Nano Dimension - Earnings Call - Q4 2020
March 11, 2021
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to today's conference call to discuss Nano Dimension's fourth quarter, 2020, financial results. My name is Grant, and I'm your operator for today's call. On the call with us today are Yoav Stern, President and CEO, and Yael Sandler, CFO. Before we begin, may I remind our listeners that certain information provided on this call may contain forward-looking statements, and the Safe Harbor statement outlined in today's earnings press release also pertains to this call. If you have not received a copy of the press release, please view it in the investor relations section of the company's website. Yoav will begin the call with a business update, followed by a question-and-answer session, at which time Yael will answer questions regarding the fourth quarter, 2020, financial results. I would now like to turn the conference over to Nano Dimension's President and CEO, Yoav Stern.
Yoav, please go ahead.
Yoav Stern (President and CEO)
Thank you very much, and good day and good morning to everybody. I will talk today a little bit about the 2020 performance, which I've written a letter to the shareholders before. I'll speak about the money we've raised, a bit about M&A, our plans moving forward, what's happening in the industry, and about the elephant in the room. Our performance 2020, you have to divide it to revenue and to expenses. The expenses are somewhat deceiving because a lot of the high expenses are non-cash expenses resulting from all kinds of GAAP rules regarding stocks and the ESOP and non-cash compensation as part of restructuring the company. And if you want to know more details about it, you can speak with Yael and ask questions. As much as the top line, as I've mentioned before, I was surprised.
My estimation in the middle of the year was that revenue would be much lower resulting in the corona. We sold very few machines, but revenue ended up being about $3.4 million, which is about half of our revenue the year before, 50%, which was structured from a lot of the present customers upgrading their machines, buying the razor blades, buying the consumables, of course, service contracts on an annual basis that we're having, and some revenue from our new Nano Services where we actually do services for the people who don't have a capital budget, is limited, and don't have the capital expense to buy machines. Meanwhile, they are paying us for doing with our machines and our fabs what they will do eventually, hopefully, when they buy the machines. So I was pleasantly surprised.
Entering 2021, we're not seeing a major change, especially not in Europe and in the States. The East is starting to wake up, and we are hoping for a new trend of buying machines, but by now, adding the revenue from the non-machines, which has shown a very, very nice performance last year. Obviously, the company has changed dramatically. We've raised money over the year. I would like to emphasize some semantics of accretion and dilution. We raised the money always with a higher price than the transaction before, and there was thinking behind it. We did not raise money at diluted prices comparing to transactions before, and shares obviously continue to raise, and we basically mounted our armor in order to prepare for what we perceive is going to happen in the near future.
And that perception relates both to the industry, and it relates to the, I would say, financial markets. I'm not a prophet, and I'm not going to comment about where the financial markets will go, but the aggressive and actually very exciting business plan that we have has an allocation of exact use of proceeds for the money we've raised, which is by now $1.5 billion. And we want to be with this money, and we will be. We shall be with this money when the market behaves up or down, and our competitors, or I shouldn't say direct competitors, but any acquisition targets or still competitors will be in a different situation, or at least part of them. We expect our position now to strengthen because of that.
We expect prices in the market to go down once this excitement of Robinhood and other trading houses and a lot of participants winning out and the market going back to normal behavior. We would like to make a very, very effective use of our business plan within the industry and the cash fuel that we have to execute it. So prices will be going down. They're not yet. And for everybody that is expecting me to tell him that we're going to accelerate our M&A, the person who tells you this, be sure he will pay too much money in M&A, and we don't intend to do it. We have a very intensive M&A activity. We have few, much more than one, letter of intent already signed. We're in the process of due diligence on few M&As at once.
