All right, we're live. Welcome back, everyone. This is Melissa Fairbanks. I am the Analog Semiconductor and IT Supply Chain Analyst here at Raymond James. We are happy to welcome back the team from Benchmark. I think we've had you here a few years in a row, it seems now. Good to be back. Yeah, yeah. We've got CEO Jeff Benck, Bryan Schumaker, CFO. This is his first time here. Been with the company just a couple of months. So welcome, Bryan. And then sitting offstage in the audience, David Moezidis, Chief Commercial Officer, and Paul Mansky, Corporate Development and IR. So I think to get us started, just in case there are some that are new to the name, we're going to have Jeff start off by going through just a few slides. Start by providing us a brief overview of the company. Just a few slides and charts to show us where you've been and where you're going. OK, thanks. Yeah, good to be here. Of course, got an obligatory safe harbor chart. There's certain risks and uncertainties with the forward direction that we're going to share, and those are documented well on our website, if you want to conduct a more, or if you're a speed reader, you've already looked at that, so sharing a little bit about Benchmark, for those that aren't familiar with us, we are both an engineering and manufacturing services company. We really pride ourselves in helping OEM customers bring their products to market. And we can really intercept anywhere in the lifecycle, whether it's at the front end of engineering a product or moving it to high-volume manufacturing. We excel at helping customers get to market faster with their products. We do have a very diversified sector exposure. You kind of see our mix from more than 15%, but less than 30% in any one sector that we participate. We like that diversified footprint. We feel like that allows us to weather ups and downs in some of the markets that don't always move in coordination, but we have worked quite a bit on moving to higher value, higher complexity ground, and we'll touch on that in a minute. We do have 22 manufacturing facilities around the world, but we also have seven design centers, so we're able to do product design, product development, test development, and really all regions around the world supporting our customer base, and one of the other secret sauces for us is that we do have over 400 product development engineers that can actually design a product. If a customer comes to us with an idea on a napkin and says, I've got this great IP, but I really need help developing it, we can help them through that journey, big or small. So a little bit about our global footprint. We do enjoy a very broad set of facilities around the world, as I mentioned before. We do have one of the largest footprints in North America for the top few EMS players. And that gives us the ability to support aerospace and defense work, sensitive work, high-performance computing. Maybe it's going to a national lab. We can support things domestically. Certainly, we've seen a resurgence in manufacturing in the U.S. And so that's an interesting trend for us. But we also have low-cost region support, whether for North America, Mexico, for Europe, Romania. And then, of course, not only do we have just one facility in China, but we've got a significant footprint in Southeast Asia with Thailand and Malaysia. So you kind of get a sense of where we're located. We also have that product design and engineering capability around the world globally. And that's reflected there as well. While we have, over the several years, consolidated our footprint, we still have a lot of capacity and a lot of upside. And we've actually started to invest where we already had footprint. And that helps support our future growth. A little bit on the journey that we've been on. If you go back 10 years ago, we did $1 billion to Sun business. We built product for Sun. Compute and telco dominated the business, as you could see in this chart. It was almost more than 50% of our revenue. We really have worked over the last several years. And that trend has continued to diversify. And you see aerospace and defense is significant now. Semi-cap is more than 5x what it was back 10 years ago. And we have also really grown aerospace and defense as a vertical that's important to us, along with medical still being really important. Our history as a company, we actually spun out of a medical OEM. And we were their dedicated manufacturing team. If you go back, this goes back quite a while, 40 years ago, when we became Benchmark independently. And you could see, while aerospace, I mean, while advanced compute and communications is still important to us, it's substantially less than what it was back when telco and compute were kind of viewed as independent sectors. So that's been an important journey. Moving to the higher value, higher complex markets has really enabled us to continue our margin journey as well, which you kind of see here. We have continued to focus on improving our gross margin. This year, we've enjoyed more than 10% throughout the whole year, which kind of puts us at the high end of our industry, if not the top of the industry for us. You also see that even in an environment where the last year, it's been softer in the EMS space. We've seen our revenue come down mid-single digits. That's kind of a reflection of the sectors that we participate in and what's happening there. I'm