Frequency Electronics Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
March 11, 2026

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Announced two contracts valued at approximately $45 million — one in FEI's traditional satellite programs and one in the proliferated-satellite market — signaling wins in both legacy and next-generation markets.
  • Positive Sentiment: Fully funded backlog reached a record of approximately $83 million, and management expects additional awards that could push backlog past $100 million in the near future.
  • Negative Sentiment: Quarterly revenue was $16.9 million (flat sequentially but down YoY) and operating income fell to about $1.3 million, with gross margins pressured by program mix and increased non-recurring engineering work.
  • Neutral Sentiment: Operating expenses rose (including roughly $500k of non-recurring costs tied to the Colorado facility) and R&D increased to ~10% of revenue, which management says should normalize and enable operating leverage as production scales.
  • Positive Sentiment: Balance sheet remains strong — roughly $32 million working capital, debt-free, and over $11 million of cash collected since Feb 1 — supporting continued R&D and program execution.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Frequency Electronics Q3 2026
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Greetings, and welcome to the Frequency Electronics third quarter fiscal 2026 earnings release conference call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. Any statements made by the company during this conference call regarding the future constitute forward-looking statements pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements inherently involve uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. Factors that would cause or contribute to such differences are included in the company's press releases and are further detailed in the company's periodic report filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Operator

By making these forward-looking statements, the company undertakes no obligation to update these statements for revisions or changes after the date of this conference call. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Thomas McClelland, President and Chief Executive Officer.

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

Good afternoon, and thanks for joining Frequency Electronics third quarter fiscal year 2026 earnings call. With me today is our CFO, Steve Bernstein. On our second quarter fiscal 2026 earnings call in December, I discussed our vision for how we see the growth in our company developing in the coming years. Specifically, I told you that the exciting growth prospects we have in large and growing end markets, which are larger than our historical addressable markets, will come in addition to continuing strength and growth in our ongoing businesses in space and defense. These new markets, such as quantum sensing, proliferated satellites, and alternative position, navigation, and timing programs, are built upon our industry-leading capabilities in our core space and defense programs.

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

I also told you on that December call that we anticipate multiple awards in the coming months, some of which are as large or larger than the biggest ones we have historically announced. Today, we're very pleased to report significant progress on all of these fronts. In a separate press release that came out at the same time as our earnings report after the close of market today, we announced that we awarded two contracts valued at approximately $45 million. One of these contracts is in the domain of FEI's traditional space satellite programs, and one is part of the new proliferated satellite paradigm. Customer confidentiality prevents us from discussing these with greater specifics at this time, but there are two important points to consider.

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

First, of course, is that these contracts reflect our ability to continue to win meaningful contracts in our traditional space business while also winning significant business in our next-generation markets at the same time. In other words, while our business is never perfectly linear, we are definitely not projecting a dislocation in which the traditional business wanes while the new business replaces it. Rather, they'll both grow and pave the way for us to become a substantially larger company. Second, we're already actively working on additional contracts of similar magnitude in both our traditional and new business lines and anticipate additional awards in this calendar year.

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

On the December call, I also told you that while backlog in any given quarter can fluctuate given newly funded awards and what is converted into revenue in a given quarter, based on what we're seeing coming down the road, we believe it is reasonable that we could see backlog north of $100 million in the not-too-distant future. Our January quarter end backlog was at a new record for FEI, and of course, this backlog amount was prior to the award of the contracts announced today. This new business announced today will start to enter backlog in this current fiscal fourth quarter, which should help us make further progress towards the $100 million mark in the near future. Now that $100 million level, by the way, is not meant to indicate, but a level we're currently building towards.

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

Adding more awards like the ones we announced today could push us well past that over time. Steve will provide more financial details a little bit later, but I would make a few financial comments here. For the third fiscal quarter, we reported revenue of $16.9 million, essentially the same as the second fiscal quarter. This revenue number is down year-over-year because of the particularly strong execution we exhibited in fiscal 2025, which allowed the company to produce revenue on certain programs in fiscal 2025 that we had originally expected to produce over a much more extended period of time, well into fiscal 2026, essentially pulling forward some revenue, as we've discussed in the previous calls.