The gates were opened a little bit in certain countries without mentioning specifics. So in three days, I'm traveling the first time to be able to perform due diligence on location. We performed already two due diligence processes in other locations that were opened before. So yes, M&A is happening. But what I've said to the people I've raised money from, which are institutional investors, many of maybe shareholders of us today didn't hear because they never spoke with me. So I will say it again. Do not expect me to perform or to announce something unless it's happening and unless we did it cautiously, thoughtfully in the right time, just because the share is up or down and just because there are short players or non-short players. Our business is to use the money according to our business plan, and we are doing it.
And investors that I met, which was probably a few dozen, if not more than hundreds, institutional investors, when we raised the money, heard me saying very, very clearly, "If you are not patient and waiting to see something in a quarter or two, don't invest in Nano Dimension." Nano Dimension is going to change an industry that's 70 years old, non-environmentally friendly, very, very non-efficient in the West, and everything of it moved to the East, creating serious issues of supply chain. It's called the PCB industry or the high end of it, which is about $30 billion in size, including the PCB assembly. And this industry did not change into a digital industry, and we are going to do it.
The signs are there, and the reason certain investors invested in us and certain investors that people follow invested in us is because they are convinced that this industry is going to go that direction. We have machines and materials that are structured in a way that are environmentally friendly, digitized, and the response we get from both our customers that are existing array of customers and the new ones that started to buy in the end of the fourth quarter of 2020 into the first quarter are reinforcing this concept. Whoever are valuable investors, and they are, and we have hundreds of thousands of investors today. These are numbers that we're getting from our transfer agent, but never heard me face to face when we raised the money and staying it again.
This company is leading a very careful plan toward an inflection point when there will be a very, very fast change, but it is not something that it's going to, and it is going through stages. It is not something that is going gradually from quarter to quarter by increasing sales or increasing the amount of machines. We're doing it anyhow. But mostly what we're doing is we search the industry. We are in the process of combining forces with other companies because we are strong by now. We are the strong player with, I don't want to say 800-pound gorilla because there are other connotations, but we are a strong player with technology and with an ability to scoop up competitors, and we are in the process of doing it, and you'll start to see a set of inflection points as things are happening.
They're not going to happen just because the elephant in the room is the share price is going down, so I will accelerate those. I will not accelerate anything. I will do it cautiously in the right time at the right price, and I will do the R&D in the right way, and whoever is going to be with us is going to see that the valuation of changing a $70 billion industry on the low side and $250 billion industry of PCB, including mounting the components on it, is going to be a leading company with proper valuations accordingly, so hopefully, people will be with us. We are very, very confident and very encouraged by what we see on the acquisition trail. I mentioned to you before, I've spoken with 85 companies.
I've scanned them down to 40 more interesting, and then from there down to what I'm ready to spend money on meeting and discussing. Yes, the SPAC tsunami created a situation that companies are completely in La La Land as much as what they believe their value is. Moreover, some people think that because we have the money we have and we are under pressure to quickly do an acquisition, they are asking us to pay more, and we say, "No. Whoever is there and behaving this way, we're going to leave them behind and move forward." Don't expect it, neither the companies nor the investors. When it will happen, it will be done cautiously and accretively. By now, I want to stop. I don't want to take too much time describing to you more of our vision. Some of you have heard it before.
If you are interested to hear more, I'll be happy to do it while you're asking questions. Please.
Operator (participant)
We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touch-tone phone. If you're 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. Remember to ask your question. It is star then one. Our first question will come from Jeff Roth, who is a private investor. Please go ahead.
Jeff Roth (Private Investor)
Yes. Thank you very much. I have a few questions. For transparency, please discuss your direct offering strategies you've done for at least the next six months.
Do you feel that you have enough money to execute your plans on a buyout, merger, acquisition, whatever you want to call it? That's my first question.
Yoav Stern (President and CEO)
Yes.
Jeff Roth (Private Investor)
So you're done. Okay. Good. Thank you.
Yoav Stern (President and CEO)
The answer is we have enough money to execute our present strategy.
Jeff Roth (Private Investor)
Okay. Could you provide some guidance towards first quarter 2021 financials? You mean that we're almost done with no guidance?
