Sono-Tek Corporation Q4 FY2026 Earnings Call - Shift to High-ASP Medical and Microelectronics Drives Margin Expansion

Rocco, Conference Moderator: Please note today’s event is being recorded. I’d now like to turn the conference over to Kirin Smith with Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Kirin Smith, Investor Relations, Sono-Tek Corporation: Thank you, Rocco, and thank you everyone for joining us today. Sono-Tek released their fourth quarter and full year fiscal 2026 results this morning. If you don’t have a copy of the release, please visit the company’s website at www.sono-tek.com and navigate to the investors section. The product market and geography sales tables on the last page of the release will be part of today’s discussion. With me on the call today are Dr. Christopher L. Coccio, Executive Chairman, R. Stephen Harshbarger, CEO and President, and Stephen J. Bagley, Chief Financial Officer. Before turning the call over to management, I would like to make the following remarks concerning forward-looking statements. Please note that various remarks that may be made on this conference call about future expectations, plans and prospects for the company constitute forward-looking statements for the purposes of safe harbor provisions under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

Actual results may vary materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including those discussed in the company’s filings with the SEC. The company assumes no obligation to update the information contained in this conference call. As a reminder, this is our full year fiscal 2026 call for the period ended February 28th, 2026. Our next call will be our mid-year fiscal 2027 update for the second quarter and first half ended August 31st, 2026, and will be held in October. I would now like to turn the call over to Christopher L. Coccio, Executive Chairman of Sono-Tek. Christopher, please go ahead.

Dr. Christopher L. Coccio, Executive Chairman, Sono-Tek Corporation: Thank you, Kieran, and good morning, everyone. I will start with some opening remarks, and then Steve Harshbarger, our CEO and President, will go through a deeper business and operational review. This will be followed by Steve Bagley, our Chief Financial Officer, and he will provide the financial review. Following their comments, we’ll open the call for questions, as Kieran mentioned. Fiscal 2026 was a year of strong execution and very meaningful progress for Sono-Tek. We delivered our second consecutive year of revenue above $20 million. We reached $20.9 million while maintaining consistent quarterly performance with eight consecutive quarters above $5 million each. We’re also proud to report that fiscal year 2026 marks our third consecutive year of annual revenue growth and 16th year in a row of profitability. Most importantly, we achieved significant profitability expansion. The gross margin increased to 51%.

The operating income grew 81%, and we delivered strong bottom-line performance, which was supported by operating leverage and favorable product mix. Our results reflect the continued success of our strategic shift towards higher value, high ASP production systems. These are driving both revenue quality and margin expansion. From a market perspective, medical was the standout performer. It increased 54% year-over-year, and it was driven by strong demand for balloon catheter coating systems, stent applications, and other advanced medical technologies. We also saw continued growth in electronics, particularly in electrically active coatings, which support diagnostic-related applications. Clean energy remains a key long-term opportunity. We are now experiencing a decline in electrolysis-related demand during the year due to policy shifts at the government level. However, this was partially offset by solar-related system shipments earlier in the fiscal year.

Geographically, we saw strong performance in the U.S. market, which grew 12% and represented approximately 67% of total revenue. That benefits both revenue growth and margins due to reduced international related costs. We ended the year with a solid backlog and a strong balance sheet, providing a stable foundation for our future growth. Looking ahead, we anticipate continued revenue growth and profitability in the first half of fiscal 2027, and that would be driven by momentum in the medical sector and sustained demand for high ASP systems. For the full year of fiscal 2027, we’re currently expecting relatively flat to modestly higher revenue compared to fiscal 2026. Visibility beyond the first half, however, remains limited due to continued uncertainty in certain clean energy sectors and the timing of these high ASP customer orders, which can create significant shifts in quarterly revenues.

This is particularly true as we continue to see a higher frequency of larger, more complex system orders that typically involve longer lead times and have less predictable shipment timing. With that, I’ll turn it over to Steve Harshbarger, our CEO and President. Steve.

