Elecsys Corporation Reports Third Quarter Financial Results

Sales for the quarter were $5,218,000, a decrease of 15%, or $891,000, from $6,109,000, in the third quarter of fiscal 2012.  Total sales year-to-date increased 2%, or $254,000, to $17,024,000.  The decrease in total sales for the quarter was the result of lower EDMS sales slightly offset by increases from overall sales growth in our proprietary products and services.

Operating income for the quarter was $473,000, compared to operating income of $429,000 for the same quarter in the prior year.  For the first nine months of fiscal 2012, operating income grew to $1,344,000 from $929,000 reported in the first nine months of fiscal 2011.

Net income was $262,000, or $0.07 per diluted share, for the quarter ended January 31, 2012, the same as the third quarter of the previous year.  For the nine-month period ended January 31, 2012, net income grew to $754,000, or $0.19 per diluted share, while for the comparable prior year period net income was $470,000, or $0.12 per diluted share.
Sales of proprietary products and services were $2,553,000 for the quarter ended January 31, 2012, an increase of 7%, or $164,000.  Year-to-date proprietary product sales also increased by 7%, to $7,276,000 for the nine-month period ended January 31, 2012 compared to $6,782,000 in the comparable period of the prior fiscal year.  Sales of wireless remote monitoring and industrial communication solutions increased 6%, or $114,000, from the previous year to $1,884,000 for the current quarter.  The overall increase in sales of remote monitoring equipment and services was driven by an increase in customer orders combined with an increase in recurring data management services.  The Company's Radix handheld mobile computing and eXtremeTAG RFID solutions reported an increase in sales of 9%, or $47,000, compared to the comparable period of the prior fiscal year.  The increase was due to increases in sales of both our Radix FW950 handheld computers and eXtremeTAG RFID solutions.

Sales for the Company's Electronic Design and Manufacturing Services ("EDMS") business segment decreased by 28%, or $1,055,000, to approximately $2,665,000 for the quarter ended January 31, 2012, from $3,720,000 in the prior fiscal year.  The decrease was the result of reduced sales to some existing customers due to uncertain economic conditions and the elimination of certain lower margin customers stemming from efforts to improve overall EDMS gross margins.  Fiscal year-to-date EDMS sales were $9,748,000, a slight decrease of 2%, or $240,000, from $9,988,000 in the nine-month period ended January 31, 2011.

The Company expects that total sales for its proprietary products and services will continue to increase over the next few quarters.  Increases in proprietary product sales will primarily be driven by wireless remote monitoring and secure industrial communication solutions but also by potential sales growth in our Radix rugged handheld computers and eXtremeTAG RFID solutions.  The Company believes that its renewed investment in EDMS sales and marketing, along with its focus on adding customers that will benefit from its proprietary technologies, will lead to moderate EDMS sales and margin growth over the next few quarters.

Total backlog at January 31, 2012 was approximately $9,953,000, an increase of $4,195,000, or 73%, from a total backlog of $5,758,000 on April 30, 2011.  The increase in backlog was largely due to an increase in EDMS bookings during previous quarters offset by a decreased proprietary product backlog.  EDMS orders typically specify several deliveries scheduled over a defined period of time while our proprietary products are usually shipped to the customer soon after orders are received.

Gross margin for the quarter ended January 31, 2012 was approximately 38%, or $1,990,000, versus 34%, or $2,048,000 for the quarter ended January 31, 2011.  Gross margin for the nine-month period also increased to 36% of sales, or $6,091,000 from a gross margin of 33% of sales or $5,522,000 from the nine-month period ended January 31, 2011.  The increase in gross margin percentage was a function of the overall increase in proprietary product sales volume combined with the reduction of less profitable EDMS accounts. 

