I'm an analyst at Sidoti & Company. Our next presentation for the day is Vishay Precision Group, ticker VPG. For those who are not familiar with the company, Vishay is a manufacturer of sensors and sensor-based systems to a wide variety of end markets. We're fortunate to have with us today CFO Bill Clancy and Director of Investor Relations, Steve Cantor. Following the presentation, there'll be time for Q&A. If you have a question, please utilize the Q&A icon to submit the questions, and I'll present them to management. With that said, gentlemen, thanks for being with us today. The floor is yours.
Great. Thank you, John, and good morning, everyone. It's great to be here today virtually to tell you about VPG. Before I do, though, I just want to remind you of our safe harbor statement. At our core, VPG is a sensor company, and I don't need to tell you that sensors really are everywhere. They're in our cars, our homes, our offices, our factories, and they continue to proliferate. I saw one report recently that estimates that the global sensor market could double in the next 10 years. Clearly, there's a lot more room to grow, and it's a great space to be in. What we do in that large market is play in a corner of it where precision and reliability and accuracy really matter. It's really about making our customers' products safer, smarter, and more productive.
The way you can think about that is really in terms of what is called the data value stream. That's simply the process in which data is acquired. Real-world data like pressure, force, weight, temperature, these are all things that our products measure. For critical applications where precision and high performance is needed, if you don't get that first step right, then everything downstream doesn't work properly. In applications where safety is involved, which is a lot of what we do, that can really not be good, certainly for the users of those products. 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 well established and really have a broad and very strong brand recognition in terms of the market and our customers. We're focused on high-end non-commodity sensor and measurement technology products with really highly differentiated solutions. We have number one or number two positions in most of the markets we play in. In many cases, VPG is a sole source. We're designed in. We address both technology-driven and industrial-focused end markets. You can see these on the right-hand side of the slide. Beginning with test and measurement, where we play in a whole variety of different test instruments, including semiconductor equipment, both front-end and back-end. We're also in the transportation market in making products that measure and track overloading of heavy-use vehicles like mining equipment, forestry vehicles, waste management trucks, as well as the testing of new automobile models.
We're in avionics, military and space. We have a play in the steel market, really in two ways. One, where our products are used to increase the productivity in the hot strip part of the steel-making process when they're rolling the steel into sheets, as well as the development of new metal alloys. We serve and have been serving a number of industrial markets. A lot of these are related to the manufacturing of commodities or materials like pharmaceuticals, chemicals, as well as in food and beverage. In that other category, that includes things like construction equipment, medical equipment, precision ag, as well as consumer, which is a relatively new area for us and one that's been very successful over the last several years. We operate in three segments: sensors, weighing solutions, and measurement systems.
The way I think about these is that sensors are components, weighing solutions are modules, and measurement systems are application-specific systems. Essentially, they're doing one specific thing for one set of applications. The blend of these three, we think, gives us a balance of both growth and profitability. Each of these segments has their own marketing strategies, R&D strategies, and business models. Like most industrial companies, 2024 proved to be a challenging year for VPG. Certainly, given where we thought the year would end up at the beginning of the year, our results were impacted by continued slowdown in the industrial parts of the global economy, particularly in Europe, as well as continued sluggishness in some of our cyclical markets, such as semiconductor and steel, which haven't recovered the way we thought they would, certainly at the beginning of 2024.
Nonetheless, we did see positive order trends and signs of recovery in the fourth quarter of the year, Q4 2024, in some of our businesses, particularly in the sensors and weighing solution segments. This resulted in a book- to- bill of about one for VPG as a whole, which was the first time we achieved that in actually quite a few quarters. What is important here is on the right-hand side of the slide. These are our three to five-year targets. We are working to grow this business in the low teens. That is a combination of both organic and inorganic, about half and half of each. That is a way of thinking about it. If we do that, we think we can deliver these financial results in terms of gross margin, operating margin, and EBITDA margin.
One of the reasons why we're confident that we can get there, that this is within reach, is the fact that we were able to achieve a record-level gross margin in the first quarter of 2024. That's on revenue levels that were well below the peak revenue levels that we had in 2022 and 2023. This is really an outcome or result of the manufacturing focus and cost reduction initiatives that we've implemented across the company over the last several years. How do we get the growth? It's really around a shift or a strategic shift in our focus. We've been serving niche markets now for many decades, even before we were public. We're now seeing some trends. Actually, these have been evolving over the last few years that are creating new opportunities for us.
