Earnings call transcript: Data I/O misses Q3 2025 expectations, stock stable

Data I/O Corporation released its Q3 2025 earnings report, revealing a larger-than-expected loss with an EPS of -0.15 compared to the forecasted -0.1. Revenue also fell short at $5.39 million against expectations of $5.6 million. Despite these misses, the company’s stock showed little movement, closing at $3.11, a slight increase of 0.32% in aftermarket trading.

Key Takeaways

• Data I/O’s EPS and revenue both missed analyst forecasts.
• Global bookings increased by 7% year-over-year, indicating demand strength.
• Gross margin improved to 50.7%, reflecting operational efficiency.
• The stock price remained stable within its 52-week range despite earnings misses.

Company Performance

Data I/O’s Q3 2025 performance highlighted challenges in meeting financial expectations, with both EPS and revenue falling short. However, the company reported a 7% increase in global bookings year-over-year, suggesting continued demand for its products. The gross margin improved to 50.7%, up from 49.8% in the previous quarter, indicating better cost management.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $5.39 million, down from $5.9 million in Q2 2025
• EPS: -0.15, missing the forecast of -0.1
• Gross Margin: 50.7%, up from 49.8% in Q2
• Operating Expenses: $4.1 million, up from $3.8 million in Q2
• Cash Balance: $9.7 million, with no debt

Earnings vs. Forecast

Data I/O missed its EPS forecast by 50%, reporting -0.15 compared to the expected -0.1. Revenue was also below expectations, with a 3.75% negative surprise. These results reflect ongoing challenges in achieving financial targets.

Market Reaction

Despite the earnings miss, Data I/O’s stock price remained stable, closing at $3.11 in aftermarket trading, a slight increase of 0.32%. The stock’s stability suggests that investors may have anticipated the results or are focusing on longer-term prospects.

Outlook & Guidance

Data I/O is focusing on expanding its product offerings and exploring new market opportunities. The company plans to launch new platforms in the second half of 2026 and is targeting the services market for future growth. Guidance for future quarters remains cautious, with expected EPS losses and modest revenue growth.

Executive Commentary

CEO Bill Wentworth emphasized the company’s readiness for growth, stating, "We are getting ready for that growth." He also highlighted the potential of providing services, saying, "The great thing about providing services is you get to test your technologies." CFO Charlie Debona expressed confidence in returning to previous performance levels, stating, "We’ve been there before, so I don’t see any reason why we couldn’t get back there."

Risks and Challenges

• High concentration in automotive electronics (78% of bookings) poses a market risk.
• Rising operating expenses could impact profitability.
• The global semiconductor market’s volatility may affect future performance.
• Supply chain challenges could hinder operational efficiency.
• Dependence on future product launches and market expansions for growth.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts focused on technology cycles and sales expectations, with discussions on potential disruptions in the EV market. Margin improvement strategies were also analyzed, along with the potential for service business margins ranging from 52% to 58%.

Full transcript - Data I/O Corporation (DAIO) Q3 2025:

Operator: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Data I/O’s third quarter 2025 financial results conference call. Please note today’s event is being recorded. At this time, I’d like to turn the conference over to Mr. Jordan Darrow, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Jordan Darrow, Investor Relations, Data I/O Corporation: Thank you, Operator, and welcome to the Data I/O Corporation third quarter 2025 financial results conference call. With me today are the company’s President and CEO, Bill Wentworth, and Chief Financial Officer, Charlie Debona. Before we begin, I’d like to remind you that statements made in this conference call concerning future events, results from operations, financial positions, markets, economic conditions, supply chain expectations, estimated impact of tax and other regulatory reform, product releases, new industry participants, and any other statements that may be construed as a prediction of future performance or events are forward-looking statements which involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors which may cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in the statements.

These factors also include uncertainties as to the impact of global and geopolitical events, international tariff and trade regulations, order levels for the company, and the activity level of the automotive and semiconductor industry overall, ability to record revenues based on the timing of product deliveries and installations, market acceptance of new products, changes in economic conditions and market demand, parts shortages, pricing, and other activities by competitors, and other risks including those described from time to time in the company’s filings on Form 10-K and 10-Q with the Securities and Exchange Commission in our press releases and other communications. The company may also reference GAAP and non-GAAP financial performance measures, including one-time items, which are intended to provide listeners with a means to better understand the company’s performance. Please refer to reconciliations in our third quarter earnings press release issued today after market close.