Total selling, general and administrative expenses were approximately $1,517,000 during the quarter ended January 31, 2012 compared with $1,619,000 in the comparable quarter of the prior fiscal year.  The decrease of $102,000, or 6%, was the result of decreases in research and development costs and general and administrative expenses along with an increase in sales and marketing expenses. Research and development expenses were lower due to a reduction in contract labor costs and lower support engineering expenses.  General and administrative expenses also posted a reduction in costs during the period primarily due to the expirations of a royalty agreement and an office lease from prior product line acquisitions.  The increase in sales and marketing expenses was attributable to the addition of an EDMS sales representative and increased travel costs.  Selling, general and administrative expenses totaled $4,747,000 and $4,593,000, for the nine-month periods ended January 31, 2012 and 2011, respectively.

Karl B. Gemperli, Chief Executive Officer, stated, "Elecsys continued to demonstrate solid performance during the third quarter as we enhanced our gross margins, expanded our order backlog and delivered our seventh consecutive profitable quarter.  Although overall sales decreased from the third quarter of last year, sales of our proprietary products continued to grow and gross margin exceeded 38% of sales during the quarter.  As we strategically build the profitability of our custom electronic design and manufacturing service business, we are actively developing long-term relationships with OEM's that value our innovative wireless M2M and display technologies while we ceased doing business with certain lower-margin customers."

Gemperli continued, "As we continue the transformation of Elecsys into a global M2M technology provider, we remain committed to expanding both our market presence and the breadth of our product offering.  We will continue developing new and enhanced industrial M2M products and solutions, a key component of future expansion for both our proprietary product and custom OEM markets.  In conjunction with new product and technology investment, our continuing business development initiatives are focused on both expanding applications for our products into new industry segments and increasing our business in developing international markets with attractive new business potential.  Although the direction of the economy is difficult to predict, we remain focused on growing our company and expect positive trends in both revenues and earnings during the coming quarters."

About Elecsys Corporation
Elecsys Corporation provides innovative data acquisition systems, machine to machine (M2M) communication technology solutions, and custom electronic equipment for critical industrial applications worldwide.  The Company's primary markets include energy, agriculture, safety and security systems, water management, and transportation.  Elecsys proprietary equipment and services encompass rugged remote monitoring, industrial wireless communication, mobile computing, and radio frequency identification (RFID) technologies that are deployed wherever high quality and reliability are essential.

Source: PRNewswire

National Health Service (NHS) Selects MaaS360 for Mobile Device Management

Ashford and St. Peter's Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust chose MaaS360 over MobileIron and AirWatch due to its speed, simplicity and ease of use.  With a commitment to improving patient outcomes and efficiency, Ashford and St. Peter's is leveraging mobile devices to access, manage and modify documents in order to streamline its management processes.

James House, health informatics engineer at Ashford and St. Peter's Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, commented, "The NHS guidelines cement Ashford and St. Peter's prior conviction that no NHS trust should distribute mobile devices without having first deployed an MDM solution. Too many public sector organisations have been embroiled in data loss crises in recent years for the NHS trusts to approach this issue without careful consideration. When investigating which MDM solution was best for our requirements, we found MaaS360 to be the best solution by far. Fiberlink is attentive to our needs and MaaS360 has proven fast to deploy with a simple user interface."

The NHS provides its trusts with recommended supplier lists for most services, and technology is no different. MDM, however, is such a new field that the NHS is yet to draw up such a list, leaving trusts to investigate the technology independently. The NHS does, however, supply guidelines for the use of tablets and Ashford and St. Peter's Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust have found that MaaS360 is crucial to ensuring that they are using devices within these important rules.

