Good day, and welcome to the AstroNova's Q4 Fiscal Year 2018 Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to David Calusdian from the Company's Investor Relations firm, Sharon Merrill Associates. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Hosting this morning's call are Greg Woods, AstroNova's President and CEO; and David Smith, CFO. Greg will discuss the Company's operating results; David will take you through the financials; Greg will make some concluding comments; and then management will be happy to take your questions. By now you should have received a copy of the earnings release that was issued today. If you do not have a copy, please go to the investors section of the AstroNova website, www.astronovainc.com. Please note that statements made during today's call that are not statements of historical fact are considered forward-looking statements within the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1934. These forward-looking statements are based on a number of assumptions that could involve risks and uncertainties. Accordingly, actual results could differ materially; except as required by law, any forward-looking statements speak only as of today, March 14, 2018. The Company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements. For further information regarding the forward-looking statements and the factors that may cause differences, please see the Risk Factors in AstroNova's Annual Report on Form 10-K and other filings the Company makes with the Securities and Exchange Commission. During this morning's call, management will refer to non-GAAP earnings per share, this is a non-GAAP financial measure the company believes to help investors to gain the meaningful understanding of changes in the company’s core operating results and also can help investors towards to make comparison between AstroNova and other companies on both of GAAP and non-GAAP basis. For more information, please see the GAAP and non-GAAP reconciliation table in this morning’s news release, the table have more details about the GAAP financial measure that are most directly comparable to the non-GAAP financial measures and related reconciliations between this financial measures. Now, I'll turn the call over to Greg Woods.

Thank you, David. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. We kept a strong year with an outstanding performance in the fourth quarter, generating higher earnings on record revenue and bookings. Total revenue for the quarter was a record $32.7 million, up more than 27%. Revenue for the year was also a record coming in at $113.4 million more than 15% higher than fiscal 2017. Our Product Identification business was up 16% and Test and Measurement was up 59% from the fourth quarter of fiscal 2017. For the year, Product Identification revenue grew 17% with solid organic growth and a quick label product line and Test and Measurement grew 11% for fiscal year 2018. I am pleased to report that our investments in geographic expansion are paying off quite well. International revenue was up 72% in the quarter, and 60% for the year, with broad-based growth. Our $43.6 million of international revenue for fiscal 2018 was another record for the company. This was the result of our focused effort over the past several years to invest and grow revenues across the globe. During the past year for example, we opened our first office in India, added sales personnel in Latin America, and established a wholly-owned foreign enterprise in China, located in the Shanghai free trade zone district. Our presence in China helped us win the Chinese C919 aircraft contract earlier in this year and has given AstroNova a seat at the table with large global manufacturing companies looking for enterprise-wide solutions to meet the needs of their customers. In addition to penetrating these local markets, we are building a truly international brand. We are now winning larger contracts from global organizations, because of our greatly expanded worldwide presence. To further facilitate our worldwide growth, last year we also…

Thank you, Greg. Good morning, everyone. I am delighted to have the opportunity to communicate with you the first time as AstroNova's, Chief Financial Officer and I look forward to meeting many of you in person over the next weeks and months. Greg mentioned my background as CFO of Global Company such as Crain & Co., Dover Corporation and Standard Microsystems. And each of these companies, each of them are global manufacturing organizations with diverse product lines and complicated business structures. I have been focused on linking the company's strategy to results. I am passionate about collaboration. Continuous improvement and raising the level of financial acumen of the entire management team, so that we can together focused on the most important activities. I have been very excited by the quality of the team here at AstroNova and I am truly enjoying working closely with them as we work on delivering results to our shareholders. One of the things that attracted me to AstroNova was the company's strong focus on operational excellence, particularly the work that Greg has done in fostering collaboration and commitment across the global business. In that regard, I have been extremely impressed with the application of the AstroNova operating system, which is as sophisticated as any I have seen. Well, unless than eight weeks into my tenure as Chief Financial Officer, I have been reviewing AstroNova's strategic initiatives with all of our business leadership team and I can see that the growth and profit improvement opportunities throughout our business or even greater than I envisioned when I signed on. So, with all that intro, I'd like to quickly provide some context on a few areas from our income statement and balance sheet. Bookings in the fourth quarter were $34.8 million, up 32% from the prior year. For…