R. Stephen Harshbarger, Chief Executive Officer and President, Sono-Tek Corporation: Thanks, Dr. Coccio, and good morning, everybody. We are very encouraged by our fiscal 2026 performance, which reflects both consistency in revenue and meaningful improvement in profitability. For the fourth quarter, revenue increased 10% to $5.6 million. Gross profit increased 15% to $2.79 million. Gross margin reached 50%, and net income increased 70% to approximately $557,000. This performance reflects strong execution and continued demand for our high-value systems. For the full fiscal year, revenue increased to $20.9 million. Gross profit increased 8% to $10.56 million. Gross margin expanded to 51%, driven, of course, by product mix and increased percentage of U.S. sales. Operating income increased 81% to $1.82 million. These results clearly demonstrate the operating leverage in our business as we scale with these high ASP systems. Now I’ll provide a few other key highlights of the year in regards to our end markets for FY 2026.

Medical increased 54%. That was driven by production scale systems and the growing adoption across multiple medical device coating applications. The electronics market increased by 16%. That was supported by electrically active layers being deposited on diagnostic-related devices. The clean energy market declined 19%, reflecting a reduced electrolysis demand. The industrial basket declined, which commonly shows variability in demand on our large glass coating orders. As for our products category for FY 2026, integrated coating systems, which we have renamed inline coating systems, increased 91%. That was driven by our solar-related systems. Multi-Axis Systems declined due to our lower clean energy demands. Fluxing Systems increased 53%. That was supported by strong Asia demand.

Regarding our geographic trends for FY 2026, the U.S. and Canada increased 12%. That was driven by shipments of five high ASP, that’s high average selling price systems, totaling $3.85 million. The international markets were mixed, with some softness in Asia and Latin America. We closed fiscal 2026 with a solid backlog, which showcases the strength of our overall business and order activity. We attribute the increased sales and the strong backlog as a direct result of our investments in R&D, with a strong focus on product expansion. Our balance sheet remains strong, with still no outstanding debt. Now overall, our results highlight the strength of our diversification strategy and the continued shift towards high margin and higher ASP, high volume production system sales. We remain confident in our long-term growth prospects and looking ahead.

As Chris mentioned, we expect continued revenue growth and profitability for the first half of FY 2027, driven by the medical and microelectronics market, and expanding adoption of our product production scale systems. Now I’ll turn it over to our CFO, Steve Bagley, for a deeper financial review, and then we’ll open it up after that for questions. Over to you, Steve.

Stephen J. Bagley, Chief Financial Officer, Sono-Tek Corporation: Very good. Thank you, Steve. Good morning, everyone. Now a review of our full fiscal year 2026 year-over-year results. Net sales were $20.9 million. That’s up 2% from $20.5 million the prior year. Gross profit increased 8% to $10.56 million, with margin expanding to 51% from 48%. That was driven by a favorable product mix and increased U.S.-based system sales. Operating income increased 81% to $1.82 million, with operating margins improving to 9% from 5%. Total operating expenses were $8.7 million, relatively flat year-over-year. Our research and development costs decreased 6% to $2.55 million. That’s primarily due to lower personnel and material costs. Sales and marketing decreased 4% to $3.53 million. That reflects lower commission and personnel costs. Our G&A costs increased 14% to $2.66 million. That’s driven by higher salaries, insurance, and stock-based compensation expense.

Our interest and dividend income totaled approximately $443,000. That’s slightly lower than last year, that’s due to reduced interest rates. Our tax expense increased, that’s due to the current year’s increase in income before income taxes. Net income for the year was approximately $1.8 million, that’s up 42% from $1.27 million in the prior year. That is reflecting strong operating performance and margin expansion. Regarding our balance sheet, cash equivalents, and marketable securities totaled $14.8 million, that’s an increase from $11.9 million in the prior year. We continue to have zero outstanding debt, our working capital increased to $16.2 million. I’m also pleased to state that our cash flows from operating activities generated $3.2 million, that is a significant increase when compared to $525,000 in the prior fiscal year.

