... Okay. Thank you very much for joining us for Jefferies' 2025 Industrials Conference. I'm Steve Gavalas. I'm pleased to be introducing the VPG team, Vishay Precision Group, joined by Steve Cantor, Head of IR, Bill Clancy, CFO. They have some prepared remarks and a presentation, and then, we welcome some questions afterwards to address whatever topics are most interesting. So with that, Steve, I'll pass it to you.
Thank you, Steve, and I also want to thank the Jefferies team for the opportunity to be here today. It's, it's always a, a good, chance to tell you about the, VPG story. Before I do, though, I just want to remind everybody, that we will be making forward-looking statements, and you should read our SEC filings carefully to understand any risks associated with those statements. So sensors. So fundamentally, VPG is a sensor and precision measurement company, and the sensor market, as you may have heard in other presentations today or will hear tomorrow, play a, increasingly important role in delivering this next generation of information that is driving the technologies that we all rely on today, including AI. What we do is we play in a corner of that market. It's quite large.
Some people estimate the total market for sensors to be somewhere upwards of $350 billion annually. We play in a small corner of that, where precision, reliability, consistency of information and data is critical. And to do that, and what we do in doing that, allows us to help our customers make their products and processes safer, smarter, and more productive. And we've been doing that for a while. We went public in 2010. We're a global company, and we specialize in the most demanding and highest performing products in our categories, and that's something that differentiates us. We're involved in a broad array of markets, as you can see from this slide, perhaps the broadest array of markets for a sensor company our size or even a company our size.
And it's really, around a number of key important markets. Some of them are industrial, as you can see, industrial weighing and general industrial. Some of these are cyclical markets, such as steel, and within the test and measurement, slice on this chart, the semiconductor equipment market is an important market for us. And then, also cyclically, we address the precision ag and construction, as well as medical and, other markets, related to consumer even, and transportation. Our business is structured in three segments: sensors, weighing solutions, and measurement systems. I think of these as sensors being components, and weighing solutions being modules, and measurement systems being application-specific, products, essentially doing one thing specifically for a particular application. Each of these segments, has their own growth profile and go-to-market strategies.
For instance, sensors, we think long term, grows in the mid to upper-single digits, delivering gross margins of 40%+ . Weighing solutions, growing more in line with GDP plus, but with margins now approaching that of sensors. In fact, that's a great margin story, as we've moved the gross margin in that segment from the mid-teens to now a record high in the last quarter. Then measurement systems growing in the mid-single digits with our highest gross margins of 50%+ . So across these businesses, generally, we're number one or number two in our markets. We have also are...
Now, as you can see on this slide, the profit model and the blend of those three segments and their operating strategies and growth rates, we think can deliver long-term top-line growth in the low teens. That's both organic and inorganic, and in doing so, we can deliver these kinds of operating results: 45% gross margin, 18% operating margin, and 22% EBITDA margin. What's new here, since we rolled out this long-term model, a couple of years ago, is that now we believe, given the investments that we've made to improve our operating efficiency, to deliver operating excellence, we now believe we can reach those targets at lower revenue levels than we initially believed that we, we could when we rolled out this model. And how does that work? First, it begins with the top-line growth.
We think that, given these trends externally that we're seeing now, broader technology trends that are now beginning to affect some of our niche markets, we think now there are larger opportunities that we could address than ever before. And at the same time, we think that we've been investing internally in our capability to really go after these in ways that we didn't or weren't able to before. And what are those external trends? I'm showing them here on this slide. They're nothing new to you. They include electrification, digital transformation, industrial automation, and defense and space, space technology, and I'll talk a little bit about each of these. So first, electrification. Our play is not just in EVs. We do have a small play in EVs.
We're involved in the testing of new EV models, as well as in the manufacturing of EV batteries, but also including other kinds of new electrified platforms, such as eVTOLs, which are electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft. We've been involved in the testing of those, and actually it's generated a few million dollars of business for us. But even beyond that, in other kinds of electrified products, such as e-bikes. Industrial automation, this is a trend that we think has been around for a while. It's gone through several iterations, but we think that this is now accelerating for a whole bunch of reasons, not the least of which was the pain that the world experienced coming out of the pandemic and dealing with shortages of both employees as well as materials.