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

Nonetheless, this was still the fourth highest quarter of revenue in the past 10 years, with the only three higher quarters having occurred within the past four quarters. As we said on the December call, though our business does not proceed in a perfect fashion, we have established a new higher base, and we anticipate building upon that base now and in the years to come. Before I turn things over to Steve, I would like to make a few comments on the current state of the world and how it relates to FEI's business. Obviously, most immediately, our country is now at war. As we've discussed on previous calls, we're involved in numerous defense programs, including Golden Dome, Patriot Missile system, B-2 Bomber, and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missile system, the THAAD system, as well as other multi-domain defense systems.

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

Missile systems and interceptors have been in the news quite a bit over the past two weeks, and I would like to remind you of remarks we've made previously on our calls. Our exposure on major missile programs is principally in the missile batteries, which are ground-based units used to detect, track, and intercept incoming threats, generally by firing missiles at those threats. As the government increases the deployment of these batteries, our business will expand along with that, and we've already seen evidence of that in the current quarter. Further, the early days of this war, as well as the action earlier this year in Venezuela, have shown an increased reliance on traditional jet fighters and naval fleets as opposed to next-generation defense technologies.

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

Similar to our discussion earlier on our space positioning in the traditional and emerging markets, we believe this military deployment is a good example of how there remains strong opportunities in our traditional defense business, even as we are engineering products for next-generation modalities. We expect defense to continue to be a meaningful and growing business for FEI for many years. Meanwhile, in the Ukraine-Russia war and in the Strait of Hormuz, GPS jamming has become ubiquitous, creating dead zones that threaten civilian aircraft, telecom, and financial systems, shipping firms, and NATO allies. The need for alternative positioning, navigation, and timing systems, ALT-PNT, including the use of quantum sensing and magnetometers, is paramount, and we expect to be a part of that solution set in the years to come.

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

In fact, in this current fiscal year, we've already won some new business in both magnetometers and other quantum sensing, including business won out of our new Colorado facility. We expect a lot more ALT-PNT business in the years to follow. Our technology is used in systems and programs that play critical roles in keeping our country and our military safe. We're very proud of this work, and it creates an additional sense of mission for our team. I would like to thank our employees, our customers, and our shareholders, all of whom we serve by carrying out this important work. Lastly, we will be participating in two investor conferences in the fiscal fourth quarter, and we look forward to meeting with a number of you at the Craig-Hallum NewSpace Conference on March 25th and the Morgan Stanley Golden Dome and National Security Innovation Summit on June 15th.

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

Now I'll turn the call over to Steve to provide some more financial details, and I look forward to taking your questions during the Q&A following Steve's remarks. Steve?

Steven Bernstein
Steven Bernstein
CFO at Frequency Electronics

Thank you, Tom, and good afternoon. For the three months ended January 31, 2026, consolidated revenue was $16.9 million compared to $18.9 million for the same period of the prior fiscal year and substantially similar to the second quarter of this fiscal year, as Tom mentioned earlier, and which we have described on the past several calls. The components of revenue are those. Revenue from commercial and U.S. government satellite programs was approximately $4.2 million or 25% compared to $11.2 million or 59% in the same period of the prior fiscal year.

Steven Bernstein
Steven Bernstein
CFO at Frequency Electronics

Revenues on satellite payload contracts are recognized primarily under the percentage of completion method and reported only in the FEI N.Y. segment. Revenues from non-space U.S. government and Department of Defense customers, which are recorded in both the FEI N.Y. and FEI-Zyfer segments, were $12.5 million compared to $7.4 million in the same period of the prior fiscal year and accounted for approximately 74% of consolidated revenue, compared to 39% for the prior fiscal year. Other commercial and industrial revenues were approximately $180 thousand compared to approximately $367 thousand in the prior fiscal year.

Steven Bernstein
Steven Bernstein
CFO at Frequency Electronics

The revenue for the three months ending January 31st, 2026 were lower than the revenues in the prior period, partly as a result of certain space programs in the FEI N.Y. segment during the prior fiscal year that were being expedited during the period due to very aggressive schedules. In addition, several new space bookings anticipated for the three months ending January 31st, 2026 are now anticipated in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026. For the three months and nine months ending January 31st, 2026, both gross margin and gross margin rate decreased compared to the same period in the prior fiscal year. The decrease in gross margin and gross margin rate were attributable to a change in the mix of high margin production satellite programs in the prior year periods versus lower margin programs with significant non-recurring engineering efforts during the three months ending January 31st, 2026.