Finally, the accuracy and completeness of all discussions on this call, including forward-looking statements, should not be unduly relied upon. Data I/O is under no duty to update any forward-looking statements. I’ll turn the call over to Bill Wentworth, President and CEO of Data I/O.

Bill Wentworth, President and CEO, Data I/O Corporation: Thank you, Jordan, for that introduction. I want to thank the people that have taken the time out of their day to listen to our earnings call and look forward to the conversation and specifically the Q&A after. I’ve spent the last week thinking about the last year since this month marks the year that I started as CEO of Data I/O. One of the things that I noticed as a board member was that the company was certainly doing well in the automotive industry, but it was also a fairly high concentration in that business. It’s still a great business for Data I/O and has continued even in this office. It’s still driving quite a bit of our revenue, but it’s also one of the things that needs to drive us to get to new markets, but also new businesses.

What we’ve done, and I look back at the year and look at where we’ve invested in the first couple of months of discovery, was looking at the team and kind of what the members brought to the party and really where were the strengths and weaknesses of the company from a people standpoint. We brought in a new Director of Engineering, John Duff, who’s done a phenomenal job. He started in January getting our refresh of our manual product line and getting the development of our next generation program, which will be introduced at Productronica at the end of this month, which we’re very excited about.

We’ve won a couple of awards already at some shows with the new reskinned LuminX, which has made the ability for us to really go out and pitch the platform and really get back into the engineering communities, which has been exciting and started to drive some ramp in our manual systems and started to look at some pre-orders as well, which will really start to kick off in Q1. Rounding out the product portfolio is probably the most important thing we had to do this year outside of the people. You have to have the right people to design the products and bring these things to life. I have to say, if you look at our product portfolio from a year ago and look at it today, it’s night and day. It’s really what Data I/O stands for, and that’s what we’re excited to bring to market.

We are starting the next generation already of our long-term platform, which started its design cycle this quarter. I would kind of call it Data I/O’s AI moment at the end of next year when that product gets released. That doesn’t preclude us from driving revenues and new revenues this year with the reskinning of the LuminX and getting to the new platform that we’re launching at Productronica. We’re also starting the refresh cycle of our automation. We’ve also noticed some gaps in the solutions area of automation for processing programmable technology. We’re pretty excited about rolling out some new automation platforms sometime around the middle of next year. That leads to process, and Charlie’s going to get into some of that process and how we’re going to be managing margins and look for margin expansion throughout next year, quarter over quarter.

There are some areas that we can definitely improve there. Really, the exciting part is getting into these new businesses and adjacent markets. The market we serve today is $100 million to $200 million at best. Services definitely need to be a pillar of this company, and we are starting those conversations now, but that’s a $1 billion-plus market that really brings in recurring revenue, not necessarily always contractual, but you’re always managing a supply chain, and those consistencies take out a lot of the lumpiness of the CapEx business. It’s a direct adjacent play. It allows us to drive very competitive pricing in the market. It puts us in a position to really drive that business, both for partners that we may partner with to provide them services or OEMs that decide that they don’t want to buy CapEx and they need a service provider instead.

It gives us an opportunity to have both conversations. We are in conversations now about embedding our technology in testers, which is a big part of the market. That’s probably a multi-billion-dollar market. Now we’re opening up a market that used to be 10% to 15% that we could play in, upwards of 60% to 65% of where data gets provisioned. That’s where Data I/O is going to be able to finally grow. These activities are going to have traction next year. I can’t tell you when these revenues will start. I just know that we’re in conversations and we’re actually in them earlier than I thought. I really didn’t think that we would, the company, would be engaged in these conversations till Q1. The great thing is that we’re out of the gate pretty quick. There’s some vertical integration that we’re going to be doing.

The people on the phone know of the company Cohu. They invested in sockets years ago. It’s a big part of how they go to market with their technology with testers and handlers. It’s a big part of and a very important part of our business because the second most important thing to a programmer is being able to make contact with a device. It’s something that Data I/O should have expertise in. It’s a $7 billion market. It’s a business where we can make a small entry into a small player here in the U.S. or even abroad, have that expertise internally, lowers our operating costs, but also gives us a secondary offering and is a lead generator as well. All three of these new business units do drive revenue for the other.