Thank you, David. As many of you are aware, in fiscal 2017, we put in the motion our five-year strategic plan. Design to dramatically grow our business, we have just completed the first phase of that plan. Having significantly grown and upgraded our revenue, infrastructure, talent pool and geographic footprint. Over the next three years, in phase 2 of our plan, where we will continue to focus on those areas, we will be leveraging the progress we have made thus far, to capitalize on our product and business development initiatives, to leverage our topline growth into improved profitability. We continue to see excellent growth opportunities from our TrojanLabel acquisition last year, and our asset purchase and licensing agreement with Honeywell’s International Aerospace division, that we closed at the end of fiscal 2018's third quarter. And we see numerous operational excellence opportunities across the company, through the addition of automated technology and other ongoing improvement that will enable us to further enhance our economies of scale. In summary, the investments we have been making in our growth initiatives have positioned us well for a stronger AstroNova, and even greater financial performance. With that, David and I will be happy to take your questions. Operator?

[Operator Instructions]. We will take your first question from Tom Spiro, from Spiro Capital.

Tom Spiro, Spiro Capital, good morning.

Hey Tom.

First David, welcome aboard, glad to have you aboard David and we are expecting big things from you David, all eyes are on you at this moment, so good luck.

I appreciate the good wishes.

Let me just focus on Product Identification for a moment. The TrojanLabel division, have we completed the integration now or we – we’re all set to move forward with vigor in the new fiscal year?

Yes, we are pretty far along on that now Tom and the only thing we have left at this point are some – some dealer networks in some of parts of the world need to be further rationalize, but other than that we’re in good shape there, manufacturing and the back office operations are done, the product developments, integrated with engineering, so, we are in pretty good shape now for this year and obviously the future.

And as you look at the portfolio of TrojanLabel products, we have come out with two new ones recently and we had the T3 and the T1 in such that were there when we acquired the company. Which of those products do you think is really going to drive growth forward in the fiscal year, where is the excitement.

Well, the full range looks pretty good, but the big movement and the excitement we have seen at the trade shows and from customer feedback, are actually in the higher production unit, so the T2C, which is -- we just started shipping at the end of Q4, or actually backorder on that one right now with so popular. So we’re kind of making those as fast as we can and the T4, which is new to the market, it’s our highest end product, it sells for a bit over a $100,000, so it’s a little bit of a longer sales cycle on that one, but that’s also got quite a bit of interest, primarily because it’s in many cases doing the work of equipment that’s twice as expenses as that unit. So quite a bit from the T2C, the T4 and the T3 which is the kind of a new technology product that can new overprinting on boxes, can print on over a wide variety of surfaces, so that’s really new to the market as well.

And we’re manufacturing all of those in China?

Primarily, yes.

I see. Well that’s Greg, good luck with the TrojanLabel. And then on the tabletop printers, I guess the Kiaro line is getting a little long in the tooth as they say, I think the first Kiaro came out four or five years ago, is there some plan to bring out a fresh line of products or update those in the new fiscal year?

Yeah, I don’t want to give too much away, but as you know we typically bring out new products in the fall at the bigger packaging shows and we have a couple things in the queue for that, for this year but I don’t want to preannounce those. So, the Kiaro product is still doing fantastic there’s really nothing else like it in the market place so that continues to be a very strong seller, but we do have some follow-on products that are in the works. But I want to kind of keep that under wrap until our close to release date.

And how’s the QL800 fairing?

Very good, we had kind of a slow start last year with that and I can give kudos to the engineering team both in West Warwick and also with a lot of help from the new guys in the TrojanLabel organization. They’re able to finalize kind of quirks we had that initial launch I'm happy to say that that product is shipping and doing very well in the market now.

I see. And David just a question or two for you I may have missed these, but the segment to sales, I think you did give them, I didn’t hear the segment operating income numbers for Product Identification and Test and Measurement. Could you give us those please?

Yeah and just as a piece of to be aware of as we move forward we’re going to try to focus on the press release the public disclosure but in the fourth quarter the segment profit at this point for product ID, Product Identification was $2.8 million and for the T&M segment as a whole in the fourth quarter was $1.5 million.

I see. Okay, that’s very helpful and how many employees does the company have at the end of the year?

The employee count at the end of the year is my eyes are too…

It’s about…

Number right in front of me ...

Kind of in that ballpark.

I'm sorry didn’t hear you Greg.

Yeah, it’s around little over 350, 352 or 355 some or somewhere around that.

Okay many thanks.

The number.

Thanks much/ I’ll get back in the queue. Thank you so much and again, good luck David.

Thank you very much.

[Operator Instructions] We’ll hear next from Sameer Patel from Adback [ph] Capital Management.