Our focus has shifted beyond those traditional niche markets to really go after, in a much more aggressive way, larger markets that are growing faster. It is this slide, which I think reflects the setup that we have ahead of us. We have these external drivers, which I'll talk about in a moment, on one side. On the other side, we have those things that we've been doing inside the company to really expand our capabilities to capture these opportunities.
It is really this convergence between these two, external and internal, that is really creating the potential to deliver significant value to our shareholders. Let me talk a little bit about these external trends. None of these should be new to you, but here they are: electrification, digital transformation, industrial automation, and then defense and space technology. I'll talk a little bit about each of these.
Beginning with electrification, so far for VPG, it's more than EVs, even though we do have a play in electric vehicles. We're involved in the safety testing of new EVs, as well as in the production and quality control of battery production for those vehicles. It actually goes well beyond that. We're now addressing some emerging technologies such as electric aircraft, which are called eVTOLs. These are systems or aircraft that are totally powered by electric power. The idea is that these will serve as air taxis that may take you from one location to another when you need to go. It's still unclear when we'll see these things flying around. For VPG, we've already generated revenue from the safety testing of these new vehicles.
There are a number of beta aircraft, which are now being tested and deployed and are expected to become commercial within the next year or so. There are lots of good things happening in electrification that we're involved with. Industrial automation, this is a trend which is accelerating really for two reasons. First, the pain that the world experienced coming out of the pandemic in terms of supply chain constraints and labor shortages. I think that was a wake-up call for many management teams around the world. Second, it's the evolution and adoption of AI. I'm showing two applications here on this, actually a few applications on this side. One is humanoid robotics. You can see that on the left. Another is surgical robots.
I've seen some research that says the global robotics market could grow at about a 12% annual rate over the next several years. The humanoid form factor of the robot could actually grow 50% over that time frame. This is a really exciting place for us to be in. We've been working with a leading humanoid form factor robot developer now for the last year and a half. That company has publicly stated that they want to see thousands of these robots in their factories by the end of 2025. We're in the final stages of discussing the final arrangements, but we've already generated upwards of $1,500,000 just from prototypes that we've delivered to that customer. We think that's an indicator of the seriousness as well as the investments that are being put into these robots.
We're now actively engaged with other humanoid robot developers. We think this could be an opportunity that could generate over time millions of dollars for VPG. It could be truly a game changer for VPG. On the other side of the slide, I'm showing manufacturing automation as well as precision agriculture, which is an area that we are seeing increased automation. I know John Deere, which is one of our leading customers, was featuring at the CES show in January, a lot of their technology, which is going to enable greater autonomy in their combines and tractors. This could be another exciting long-term potential market for us. Right now, it's in a bit of a slowdown as a result of a number of factors, but we think that it will come back eventually, maybe as we move into 2026.
Defense and space is not a new trend per se, but it's certainly one that is growing in terms of technical development, especially given the conflicts we're seeing around the world and the increased defense spending that we're seeing many countries start to make. We're involved in a number of areas related to defense and space. In terms of space itself, our products are used in the command and control of satellites or the testing of different space rocket systems, such as this re-entry system showing here on this slide. We're also involved in a number of new missile and defense systems, including hypersonic, as well as commercial and military drones for air, sea, and land.
Digital transformation, which is the fourth key mega trend I'd like to cover today, is really the process where you apply digital technologies to a product or process that may not have needed it before. Consumer electronics is an area that I mentioned is relatively new to us. If you looked at the company maybe six years ago, we did almost zero in consumer. Now that's been, over the last few years, one of the best performing areas for us. We're also involved in semiconductor equipment, as I mentioned, both on the test side as well as in the front-end equipment side. We're involved with supplying products for data center and fiber optics equipment. The data center and fiber optics opportunity or application is an interesting area for us.
It's smaller than the other two that I'm highlighting on this slide, but it's one that we do see some potential. We're getting some traction. Just to give you a little more color about that, one of the features of our products, of our precision resistors, is that they perform consistently and reliably across all different types of environments and changes in environmental conditions. If you think about the data center environment or the telecommunications equipment environment, or even the equipment such as tunable fiber optics lasers used in those data centers, these are among the most tightly controlled environments in terms of temperature and humidity. Any change, even the most smallest, minute change, can affect the performance of the equipment. The reliability, consistency of our product has led us to get a number of recent design wins.
That we believe will allow that customer to reduce the frequency of calibration of its equipment and also the replacement cycle. We think we have a really strong value proposition in this market opportunity for us. Hopefully, I've given you a sense of some of the external drivers we're seeing. I want to take a moment and talk to you about what we've been doing internally to enable us to capture these opportunities. I mentioned this convergence between the external and internal.