That’s the great part about being in adjacent markets, you can leverage your core, which is exactly what we’ll be able to do next year. I’m excited about 2026 because we can finally start to drive the growth engine. We’re going to have the products and the people and the services to be able to go do that. That’s what we’re investing in between now and the end of the year, and we’ll continue to make those investments next year. We’ve invested also in the engineering department. We’ve brought in some additional AlgoWriters to drive our Algo migration from our older platforms to the new platforms. We’re getting ready for that growth. That’s all I have for now. I look forward to the Q&A session. I know there’s some coming. I look forward to the Q&A. I’ll hand the rest of it over to Charlie. Charlie?

Charlie Debona, Chief Financial Officer, Data I/O Corporation: Thank you, Bill. Good day, everyone. It’s a pleasure to speak with you all today, which is my first call as CFO of Data I/O, and I’m excited about the prospects of this company and of this role in particular. In my remarks, I’ll address our recent financial performance in more detail. My comments today will focus on key points of interest for the third quarter of 2025, recent trends, and our outlook. Net sales in the third quarter of 2025 were $5.4 million, down from $5.9 million in Q2 2025 and flat from the prior year period. Bill mentioned some of the pressures that continue to drag on our current revenue performance. These include the temporary realignment of tech spending related to AI and the changes in the global EV landscape for manufacturers and the impact on automotive electronics generally.

Global trade and tariff negotiations, which had been a gating factor earlier this year, remain but are now tertiary concerns. Automotive electronics, as a primary business segment, represented 78% of our third quarter 2025 bookings, compared to 59% for all of 2024. For the third quarter of 2025, consumable adapters and services represented 24% of total revenue, providing a base of recurring revenue, while capital equipment sales represented 76% of total revenue. Similar to the second quarter, Asia was led by customers in China and Korea for a relatively strong third quarter in the region, particularly within the EV sector of automotive electronics. Europe, however, remains pressured with capital equipment spending impacted by tariff and trade uncertainties, as well as EV disruptions in the regional market. The Americas, bolstered by systems to be deployed in Mexico, has been relatively flat.

Global bookings for the quarter were $5.2 million, up over 7% from $4.7 million in the third quarter of 2024. New bookings activities were driven by demand for the PSV 7000 automated programming system. A total of eight PSV 7000 systems, complete with LumenX programmers, were booked in the third quarter of 2025. Backlog as of September 30, 2025, was $2.7 million, down slightly from $2.8 million as of June 30, 2025. Three systems were booked and shipped within the third quarter, with seven systems remaining in the backlog. Gross margin as a percentage of sales was 50.7% in the third quarter of 2025, as compared with 49.8% in the second quarter and 53.9% in the prior year period. A higher margin product mix and configuration of automated systems driven by demand for the PSV 7000s led to the improved margins on a sequential quarter comparison.

Direct material costs remained steady and consistent with prior periods as supply chain planning and other actions have mitigated the impact of new tariffs, trade, and inflationary pressures. The third quarter gross margin benefited from this positive product mix and configuration of automated systems, as I mentioned. We’ve begun a thorough review of gross margin enhancement strategies. Some of these initiatives were already underway and should support our gross margins this year. We expect other aspects of this plan will lead to higher sustainable gross margins in the longer term, meaning next year and thereafter. These strategies are likely to include pricing modifications and new pricing models, labor and costing efficiencies, supply chain optimization, and a focus on more direct sales engagements with key customers, particularly in the Americas and Europe.

Moving back to my review of third quarter performance, operating expenses for the third quarter were $4.1 million, up from $3.8 million in the second quarter of 2025 and $3.3 million in the prior year period. Third quarter 2025 spending tracks closely with the company’s operating expenses early in the year after excluding approximately $585,000 in one-time expenses. $200,000 of these expenses were related to the investigation and remediation of the cybersecurity incident first identified on August 16, 2025. $130,000 are related to executive transitions, and another $130,000 are one-time expenses tied to technology and IT-related growth initiatives. For comparison, total second quarter 2025 one-time expenses amounted to $480,000. As with cost of goods, we are undertaking a thorough review of operating expenses to find opportunities for savings and efficiencies. Q3 2025 one-time investments and expenses reduced our profits, adjusted EBITDA on cash in the period.

