Graham Corporation (NYSE:GHM) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

And we’ve got a lot of industry experience knowing how long those things last. So, helping our customers, kind of get ready for that. So, it’s not an emergency in the end, it’s really the that we’re taking.

Graham Mattison: All right, great. Yeah. And then that makes sense. I mean, obviously, the existing fleet of refiners in the U.S. is just going to be run harder and harder because permitting to get anything new is going to become more challenging, it looks like. So, one other question. Last call you talked a little bit about you’re seeing some good activity around the nuclear power space around small modular reactors. Given some of the events that were, sort of positive announcements that have been coming out there in terms of players coming into that space, are you still seeing strength there? And if so, how soon do you think you could see orders from that area?

Dan Thoren: Yes. So that is very much an industry in the middle of research, development, and technology demonstration. And the activity that we’ve seeing there really has been to support those technology demonstrations. Some of them are subscale some of them €“ well, a lot of them are subscale actually. Some of them are working on just particular areas that they’re trying to show technology works well. We don’t expect really any production orders to come forward, gosh, probably another five years, but this is the perfect place for engineered product companies to get involved in new technology and that is, just getting involved with the big players to help them demonstrate that technology start to develop the new product and then be in the position to really help them roll this out as it starts to roll-out.

So, we continue to stay involved. Are we involved with all the right players? Hard to say? But we think that we’re well positioned for any small modular nuclear types of applications going forward.

Graham Mattison: All right, great. Thank you very much. I’ll jump back in queue.

Operator: Our next question is from Gary Schwab with Valley Forge Capital Management. Please proceed.

Gary Schwab: Yes. Hi, Dan and Chris. Great quarter. You guys are really turning this company around.

Dan Thoren: Thank you, Gary.

Gary Schwab: For 50 years, Graham has been known as a low multiple metal tank and piping fabric cater for their industrial products, but since June of 2021, when you acquired Barber-Nichols, you’ve almost overnight transform the company into a highly technical, critical component manufacturer for defense industry, and the fast growing space industry. And I don’t believe that the markets become aware of Graham’s transformation. Certainly, I think your company should pick up a higher multiple that reflects that change. On the bottom of Slide 10, under the Graham Engineered & Manufactured Content, you show a number of products such manufacturer, but investors really don’t understand how critical these components are, especially for nuclear propulsion and subs and carriers.

But also, here’s one example that confused me. You show ejectors on Slide 10 are one of the components listed. I’ve been following Graham a lot of the years and I understood that Graham made ejectors and the ejectors were sophisticated engineered venturi pipes. They had no moving parts, but they manage the air pressure in the distillation process for refineries. And the description on your website under submarine ejection system says Barber-Nichols makes ejection assemblies that form part of the pressure boundary of naval submarines, but it really doesn’t explain what these things are. And now I understand what these are. Could you like for the benefit of new investors, maybe and existing investors who knew the old Graham, can you explain what these submarine ATP ejectors are?

And how complicated they are to develop? And what their function was on Virginia-class submarines?