sure we'll talk more specifics in a minute. Even in face of that, we've been able to protect margin and improve our operating margin. And that's allowed us to continue the journey we've been on, focused on profitability and really demonstrating that we're able to improve our profit position even in a more challenging macro environment. And that's led to pretty significant free cash flow as well, as we've also brought our inventory position down. And then you can see our most recent earnings, where we did $658 million in revenue and $0.57 of EPS last quarter. And with that, our forward guidance is pretty similar to last quarter. Midpoint of our revenue guidance was $660 million back at our earnings a few months ago. We also reflected 5% operating margin and still anticipate generating free cash flow and really reflecting a similar $0.57 EPS for the quarter. The other details are there. And so maybe with that, I will wrap up by saying, look, we've got a strong leadership team, folks that have come from around the industry. We've also promoted from within. And most recently, we've added Bryan Schumaker to our team. And he's only been on board two months. But it's great to have Bryan's experience from the industry. Spent quite a bit of time at First Solar and was most recently at TPI Composites. And we're great to have his leadership on our team. Understands global manufacturing and margin-sensitive environments. So I think he's well equipped to work in our space and kind of help us on the journey. And then also, she talked briefly about David Moezidis being here with us today. David came to us from Flex over a year ago. So he brings large EMS experience, really understands the industrial space, and has had a variety of different roles there. And so bringing operators to the team that have really grown other companies and kind of blending with the team that I built has really helped us have strength in our team. So with that, I maybe will stop and let you fire away. Yeah, sounds good. Thanks so much for that overview. I think the slide showing how well diversified the company has become over the past 10 years and certainly even more over just the past few years, we've seen a lot greater diversification. Looking out, we see the December quarter outlook. You had that up there. But maybe looking to next year and beyond, which end market or what area do you expect is going to be the most significant growth driver or drivers? And which industry sectors are looking the most promising in the near term, relative near term? OK, I'll share that. If you look at this year and 2024 maybe as a launch point, the two largest growing sectors this year are really aerospace and defense, which we kind of look for that to continue. We had a really strong 2024. We'll still see growth in the next year. I think it'll modulate a little bit because aerospace and defense was probably more impacted by some of the semiconductor challenges because they might be on legacy nodes or they weren't substituting, of course, where the products are going. So we saw some catch-up this year. But we still think that that's a very robust market from a demand standpoint. And unfortunately, with the conflicts around the world, there's a lot of spending going on there. Semiconductor capital equipment, we tend to play more on the wafer fab equipment front end. We have a lot of strength there. We've done well this year, growing double digits, kind of forecasted to do that for the year. The market's only grown low, like 3%, 4%. Anyone can kind of look at what's been forecasted there. We believe semi, it's been an interesting down cycle. It's certainly stabilized and started to show signs of growth. We'll see how that plays out next year. There's certainly a lot of currents around that. We believe that we've got an extremely strong position. We've been gaining share, which is why we grew three times the market this year. We feel good about that as well. Industrial is one where it's sort of stabilized through the second half of this year. It's a big market. There's a lot of opportunity. We're engaged in a lot of new activity there. And we also expect our install base to turn around and start to see recovery there, where it's been a little choppier. But we've also got a number of good wins there. And then the two that are probably a little bit wait and see is really medical and advanced compute. Advanced compute, because we're pretty selective with advanced compute and communications, high-performance computing, we've had some very large system builds that completed. And now you're on the next generation platform. And the time for that to get qualified is a factor there. And then with communications, we've certainly seen capital spend tighten there. But we think that will, over time, continue to be an important space for us. And then with medical, a little more channel inventory challenge with some of our customers on the medical device side and that. So we're looking at that closely. And again, like our competitive position, but expect that that probably won't be as big a growth contributor in the near term. But long term, certainly very important to us. Sure. And I think that that's pretty consistent with some of your peers and even some of your suppliers on the medical, health care, life sciences has been challenged. I do just want to point out very quickly, you said one of the magic words