The current year’s cash flow was supported by profitability and favorable working capital dynamics, including higher customer deposits and inventory management.

R. Stephen Harshbarger, Chief Executive Officer and President, Sono-Tek Corporation: We ended fiscal year 2026 with a backlog of approximately $9.12 million. That’s remaining pretty close to historically high levels, and that is supporting our visibility into fiscal 2027. Overall, we are very pleased with our financial performance for the year and believe we are well-positioned moving forward. Now, we will open the call for any questions from the audience. Rocco, please go ahead.

Rocco, Conference Moderator: Yes, sir. Thank you. Once again, we will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you can press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you’re using a speakerphone, we ask that you please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you’d like to withdraw your question, please press star then two. We’ll pause for just a moment to assemble our roster. It looks like our first question today comes from Dick Ryan at Colliers. Please go ahead. Mr. Ryan, you’re on conference.

Dick Ryan, Analyst, Colliers: Oh, was I on mute? Sorry, I think I was on mute. Thanks for taking my question.

R. Stephen Harshbarger, Chief Executive Officer and President, Sono-Tek Corporation: Okay. Good morning, Dick.

Dick Ryan, Analyst, Colliers: Hey. Solid end to the year, we’re one quarter into fiscal 2027. Can you talk on the order activity, what you’re seeing, kind of the segments? I think you indicated in the past that the backlog had shipped all the alternative energy or clean energy, so the backlog was pretty much medical and other. Can you kind of give us a sense of your order pipeline to date here with the, like I said, with the first quarter already in the bag, essentially?

R. Stephen Harshbarger, Chief Executive Officer and President, Sono-Tek Corporation: Yeah, for sure. Good question, Dick. As you indicated, our backlog historically for the last few years has been very heavily clean energy related. I can tell you this current fiscal year, it’s very light clean energy related. It’s really transitioned and shifted drastically over towards the medical sectors and the microelectronic sectors. That’s most definitely where we’re seeing our fastest growth coming from. I should note that it’s really a result of a lot of the machine integration development we did for the clean energy sector prior, that was directly transferable, those capabilities, over to these other marketplaces. Our diversification really worked to our advantage here. That’s where it’s really coming from, and that also goes with how it’s looking going forward.

If I look at our quotes and forecast going out, it continues to be these high ASP, high average selling price, larger production systems that are being quoted and presented. It’s customers that maybe were buying machines that were four, five, $600,000 a piece, but now they are making these transitions over to machines that are maybe one, two, or $3 million as part of the transition to our capabilities to provide these high ASP complex platforms.

Dick Ryan, Analyst, Colliers: Okay. Thank you. The last call, midyear, you talked about coming out of a major semiconductor show, showing a lot of interest and kind of a renewed confidence in entering that market longer term as they move from 200 to 300 fab photoresist business. Can you give us an update on the progress you’ve seen over the last six months, Steve?

R. Stephen Harshbarger, Chief Executive Officer and President, Sono-Tek Corporation: Sure. That’s been a very serious focus for us over the last year. As we talked about in prior discussions, we had what I would describe a very solid product that was well received for the 200 millimeter lab market. Well, we’ve put a lot of effort into the development of 300 millimeter wafers, with the goal of ultimately directing those more towards the fab marketplace. That’s coming along quite nicely. With that said, maybe a little bit longer than we expected it to be. It is coming along nicely. We’re going to be participating and bringing that 300 millimeter machine as planned for the end of this calendar year to be doing a semiconductor show, SEMICON Europa, which is actually the first time we’ve ever participated in that show for Sono-Tek.

We think it’s a significant enough introduction that we want to make the world aware of its availability and capability at these upcoming shows. I think we’ll start to see that begin to contribute to the revenue stream more so in the coming fiscal year. Maybe we’ll find in FY 2027, maybe we’ll see some orders, but actual deliveries will likely be more likely to fall in the following fiscal year, in FY 2028, I should say. It would be in FY 2028 would be actual deliveries of machines that are focused on that. We’re anxious to get it out there for the market to see it and to really gauge the acceptance of it. I think it will go fairly well. It’s a product that we feel like we’re being pulled into versus us trying to push our way into the marketplace.