Steven Bernstein
Steven Bernstein
CFO at Frequency Electronics

Going forward, the mix of programs will vary in any given quarter, but in general, we expect our gross margin to move up over time, particularly as we add more business with higher rate of unit production and follow on business from successful programs. For the three months ending January 31st, 2026 and 2025, Selling, General, and Administrative expenses increased by approximately $213 thousand and were approximately 21% of consolidated revenue, up from 18% in the prior year. The increase in SG&A expenses during the three months ending January 31st, 2026 was due to fluctuations in various expense accounts that make up SG&A.

Steven Bernstein
Steven Bernstein
CFO at Frequency Electronics

R&D expense for the three months ending January 31st, 2026 increased to approximately $1.8 million from $1.4 million for the three months ending January 31st, 2025, an increase of approximately $327,000, and were approximately 10% and 8% respectively of consolidated revenue. Fluctuation in R&D expenditures will occur in some periods due to current operational needs supporting ongoing programs. The company plans to continue to invest in R&D in the future to keep its products at the state of the art. In total, operating expenses increased approximately $540,000, but this includes approximately $500,000 of non-recurring expenses, so we anticipate showing more operating leverage going forward as additional revenue should expand at a much faster rate than expenses.

Steven Bernstein
Steven Bernstein
CFO at Frequency Electronics

For the three months ended January 31st, 2026, the company reported operating income of approximately $1.3 million compared to an operating income of approximately $3.5 million in the prior fiscal year. Operating income decreased due to lower revenue, lower gross margin, and increased SG&A described earlier. Other income expense net is derived from various sources. The majority of the approximately $0.2 million of investment income for the three months ending January 31st, 2026 was from interest income and unrealized gain on assets held in the Frequency Electronics deferred compensation trust. This yields a pre-tax income of approximately $1.4 million for the three months ending January 31st, 2026, compared to an approximately $3.6 million pre-tax income for the three months ending January 31st, 2025.

Steven Bernstein
Steven Bernstein
CFO at Frequency Electronics

For the three months ending January 31st, 2026, the company recorded an income tax benefit of approximately $127 thousand, which includes a discrete tax benefit of approximately $568 thousand. The discrete income tax benefit is primarily due to stock compensation windfall deductions. For the three months ended January 31st, 2025, the company recorded an income tax benefit of $11.8 million, which included a discrete income tax benefit of $11.9 million. The discrete income tax benefit in the comparable period is primarily due to the release of the valuation allowance. Consolidated net income for the three months ended January 31st, 2025 was approximately $1.6 million or $0.16 per share, compared to approximately $15.4 million or $1.60 per share for the same period of the previous fiscal year.

Steven Bernstein
Steven Bernstein
CFO at Frequency Electronics

Our fully funded backlog at the end of January 2026 was approximately $83 million, a new all-time high for FEI, as compared to approximately $70 million for the previous fiscal year ended April 30, 2025. The company's balance sheet continues to reflect a strong working capital position of approximately $32 million at January 31st, 2026, and a current ratio of approximately 2.6 to 1. The amount of cash reported as of the quarter end January 31st, 2026 should represent a low point going forward, which is a combination of investments made by the company, purchases of stock, and collections coming in early in the fiscal fourth quarter that were anticipated in the third quarter. Specifically, we have already collected over $11 million of cash since February 1st, 2026, and we expect that to continue building through the quarter.

Steven Bernstein
Steven Bernstein
CFO at Frequency Electronics

Additionally, the company is debt free, and the company believes that its liquidity is adequate to meet its operating investing needs for the next 12 months in the foreseeable future. I will turn the call back to Tom, and we look forward to your questions shortly.

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

Thanks, Steve. We're now ready for questions.

Operator

Thank you. At this time, we will be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment please while we poll for questions. Once again, please press star one if you have a question or a comment. The first question comes from Jeff Van Riel with Craig-Hallum. Please proceed.

Jeff Van Riel
Jeff Van Riel
Research Analyst at Craig-Hallum

Great. Thanks for taking the questions. A couple for you here, guys. Tom, the proliferated win, talk to me about what you're learning out in the marketplace and your ability to win in these proliferated constellation deals. I know this is something you've sort of felt your way through. Looks like you've got some success, and you're sort of guiding to continued success. Where do you have the right to win? Where do you win? Where do you not have a right to play? Just what have you learned there?

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

Well, I think when we can provide some technical edge, we're very successful. We're seeing that, and that's what the win that we announced today reflects. When there are systems that have minimal technical requirements and all of the emphasis is just on the lowest possible cost, then it's a much bigger challenge for us.

