AstroNova, Inc. (NASDAQ:ALOT) Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Greg Woods: Yes. As I mentioned earlier, the overall industry is growing. So we’re on a wide range of aircraft. Obviously, in commercial, Boeing and Airbus are the biggest, but pretty much any aircraft that you might be flying on probably has our products on it. So in general, we’re pretty well diversified there. As far as Boeing, I’m sure that they’ll have — they have these items to deal with. But looking at it from our standpoint, from a forecast and talking to their supply management people, our forecast and projections from them have not changed. So we’re still shipping on schedule and expect that to increase. The increased rate might be a little bit less than what we anticipated last year going into this year. But hopefully, we’ll see that pick up as we go later into the year.

Unidentified Analyst: And are you — and my final question and wishing you all a great weekend and happy Easter is, are there upgrades coming in these printers? Do you have any upgrades at all? Or are these same like newer products and upgrades in the printers?

Greg Woods: Well, as we mentioned in our press deck, last investor deck that we posted, we have a big encouragement program going on with airlines and aircraft manufacturers to transition to our ToughWriter brand, which is a more modern printer. So we have a number of airlines as well as OEMs taking us up on that. And we expect to have within the three-year period, the majority of our shipments transition to the ToughWriter brand, which is a newer, more up-to-date printer.

Unidentified Analyst: Thank you, guys, and keep up for good work.

Greg Woods: Great. Thanks for your call.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our next question today comes from Samir Patel from Askeladden Capital Management. Please go ahead.

Samir Patel: Hey, guys. Congrats again on the great quarter, and thanks for initiating guidance. I know we’ve been talking about that for a while. On that topic, I wanted to kind of dive into that guidance. So it’s like there’s some level of conservatism embedded in that, obviously, year-on-year growth, but it kind of seems more flattish to the last couple of quarters of the year. Is that attributable to seasonality, conservatism on the macro kind of given like the previous caller referenced some of the issues at Boeing. Maybe you could just kind of expound on that a little bit.

Greg Woods: Yes. Hi, Samir, yes, it’s — we will like to kind of be in the lane there and not everything is predictable. So we don’t see any huge headwinds with respect to that. And there are some things, obviously, that could move it higher as well. But that’s what — when we take a look at it right now, we’re comfortable with what we said and if we need to revise that later in the year, if things — if we get ahead of ourselves, we’ll adjust it at that way.

Samir Patel: Okay. So it’s kind of that’s what you’re starting with. And then it’s more — I guess, the bias would be more towards upward revisions if things go well, that you’re comfortable that kind of in the face of whatever things you anticipate might happen that you’re not going to kind of come in below that. Is that a fair way of interpreting it?

Greg Woods: Yes, that’s a good way to think about it, yes.

Samir Patel: Okay, okay. The second question was — I know we’ve had this ongoing conversation on product ID emergence. They were obviously quite strong in Q3. Q4 kind of gets back to that Q2 level despite similar revenues. I know you mentioned in your script about the retrofit program. Can you kind of explain what was going on there and what we should think about for margins in that segment as we head into next year?

Greg Woods: Yes. Well, you know — don’t really have — did never release exactly on that, but there was an adjustment that David could maybe talk about there in Q4. But setting that aside, what we’re looking at as we go into this year, is that should — those margins should be increasing because we’re looking at more of those T2C and the other [children-related] (ph) products coming back online as you move through this year. And that helps drive the supplies revenue, which obviously helps growth, but also helps us on the margin side of things. David, do you want to add anything to that?

David Smith: Yes. We did have some inventory adjustments in Astro Machine in the fourth quarter that sat on the margins there a little bit. Obviously, it was — that’s not something that’s going to recur. So we think that the margins, the mix moving forward certainly well should improve from what happened in the fourth quarter.

Operator: The next question is from George Melas from MKH Management. Please go ahead.

George Melas: Thank you, operator. Hi, Greg and David, the previous caller asked exactly my question. So I don’t have any other, I’m sorry.

Greg Woods: Okay. All right, good catching up with you.

George Melas: Okay.

Operator: The next question is from Dennis Scannell from Rutabaga Capital. Please go ahead.

Dennis Scannell: Yes, good morning, Greg and David, and just echoing what everybody else has said a really nice quarter and nice end of the year. Nice to see this rebound. So my question is also similar to the previous two questioners. So — but maybe to get a little granular or frame it a little differently. So QuickLabel in the third quarter, by my numbers did — I’m sorry, Product Identification did 18.1% operating margins, I think the highest I’ve ever seen and then we’re 12% in the fourth quarter. And David, you said that maybe there were some inventory adjustments at Astro Machining. I know historically, the group has been as high as, I think, 14%. So kind of on a go-forward basis, can we look more at the high-teens for this business, like what we showed in the third quarter? Or were there some unusual things going on in the third quarter that make that kind of an unrealistic expectation?