without saying one of the other magic words. So high-performance compute, but not AI. So maybe just explain. It's more of the educational. The supercomputer deployments tends to be a little bit lumpier. But let's not throw the AI word around. Yeah, yeah. We've had the fortunate opportunity to be involved in several of the top five supercomputers in the world. They tend to go into national labs, doing all kinds of things from simulation of climate change to solving some really complex problems. They tend to be very large multi-node systems, right, and not totally unlike AI, but not really driven for AI. Because of our focus on that kind of complexity, we have not typically supported the cloud space. Doesn't mean that we don't see the growth in AI as a driver, certainly in Semi-cap. We see chips consumption there, and that's a good thing for us as well, so indirectly, we support that, but in terms of being a provider to the cloud market, it's not been a target for us. It is a pretty unique position that you're in, honestly. Yeah, no, absolutely. Kind of interesting. I always like to highlight it. Yeah, no, I appreciate that. I appreciate that. So of these industry sectors that we were talking about, are these areas that are already pretty well penetrated by EMS services? Or are you seeing new opportunities for you in the industry, maybe either taking share from some of your peers or even taking share as customers are looking to outsource more of what they've historically done internally in terms of design and manufacturing? Yeah, I think even in a macroeconomic environment where everyone's looking closely at their spend, they go, should we really be building this product in-house? Should we outsource it? And I've found even in recessionary environments, which I wouldn't say this isn't that, but even in those environments, we tend to see growth in outsourcing because people really say, what's our core competency? We have IP. Maybe we're not the best to build that board or that system, right? And so that helps us. The markets that we're in, they're not fully outsourced. And so we got to question a bunch today. Who's your biggest competitor? What EMS guy are you going up against? And I go, well, my biggest competitor is usually internal manufacturing because many times our customers are saying, we don't want to do it anymore. We'd like to get help. Aerospace and defense is probably the least outsourced. They have much of their own factories. And certainly, that's an opportunity where they will continue to outsource more. Medical, probably 50% outsourced. Industrial, maybe a little bit less than that. So lots of opportunity, as you said, to engage new customers that are first-time outsourcing that are trying to decide what to do. And frankly, if you were going to build a medical device company today, would you do your own manufacturing? Probably not. You'd probably have to think hard about, should I do that? Or is there someone better suited, like a Benchmark, to do that? Of course, we don't deal with real, real small startups. I mean, there's other players in the market that would do that. We want a customer to have meaningful scale. But we do engage customers of various sizes depending on their ability and financial position to grow and support the investment needed to grow with us. Is it safe to assume that your network of design centers globally also helped to kind of like insource some of that, those engagements? Oh, for sure. For sure. Being close, the fact that we could be down the street from a customer that wants to outsource, that can help us a lot, and that's kind of a need for having design services in Asia or in the Netherlands so that we're in that region in the same time zone. We tend to like to follow the sun with that team so we can leverage a global engineering team, and proximity to customers is important. Although we've all gotten better at flattening the world and using tools, I've been amazed how effective the team has been. During COVID, when we were all remote, of course, we've come back predominantly, but yeah, that's worked well. So, globalization and your global footprint, this kind of leads into the next question. Every year, it seems we have one general theme. The theme this year seems to be a lot around tariffs, some angst around tariffs. So, relative to the recent election, can you speak to how you're thinking about potential tariffs and maybe more broadly, any trends that you're seeing toward reshoring manufacturing, reshoring some of the supply chains, and how maybe potential increases in costs are going to affect your business? Yeah, I'm going to throw this one to my guy. Yeah, Bryan. Yeah, so we have a very diversified and flexible footprint. If you look at us globally and kind of where we're positioned, so we can flex with our customers and listen to what their needs are. So if you look at kind of where we're at today, I mean, 35% in the U.S., approximately. So we're able to accommodate that. Or if they need to nearshore with Mexico and meet their needs on each of those fronts. And then every day you wake up, you hear something else about supply chain, it seems like, and what they're doing. So we do have a China footprint, but that's China for China more than anything. And then if they want to Asia, you have the Thailand and other areas. So we can be flexible and work the tariffs with them. Then you look at the CHIPS