Jeff Van Riel
Jeff Van Riel
Research Analyst at Craig-Hallum

Realizing your hands are somewhat tied, talk to me to the degree you can on the $45 million. I think you said there's a couple wins in there. Are these roughly equal in size? I know you said one was proliferated, one wasn't, but just rough proportion of what's in there.

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

Well, I yeah, I'm gonna dodge that one a little bit, Jeff. Let me just say they're both significant.

Jeff Van Riel
Jeff Van Riel
Research Analyst at Craig-Hallum

Okay. In terms of the coming into funded backlog, I think that the phrasing was they will start to come into backlog. I mean, can you give us some swag at how quickly that's gonna play into the backlog?

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

Yeah. Just a reminder that we talk about funded backlog, so it's a question of the funding profile on each of these programs. The reality is that will be pretty significant in the quarter that we're in currently. Yeah, I don't think I can say a whole lot more than that at this point.

Jeff Van Riel
Jeff Van Riel
Research Analyst at Craig-Hallum

Steven, on the cost structure, I was unclear. I think you referenced there were some unusuals in there. Obviously, R&D has bumped up considerably over the last few quarters. I'm trying to understand what the steady-state OpEx levels are going forward. Just what was in there this quarter that was one time and not?

Steven Bernstein
Steven Bernstein
CFO at Frequency Electronics

Well, we have in the general operating expenses, we still have investments that we're making into Colorado is the largest piece of that. Once that's, you know, done, it should normalize pretty much. That was one, the larger piece of it.

Jeff Van Riel
Jeff Van Riel
Research Analyst at Craig-Hallum

When you say normalize, are we gonna go up from this level as we go forward into future quarters, or was there unusual in here, and we should step down from here?

Steven Bernstein
Steven Bernstein
CFO at Frequency Electronics

Well, again, operating expenses in general, unfortunately, there's always some bump, you know, whether at 3%, 4%, 5%, you know, based on just the, you know, normal growth of normal expenses. So I don't see any, you know, unless something changes, I don't see a large increase, but I don't see a large decrease.

Jeff Van Riel
Jeff Van Riel
Research Analyst at Craig-Hallum

Okay, maybe last for me, Tom. On with respect to TURbO, I know you had given some color commentary in a few prior quarters, that it, you know, you felt it had the potential to go from a couple million to maybe $20 million in the out year if things go right. Just your updated thinking on TURbO based on market reception, pipeline, et cetera. Thanks.

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

I think, if anything, we are more optimistic about TURbO. We're beginning to see significant revenue at this time, and every indication is that this is gonna grow dramatically over the next, even over the next couple of quarters and definitely over the next couple of years.

Jeff Van Riel
Jeff Van Riel
Research Analyst at Craig-Hallum

Got it. Thanks so much.

Operator

Our next question comes from Chris Witkowsky, private investor. Please proceed.

Chris Witkowsky
Shareholder at Private Investor

Hello. Thank you for taking my questions. Congratulations on the new wins.

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

Thank you.

Chris Witkowsky
Shareholder at Private Investor

Could you clarify what exactly is a proliferated satellite? Is that the Starlink type satellite? I'm not asking you if it's Starlink or not, just if it's that type of satellite.

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

Yeah. It's actually a pretty good question. I'm not sure I really like that term proliferated satellites, but it is one that is being used out there. I think the distinction we're trying to make is between what we call traditional satellite systems, where there are maybe 3-5 satellites in a constellation, oftentimes in geosynchronous orbits, versus these newer satellite systems that are being envisioned at this point in time, often, but not always in low Earth orbit, but consisting of many, many more satellites, typically from 300 to, in some cases, many thousands. SpaceX is now talking about a constellation of 1 million satellites. I think the real distinguishing feature is that the thought process that goes behind these systems, what's become very clear recently is that satellites are vulnerable from our enemies.

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

This has been demonstrated recently that both the Chinese and the Russians, in particular, have the capability to destroy other satellites. When we have a satellite system that has only a couple of satellites in it, if one of those satellites gets destroyed, it's a huge loss for us. It can represent $ billions, in fact. The idea is instead of having a couple of satellites worth $1 billion each to have a system where there are many more satellites, but the individual satellites are much, much less costly. The simple way I like to look at it is that the system itself may overall cost the same amount of money, but instead of those costs being distributed over a few satellites, three, four, five satellites is distributed over 300 or 1,000 satellites.