I believe we have customers that see need for us with that product.

Dick Ryan, Analyst, Colliers: Okay, thanks. One last one for me. You have a nice buildup of cash. I don’t think you’ve done any stock repurchases down here. What’s the status of the repurchase program? I think your investments have been kind of for organic growth. What’s your thoughts on potential M&A?

R. Stephen Harshbarger, Chief Executive Officer and President, Sono-Tek Corporation: Yeah, you’re correct in the fact that we do have a stock repurchase program, of which we’ve exercised some, but it’s been very minimal amount that we’ve purchased back so far. I think it’s maybe several hundred thousand dollars or something along those lines. It’s not a significant amount at this time. We certainly do continue to have active both inbound and outbound discussions as part of our normal daily routine in practice at Sono-Tek. Like everybody, we’re out there looking for the correct valuations and the correct synergies, and we most certainly, we’re highly selective. There’s no doubt about that, we’re very highly selective. I think we’re fortunate that we have the ability to be highly selective, because if something doesn’t happen immediately for us, we feel like we have a long runway of growth for organically within the company.

We continue to be relatively active considering both inbound and outbound activity.

Dick Ryan, Analyst, Colliers: Okay, great. Thanks, Steve. Congratulations on another strong performance here. I’ll get back in line. Thank you.

R. Stephen Harshbarger, Chief Executive Officer and President, Sono-Tek Corporation: Thanks, Dick. Always good catching up.

Rocco, Conference Moderator: Thank you. Our next question today comes from Ted Jackson at Northland Securities. Please go ahead.

Ted Jackson, Analyst, Northland Securities: Thanks very much. Good morning.

R. Stephen Harshbarger, Chief Executive Officer and President, Sono-Tek Corporation: Hey. Morning, Ted.

Ted Jackson, Analyst, Northland Securities: Steve, let’s start with a little bit on backlog and bookings and things like that. Backlog at $9.1 million. It’s down sequentially, but up year-over-year. It’s a solid number. If I kind of back through it, the book-to-bill was 0.44, and your bookings number is around $2.5 million. You can correct me if I’m wrong on that. My data only goes back through 2022, that’s actually the lowest kind of bookings number I have in terms of the stuff I’ve been following and tracking. I guess the question with that is has there been a like beyond like the alt energy, has there been somewhat of a slowdown in terms of business coming in the door? Or is there this opportunity out there that hasn’t manifested itself in any kind of bookings growth?

If there is maybe a discussion about what are the opportunities that are out there that could come into play to strengthen up your view with regards to the second act. It’s a whole bunch of stuff around there, but you get kind of where I’m going with it. That’s my first question.

R. Stephen Harshbarger, Chief Executive Officer and President, Sono-Tek Corporation: Yeah. 100%. It’s been a common question over the past year and a half now since the new administration has come into play. I think because we participate in that clean energy sector, I think our investor base may have thought, "Oh, Sono-Tek’s going to get punished for that." There’s no doubt in the electrolyzer area, our business did slow down. I think what a lot of our investors didn’t recognize is our ability to switch to other marketplaces very quickly with the same technology, but just refocus our front end of the organization to other markets that were thriving. Right now, it is more lumpy, our backlog, than what it’s been historically. That’s just because of these high ASP platforms that come in.

We get more frequently these $3 million, $4 million, $5 million orders that come and drop in. It makes your backlog go up, and then it works through it and disappears. We certainly have to work towards making sure those are coming in, not just once a quarter, but our goal here is to make sure those sort of orders will be coming in once a month, and then ultimately a couple times a month going forward in addition to our normal flow of business. Although we’ll see it’s lumpiness, I think right now, year-over-year, I think we’re either flat or just slightly up maybe backlog. I think it’s right near our year-end high backlog number that we’ve ever had. When you compare it to prior quarter, it did dip back down.