MaaS360 enables Ashford and St. Peter's Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust to:

• Deploy tablets with passcode and encryption enforcement enabled
• Provide a standardized OS and firmware version, together with current security updates
• Restrict and remove unwanted applications and services
• Distribute authorized applications
• Whitelist, blacklist and enforce the status of required applications
• Provision over-the-air Wi-Fi and VPN profiles to access health data with the ability to restrict devices to specific trusted networks
• Distribute sensitive documents in a secure container with centralized management
• Perform remote device wipe for lost or stolen devices which may have contained or had access to sensitive information

Alan Giles, Fiberlink EMEA managing director, said, "We are really excited by this project with Ashford and St. Peter's Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and expect this to be the first in a long line of NHS and wider public service contracts. MaaS360 exists to ensure that employees can work with the greatest amount of flexibility, whilst ensuring that employers are able to maintain a high level of security and control where it is really necessary. We are well aware of the sensitivity around data within all areas of the public sector and we are on hand to provide the perfect solution."

About Fiberlink
Fiberlink is the recognized leader in software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions for secure enterprise mobile device and application management. Its cloud-based MaaS360 platform provides IT organizations with mobility intelligence and control over mobile devices, applications and content to enhance the mobile user experience and keep corporate data secure across smartphones, tablets and laptops. MaaS360 helps companies monitor the expanding suite of mobile operating systems, including Apple iOS, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone. Named by Network World as the Clear Choice Test winner for mobile device management solutions and honored with the 2012 Global Mobile Award for "Best Enterprise Mobile Service" at Mobile World Congress, MaaS360 is used to manage and secure more than one million endpoints globally. For more information, please visit http://www.maas360.com.

Axeda Gives Customers More Choice with New Axeda Ready Devices

By enabling more devices and services to quickly and easily integrate with the Axeda Machine Cloud, the Axeda Ready program broadens the device options available to customers – allowing them to select the right communication device for their environment. For device manufacturers, Axeda Ready provides a testing and implementation program that validates their connectivity via the Axeda agent protocol or their own device protocol. The program includes development and certification of Axeda Codecs (protocol translators) that leverage the Axeda AnyDevice Service to enable device makers to connect to Axeda using their own device protocol.

"New business strategies offering connected services will rely on a diverse and broad array of devices and our customers want M2M platform solutions that give them the flexibility to use any device type," said Bill Zujewski, executive vice president of product strategy and marketing at Axeda.  "The Axeda Ready program was created to enable easy connectivity using a long list of popular M2M communication devices for equipment, consumer products, fleets, smart homes, smart hospitals, smart cities and the Internet of Corporate Things ™. Our M2M application enablement platform is not tied to a single device like most of our competitors, but instead delivers a future-proof multi-device approach."

"Solutions that help simplify the process for manufacturers and remove time, cost, and complexity from developing a connected product solution will be the key force behind the industry's continued growth," said Sam Lucero, senior principal analyst for M2M research at IHS. "We expect the installed base of cellular connected devices in M2M applications to grow to approximately 327 million connections globally by 2016. This growth will be increasingly characterized by an evolution from standalone 'point solutions' to multi-vendor interoperability and then to a truly inter-connected 'Internet of Things'."

Axeda Ready Raises the bar in the connected product ecosystem. Axeda Ready products include:

• CalAmp' LMU 3000
• Danlaw's DataLogger 250/450/750
• GlobalSat's TR-151
• Lantronix's PremierWave XC and XN
• Multi-Tech Systems' MultiConnect™ OCG
• RF Monolithics' RFM LG2430E
• Xirgo's  XT-2060G, XT-4760G, XT5060G

About Axeda
Axeda provides cloud-based service and software for managing connected products and implementing innovative M2M application — taking the cost and complexity out of connecting and remotely servicing the products of the world's leading companies. Axeda customers use its M2M cloud service to deliver innovative M2M solutions and optimize their business processes with data from their connected products.

By relying on the Axeda® Platform to power their connected products, companies are transforming their business by improving customer satisfaction, reducing costs, and generating new sources of revenue. The M2M solutions behind these connected products range from remote service, fleet management, usage-based insurance, asset tracking, mHealth, and more. Join Axeda's developer community at: http://developer.axeda.com. Learn more about Axeda at www.axeda.com.

Source: Axeda