Yoav Stern (President and CEO)
No.
Jeff Roth (Private Investor)
Any guidance for 2021 in terms of revenue appreciation?
Yoav Stern (President and CEO)
No.
Jeff Roth (Private Investor)
Okay. Any growing interest contract signed in 3D printing of 5G antennas? Have you been working with any major automotive companies?
Yoav Stern (President and CEO)
Yes. We are working with major players in that field, and when there will be anything to announce, we'll announce. We had contracts with them and worked with them before, and when there will be something to announce, it will be announced.
Jeff Roth (Private Investor)
Okay. You recently filed a patent on ceramic integration.
Could you talk about that?
Yoav Stern (President and CEO)
Yeah. As you know, if you have read a presentation on our website as well as listening to part of the past discussions of this kind, we focus on development on few bridgeheads. One of them is the materials. We're improving the materials gradually, and we're going through very important stages. In order for the materials to reach as close to military spec and before that industrial spec and the commercial spec, we're seeing some very, very encouraging advancement. Our materials today are much better in their withstanding environmental circumstances and specs, including temperature, including strength. And part of what we do to the materials is we have, as you know, two materials. One is the dielectric and one is the conductive.
We are improving the materials by mixing materials so certain, be it ceramics or others, improve both the electrical characteristics of the material, the insulation characteristics of the material, the conductivity. We file patents when we find solutions and we feel that it should be protected. Ceramics is part of the materials we add, and that's what you asked is actually happening, yes.
Jeff Roth (Private Investor)
Okay. Thank you. With coronavirus dissipating in a very large way, when is that a positive in terms of revenue growth and executing on that?
Yoav Stern (President and CEO)
First of all, I'm not a corona expert as far as I'm concerned. You may see coronavirus dissipating or not. What I see is total closures in Europe. We have no customers that are active from our array of customers in Europe at all. It's actually becoming worse over the last two, three months. In the States, it's steady state.
It's not worse. It's not better. So I'm not commenting on the coronaviruses in the general public. I'm just commenting in so much as our customers being in the laboratories and the facilities, and we don't see a major change. We did see a change in the East, that being Australia and the Pacific Rim. We actually sold machines there at the end of the quarter, and when there will be a change, then we will announce it or you will see that we are selling more machines.
Jeff Roth (Private Investor)
Okay. That concludes my questions. Thank you very much.
Yoav Stern (President and CEO)
Thank you very much.
Operator (participant)
Our next question will come from Mr. Jerkowitz with John Carroll University. Please go ahead.
Oh, hi. Good morning. At your recent AME conference, you spoke about your approval from NASA, and I'm just curious if you could provide some detail on your ability to 3D print in space.
Yoav Stern (President and CEO)
No, we don't 3D print in space. What we do with NASA and L3Harris is we do 3D printing on the ground and on very, very unique components, high-performance electronic devices. And those components were taken up to space and in the process of being taken more and more in this cooperation in order to test them in space and to see how do they perform in an environment of obviously different radiation, lack of gravity, etc. But it's not that we bring up a machine to space to print. We just send the components to space.
Yeah. So those satellite components, those are 3D printed by you guys and then taken by NASA up to the ISS?
Yes. Yes.
Okay. Have any private companies pursued your technologies?
I'm sorry. Can you repeat the question?
Jeff Roth (Private Investor)
Have any private space ventures pursued your technologies?
Yoav Stern (President and CEO)
No.
We work with NASA and we work with Harris.
Jeff Roth (Private Investor)
Okay. That's my question. Thank you.
Yoav Stern (President and CEO)
Thank you very much.
Operator (participant)
Our next question will come from Tavy Rosner with Barclays. Please go ahead.
