RF Industries, Ltd. (NASDAQ:RFIL) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Rob Dawson: Yes. So I think on both 4G and 5G kind of looking at them together, the CapEx as calendar ’22 wound down, this is one of those years where things really slowed down from an expectation of what was going to happen in December in particular. That’s normal. This is my fifth iteration of a major build, I think. And so, what we expected most years, I think the thing that we’ve generally seen is with the overall economic uncertainty carriers are still committed to a meaningful amount of CapEx. I think there was a little bit of holding your breath as the year ended to see, okay, how do we end up and our carrier is going to keep spending like they said. We haven’t seen any major pullback on that. There’s still a pretty significant amount allocated.

I think I won’t be surprised if there’s sort of delays in acceleration as we get into early and late spring, which is normal build season when it really gets moving. The part of that that I’m most intrigued to see really is on the small cell side. Do we start to see the spend that we’ve been expecting, sort of the pent up demand spend that’s been sitting there, which I think we will. I think this is a year — 2023 is a year where we need to see some of that. So I guess summary there is, we expect pretty meaningful CapEx, macro sites, small cells and venues as well as we get into better weather and some of those outdoor venues start to be built out.

Josh Nichols: Thanks for clarifying. And then last question for me. Looking at the guidance for next year, I guess, you’ve historically been able to secure some large orders. And to your point, I think the small cell opportunity is probably like a bit underappreciate. I’m just curious like are you still pursuing some of these large multimillion dollar orders? Is there a good pipeline of those? And as much of that or a big ramp in small cell included all in the guidance that you’re giving initially or is that more like an upside scenario case?

Rob Dawson: Yes, I think that a larger small cell spend would be an upside case. We have some of that built into our expectations, it’s really hard to predict. So it’s one of those things, but putting an exact number on has been difficult to do, especially early in the year. I think as we get through the year, we’ll get a clearer sense of what does that build plan look like. But they are absolutely in our expectations, there are some pretty significant wins that need to be in there in multiple product areas. We’re still shipping a lot of hybrid fiber, we’re hoping for even more of that. As we go on, that’s a tough one to predict as well kind of week to week or month to month, but we’re hopeful there. And then our other kind of bigger ticket items as we get into small cell and thermal cooling, those are areas that we see large opportunities.

And the last thing, as I mentioned a minute ago is, from a venue perspective with the add of Microlab into our offer, when a large venue like a football stadium in particular gets built out and we’re specked in there, those are hundreds of thousands of dollars in one PO just for passes. We can now throw in fiber and coaxial jumpers as well and some other items to try to fill out that bill of materials. So I don’t want to understate the possibility of those as those start to line up as well as some decent wins.

Josh Nichols: Appreciate it. Thanks. I’ll hop back in the queue.

Rob Dawson: Thanks, Josh.

Operator: Our next question is from Aaron Martin with AIGH Investment Partners. Please proceed.