Backing out those one-time expenses in the third quarter of 2025 would have left us with an operating loss of $808,000 versus the reported third quarter operating loss of $1.393 million and the third quarter operating loss of 2024 of $325,000. Again, backing out one-time expenses, adjusted EBITDA would have been $563,000 versus the reported adjusted EBITDA loss of $1.15 million and a positive adjusted EBITDA of $37,000 in the prior year period. Our cash balance, absent the one-time expenses, would have been approximately $600,000 higher or just over $10.2 million as of September 30th versus the reported amount of $9.7 million, and the $10.3 million as of December 31st, 2024.

The company’s continued discipline in spending and cash management reflect an improvement in constant cost structure, as well as investing in our unified programming platform and other new products, and fortified our IT systems, both of which allow for greater top-line growth and scaling of the business. Data I/O’s networking capital of just over $14.4 million as of September 30th was slightly lower than $16.1 million as of the end of last year, in part reflecting one-time spending through the three quarters of the year. Finally, the company continues to have no debt. This concludes the remarks for the third quarter of 2025. Operator, would you please start the Q&A portion of the call?

Operator: We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then one, on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question comes from David Marsh with Benchmark. Please go ahead.

David Marsh, Analyst, Benchmark/Singular Research: Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. Congratulations on the progress here and the confidence in the tone. Certainly good to hear.

Bill Wentworth, President and CEO, Data I/O Corporation: Yeah, thanks, David.

David Marsh, Analyst, Benchmark/Singular Research: Yeah, lots of exciting things going on. I guess maybe first I want to touch on, Bill, you and I have talked before about just the technology and progressing that and taking it into the future. Outside of maybe what you discussed just now, what do you think if you look out maybe two years or three years from now, how do you envision just the platform overall? Do you think that all of the growth and the areas of growth that you have that you’re looking towards, can you do that, I guess, and still maintain kind of your focus on the core business?

Bill Wentworth, President and CEO, Data I/O Corporation: Yeah. It’s a great question, David, because I know it sounds like we have a lot going on, which we do, which is great. It all revolves around the platform. That’s the beauty of it, right? When you think about the platform that we’re building, that we’re in design now, that’s really going to be a platform that will last a good 10 years. We had to kind of round up the existing portfolio of platform that we had and just kind of filled some small gaps until we could build this next gen. That platform will be the platform we move Algoes onto, and they’ll be forward compatible to the new, real, our long-term platform, which will be released at the end of this year. It kind of fills a gap, but then gets that product.

It also, in the design of this, will be designed for the things such as the embedded opportunities we have with some very large test companies, global test companies. Can’t disclose any names or really describe what they do, but it’s certainly a large opportunity for Data I/O. It’s a part of the data provisioning market that represents probably 25% to 30% or 35% of the overall data provisioning. Then there’s the services piece where we would also use our platform. The great thing about providing services is you get to test your technologies on these services. Instead of the customer finding some of the problems, we get to find them upfront as a service provider. That’s also a market that’s a billion-plus market and really hits all domains, right?

The great thing about some of the partners that we will be talking to about providing these services and generating these services for is that they serve multiple markets. It does insulate the company in the future from any domain concentration like we’re dealing with now. Thirdly is the automation that we have today. We need to be a little more specific because we do program various different types of technologies, from microcontrollers to programmable clocks to sensors, all the way up to large-density UFS flash. The platform has to be able to handle all of that. The solutions you provide need to be a little more specific to the technology, such as microcontrollers typically programmed in less than a few seconds. It doesn’t make much sense to program a lot of microcontrollers on a huge 7000, right? We’re looking at providing and generating newer handover technology that is faster.

It’s more functional. It’s made for very fast programming times, and it’s more economical. You get a lot more value. We’re getting very specific. There’s also been a gap in the services space, whether it’s an OEM that wants to do their own programming in-house or a services provider that needs to provide services for their OEM customers. It’s like a tabletop automation, something that can go tray to tray or tray to tape. It’s been a huge gap in our industry for many years. It’s never really been addressed very well. Data I/O did try to address this back in 2008 with what they call the FLX 500. It was a great machine. It was just over-engineered. The good thing is we still have a lot of the specs and the drawings and software for it. We’re digging that out of engineering, and we’re going to rebirth that machine.