Internally, we are focused really on three key areas. First, operational excellence. This was really the driver for us to reach record-level gross margin in the first quarter of 2024. It's not only about cost efficiency programs or moving from high-cost centers to low-cost centers. It's about adding additional automation, something that we are doing ourselves as well as our customers.
While the heavy lift in terms of investment on our part is behind us, we're not stopping. We achieved about $5 million of cost improvements in 2024. We've announced an additional $5 million of cost efficiency programs that we would like to achieve this year. The second key theme is really around business development. We are now laser-focused on securing design wins in new applications and new customers in areas such as robotics, consumer data center, aerospace, and defense. I mentioned some of these already.
These are, of course, being driven by some of the mega trends that I've mentioned. Third, we continue to look for additional businesses to add to our platform and increase our scale. This slide is a short list of some of our business development opportunities we're currently addressing. They contributed about $18 million in revenue in 2024.
Our goal going into 2025 is to grow that to $30 million. We see the potential to achieve $100 million of revenue in aggregate over the next three to four years just from the opportunities we currently have in the funnel. I mentioned the humanoid robot opportunity, which could be a game changer, but there are many others that we're pursuing of various sizes. Another of the potentially really large opportunities is in ceramics testing.
In our measurement systems business, we have a very sophisticated high-end tool that's used by R&D engineers and metallurgists to develop new metal alloys. We're now working on expanding that capability to test non-conductive materials such as ceramics. That's an application that we don't address today. It is a new market for us. It's adjacent to our current market and could represent a significant amount of revenue potential in the long term.
We just announced a beta with the University of Alabama, who's going to be testing and validating a prototype of this system. We are very excited about what this could mean for VPG. Also, just on the M&A side, we did acquire a small business back in September called Nokra. This uses innovative laser technology to precisely measure the thickness and flatness of metal sheets. It is used in steel production, next to our products where the steel is being rolled into sheets, as well as in other metals. Even though it is a small opportunity, we think it is really reflective of the kinds of things we could add to VPG that are both strategic and additive and also allow us to realize synergies given our current customer base and our current operating platform.
With that, hopefully, I've given you a little bit of flavor or introduction to the company, certainly around some of the opportunity sets we have, some of the key drivers. We have a solid balance sheet. We're in a net cash position. We have a great platform. In spite of the current uncertainty globally that many companies are seeing, we're excited about the long-term future of VPG. We'd like to take any questions you may have at this point.
Thank you, Steve. If anybody has a question, please type it in the Q&A box, and I will present it to management. Generally, I guess I'd like to start at a high level. When you compare the current environment that we're operating in to, say, six months ago, can you talk about the positives and negatives in key end markets now relative to then?
Yeah, John, so I would say, I mean, obviously, if you saw, if you're comparing it to six months ago, when we looked at, especially we saw in our fourth quarter earnings, we saw sequential orders improving at sensors and weighing solutions. We're beginning to see the process where we saw the semiconductor testing was relatively down for a good year and a half, two years. In the third, fourth quarter, we began to see the re-entry of orders, whether it's just replenishment of inventory, which is probably the case, but yet it's a sign that things are beginning to improve. We've also saw some improvements in weighing solutions with some of our onboard weighing products. At least from that perspective, we saw sequential growth for those two segments.
I'd say on the flip side, the one that it's the measurement systems where you can have one quarter where the orders are really great, and then the next quarter, the shipments are great. It's that lumpy business that generates the uncertainty. Given today, we still see that sensors and weighing solutions are performing solid or well. It's the measurement systems and the fact that this lumpy business, I would say the uncertainty in the markets, especially the uncertainty with tariffs, where within the measurement systems, we have the steel. We have the Steve mentioned about the ceramics. We sell into the space industry. This is where I think we see some of the unknowns that we're closely monitoring and following each and every day.
Against that backdrop, a member of the audience has asked specifically about the ag market. How is it from peak to trough right now for you, and what are your expectations maybe in the year ahead?
Yeah, so in terms of precision ag, it represents several millions of dollars of business to us annually. As I mentioned, John Deere is one of our key customers. You can see in terms of John Deere's outlook, certainly they're looking for significant slowdown in demand in 2025 versus 2024. That is certainly going to affect us. Look, we are very well entrenched with John Deere on a number of their platforms, and we see additional opportunities to expand with some new sensors. Look, it's something that we're very confident will bounce back and come back, certainly given the demands on the world's food supply and the efficiency that some of these new technologies can provide in terms of crop yields.