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

In order to make that approach work, obviously, the individual satellites have to cost a lot less. That's what we end up looking at. We look at individual satellites. The contribution that we make in a product to an individual satellite has to cost a lot less than what we would deliver for one of the traditional satellites. Then, of course, another important feature is that if you're going to launch 300 satellites instead of three, you need to do it at a much more rapid pace than is necessary for the three satellites. The production rate has to increase dramatically. This lower cost and more rapid production makes for a significantly different manufacturing approach than with traditional satellites.

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

One of the things, so we're actually investing in order to really get involved in a very significant way in this new kind of satellite business. One of the attractive features is that on an ongoing basis, many of these systems are envisioned to have just a continuous ongoing production of satellites. The idea is that the individual satellites are intended to have a shorter lifetime instead of 15 years for traditional satellites, maybe 3-5 years for the newer satellites. We get into a production mode where we are delivering on a scheduled basis, say, the first 300 satellites in a 300-satellite system.

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

As soon as we're done delivering the 300 satellites, we have to start all over again because the first satellites that were launched are nearing the end of life and have to be replaced with new ones. It makes for potentially a much more continuous kind of production. That's something that we think makes for a much more predictable business. It's also in many ways a more attractive business than the traditional satellites, where we would have a large scale production activity over a couple of years. Then when we're finished with three or four satellites, we're done perhaps for the next decade until people are talking about potentially replacing those satellites. Anyway, it's probably a more long-winded answer than you wanted, but let me leave it at that.

Chris Witkowsky
Shareholder at Private Investor

That was very appreciated. Please feel free to be as long-winded as you want. It seems like there will be some headwinds and some tailwinds for gross margins. I'm sure having continuous production would really help gross margins. Having a new satellite program which requires limited costs that might hurt gross margins. Do you think you'll be able to keep your gross margins on this new proliferated satellite program? Is there gonna be like a learning period where gross margins will be lower?

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

It's a good question. It's something we've talked about on previous calls. I think we do anticipate in the short run somewhat lower gross margins on the proliferated satellite business as it gets refined in the initial years. But at the same time, and it's really one of the things we're trying to emphasize today, is that the traditional satellite business is still alive and well. That is a business that our gross margins are very strong. Whereas we have to invest to some extent in the proliferated satellites, we have really good gross margins with the traditional satellites.

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

I also wanna emphasize that in the long run, we anticipate very strong margins for the proliferated satellite business, as well.

Chris Witkowsky
Shareholder at Private Investor

Okay. You mentioned that in this current quarter, things are going, this $45 million, some of it is going to the funded backlog. Are you allowed to tell us when actual production would start?

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

That's something I think I'm not prepared to get into. It's very early stages of these programs, and the schedules are being worked out now with our customers.

Chris Witkowsky
Shareholder at Private Investor

All right, thanks. Good luck.

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

Thank you.

Operator

Next question is from Michael Eisner, Private Investor. Michael, please proceed.

Michael Eisner
Shareholder at Private Investor

Congratulations on the two contracts and future contracts.

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

Thank you.

Michael Eisner
Shareholder at Private Investor

Most of my questions are answered. Can you comment on Golden Dome?

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

I don't think there's a whole lot I can say. From our point of view, Golden Dome is just sort of being defined at this point in time. We have spoken specifically in the past and earlier today about some of the programs, Patriot Missile and THAAD, which I think are in some ways of thinking considered part of the Golden Dome concept. We are also involved in several other missile programs which we can't talk about in specific, but you know, we're very involved in a number of things that are part of the Golden Dome concept.

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

Of course, you know, satellites and are also a very important part of the Golden Dome concept. We're very involved in that also. I, you know, other than that, Michael, I don't think I can really get into any specifics.

Michael Eisner
Shareholder at Private Investor

Frequency Electronics has been around 60, 70 years, and Frequency is a nice name, good name, respected name. Did you ever think of adding to Frequency, maybe frequency Quantum Sensing, for example, or timing, more.

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

Uh.

Michael Eisner
Shareholder at Private Investor

to what the company actually does?

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

Sure. We have thought about it. You know, there have been all sorts of suggestions along the lines that you're suggesting right now and quite a number of other ones also. I don't think I wanna say a whole lot more than that, but at the moment, we're sticking with the 65-year-old name that we have.