We do believe that’s going to be a great seller for the company, and it’s also something we’ll consume internally as a service provider. I hope that answers your question.

David Marsh, Analyst, Benchmark/Singular Research: Yeah, no, that was fantastic, Keller. Thanks for all the details.

Bill Wentworth, President and CEO, Data I/O Corporation: Yeah.

David Marsh, Analyst, Benchmark/Singular Research: Maybe secondly, just thinking about your customers and how they’re viewing some of these changes, obviously in a positive way. Do you feel like you’re gaining traction there? I’m assuming that your customers are really leading the way in some of these new technologies. Anything on the feedback or traction you’re seeing, I think, would be very helpful.

Bill Wentworth, President and CEO, Data I/O Corporation: Yeah. Sure. As a customer myself, some of the gaps I’ve seen for years, so it’s easy for me to look through their lens. We’ve got a customer here this week that’s been a long-term customer of Data I/O. The great thing about having them on site is you get to share a lot of information. They can share with us. We share with them what we’re thinking, and they kind of nod and say, "Yeah, that’s a great idea." A customer’s been here all week. It’s a customer that’s in the automotive space. Meetings are going great, and getting that feedback directly from customers is nothing better. I think we’re building the things, the products that they need today going forward.

When we introduce them to our new manual program, they were like, "Oh, yeah, I need that." I think there’s no doubt in my mind we’re building what customers do want to consume in the coming years. There’s nothing better than getting direct customer feedback.

Operator: The next question is from David Marsh with Singular Research. Please go ahead.

Bill Wentworth, President and CEO, Data I/O Corporation: Hey, David.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the question. Appreciate it.

Good.

Hey, Bill, obviously, you’re still—I hate to say new to Data I/O since it has been a year. Given all the changes you’ve made, the product suite is pretty new, but you’re certainly not new to the industry.

Yeah.

I would first offer congrats on the awards that you’re receiving at the trade shows.

Yeah.

My question is, just given your history in this business, what have you seen as typical kind of sales cycles from getting kind of critical acclaim at trade shows and generating that kind of customer interest and then actually getting the pull-through on the orders?

Yeah. A lot will depend on the technology event. The reason why I say that is that technology events, meaning silicon, right? A big change in silicon usually drives big spend. You reach certain technology hurdles. UFS has been one of those. The industry has struggled with getting to the yields that are necessary. I thought we’d be past that for this quarter, and we’re not. I mean Q3. We made some pretty big strides in the last four weeks. I think we can announce some really good yield rates on UFS. That’s a technology that’s very high-density flash. It has to be programmed offline. You can’t do it in-line. It’s just something that we need to do a better job of perfecting. I think that would be an example of a pull-through, David, is that when you get that, you get that technology conquered, they come to you.

The thing is that UFS was mainly used in automotive, which is fine, but that’s also a market that’s still relatively depressed. At the same time, when that market picks up, they’re going to be in a position, plus a few years have gone by, they’ll be refreshing and looking to advance that UFS technology with a company such as Data I/O Corporation that has the solution that can solve the problem. Then you’ve got in the next year or two, 2027, you’ve got one terabyte flash coming out. That’s across UFS and NVMe is capped out, but UFS will be driving those. We will have the technology available to program those high-density flash.

It’s one of the things when we look at our product portfolio, we’re going to refresh the 7000, but that’s mainly going to be a system, an automation system that’s going to be made for programming high volumes of high-density memory. The new system will be focused on microcontrols. You can do both on both machines. They’ll have the flexibility, but there’ll be a main purpose for those solutions, which will drag our platform in with it. Does that make sense? I see these, our PSV line is over 10 years old now. We are focused this quarter on driving a target list of accounts that have these systems that are 8, 9, 10 years old and going out and being very proactive to get them to refresh. The good thing is that we’ll have the new platform for them to be able to refresh on.

There’ll be a couple of reasons for them to really take a serious consideration of refreshing now, even when times are a little slow. Look, this is the best time to invest, right? It’s easy to adopt a change or adopt a new platform when things are slow.

That’s a great lead-in for my next question, which is.

Thank you.

As rates are starting to come down a little bit in the U.S., we’re starting to hopefully get some clarity on global trade.

I love your hope.

We got the President out making a lot of deals, hopefully.

That’s right. Deal away. It’s good for all.