Question about the M&A pipeline. You've been mildly acquisitive in recent years. Can you talk about your appetite for acquisitions, the size of the deals, the multiples you try to target, also maybe adjacent marketplaces, products versus end markets, maybe some background maybe on M&A?
Sure, John. That's a good question. Look, for M&A, the pipeline for us, we want to continue to grow. We've mentioned this organically and also inorganically. It's part of our three to five-year target, our plans. The pipeline, we've been engaged in various discussions. Unfortunately, I mean, we had it when we finalized the Nokra in late September.
We have been engaged in other sizable ones that for us, an ideal M&A would be revenues $50 million up to $100 million, EBITDA, say, $10 million plus. We're still seeing some of the multiples still relatively high. I mean, interest rates haven't dropped. We continue to be very proactive. I mean, we're looking at opportunities. Even though we haven't secured one, we continue to be focused and optimistic that we could potentially have an M&A opportunity within the next year or so. We're looking at adjacent markets. It could be in the area of predictive maintenance. It could be data centers. It could be within the measurement systems. There are many opportunities for us to continue to explore.
An additional question to that, would you foresee raising capital for acquisitions?
I mean, at this point in time, we would always use the ability for a combination of our cash because we're in a net cash position and current bank debt. I think those would be the main source that we would utilize to acquire a company. There's always that option down the road to utilize secondary capital to pay off some of that debt.
Question about maybe some of your long-term targets relative to the weak top line in recent years. What are you thinking about his ability to sustain double-digit growth relative to a flat growth profile in recent years, absent acquisitions? What's going to be the key drivers there?
I should point out that we had a record year in terms of revenue in 2022. 2023 was not far off of that. I think that 2024, certainly like most industrial technology companies, particularly niche-focused technology companies like we are, certainly saw slowing trends as we move through 2024. I think, look, there's been a transformation at VPG, and I think that may not be immediately apparent to some investors.
I think the pivot strategically towards really focusing on capturing these business development opportunities in a way that we really haven't before, I think that is something that is really we're still in the early innings of that, but that's going to play out. I think we, as I mentioned, there is a number of these opportunities that we wouldn't be in a position a few years ago to even go after because we didn't make those changes and those cost efficiency advancements in our manufacturing and operations. Now we can.
That's one of the big factors of where we are vis-à-vis this current humanoid robot opportunity. I think there's these changes that may not be immediately apparent, but certainly they're in place, and we think the setup is there to really deliver.
I guess a follow-up question to that, Steve, might be a question about margin expansion. Is that a function of revenue mix? You kind of just referenced maybe product mix, leverage, or combination of both. How do you see margin expansion playing out?
Yeah, John, I think from a margin expansion, it's twofold. One, obviously, we've been doing, I think, a very good job of cost optimization, unless you want to call it operational excellence, better yield, better, more automation. The biggest driver that we'll have for margin expansion will be revenue. We are volume-driven.
To the extent that we continue to work on our business development initiatives and continue to grow, like Steve mentioned earlier, that we had $18 million of revenue initiatives in 2024. The goal is $30 million in 2025, and then further $100 million over the next three, four years. There's where you're going to see the increase and the expansion of the margins and the profitability. Because once you get to that point where the volume gets back to a more normal, stable environment, and we get back to that, say, $85 million-$90 million of revenue per quarter, this is where you'll see that contribution margin of like 40%, if not greater, down to the operating margin.
We've kind of avoided the topic of tariffs. Have you seen any impact on tariffs considering your Indian operations, Israeli operations? Anything being impacted notably yet?
From a tariff perspective, obviously, no tariffs that we're aware of for Israel and India. We look at it in two parts. From a cost perspective, primarily maybe because of our operations in Canada for steel, from a cost perspective, we see very little cost that has affected VPG. Obviously, there's so much uncertainty, John, in the markets in the world today as to whether tariffs are going to be applied, not applied, what's the percentage. We are looking at that each and every day because that may have some impact on the business per se. At this point in time, there's been no impact at all from a cost or business. Yet, we continue to monitor it because it's changing. It seems to be changing daily.
Fair enough. Gentlemen, we're actually all out of time. Bill, any closing remarks?
No, I just want to say thank everybody for the continued support. Like I said, we continue to strive to achieve our targets. We look forward to talking to everybody in the relatively near future.
All right. Thank you, Bill. Thank you, Steve. Thanks for attending the Sidoti & Company Conference. Everybody, have a great day.
Thank you.
Thank you.