I think again, you’re going to start to see it go back up again and continue to see that kind of lumpiness going through it. Most definitely, though, the big shift, which is going to drive the backlog moving forward, is the ability to drive higher ASP, more complex platforms into the portfolio. I should say that every time we get an order, we almost kind of think, "Oh, wow, it couldn’t get any bigger than this." Then all of a sudden, you go back and ask just two simple words to your customer base. We typically now will just say, "What next? What else do you need from us?

What would make your process, your life, your manufacturing realm easier if Sono-Tek provided it for you?" That’s much different than saying, "Here’s what we have to offer." Here’s what we have to offer is just the beginning of the conversation that we have with our customers now. The bigger question is, all right, here’s what we have to offer, but what else would you like us to provide you? That’s really driving our growth significantly. I look at some of these more recent quoting activity, projects that we have. It’s not uncommon for us to quote a customer, say a million-dollar machine, but by the end of the discussion, 6 months later, that million-dollar machine might be $6 million or $5 million or $4 million, but several times larger than what it started out.

That’s all because of our ability both to provide and ask the question of, "What else? What next would you like us to provide to you?" The customer, now they have the confidence to give us those sort of additional add-ons because they’ve worked with us for so long, and they know that the quality of the products we’re delivering to them are good. It’s worked out really well for us with that strategy, and that’s something we’re going to be continuing to doing. To be honest, I don’t really know how high it could go. That every time we hit another milestone where we’ll say, "Wow, that’s a $3, $4 or $5 million order," it seems like the next order becomes even larger.

We’re just going to keep on pushing that as far as the limits will let us take us and drive these high ASP production systems larger and larger.

Ted Jackson, Analyst, Northland Securities: Do you have a pipeline of opportunity that will enable you to feel more confident in the second half of the year? If so, at what point where’s kind of like the cliff to where you need to have those opportunities become orders and then maybe some discussion about the markets that they’re in?

R. Stephen Harshbarger, Chief Executive Officer and President, Sono-Tek Corporation: We most definitely have a pipeline, and that’s driven by the forecast, and we keep track, although we don’t give guidance or publicly announce it, but we have forecasts and marketplaces where they’re coming from. Most of the most recent activity is microelectronics in the medical sector. As far as guidance, I think the biggest challenge for us now with these high ASP complex production systems, it’s the lead time. If we say, for example, get an order in the next month, and keep in mind, we’re just finishing our fiscal year Q1 in another couple of days from now. We’ve got very good guidance on Q1 and pretty good guidance on Q2. If we get any significantly high ASP orders, probably in the next month, there’s a very good chance they’ll ship within this fiscal year.

If by chance those same orders come in in two months from now, that will very likely push them into the next fiscal year, which is still good, but it just kind of is punishing on the current fiscal year. That’s why you’ll see us be a little bit more cautious on second half numbers, and we should be able to give much clearer guidance in our next conference call. That will be dependent upon, did we get orders over this next month or two that allow us to ship these big production platforms in the current fiscal year? Or will they be pushing into next fiscal year? Again, it makes the visibility a little bit tough longer term because of that.

Either way, there’s definitely a nice upward trend in the activity, and these quotes that are going out and the level of seriousness with these quotes.

Ted Jackson, Analyst, Northland Securities: Because I’m taking up too much time, my next question is just if you look at your geographic mix and you kind of look at it for the past few years, you have had exceptionally solid growth out of North America. You had $4.5 million of revenue in 2020. You did almost $14 million of revenue in 2026. It’s been up every year over that time frame. What’s dragged down the aggregate growth has been APAC. Is there a case to be made just ignoring kind of the end markets that the decline in APAC has become such a small portion of revenue for Sono-Tek that the growth metrics on the top line might improve just because you don’t have that drag?