Morning guys.

Morning.

David since you’re new around here, I’ll send you all the questions give you a warm welcome. First off just on the press release do you have a number I'm trying get the adjusted EBITDA for the year do you have a full year number for both depreciation and amortization and then also integration expenses?

Depreciation and amortization will be in the K when we file it couple of weeks and we’ll think in the future about discussing the integration expenses, it’s not a number that we’ve historically disclosed.

Okay, sure. On the tax rate side, I didn’t see anything in the press release about what tax rate you’re expecting going forward pro forma for the tax reform any thoughts on that?

Yeah in the range of 28% or 29%.

Okay.

It should be very tight in that range someplace.

Okay. And then Greg I think you talked a little bit about being done with Phase 1 of the strategic plan moving on the Phase 2 as you look out over the next few years I mean how do you think about the margin cadence in terms of kind of getting from where you are to where you want to be is that mostly front-end loaded, is that mostly backend loaded, is it kind of linear?

Yeah, I would say it’s something obviously little bit hard to predict, but it’s more of a steady progress it’s not the type of business where turning by the dime. But it’s, we’re in two things, we’re getting operating leverage obviously now that we’re well above the $100 million level and as David referenced the operating expenses will not be growing in the same type of ratio and lost up. So the only thing we have in the short term which is the bid of our drag and David also reference that is the TSA slash integration charges that -- but while the second half for this year the bulk of those should be behind us and we start to move in ahead of that.

Okay, I have more but I will get back in the queue and come back. Thanks.

Sure.

We have our next from Steve Bush from Everglades Research Inc.

Good morning, guys.

Good morning, Steve.

So, good number, I like the way it’s going we are finally over a $100 million, if you are trying –

Especially promising of course with the bookings at $120 million, so we are very pleased with that.

Yes, and so, you kind of say there is 1200 Boeing Airbus planes rated for this year, is that correct?

Yes, that the production numbers we have for the A320 and 737 combined.

And do we think we are going to get some percentage of those for our printers?

Pardon, I didn’t hear that part.

Do you think we're going to be like the 80% level or 50%, 90% what kind of percentage do we have with that market?

Well, the two aircraft manufacturers are kind of neck-in-neck and I think on depends on a given month who produces more but they're basically 50-50 on those numbers and on the A320, our printers standard equipment service single gets one of our printers. On the 737, there is an option for a wide format printer which we also make, so as far as AstroNova manufactured printers also be a very high percentage, there is very few aircraft that do not get printers, so -- exact percentage -- 100% of the A320 and much more than 50% of the 737 –

All right, and so that’s good. So, on the 10,000 or so over the next decade. I think that’s we waited more towards the next year or is it kind of evenly distributed any idea on that kind of roadmap?

Yeah, you can take a look – there is lot of literature about that, I will just say a rough -- last week and then had talked with the people at the U.S. commerce aerospace some at a couple weeks before. And both those manufacturers are trying to ramp as quickly as they can from -- they are kind in that 40's to maybe 50 right now, and they are looking for ways to get to 70. And that will take them 70 per month, which will currently take them a couple of years and get mainly a supply chain issue, but you can, they both publish information, it's easy to Google, you can find that where they are at, but I would think 60 per month is very doable within less than a two year window and 70 if they can get the supply chain in line.

Right. So, it seems like once we get our integration costs fully completed we should be able to drop some good earnings down to bottom-line going forward. Fair assessment?

Yes.

Yes, that’s the objective.

All right, okay. And so I guess just more on like an overview of the company in the stock, I have been in a long time and happy with you guys, you did a great job, but the liquidity still bit of an issue, any kind of concept of doing a stock dividend or anything like that to get more, I know I ask this every couple of years.

Discussion at the board meetings and obviously we can say anything before anything, so changed or updated there, but at this point there is nothing to report there.

It would be helpful to the thought process there if we could get our stock price to a point where after we say split or something that the price would be high enough. So, it’s something we will continue to look in as we are long here.

That's right. Sometime stock dividends are that are going to stock split until it gets tired but either way you guys are doing a great job and I look forward to future.

Great, thanks Steve.

It does conclude the question-and-answer portion of today’s conference. I would like to turn the conference back over to Greg Woods for any additional or closing comments.

Okay, thank you. Well, thanks again everyone for joining us here this morning and we look forward to updating you on our results for the next quarter. Bye now and enjoy Pi Day.

And that does conclude today’s teleconference. We thank you all for your participation.