I guess it is kind of a real-time question. Are you seeing any kind of optimism, particularly outside of the country in terms of the trade partners with some of the—hopefully, some of this tariff stuff clearing up?

Yeah.

Giving us a little bit clearer path forward.

Yeah. I’d say, and I say this cautiously because it’s not just the trade issues. I know if you read recently, there was a passive supplier that was technically owned by a Netherlands company that became Chinese-owned. The rare earth minerals were getting shut off to them, and they’re in about 40% of the automotive products. We had a call with one of our larger automotive customers early this week, and they said, "We’re shutting our factory for three weeks." That can change quickly, right? Just like trade talks can change the tide pretty quickly, so can things like turning that back up, right? You hope that these trade agreements that are evolving include things like rare earth minerals. I know that’s a hot subject, but it’s one that does cause huge ripple effects through the supply chain. With your hope, I’m hoping that that’s part of these negotiations.

For right now, it’s still pretty shaky.

Operator: The next question is from George Marema with Perito Ventures. Please go ahead.

Bill Wentworth, President and CEO, Data I/O Corporation: Hey, George.

Hey, how you doing, Bill? And welcome aboard, Charlie.

Thank you.

A lot there.

Yeah.

Let’s pull on the partnerships and accretive acquisitions thread.

Yeah. Sure.

What kind of hurdle rates are you looking at for that? What sort of, categorically speaking.

Yeah.

What sort of acquisitions would we be looking at in partnerships? What would that look like?

Partnerships are mostly going to be around the embedding of our technology, where our technology can fit inside somebody else’s solution that gives them added capability for their customers, and their customers are asking for that, such as app tests. We’ve had some pretty significant conversations with one of the larger test companies in the world. Those conversations are going to continue at Productronica and will probably result in a contract that will start to drive our building of that technology for their platform. I can’t say when that’s going to drive revenue. They’re looking for the second half of next year release to give you an idea. It’s real. They have a scoped release time, second half of next year. A lot will depend, George, on how much they put us in the driver’s seat.

We’re pushing to be the actual provider of the technology from the ground up, meaning developing the whole product versus co-developing. You know how big companies can be. They’re not going to work as fast as a small company can. We would like to have this early in the second half, not later in the second half. That’s why we’re pushing our own agenda. We’ll see how that goes. They’re open to it. There’s just a couple of conditions that I need to make sure that our intellectual property is protected. That’s the most important thing. As far as things like services, we’re in some communication now with some potential opportunities that are really a carve-out. There’s not a huge cash need to bring that business over. Could add some good revenue to the business, but get us more importantly into services, which we need to be in.

There’s a couple of different methodologies. There are some smaller acquisitions we can do to get there, small acquisitions versus large acquisitions. They’re both the same amount of work. I prefer to do a larger one. We’re opening as many doors. We did hire a boutique advisory firm, by the way, last week. We had our first kickoff call. I’ve given them 25 targets. We’ve gone through that pick list, and that is an ongoing activity. It was just launched last Thursday.

On the services, are we talking about just programming services or beyond that?

Yeah, programming services.

Would this be kind of explore this a little bit.

Yes.

Let’s say a company hired you. What would this look like?

It depends on the relationship, right? I mean, some of it would be, I mean, right now, because we don’t have a programming services division, they wouldn’t really be able to hire us right now. We got to get the programming services in there with the shop for, with the expertise and the shop for control system and things, which would come from an acquisition or a carve-out.

Okay, you’d already be able to do that.

Once we get that, that’s kind of the first domino that has to fall, George. At that point, I can open up in somebody’s warehouse. I could open up on their production floor. Once I have that shop for control, I can parachute that thing anywhere.

Okay, in terms of.

We can make the equipment. The advantage of being the equipment manufacturer is certainly we make the equipment that’s needed to process the programmable parts. That’s the advantage we have. That’s why I’ve always thought services should be a cornerstone of a company such as Data I/O. If not, the other way around. It’s a bigger market.

As we look out the next year, it sounds like the cadence of things would be your internal new product launches, then embedded applications and socket manufacturing, and then later.

Yep. Services.

Services kind of roll in.

Yep, I would see services coming first, actually.

Oh, really? Okay.

Yeah. Yep.

Okay. When you talk about leading the semiconductor roadmaps, are we talking about just UFS flash or are there other things you’re talking about as well?