R. Stephen Harshbarger, Chief Executive Officer and President, Sono-Tek Corporation: Most definitely. There’s a lot of areas where because we’re, in my opinion, just at the beginning phases. My opinion, we’re still small, there’s so much potential upside here. With our high ASP platforms, it only takes one or two significant orders to make a big impact on the revenue upside. Of course, we’re never going to say, "All right. We’re anticipating to get this $10 million order," until it’s really locked in there. Orders like that are the kind of thing where all of a sudden you could be up by 50%-80% on one significant order. That’s a big change in the company’s overall trajectory. We always plan kind of conservatively because we like to stay profitable. We like to make money.

Well, don’t get me wrong, we continue to invest very heavily in our R&D to grow the company. When we give guidance, we like to give relatively conservative guidance, to make sure we achieve what we’re saying we’re going to do and leave some upside potential.

Ted Jackson, Analyst, Northland Securities: Great. I’ll let someone else stick in a question, too, if they want. Thanks very much, Steve.

R. Stephen Harshbarger, Chief Executive Officer and President, Sono-Tek Corporation: Yeah. Good talking to you, Ted.

Rocco, Conference Moderator: Thank you. Our next question comes from William Nicklin at Bill Will Insights. Please go ahead.

William Nicklin, Analyst, Bill Will Insights: Hey, good morning.

R. Stephen Harshbarger, Chief Executive Officer and President, Sono-Tek Corporation: Hey, morning, Bill.

William Nicklin, Analyst, Bill Will Insights: All right. Nice margins. Nice margin improvement. Good job.

R. Stephen Harshbarger, Chief Executive Officer and President, Sono-Tek Corporation: Thanks.

William Nicklin, Analyst, Bill Will Insights: Thanks for taking questions. I got a couple here. You’ve kind of touched on some of it, and basically it’s, over the last four or five years or so, you’ve consistently delivered strong growth margins, and it looks like they’re getting stronger and headed higher from here. Yet your bottom line has not been stellar. Was that a specific strategy, and what do you think you’ve accomplished from that, and where are we headed going forward based on what it looks like is the money that you spent building out the business?

R. Stephen Harshbarger, Chief Executive Officer and President, Sono-Tek Corporation: Yeah, good question. I would say, to a significant extent, it was deliberate. We very intentionally reinvested heavily in application engineering, things like process development, and maybe broader integrated system capabilities, all with the goal to position Sono-Tek for large, more sophisticated production opportunities. I have to also say that, importantly, our net margins certainly could have been higher during that period had we chosen to prioritize near-term profitability over some of these growth initiatives, and strategic investments. At the same time, I would say that some of the market acceptance and pricing resilience we’ve seen with these newer integrated system solutions definitely exceeded our original expectations. As we’ve evolved towards more complex and higher ASP production platforms, which commonly involved outsourcing subsystems and our integration partners, I for sure initially expected some downward pressure on margins. In practicality, that really hasn’t happened.

We’ve been able to maintain consistently strong gross margins through this transition. They stayed within, and really I would describe as an unusually tight range. They’re generally in that upper 40% to low 50% area. I think it’s because our customers understand that they’re not simply buying sophisticated coating equipment for Sono-Tek anymore. They’re buying our process expertise, our application knowledge, and highly specialized integrated capabilities tailored to their specific manufacturing needs and processes. While we’re certainly a manufacturing company, our customers, they’re increasingly viewing Sono-Tek as much more of a technology solutions and maybe a process expertise provider, I would say, rather than, say, a traditional equipment supplier, where margins typically fluctuate much more significantly.

The good news is our customers are willing to pay for our integration expertise and the ability to work with a single source for a broader turnkey solution, which has, again, allowed us to maintain these healthy margins.

William Nicklin, Analyst, Bill Will Insights: Great, thanks. A couple of years ago, there was some discussion about building out what we call building 6 on your campus. That appeared to get put on hold probably because of the clean energy slowdown. I understand that’s back under consideration now, and that would take your overall capacity up from somewhere of $25 million-$29 million now up to the $40 million-$44 million range. Is that correct? What is in your pipeline as you look out that could get the revenues up to that $40 million-$44 million range?