So we think there's a lot of investment that needs to happen, and is actually happening, to increase the capabilities related to industrial automation. These include things like robotics and other kinds of automated systems. But also there's other trends, such as reshoring of manufacturing. I know in the United States, we have a goal of bringing back manufacturing to our country. And if you think about how we're gonna be able to do that, we believe that industrial automation actually plays a big role. So in terms of applications for VPG, so we are involved in robotics, both in now new form factors of robotics, such as humanoid, and I'll talk a little bit about that, later in this presentation. But also in surgical robots, as well as in just general manufacturing automation.
That's something we've been doing for a while, but we think that also has legs, and that includes products that we sell that weigh ingredients as they enter the manufacturing process, and also weighing the product as it's being manufactured for a whole variety of industries, including chemicals and pharmaceuticals and food and bev. And then, of course, we've been very involved in the agricultural equipment, including precision ag equipment, and those emerging applications. Defense and space, it's not a trend. I'd say it's more of a need, but it's a need that we think is increasing, especially given the geopolitical tensions around the world. We play a lot in the space side of that defense space market.
So you can see in terms of space systems, such as this parachute re-entry system that I'm showing here on the left, we're involved in the testing of that. We have product or components that are on satellite command and control systems, and actually on the satellite itself, and we're involved in the command and control of missile and defense systems, as well as the testing of drones, both air, sea, and land. Digital transformation, we define this as sort of using digital technology in new and innovative ways. So we have plays in consumer electronics, in semiconductor, both the front end and back end. That's actually a significant market for us. And then emerging or a new opportunity around data centers and fiber optics.
So, in terms of the value creation, I described the external trends and forces that we think are creating opportunity sets for us, but internally, we've been investing a lot in our own capabilities. On the left-hand side of this slide, you can see what we believe to be our core competencies, so it revolves around innovation. It's using our deep technical expertise to really solve problems for our customers. Also, our operational excellence and our investment in our operating capabilities. And really, on the right-hand side of the slide is sort of those elements, and I think that, you know, we probably have made more progress in our operational excellence than I think is appreciated in the market.
We've invested more than $53 million in CapEx over the last several years, in facility projects, in automation, and that's both to increase our efficiency through use of more automation in our facilities, but also it's involved consolidation of our manufacturing footprint and moving manufacturing from the high-cost centers to lower-cost centers. And we're not finished. We have an additional $5 million of cost reductions that we expect to achieve this year. And the results are clear, and we're already seeing the results from these kinds of activities. We achieved a record gross margin for our company in the first quarter of last year, and we achieved a record gross margin...
I should point out that we achieved that record on lower revenues than we did in the previous peak, and we also achieved a record gross margin in the weighing solution segment. So as again I mentioned, moving those gross margins from the mid-teens to 40%+ . Another element that I think is internal, that we've been focusing on, is business development. So we now have a greater focus on developing both new customers, as well as getting on platforms that of existing customers that we weren't on before. And we've been doing that through sustaining R&D investments, as well as revitalizing and repositioning our sales organizations and using new sales channels. And then third, acquisition strategy. We think we have a really good balance sheet. We've completed six acquisitions to date.
We think we have a great platform to add additional high-value assets. Going back to the business development initiatives, so we have now, and this is, I think, different than, you know, it was two years ago, so every one of our business units has their own business development strategies and initiatives. And these are not only tied directly to KPIs, but also now have visibility going all the way up to the board level. This is a huge effort for us and one that we've definitely increased our focus. We have initiatives that we think currently in the pipeline, which we think can deliver $100 million of revenue in three to four years.
Now, there's a number of these. It's not certainly one or two, but I do wanna highlight a couple of these that we think are quite sizable and certainly can be even transformative for VPG. So first, humanoid robots. So I don't need to tell you that humanoid robots are real. They're coming. They sound like science fiction, but you now have major technology companies around the world that are investing a lot of money and putting a lot of focus on these robots. And really, the rationale is pretty clear. The only reason why they think the world would need a humanoid robot is to replace humans, either for efficiency or for safety.