Act and what's going on there. We have capacity in the U.S. to meet those needs or other places, depending on where that resides. So we feel like we're in a great position to handle it. I mean, there will come issues. I mean, but we pass through those tariffs to our customers. So we're not impacted by those directly. Yeah, I mean, that's one of the biggest concerns. Yeah, and I think our customers, I mean, they know being a lower margin business that we can't absorb a 25% tariff, for example, given what we do. And so we would work with our customers on that appropriately. And we'll see. We're in a little bit of a wait and see too. We're poised to support. If they want to grow the footprint in the Americas or in the U.S., as Bryan said, we've got capacity and room to do that. At the same time, we're kind of watching. We gained a bit from folks wanting to get out of China with our Thailand and Malaysia footprint. We gained some share with some customers that were new to us that said, hey, we want to look at stepping off of China. And that's why we're kind of careful about what work we do ourselves in China. But I think our footprint really does align well with where the interest is for customers around the world. OK, great. Before we get into some more of the financial discussion, any questions from the audience? No? All right, we'll keep moving along. So I'd like to talk about some of the investments that you've made. You kind of touched on it, Jeff, in your intro remarks about building out some capacity, like the campus-type orientation, where building on where you have existing capacity. But maybe talk about some of the investments you've made to support future growth. And then we'll get into how we're thinking about capital spending. Yeah, and I like the way you said that. Campuses, we kind of have epicenters that we're building. And so we had a lot of subscale, small manufacturing facilities. And in my tenure, over the six years I've been here, we consolidated out of six of those. And we really are trying to build up on where we've got the leadership and the team and engineering. And that's a common theme. Just in the last year, we doubled our footprint in Romania from a manufacturing capacity. Being nearshore to Europe and having that has been something our customers were pushing us on. We've got great upside capacity there now. I was recently in Malaysia for the grand opening of a new precision machining, precision technology building in Malaysia. We've been investing there. And really, even in this downturn with Semi-cap, we've kind of felt like, hey, this is a great time to invest. And our customers have taken notice. And we've gained some new wins because they see the capacity, knowing that next upswing in Semi-cap is there. And then in Mexico, we have a new building in Guadalajara. So great nearshore to the U.S. And that had been a bigger trend. We'll see where that goes with the tariffs. But certainly, there had been a big trend to, how do I get closer to point of consumption? And so a lot of our global customers, we love to support them at three or four or five of our sites around the world. And we've got a number of customers that are like that. And we see a number of them trying to build product closer, particularly with the supply chain constraints. How do I build closer to where demand is, and I think I like our footprint a lot now with the work we've done to clean that up. It's been nice too to see much more robust investment in just the supply chain around areas like Guadalajara and in Romania, where it's not just you building in a vacuum. There's a very robust supply chain there to support it, and those tend not to move very quickly. Yeah, and we've watched that. And we've worked with some customers. We had some customers that said, we only want to source from the U.S. And given the government work we do, we were able to do it. It was more challenging, but we were able to get through it and do it. We're kind of watching to see what happens in other low-cost regions, whether that supply chain will really fully build out if you think about India and some of the other areas. But Mexico has made a ton of progress, as you mentioned. I also, not too long ago, moved my CPO to my staff directly, just with all the focus on supply chain, make sure it's getting the strategic support. And then we're building our team out globally to leverage a global spend, but then where it makes sense, source locally. So you can imagine things like sheet metal and plastics might make sense to be local because they're heavier, bulkier. But electronic components, I mean, we should be leveraging that global footprint. Excellent. So moving on to just the capital spending and how that fits into that investment strategy. You have had some pretty healthy cash flows, which is great to see. But how should we be thinking about capital spending and the investment going forward? Yeah, so over the supply chain crisis, COVID time period, our inventory ballooned up to closer to $1 billion, and we've since taken that down. So think about it as 3.5 turns at that time, and now we're driving it down to 4 now and then more to a historical. Where we're going is 5-5.5 times at least. So we have seen a significant amount of cash flow from that over the last 24 months as we've driven that down. Going forward, we expect it to be more in the $70 million-$90 million of free cash