No, I mean, the important part is just staying connected to them because they’re rolling out new silicon all the time and sharing roadmaps. It’s more just engaging the semiconductor manufacturers. Like I said, we signed six or seven information sharing agreements with various semiconductor manufacturers. We need to do a better job, though, there and really engaging. I think at that point when we could start growing again, I’d certainly like to allocate a resource or two to be calling on the semiconductor manufacturers on a regular basis because they can also help generate leads too.

Yeah. Okay. I really like the startup energy, guys. Keep it going.

Yeah, no, pretty excited.

Thank you.

Finally, George, it’s been a long year, as you know. It’s nice to start looking at execution of plans instead of just dreaming about them.

Agreed. Thank you.

You’re welcome.

Operator: Again, if you have a question, please press star, then one. The next question is from Casey Ryan with West Park Capital. Please go ahead.

Bill Wentworth, President and CEO, Data I/O Corporation: Hey, Casey.

Hi. Good afternoon, you guys.

Good.

Interesting conversation. I’d like to ask about the EV, I guess, disruptions. I don’t know if that’s the word that was used in the press release, but you did sort of suggest Asia was sort of okay and then talked about Europe a little bit and maybe the U.S. Two things I’m interested in around EVs. Is it kind of the headline thing where we see credits going away and there’s some policy stuff impacting it, or are there fundamental things with what the OEMs are thinking about, those types of platforms, I guess? Thank you.

Yeah. I think obviously it’s no secret that the Asia manufacturers are doing very, very well across the globe. I mean, you’ve seen BYD move up the ladder in Europe as far as share. Domestically, they’re doing very well self-consuming their EVs. That’s where we’ve received a bunch of orders. South Korea, some of their automotive kind of parts manufacturers are doing well. There’s a company there called Mobus who actually feeds into a lot of the different supply chains. There are different pockets, I guess is the best way to say, that are pretty strong. We play in not all of them, but some of them, which has helped this year. The European auto manufacturers are in a lot of hurt. I mean, we had a big call with all our reps.

We had 95 of them on the phone last week and really talking about next year and where we’re going just to get them all kind of geared up and excited about the new products coming, which they are. I will say they applauded the call. They were like, "Finally, we have products that you’re going to make that we can sell in our own geographical areas," which if you’re not in heavy manufacturing, what are you going to sell, right? If you’re in engineering and development communities, you need things like manual systems, tabletop systems to do low volume, medium production. We need to help fill the gaps for them so they can address a bigger market that we haven’t been addressing in the past. They were pretty excited about that.

Still, again, automotive is a little—it’s still fragmented in the way of the revenue is still in pieces across the globe. Some of it’s just not buying anything. I mean, some of these reps came back from their August break, and they said their business was down 50%, 60%. This is Europe talking.

Right.

U.S. has been—and we had a good friend of mine that had a chance to talk to the Vice President of Technology Supply Chain for BMW. His comment was, "Look, the lots of films. Kind of inventory is kind of cleared out, but end demand is slow." If you take out the AI spend in the U.S., we don’t really have much of an economy after that.

I appreciate that too.

Yeah.

Is there some delineation between auto overall and EVs in particular? Does that distinction matter, I guess, from where you guys sit?

Not really because you’ve got so much technology in cars, honestly. As those markets tune back up where we have customers that deal in all aspects of that: EV, hybrid, and pure petrol, and then a mix. No, it’s across the board. It’s just right now the EV makers are doing, and some of the key component manufacturers are still shipping a decent amount of product. Now, automotive numbers could stay flat. Content will still be up 10% this year. You’re still seeing that content still drives. You can still have down years and have—the problem is that when they’re not clicking on all eight cylinders, this is excusing the pun, but they have excess capacity to our equipment too. When that fills up is when that next buy signal will happen. I think next generation products that are using higher density flash are going to require more capacity.

As these things start to turn up their new revs, I think the sweet spot right now is 128 gigabyte on UFS for automotive. Those go to 256, 512, you’re going to see a spend cycle.

Right. Okay. It looks like systems are pretty good in the quarter, actually. I think if I just took 76% of Rev’s number, it’s like $4 million, $4.1 million. It’s really consumables that were kind of challenged. I guess it’s consumables kind of related to units. Is that sort of how we’re sort of seeing that inside of the numbers, I guess?