Tavy Rosner (VP and Equity Research Analyst)
Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. I have a few, so maybe I'll throw most of them at once because they're related. So you talked about your net cash position. I was wondering if you have some granularity into roughly how much you were planning on spending on M&A as opposed to how much using for organic growth. And I guess looking at organic growth, last year you introduced the different stages of development with stage five expectedly being reached by 2023, if I'm not mistaken. So does the fact that you have significant cash accelerate the development pipeline?
Yoav Stern (President and CEO)
Okay. So I'll answer it according to the order you asked.
Inasmuch as how much we allocate, the numbers are pretty much 50% and more for M&A and less than that, obviously, for organic growth. That may change based on the M&A we do because part of the companies that we intend to purchase and we negotiate with have certain very advanced technology, which is the reason why we acquire them. And as we acquire them and we integrate them, we may increase the organic growth budget for R&D and for what's coming after that, which is go-to-market because of the companies we acquire. But right now, it's a bit more than 50% we intend to allocate for M&A. That's as much as the first question. The second question, yes, we are going through stages of development, which we defined as one, two, three, four, five. Five, which is the inflection point, is somewhere around stage four.
We believe where our first machine will come into a stage of a production machine or fabrication machine, which means the machines will move actually too, the machines and the materials. The machine will move into yield level and throughput level that it will be used for production, and the materials will be at a stage reaching stage four and then five where they will meet the specs of industrial spec and commercial spec and closer or very close to military spec. But the question, yes, 2023, and the question is, does the amount of cash we have can accelerate it? Potentially, yes, because we are allocating as much as needed by now for increasing M&A sorry, R&D in the field of chemistry, physics, that's the materials in the field of engineering.
We're actually looking even to acquire companies in Central Europe, which are companies that will accelerate the speed of building machines because we're looking at companies in Central Europe that are expertise of building machines and the hardware side in a very, very high level. And you can guess yourself in which countries it is. And that will accelerate our time to market on the machine side. We are looking for cooperation on the chemical side, but we are so advanced on that side on the materials, I don't see a lot of people that I can neither cooperate nor acquire that will accelerate what I'm doing. So I don't see that side accelerating. The materials is a process that we are really intensively investing internally in-house.
And obviously, but the fact that we don't have cash limitations per se enables us to maximize the speed you can get to develop to get to the stage four and five. But your question is very, very good.
That's very helpful. And I guess more of a bigger picture. So I understand the value proposition of your machines as opposed to the traditional analog way of production. What I'm wondering is that do you ever get kind of pushback from clients saying, "Yeah, it's true. We could produce on-site and get faster time to market, but we don't need that kind of speed. We would rather do it in a cheap way no matter how long it takes." Is that something you've ever heard of, or you just think that with time, the market will educate and understand the value?
No. We actually get the opposite response.
We never got an answer like this. I can tell you this. What we got is answers like, "This is great. This is amazing. But we want you to have the materials accelerated forward so we can actually use those immediately, not only for prototyping, but into our own products." And B, your machines are great, but if we want to put them into production, which we do because the prototyping is great, but we want the yield and the throughput to be faster. And frankly, they're right. So that's the direction we are taking. I can tell you that the MRD, the marketing requirement documents, which is the documents that define our product moving forward, are totally based on feedback we get from customers.
When I joined this company a year and a month ago, one of the reasons I chose to take such a risky "position" when the company was small and the technology was working, but it was embryonic, is they had 45 customers, which are really impressive. Some of you heard the names. I can't tell them now, but it's the leaders of the defense industry all over the United States and Europe. Hensoldt, I can say, is a leading defense contractor in Germany, owned partly by the government. And they allowed us to use their name, and you'll hear more about what we're doing with them soon.
So those people built the confidence I had as a person to join and to invest my own money because they told me that the company is really listening to them in so much as where the machine and the technology will go. That was very encouraging, and it's even more emphasized now. Everything we do is based on 35 leading customers, including leading universities, and the direction they're giving us. I'm really proud of this company. Before my time doing it, and now it's even more emphasized that nothing is being done here just because we are entrepreneurs having good ideas. By now, everything we do is based on information from customers.