flow kind of as we look forward into the future. What I will say then, like in June, we increased our dividend to $0.17 per share. So that's still an important piece of it there. Then, if you look at kind of paying down the revolver because it's accretive right to the bottom line, so we'll continue to use proceeds from that to continue to drive towards that piece of it. Do some opportunistic buybacks. We have an approval under that kind of stock buyback program. Then look at acquisitions. Now, we're not going to do anything dilutive or anything significant on that front. It's more what is vertical in nature with that will contribute to our margins and keep it kind of a small tuck-in more than anything, not necessarily some significant acquisition as we look at the use of proceeds from the free cash flow. We've invested about, I don't know, 2% of revenue approximately in capital for building and equipment. Depending on the opportunities we see, that'll modulate a little bit. We're probably a little less on capital spending this year. We may step up as we look forward, just depending on that footprint and where do we see the need for capacity as we get utilization up further. We never want to be at the point where we're 90% in a factory. But at the same time, nobody wants to be underutilized either. So it's something that we constantly look at and try to pay attention to. OK, that kind of leads into the next. You touched on it, Bryan, the way that you've been managing your working capital. Almost $250 million free cash flow over the last year, which for if you look at a company of your size, that's pretty remarkable in the past 12 months. So you mentioned working back down to or working back up to your more normalized level of inventory turns. But in terms of managing your working capital longer term, how sustainable is that level of cash flow? Is there some point where in order to you have been winning new business that maybe hasn't started to ramp yet, how much upfront investment is required there? Yeah, so as we're looking at it, you're going to have some increases just because of the new business we win. Now, we're still not to where we want to be on our inventory turns. And so you're going to get some offset over the next 12-24 months. So we're going to continue to drive on that, which again, that gets you to that range of the 70-90 longer term is what we're looking to do at this revenue. And the interesting thing is, I mean, as you get to that and you continue the operations and leveraging off of that OpEx, I mean, that's where you start to see that just based on what we've been able to do right now off our current revenue and then drop that to the bottom line as we leverage our current SG&A spend and what we're doing there. So kind of a mixture of everything. And it kind of has been a trend where new customers can drive the need for equipment or not always buildings. We don't usually build a building for one customer. But we will look at the capacity in the region. But as we drive faster growth, you do see capital needs that'll come with that that could step that up. In a softer environment, we're able to invest less and throw off more cash. But that's a balance. We do just have a few minutes left. So maybe as kind of a closing remark, what we've seen across the entire EMS industry to varying degrees, we've seen operating margins expand to levels not seen in a very long time. You guys have certainly been toward the higher end of that. So what's changed either with the industry overall or maybe Benchmark specifically, the work that you've been doing, Jeff, since you joined? Yeah, well, I mean, thanks. I mean, a lot of it's, I mean, I wasn't here for the whole journey on this chart, but just the move to high-value sectors. It's easy to say, it's harder to do and to be disciplined about what kind of deals or what kind of opportunities that you go work on, and investing in the right areas to be successful with that, that's been a big part of us being able to drive to kind of record gross margin. From an operating margin standpoint, we know that we scale up pretty well and that our SG&A spend does not have to grow as fast as revenue, and so we're very mindful of that. We do want to invest for sustainability in our revenue growth and our business support, whether that's new IT platforms or having the right systems around the world to be one integrated entity. But that being said, we really are mindful about, OK, as revenue grows, how do we bring down SG&A as a percent of revenue to really help operating margin go further? Because while we've made a lot of progress, we don't think we're done on that journey. But I think for us, it's really about we like the difficult, the high complexity, the challenging problems that customers throw at us. We'd love to mix in engineering, which also brings nice margin with it because we do get paid for what we do there. Customers keep the IP, but we get compensated for what we do. And then just helping solve those complex problems enables us to capture more value from that. And that's really what we're about. Excellent. Amazingly, the half hour went by very quickly. It always seems to whenever we start talking. It was great to have you, Bryan. Great to have you the first time at the conference. If anyone has any follow-ups, just be sure to reach out. OK, thank you. Thanks very much, everyone. Thanks for having us.