Michael Eisner
Shareholder at Private Investor

Yeah. I just thought 'cause it does so much. Frequency from years ago, it does so much more now. It sounds like from this call, we're getting involved with more stuff in technology.

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

Yeah. I guess.

Michael Eisner
Shareholder at Private Investor

It's a technology company.

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

Yeah. The one thing I'll say, you know, we've given some thought to this kinda thing, and I'm not gonna say one way or the other what the future will bring, but I think, you know, there's we've just been talking about it. There's a tremendous amount of business that we're looking at at this point in time, and we're anticipating very, very significant growth. I think the important thing to do is concentrate on executing that business effectively. So that's what we're focusing on. We feel that's way more important than, you know, the name we provide to the company.

Michael Eisner
Shareholder at Private Investor

Okay, that's fine. Thank you.

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

Yeah.

Operator

Once again, if you have a question or a comment, please press star one. We have a follow-up coming from Jeff Van Riel with Craig-Hallum. Please proceed, Jeff.

Jeff Van Riel
Jeff Van Riel
Research Analyst at Craig-Hallum

Great. Thanks. Yeah, just a few from you guys. In terms of the script, Steven, I might have missed it. I thought you had said you had some bookings push outs, and I didn't quite catch it. I think you said Q1 went to Q4. Just recap that for me. Tom, I know you've been talking about a $100 million backlog. You thought in the relatively near future. Sounded like slightly different verbiage here, so maybe it's not quite as near as you thought it had been. Just connect those two dots for me and help me understand what's going on there.

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

Well, I think that, you know, again, we can't really get into quantitative specifics, but I do think that the $100 million mark is gonna be breached relatively quickly. I think, you know, just the what we talked about today, our backlog is up from what it was last quarter, slightly. You know, we just announced today $45 million of new contracts, and that's gonna be hitting the backlog, beginning to hit the backlog this quarter. There's more, you know, in the pipeline. We're very quickly approaching the $100 million mark.

Jeff Van Riel
Jeff Van Riel
Research Analyst at Craig-Hallum

Yeah, understood. Just back to the original question, Steve, did you reference?

Steven Bernstein
Steven Bernstein
CFO at Frequency Electronics

Uh-huh.

Jeff Van Riel
Jeff Van Riel
Research Analyst at Craig-Hallum

Contracts pushing out from Q1 to Q4? If so, can you expand on that?

Steven Bernstein
Steven Bernstein
CFO at Frequency Electronics

No, I said they pushed from Q3 to Q4, and that's why, you know, some of the revenue is down or dropped because of that. That's all.

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

Yeah, I think.

Jeff Van Riel
Jeff Van Riel
Research Analyst at Craig-Hallum

Okay.

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

Very specifically, the contracts that we just announced.

Steven Bernstein
Steven Bernstein
CFO at Frequency Electronics

Yeah.

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

One of the frustrating things in the satellite business.

Jeff Van Riel
Jeff Van Riel
Research Analyst at Craig-Hallum

Yeah.

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

Our wonderful government, they like to get their satellite hardware as quickly as possible, but they're not so fast in executing contracts.

Jeff Van Riel
Jeff Van Riel
Research Analyst at Craig-Hallum

To say the least. Okay, thanks so much.

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

All right.

Operator

Next question comes from Robert Smith with Center for Performance Investing.

Robert Smith
Research Analyst at Center for Performance Investing

Hi, good afternoon, Tom.

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

Hi.

Robert Smith
Research Analyst at Center for Performance Investing

I just wanted to congratulate you, Tom, on your transforming this company and positioning it for future growth. I'm hopeful that you can continue to execute, and I think you're doing a wonderful job. Kudos to you. Grateful to be aboard. Thanks so much.

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

I appreciate it, and, we'll do our best.

Operator

Okay, our next question. We have a follow-up, actually, from Chris Witkowsky, Private Investor. Please proceed.

Chris Witkowsky
Shareholder at Private Investor

Hello. Thanks for taking my follow-up. I wanted to ask you if you can expound a little bit on the alternative positioning and navigation. Now, obviously, there's GPS jamming all over the place. How do you help address that? Would that lead to your devices being actually deployed in kind of the boats and cars and so on?

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

You know, for alternative navigation, there are dozens or more things that people are considering. I think it's maybe worth just a little bit of discussion about this. You know, we all have come to depend on GPS, Global Positioning System, over the last couple of. The one thing that distinguishes GPS is the G part of it, the global. It's available, you know, literally any place on the surface of the Earth. When people talk about alternatives to GPS, sometimes they talk about other satellite navigation systems which are potentially also global in reach. In general, people like to talk about things that are not satellite systems. The whole idea is that the satellite Global Positioning System is vulnerable.