Yeah. We had some pretty good socket spends in the first two quarters. I wasn’t surprised to see a little softness in Q3 and that. Obviously, people like it to continue, but as things slow down, people aren’t processing as many parts, which means they don’t have to replace as many sockets. Again, as volumes tune up, you start to see that number come back. It’s off to a decent start this quarter. I wouldn’t say it’s flying off, but sometimes you’ve got CapEx budgets, and they may start placing some orders at the end of the quarter. I don’t know. I mean, we don’t get a lot of forecasts in that. Because it’s not a long lead time item, we pretty much can spin those once they come in within three, four, or five weeks and usually have some inventory going.

Look, the more you get your platform out there, the more that number goes up. That’s the reason why having the new product portfolio, driving that platform out to market, getting more sites out there means more sockets.

Okay. Three quick margin questions, I guess.

Sure.

Overall margins were pretty steady even though your mix changed quite a bit. Where do systems and consumables carry the same margin? I guess in my mind, I was saying consumables might be.

Margins are much higher in consumables, probably 60% to 70%, sometimes a little bit more. Margins, look, we’re carrying a little extra expense because we’re trying to, again, scale the business, get the business in the right position. We’ve got some consultants that will probably take off the P&L during the first half of next year for sure. Where margins are going to get better are going to be better pricing. Honestly, we’ve just done a poor—the company historically on their custom systems has gone off of a list price methodology. Every system we do is custom. I don’t know why you would go off a list. You should just custom build from the ground up. We’ve done this a couple of times already and a couple of orders, and we’ve come out with not only capturing our costs better, but improved margins on top of it.

Now we’re getting the reps to add more value. I’ll give you five points, but go earn the rest. Why am I protecting your margin? I need to protect mine.

Right. Sure. I mean, sort of what I’m drilling into here is that there is really good margin expansion opportunity that you guys are demonstrating because.

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Yes. Yes.

Because mix was sort of off this quarter from a margin preference standpoint, and you guys still were flat to up, I think, on gross margins versus last quarter.

Yes. Yes. We were up sequentially. We do expect, look, we’re focused on opportunities both on the cost of goods side and as well on the operating expense side of not just rooting out some efficiencies, but then as Bill mentioned, I mean, the opportunities on the pricing side for gross margin improvement are, we believe, significant. We’re exploring them. We still have to understand a little bit better what those dynamics look like. There’s opportunity there that’s worth exploring in some depth.

Charlie and I and Monty are going to be digging into that pretty deep this quarter.

Yep.

At some point in the future, let’s say in the farthest from the future, if revenues were split evenly, could you see 55% gross margins or something like that in your imagination? You guys aren’t guiding that.

Yeah, that’s theoretically possible. Yes.

Okay. Okay.

We’ve been there before, so I don’t see any reason why we couldn’t get back there with better rigor around everything we do: expense control, but also, more importantly, how we price our products.

Right. It sounds like understanding how to price better has a lot of leverage to it. As you say, as you grow systems, then consumables go up, and that’s a margin add or two to the overall. Just to refresh the last margin question, services.

Okay.

I’m thinking sort of range-wise is sort of a 30% business, but tell me what you’re thinking about its contribution to your margin profile.

Yeah, I think from my experience, we ran between 52% and 58%.

On services?

Yes.

So that’s.

That’s historically. Now, obviously, with making the equipment, we have an advantage a little bit because, obviously, we have the margin in that. We don’t want to penalize the core business, right? We’ll sell it, obviously, at a competitive price, but we have the advantage there for service, sockets, things like that. No, I expect the services business to run pretty healthy margins, definitely not 30%.

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we’ve reached the end of the question and answer session. I’d like to turn the floor back over to management for any closing remarks.

Jordan Darrow, Investor Relations, Data I/O Corporation: No, I just want to thank the people on the phone. Great questions. Always love the questions. It’s always great to dig into the business. It’s been an interesting year, I have to say. The great thing about it is I think we really have a great team now that we can build from, but we are, more importantly, building out the products and the product portfolio. I think we’ve got a great focus for next year to grow and grow into these new businesses. We’re initiating discussions with, I think, some really great future partners for our technology. I want to thank everybody for logging on to the call today and those who are listening in and look forward to updating you next quarter.

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, with that, we’ll conclude today’s conference call and presentation. We do thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.

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