R. Stephen Harshbarger, Chief Executive Officer and President, Sono-Tek Corporation: Sure. Yeah. Good observation, Bill. A couple of years ago, as you mentioned, we did discuss larger expansion initiatives tied primarily anticipating with that green energy growth sector. When portions of that market slowed, we took a more measured approach, I would describe it as, rather than expanding too aggressively ahead of demand. However, more recently, we’ve been increasingly proactive with the next phase of our manufacturing expansion, and going along with that is some flow optimization strategy. This first phase that we’re looking at right now takes advantage of currently underutilized vertical space. That’s within our existing facility, and it’s really by constructing a mezzanine structure, and reconfiguring portions of our manufacturing floor for improved workflow efficiency and space utilization. We expect to begin implementing that phase during the current calendar year.

The investment will likely be in the area of, and this is early, but $500,000-$600,000, and should increase our practical annual revenue capacities to roughly $35 million at this point is our latest guess. While also, though very importantly, improving our operational efficiency throughout the facility. Now, we’re also actively working with New York State economic development programs. We’re hopeful that they’ll participate in supporting this project. We believe internally here that our investments very well align with the state’s goals around advanced manufacturing and high-value domestic production jobs. Our goal is to continue expanding these capabilities here in New York rather than elsewhere. We believe state participation can play an important role in helping support those objectives. We’re hopeful that confirmation of state participation will allow us to formally kick off this phase of the project during the current calendar year.

Beyond that, we do have an additional expansion phase under consideration that would involve taking over our adjacent space that we have that’s currently in a leased building on a short-term lease. Assuming that moves forward, we believe it could expand our overall capacity to approximately that $45 million area of revenue, as you mentioned. I think what’s really important is what’s driving this renewed interest in expansion is not just one end market, but it’s the broader evolution of the business towards larger, more sophisticated production platforms, mostly across the medical devices and microelectronics in some very selected clean energy opportunities. We’re seeing these large system opportunities, these higher ASP programs, and a pipeline that increasingly supports the need for additional scalable manufacturing capacity over time.

William Nicklin, Analyst, Bill Will Insights: Great, thanks. Let’s say you get up to the $35 million, then $40 million-$45 million revenue run rate. What is your headcount going to look like?

R. Stephen Harshbarger, Chief Executive Officer and President, Sono-Tek Corporation: I think, I’ll leave that to Steve Bagley to be exact, but I think we’re currently operating with around 90 employees.

William Nicklin, Analyst, Bill Will Insights: Thank you.

R. Stephen Harshbarger, Chief Executive Officer and President, Sono-Tek Corporation: Is 90 right, Steve?

Stephen J. Bagley, Chief Financial Officer, Sono-Tek Corporation: Yeah, 90 is about right now. Yes.

R. Stephen Harshbarger, Chief Executive Officer and President, Sono-Tek Corporation: Okay. While we could certainly expect headcount to increase as revenues scale, we certainly wouldn’t expect it to increase proportionally with revenue, of course. The majority of hiring of personnel would likely incur within probably the manufacturing operations as we expand production capability and throughput. At the same time, we would expect continued growth, in particular, of our FDE group, which, as a reminder, is our Field Deployed Engineering team. That team works very closely with customers on application development, the process optimization, and helping ensure successful implementation of our technology with the customer in their manufacturing environment. We’re also quite aggressive on increasing deployment, as you mentioned, of AI and automation tools across the organization to help improve scalability over time. We are seeing opportunities to do more with less across many areas of the business.

That includes areas like programming, marketing, sales support, contract reviews, purchasing, and several other operational type of functions, I would describe. I guess I really believe that Sono-Tek, that we’re ahead of the curve organizationally in our adoption of AI tools. Frankly, we’re still in the relatively early stages of deployment with that said. I think there’s still some meaningful additional leverage potential over time as those systems mature internally. Overall, to answer your question, for a scenario where revenue output, let’s say it approximately doubles from our current levels, I would estimate headcount to grow in the range roughly of maybe 30%-40%, which should reflect both the operating leverage and scalability built into our general business model.