Great. And last one for me, if I may. So obviously, corona had an impact on you guys in 2020. You talked about it for several quarters.
I'm just interested in a way, several companies that we follow also in this 3D printing actually saw corona as a boost because people realized disruptions of supply chains and so on, and with you, it was kind of the opposite with budgets being down or at least investment decisions being delayed. How do you think about that with regards to your potential addressable market?
The phenomenon you're describing, you have to separate between machines or technologies that are mature and are acceptable into production lines, and when the disruption in the supply chain was imminent because of the trade wars with China and because of corona, and it's still happening, then people buy machines that they either bought before, but they buy more machines in order to compensate for the supply chain disruption. In our case, since I came to the company, our machines are early adopters.
I should say not the machines. The customer that bought our machines, by now, 45 or so customers, and the leading names I told you of the blue chips are early adopters. Those are machines for proof of concept and early prototyping. And when you have supply chain disruption, the supply chain disruption is of production. The processes of R&D, product development, which are using our machines, those are not on the supply chain curve. And therefore, those are not on the country. Our customers slowed down their R&D and reduced their R&D and product development expenses because they were not doing it while the coronavirus is and where it is. So it's a different way of responding when you're dealing with machines like ours, which are in the early stage, or when you're dealing with machines in the 3D printing in general, which is a much older industry.
It's a 15- or 18-year-old industry even more. Our industry, the AME, just started five years ago, and the earlier ones started before, but this was really not AME. It was, call it toys. So our industry, the AME, additive manufacturing electronics, it's really a much earlier stage and specifically Nano Dimension, with the only company that actually manufactures PCBs in layers and in three dimensions. The behavior of the people who allocate budget for that is the behavior of people saying, "Okay, these are really breakthrough machines. We can hold back and buy them half a year here when things will clear up with the corona." It doesn't help them with supply chain in an immediate way.
Understood. Great. And thank you for taking my questions.
Thank you for beautiful, great questions.
Operator (participant)
Our next question will come from Stuart Taylor with Atlantic Capital. Please go ahead.
Stuart Taylor (Analyst)
Sir, thank you for taking my question. I only have one. Warren Buffett recently discussed how costly it is to buy out a quality company. Does your M&A strategy include taking large stakes in several quality companies where the partnerships can be made, or are you generally focused on overtaking just one company?
Yoav Stern (President and CEO)
No. First of all, we are focusing on taking 100% of companies. We're not investment companies. We're not going to invest and take a partial stake in a company. We are interested to buy them in order to integrate them and to get the benefits of the integration, either it's integration of technology or it's integration of their distribution channels and go-to-market methodologies. So we are looking at the three types of companies I mentioned before to acquire type A, type B, type C. Each one of those types, we are interested to buy the whole company.
The type A are much bigger companies in the PCB field. The last response to your question is we will acquire a few companies. As I mentioned earlier, I am in negotiations. I don't want to say with how many, but it's many more than one in parallel and in due diligence in parallel. We're not going to buy 20 companies. We are not going to do a roll-up. Each company that we will buy, first of all, we will negotiate until we get it to the right price. The right price is not necessarily going to be the lowest price possible. We're not going to necessarily do bargain buying because what we buy is a value for us. We're not looking for what the value of the company in the market is, what the value for us.
And we will buy few in order to leverage both our technology and our go-to-market efforts in preparation for the inflection point in the industry, which we believe will happen, as we discussed before.
Stuart Taylor (Analyst)
Thank you. That's all I have. Thank you.
Yoav Stern (President and CEO)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Again, if you'd like to ask a question, it is starred on one. Well, there being no further questions, this will conclude our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over. Oh, hold on. It looks like we have a couple dialed in. One moment, please. Our next question will come from Puneet Maheshwari, who is a private investor. Please go ahead.