And also, given the, again, the drive towards increasing industrial automation and the goals that we have, both in this country and around the world, the humanoid robot, we think, plays an important role. It's a very early stage market right now. We've yet to see a full-scale, real-world deployment of these, but we know it's coming. We're now working with two customers, which unfortunately, we can't name precisely, but they're two leading developers of these robots. And with customer number one, we've been working with that customer for now almost two years, and we've generated $4 million worth of revenue just in prototypes, which is a huge number for VPG. And it's also an indication of both the speed and intensity of development by this particular customer.
Our second customer is one that we just started working with. It's probably further behind than customer number one. On customer number one, though, we are designed in, we believe, in terms of our sensors in the joints of the robot, so it's the shoulders, the elbows, the wrist, et cetera. These sensors are playing a critical role in the functioning of this robot. It's taking the force and measurement as that robot moves and executes its activities, and really translating that data to be used by the AI brain of the robot to enable that robot to function.
And if you think about how a robot moves, and walks, or interacts with a real-world work situation, either in manufacturing or warehousing or other use cases, it's these torque sensors that are providing a critical piece of that technology. The second customer we're now engaged with providing sensors in the hands of the robot, so essentially providing the tactile feel of the robot, enabling that robot to actually perform delicate tasks in one moment, and then something else another moment. And so we're very excited about the potential for this market.
Another opportunity that we're very positive on, and I think that's it's emerging, is in the testing of new materials, such as non-conductive materials or ceramics, that are now being used in all kinds of applications related to aerospace, to energy, as even in hypersonic missiles. And our tool really builds on a platform that we've had in the market for a number of years. It came to us through an acquisition. The technology is or the platform is called Gleeble. If you're a metallurgist and you're developing a new metal alloy, you probably have used a Gleeble, or you'd wanna use a Gleeble. It's the most sophisticated, comprehensive tool of its kind. But we now are expanding that to new materials, such as ceramics, as I mentioned.
The innovation here is that, these ceramics need to perform at really high temperatures, even as much as 2,000 degrees Celsius. And if you think of the cone of a hypersonic missile traveling at Mach speed and the heat that would generate, that ceramic material needs to perform perfectly, otherwise that missile doesn't get to where it needs to go. But there are other, many other examples related to aerospace that are being developed. We now have a beta that we're starting with the University of Alabama with this new tool. The University of Alabama happens to be in an area where there is already a lot of aerospace development going on, and indeed, we just learned this week that, the United States is moving its headquarters for its U.S. Space Force from Colorado to Alabama.
I think that's another indication of that being a good area to focus on. We've also are in the final stages of completing an agreement for a second beta with a second university, and clearly, there's a lot of interest in the tool, in part because our tool has a unique ability to cool and heat the chamber that would allow for a tenfold increase in the amount of tests that you could do for a certain period of time. So a tenfold increase in testing throughput, which is huge if you're developing these kinds of new materials. So that's just a couple of the, I would say, the larger opportunities that we see in front of us.
Before completing this presentation and taking any questions, I did just wanna follow on our recent second quarter earnings result. The second quarter was the third consecutive quarter that we now have seen in terms of sequential order growth and positive book-to-bills. So we think that's another step in the right direction as we see, you know, growth coming back to some of the cyclical areas and as we see, hopefully, some continued improvement in the broader industrial economy. We also delivered, as I mentioned, a record gross margin for the Weighing Solutions segment, and generated good cash flow, and certainly another good step in the right direction.
With that, hopefully, you know, there are three pieces to the investment thesis, I think, if you're looking at VPG. The first is that, you know, we'll see continued improvement in our core business as some of these cyclical markets continue to recover. Secondly, we have these new company-specific growth initiatives, which we're very excited about, which we think could add materially to our revenue streams in the next year and beyond. Then third, we're now able to deliver higher levels of profitability at lower revenue levels. In other words, we've improved our operating leverage even more. With that, I'll be happy to take any questions. Okay, well, I guess so, I answered all your questions.
So, again, I appreciate your time, and again, appreciate Jefferies for the opportunity to tell you about VPG today. With that, I wish you a good rest of the day.