you've generated incremental/decremental operating margins of 35% to somewhere in the neighborhood of mid-50% range. Can you kind of discuss the economics behind these pronounced swings in profitability and how you're thinking about that margin profile on a go-forward basis? Yeah.
As I mentioned, I think we feel very good about the operating model that we have and the leverage that that provides. You can see that if you just go back to 2022 and 2023, when we were achieving quarterly revenue in the upper $80 million or low $90 million, you can see the kinds of margin that we can achieve on those levels. So that's something that we feel very confident in. Actually, we feel like we can actually do better given the investments that we've been making in our manufacturing footprint. So I think it really boils down to a revenue story for the business, and that will be driven by an improvement in orders.
I did want to meant to mention in the previous question that we have seen some pickup in orders thus far in Q4, but it's really more in terms of replenishment of inventories. Again, our customers continue to be cautious, and they continue to reorder, but in terms of minimal requirements. So that, I think, is more a reflection of the uncertainty around some of these industrial market trends, at least short term. But I did want to point that out.
Okay. The questions from the audience starting to build here. So let's move along. How does VPG gain share as it moves into some of the larger market opportunities from niche markets? And is the competitive landscape in larger markets much different?
Yeah. So a lot of these markets that we're addressing are new or emerging or evolving.
I would say, as an example, the humanoid robotics application. Now, we've been addressing robotics applications for many, many years. But I think what we see now is sort of these new versions of some of those products and some of that technology, which is offering, of course, us the ability to enter them or to address them. So what our value proposition is and why we are winning the opportunities that we are and why we expect to win additional ones really boils down to having the right technology, the best technology, and really offering that kind of engineer-to-engineer solution that we're known for. And that's the differentiation. Plus, in fact, I think we do offer. We have advantages in terms of our cost and delivery.
So that's another factor for why we're winning the business. The question is, what kind of pricing power do you have? Yeah.
So pricing is very stable for our products. On average, we see price erosion of probably 1% a year, if that much. And that really attests to, again, the value of the technology that we sell and the fact that if you need that level of technology, we're generally the only shop around or one of two shops around to get it given our position in our markets. So we have walked away from business, a lower margin business, and we expect to continue to do that. But the kinds of opportunities, again, that we're looking at ideally would be these larger, faster-growing ones where we would sell higher volume of product compared to some of the smaller niche markets that we address.
Question about your 22% EBITDA margin is much higher than you've achieved in the past. How did you make that leap? Yeah.
Well, that, I think, again, comes from both the efficiencies that we've built now into our model and plus the incremental revenue that we would add both organically and inorganically.
Question about the impact of tariffs. What will they be and how are you preparing?
Yeah. At this point, we don't really anticipate any impact from the tariffs. I think there's certainly a lack of clarity in terms of what that actually means and what extent and in which markets. But I'd say, because we're a global company, our largest manufacturing center is in India. Our second largest manufacturing is in Israel. So we don't expect that to be an issue, at least at this point.
Couple of questions on AI here. So let's bundle them. What are your thoughts about AI and its adoption and how is it going to impact your organization on a twofold basis? Yeah.
That's a hard one to answer. I mean, I think long-term, we think that's a driver of our opportunities given the fact that a lot of AI or some of the AI applications certainly in some of our industrial markets require data, right? And so it's really about how do you acquire more data and the level of data and precision of data. So we think that AI, actually, in a big-picture way, provides us with some momentum going forward, at least in terms of the opportunity set that we see. We're going to squeeze this one in.
A couple of questions on M&A. Can you talk about the size and targets, what you're kind of looking for in an acquisition?
Yeah. So historically, we've looked for smaller kinds of opportunities for bolt-on. I think now we're more open to larger, more transformational opportunities.
We have a very high threshold for what we think makes sense for us, both in terms of accretion and growth and fit, but also in terms of price. So we've been very conservative about which opportunities we go after and what we're willing to pay. I don't think that changes, but it does make it a bit more difficult to really find the right opportunity. But we're continuing to look, and we have a pipeline of opportunities we're currently looking at.
Well, we've gone a little bit over the target market mark here. Steve, do you have any closing comments?
No, again, I want to thank everybody for listening in, and we'd be happy to follow up with anyone individually if they had any more questions.
Thank you. And thank you for participating, and have a great balance of your day.
Great. Thanks, John.