Puneet Maheshwari (Private Investor)
Hello. Hi. Good morning. My question is regarding your margin and acquisition. In the quarter past last quarter, like two quarters back, you said you are very close to acquiring some companies.
Is the delay because of the valuation of the company due to market behavior right now, or you find some other more competitive companies or more advanced technology companies for which you are targeting? Thank you.
Yoav Stern (President and CEO)
The companies that we. I don't know. I don't remember saying close, but we were very advanced in discussion with companies in the fourth quarter. I dropped about two or three of them. I don't remember exactly because their ideas about their value were totally out of whack. And one of them was a company in the PCB field, a relatively small company in Silicon Valley, which thought that their value is close to six times revenue for a PCB company. So after due diligence and after realizing that's what they think, we dropped them. Another company in a similar field, smaller, spoke about 20x revenue. So we say thanks, but no thanks.
We continued with other companies when negotiating. By now, we are in advanced stages. We believe, since I mentioned, we have LOIs. In LOIs, which are signed, by definition, you have agreed. Well, it's conditional on the final due diligence and non-binding, but we agreed on the price. So by now, on the LOIs that I'm signed, there's no issues of pricing. But do I tell you that there's a guarantee that those will be closed? Of course not. Due diligence is due diligence. But I've done, in my career, grow a company through maybe 20 different acquisitions. So I've done it. I've seen it. And it's going to happen. And we are the patient one because those who want to sell want to sell now because they feel that this whole SPAC campaign enables them to raise prices. And I'm saying, "Okay. You can raise prices.
I'm still interested, but I will drag along until the prices will be right," and my investors, including you, I assume, that gave me this money, it's a lot of money, and I need to make out of this money value to return value to you, which is three to four times this money. I intend to do that. I'm not going to do it by overpaying, and I can tell you one thing else for you and for everybody else on this call. We did not increase salaries to anybody in this company. We did not pay bonuses other than one or two exceptions, which are very small, less than a few thousand dollars per person, people which really performed. We did not pay bonuses for myself because this is your money, and we're not going to do it.
We're neither going to increase salaries, nor are we going to pay bonuses. We're going to work until the performance of the company will be more than just raising your money. And the performance of the company and ourselves as executives is going to be by increasing value for your money. So that's our commitment. And that's what we're doing. And rushing into M&A and paying quickly is not going to make it.
Puneet Maheshwari (Private Investor)
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for your answer. That was very helpful. And all the best for the future. Thank you.
Yoav Stern (President and CEO)
Thank you so much.
Puneet Maheshwari (Private Investor)
Yeah. That's all from me.
Operator (participant)
Our next question will come from Tim Ishwal, who is a stockholder. Please go ahead.
Tim Ishwal (Stockholder)
Yes. Thanks for taking my call. I'm trying to understand how you control your supply chain for your raw materials.
Do you all own companies that you get your supplies from, or do you just have supply agreements with them?
Yoav Stern (President and CEO)
We have no issues with supply chains because from the beginning, when I came in, we were going to actually move production to the Far East, including China, which would have increased our gross margins dramatically. I stopped that for two reasons. One, the corona was already in China in January. And I just was here two weeks. I said, "I'm not taking any risk on that." And B, we are an ITAR-approved company in the United States. We are selling to the defense community close to 50% of our revenue. So I was not going to play games with that. And frankly, I don't think that the change of administration in the United States is going to change this policy.
I think we are going to see issues with that. So all our supply chains are from the West. And most of what we built, we built here in the R&D facility or the manufacturing facility that we have in Israel and now in the States. So we didn't have any disruption.
Tim Ishwal (Stockholder)
Well, I guess maybe I'll make sure I understand. I'm talking about the actual raw materials used to produce your product.
Yoav Stern (President and CEO)
That's what I'm talking about.
Tim Ishwal (Stockholder)
Okay. Okay. All right. Thank you. That's my question.