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

The satellites can be destroyed or damaged by our enemies in particular, and also the signals can be jammed. If you just replace one satellite system with another satellite system, you have essentially the same problems with that you had with the original system. People talk primarily about non-satellite alternatives, and in general, the non-satellite alternatives are not global in reach. That means that if you're not talking about systems, usually when you talk about alternatives, you're talking about employing multiple approaches to navigation. You know, one alternate may work in a particular environment, say an urban environment, and another approach will work over the ocean or in the middle of the desert someplace.

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

With all of that preliminary being said, you know, there are a couple of things that we're involved in and think are gonna become important over the next couple of years and probably over the next decade. One of them that we're working on very actively right now is so-called magnetic navigation. The idea here is that the magnetic field around the surface of the Earth is not exactly constant. It varies by small amounts and the exact magnetic field and direction is location sensitive. If you have a very accurate map of the magnetic field in a region on the surface of the Earth, then you can.

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

You have a means of measuring the magnetic field, then you can compare your measurements to the magnetic map and locate yourself with really quite precision. Probably not at this point in time with the same precision that we get from GPS, but under the right conditions, it can be pretty close to that. That's something that we're pursuing. We're pursuing the magnetometer end of this, the sensor for measuring the magnetic field. Of course, that by itself isn't going to allow you to navigate. You also have to have the magnetic maps, which, by the way, is something that we're looking at helping to improve, the existing magnetic maps of the surface of the Earth.

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

Another thing that another alternative to GPS that is considered is really a similar kind of concept, but you can imagine using a combination of fixed terminals on the surface of the Earth or and drones. Those fixed terminals and drones effectively act as a mini GPS system. The drones are equivalent to the GPS satellites. In a localized area, that kind of configuration provides a means of very precise localized navigation. You know, these are just a couple of things that Frequency Electronics is actually involved in terms of alternative navigation. There are, of course, many other things that people talk about, various detecting radio frequency signals from radio stations and using that to locate.

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

There's inertial navigation and various other things. I'll just leave it at that for now.

Chris Witkowsky
Shareholder at Private Investor

Well, thanks for the thorough answer. Are you getting any revenue right now? Or I guess production revenue will be a couple of years out.

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

Well, yeah. We are because the U.S. government is very interested in developing these technologies and they're funding development activities. So we're getting revenue from those development funds. We anticipate over the next decade, you know, instead of development revenue, turning that into product-based development. Product-based revenue, excuse me.

Chris Witkowsky
Shareholder at Private Investor

All right. Thanks again.

Operator

The next question is from Sam Nelson, Private Investor. Sam, please proceed.

Sam Nelson
Shareholder at Private Investor

Hi, Tom. Thanks for taking my question. I was just trying to get a better idea of, with the new contracts, how that award might ultimately flow through the backlog. I think on previous calls, you had described how ultimately the impact might be like 10x the initial value that's realized on the backlog. Just to clarify, I was wondering if we could look at these new contract awards in a similar way where the initial realized amount of the contract that's falling in backlog could we 10x that or what might the impact ultimately be?

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

I think without making specific kind of statements, that the 10x approximation, I think, is reasonably valid here. You know, it's the contribution to backlog depends on the initial funding on these contracts. Yeah. Something along those lines. Again, not providing specific guidance.

Sam Nelson
Shareholder at Private Investor

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Okay. We have no further questions in the queue. I'd like to turn the floor back to management for any closing remarks.

Thomas McClelland
Thomas McClelland
President and CEO at Frequency Electronics

Okay. Thank you for taking the time to listen and participate in today's earnings call, and we look forward to providing further updates in the coming months. Thank you.

Operator

This concludes today's conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.

Executives
    • Thomas McClelland
      Thomas McClelland
      President and CEO
    • Steven Bernstein
      Steven Bernstein
      CFO
Analysts
    • Jeff Van Riel
      Research Analyst at Craig-Hallum
    • Chris Witkowsky
      Shareholder at Private Investor
    • Michael Eisner
      Shareholder at Private Investor
    • Robert Smith
      Research Analyst at Center for Performance Investing
    • Sam Nelson
      Shareholder at Private Investor
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