William Nicklin, Analyst, Bill Will Insights: Great. Thank you very much. I’ll jump out at this time. At the end, I might have another question or two. Thank you.

R. Stephen Harshbarger, Chief Executive Officer and President, Sono-Tek Corporation: You got it, Bill.

Rocco, Conference Moderator: Thank you. Our next question comes from David McGinnis, a Private Investor. Please go ahead.

David McGinnis, Private Investor: Yes. It’s great that every quarter there’s more terrific news on Sono-Tek. I am disappointed in the lack, the minimal use of the stock buyback program, that stocks go up on earnings per share beats. When you’re just trying to get $0.01 above expectations, one way to do that is reduce the number of shares. For many months, the stock was down, trading at the value within the low $4, so this would have been a great investment. What are your thoughts?

R. Stephen Harshbarger, Chief Executive Officer and President, Sono-Tek Corporation: Yeah, it’s a reasonable question, Dave, and it is something that we bring up at the BOD level quite often about what is the right timing to do stock buybacks. I know we do have a relatively significant amount of cash on hand. We bought back a relatively small amount of stock to date. It continues to be something we look at closely. Most of the potential acquisition opportunities we’re looking at are not cheap, so we have had the ability to look at them quite aggressively and to make short-term moves if we needed to. As I tell you, having that cash on hand also gives us a lot of flexibility to make strategic moves aggressively when we see the right opportunity arise. The opportunities are more plentiful now, but higher cost, I should note, than what they’ve been historically for us.

That’s just because our overall model is becoming larger by scale. We most certainly will continue to look at that. I wouldn’t be surprised if that number for the buyback starts to change of where the BOD gives guidance for. It’s something we’re going to continue to be looking at and evaluating of what’s the right timing there, for sure.

David McGinnis, Private Investor: Okay. Interesting. I’ll throw in a different point is, the world has had quite a few oil price shocks in the past, and my point is, this one is different. We had the Ukraine war. We’ve now got countries with the Iran war, problems that are seeing they need energy independence. It’s not just a matter of are alternative energy sources a good value, financially prudent? It’s how do I make sure that I can still keep the electricity on? It’s interesting that in Sono-Tek’s business that’s dropped, but I’m very hopeful in that area as well.

R. Stephen Harshbarger, Chief Executive Officer and President, Sono-Tek Corporation: Yeah. I appreciate that comment, Dave, because I also agree that long-term energy independence is going to ultimately have to be a major factor and criteria for almost all governments. I’ve got to believe that this will, at some point here, become back to the prior level of activity it was, if not significantly higher in the future. Timing certainly will be an impact with the administrations and how they’re being handled from that standpoint.

David McGinnis, Private Investor: Great. Well, thank you.

R. Stephen Harshbarger, Chief Executive Officer and President, Sono-Tek Corporation: Good talking.

Rocco, Conference Moderator: Thank you. That does conclude our question and answer session for today. I’d like to turn the conference back over to Steve Harshbarger for any closing remarks.

R. Stephen Harshbarger, Chief Executive Officer and President, Sono-Tek Corporation: Excellent. Well, thank you. In closing, for fiscal 2026, I believe this was a strong year for Sono-Tek, marked by consistent revenue, significant margin expansion, and continued strategic execution. We believe our focus on high ASP production systems, market diversification, and operational discipline is driving sustained long-term value. We remain confident in our outlook for FY 2027, supported by strong momentum in the medical and microelectronic sectors, and this is supported with our strong backlog. I thank you all for joining us this morning, and we look forward to updating you on our progress in the coming months. Thanks very much, everybody. Enjoy your rest of your day.

Rocco, Conference Moderator: Thank you, sir. That concludes today’s conference call, and we thank you all for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect your lines and have a wonderful day.

David McGinnis, Private Investor: Thank you.

R. Stephen Harshbarger, Chief Executive Officer and President, Sono-Tek Corporation: Thanks.

Unknown, Unknown: Thank you all.