Yoav Stern (President and CEO)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Our next question will come from Joseph Alvo with Shalom Enterprises. Please go ahead.
Joseph Alvo (Analyst)
Yeah. Just a quick question. Should we anticipate any dividend announcements this year?
Yoav Stern (President and CEO)
Absolutely not.
Joseph Alvo (Analyst)
Okay. Thank you.
Yoav Stern (President and CEO)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Our next question will come from Byron Mayo with 1031. Please go ahead.
Byron Mayo (Analyst)
Hi. Thanks for taking my call.
I read earlier, and I understand why, with the COVID-19, that sales would be sluggish currently, but it would be like a slingshot when things would bounce back. I just wondered, what was the time lag between when people plan the order and when it actually occurs?
Yoav Stern (President and CEO)
Well, the process of selling a machine, which I'm now selling. Prices are up, actually. We're charging more for our machines, and it's not an issue. It doesn't hold up. There's no sensitivity of price because there's no competition, so we figure out we'll just make more money, so the issue of our machine is not the price, and the time lag, as you asked, is about six-to-nine months between the first time we speak with a prospect until the budget is allocated. It's an average, so let's put it this way.
If it's a defense or government, it's probably nine months. If it's non-defense and if it's a commercial or university, it's probably less than six months. And obviously, we don't start today. We have a pipeline of starts with hundreds, and it's scanned down in a very organized fashion to dozens. And we have, by now, many in the process of these six months into that process, one month in the process, two months in the process, four months in the process, pre-purchase order. But if you analyze it statistically, on a per-case basis, this is the time lag between introduction until somebody buys. I hope I answered your question.
Byron Mayo (Analyst)
Thank you.
Yoav Stern (President and CEO)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Our next question will come from Ram Raghavan with retail. Please go ahead.
Ram Raghavan (Analyst)
Thank you. Hi. Thank you for the conference. Your business strategy sounds very strong.
And thank you for providing details as transparently as you can. My question is, you're in a particular niche right now in the PCB industry. Do you foresee going into any other industries and expanding your presence in the future?
Yoav Stern (President and CEO)
Okay. Let's define the niche. And you're right. The PCB industry is estimated by two. You have to measure it in two ways. One is the PCB itself, the fabrication, when people build the board, and then they mount on the board a lot of semiconductors and other components. So just the building of the board is about $70 billion industry. By the way, 85% of it is in Far East. And if you speak about PCBA, the A is for assembly, that becomes about $250 billion industry. We are focusing on the upper 10%-12% of this industry.
That's the niche you spoke about, which can be measured at about $25-$30 billion if we include all the components. And we do because soon we're going to have components mounted in our machines. And so that niche, which is 10% of the much larger industry, is very large because it doesn't have a solution right now, anything closer to a digital solution like ours. And it's an analog industry. And I spoke about it a lot in the past. I don't want to repeat with all the issues of analog and very large production runs that without it, you can't justify the price, etc., etc., not to speak about prototyping. Specifically to your question, yes, we are looking to move to adjacent industries. Very exciting because there are industries that are selling.
We're not going to move out of 3D printing, but we're moving, we may move to adjacent industries, niches, which are 3D printing of micro-mechanical, not only micro-electro-mechanical pieces. It's very exciting because it is selling to the same verticals we are selling. It is selling to the defense industry, to the aerospace industry, to the aviation industry, to the very high-end auto industry, to the very, very high-end medical industry. And those kinds of technologies, first of all, can be integrated with electronics, but also can be sold as micro-mechanical devices, nano-devices, which are not only with electronics. And we are looking to expand into that. So the answer is yes.
Ram Raghavan (Analyst)
Excellent. Thank you very much. It's very encouraging to see prospects of expansion. Thank you. That was my question.
Operator (participant)
Our next question will come from Richard Anderson with IDA. Please go ahead.
Richard Anderson (Analyst)
Hello. My question is more hypothetical.
It seems to me that for the company to really grow at leaps and bounds, the physics of mass production are going to be a key question. So does your R&D team think that creating machines of mass production capability will be capable in the next year or so? Thank you.
Yoav Stern (President and CEO)
Okay. First of all, let's define exactly. Mass production is too general. And let's start by saying where we are not going. It's easier. We are not going to compete with the mass production of 20 million pieces or five million pieces that are done in China in a production line which is analog and very capital-intensive and very labor-intensive and for $5 a piece. That's the mass production we will never intend, we never intended to go into. So I'm saying we are going into production.
The production segment that we are looking and very encouraged about, it's called high mix, low volume, which means it's a production of very high mix of designs and very low volume per design. Give an example: aerospace. There's no 500,000 micro-satellites that are being produced by whoever produced them, and we are selling them. There's very few thousand. They don't need 500,000 pieces. That's an industry that has a lot of variation, a lot of designs, a lot of prototyping, and a lot of production of very special high-performance electronic devices that we are definitely intending to, we cater to today on a prototyping level, and we will cater in the production level. Is it called mass production? Yes, because it's mass, 5,000 pieces. But it's not 500,000 pieces.
Those industries we estimated, as I mentioned to you, to be in total at least $10 billion on the fabrication side and the fabrication and assembly going up to $25 billion. So that's where we're aiming, and no, it's not going to be within a year. Having said that, it's going to be within two years. Having said that, we already have our machines today that are built for prototyping and proof of concept, but are already working 24/7. Some people have already started to use them, to our surprise, for early production runs. That's very encouraging, which means machines that we didn't build originally for production are being used. Because if you have a short run of 500 pieces, people say, "We prefer to do it with your machine." So that's encouraging.
But it's the next machine and the one after that we're in the process of development that's going to be built for production where yield, repeatability, and throughput is our focus.
Richard Anderson (Analyst)
Great. On a follow-up to that, it's your last video that you spoke mainly about M&A. You did mention that there's going to be a next-generation DragonFly coming this summer with limited production capability. Can you add a little more flavor to what you think that will entail? Thank you.
Yoav Stern (President and CEO)
Yeah. Yes. Yes. It's coming this summer or very early this summer. If my people will submit to my pressure on them, it'll be early, early this summer. It's going to be the. I don't want to say the name of it yet, but it'll be the most advanced DragonFly machine. It will have a better performance of the, sorry, of the materials, both the dielectric and the conductive material.
The conductivity of the conductive material will be three to four times better. The strength and the temperature spec of the materials will be much, much better. The stability and the repeatability of the machine will be better. The efficiency of using ink will be better. In a funny way, it's not so good for us, but the people will be able to build the products with less ink than they used to in the previous DragonFly, which, of course, makes our customers very happy and looking forward for this machine very much. And there's a few more that are going to be, sorry, a few more features that are going to be released, including very, very important features in the software, which will enable, and that is going to be even before the summer, somewhere between now and June.
We are releasing software that you'll understand that it enables the designers to use the utmost capabilities of our machines by having design rules library in the typical industry software that is being used for designing printed circuit boards. So that is going to be released very, very soon, within weeks or a month and a half. And that's another new feature in the DragonFly. So kind of try to cover it all for you.
Richard Anderson (Analyst)
That's fantastic. Thanks. That's exactly what I wanted to know. Bye.
Yoav Stern (President and CEO)
Thank you very much.
Operator (participant)
This will conclude our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to you, Yoav Stern, for any closing remarks.
Yoav Stern (President and CEO)
Okay. Thank you very much, sir. Thank you very much. We had hundreds and hundreds of participants in this call. At the point of time, it was 550. I'm very proud of it.
I'm very proud of you, everybody, that is patient enough with me and Yael and us in general in supporting us. And I promise you that we mean every word we say, and we say everything we mean. And it will stay this way. Thank you very much.
Operator (participant)
The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.