CFO Farouq Tuweiq's Amplify Spotlight with NASDAQ

MICHAEL: Thank you for tuning in to this edition of NASDAQ Amplify's Issuer Spotlight, where we feature conversations with leaders of some of the world's most innovative and growth oriented small-cap companies. Today, I'm joined by Farouq Tuweiq, Chief Financial Officer of NASDAQ-listed Bel Fuse. Farouq, thank you for being here!

FAROUQ: Thank you for having us!

MICHAEL: Absolutely! Can you start by telling us a little bit about Bel Fuse and what you do?

FAROUQ: Sure. Bel Fuse is coming up on our 75th Anniversary, believe it or not. We're an electronic component manufacturer and we operate at a global level, with 7,000 employees across three continents - Asia, Europe, and North America. Our tagline's Power, Protect, and Connect, which is a fancy way of saying we make a lot of the little pieces that go into bigger electric systems, so we are kind of behind-the-scenes guys to enable our customers to deliver the services and the products to their ultimate customers. So we're partners in the technology side of the world.

MICHAEL:And when you think about the secular trends in your industry, what are the drivers of growth for Bel Fuse?

FAROUQ: Yeah, so Bel Fuse, we're around 680 million dollar revenue company and we participate in a number of end markets and in these times, we are seeing kind of more traditional sectors like commercial air, defense, and rail pick up, where these are areas we play in. We also have seen a little bit of challenges within the networking/data center side, but nonetheless, there're strong tailwinds there and we're a kind-of beneficiary. Obviously EV, we participate in the industrial side of the e-mobility, where we focus on bigger ticket items such as buses, mining equipment, and we're getting to more on the AG side as well, where there's a high cost of failure for these big ticket items, as opposed to passenger. A new and emerging place for us is space, as we think about a lot of the things getting launched into there, whether it be on the commercial side of it or the internet side of it, we're seeing what I call it to be the new EV - here EV was 10 years ago, so we're operating a lot of exciting areas. Also we do areas in IoT 5G, so we're a pretty diverse participant, a lot of exciting markets.

MICHAEL: And panning out a little bit and thinking more about the macro view, so given the challenges coming out of the pandemic, such as inflation and Global Supply Chain shortages, how are you navigating that, and how are you adapting?

FAROUQ: It's a complex, it really is, and given that we operate at a global level, the challenges sometimes are nuanced depending on where you are, but the underlying theme for us fundamentally is two things. One is we got a great employee base that's very customer-centric and customer-focused. Two, we have great relationships and partnership with our customers, so as these issues have come up, whether it be on the supply chain or on the delivery side of it, we have partnered pretty intimately. So while challenges will always persist, it's about how you react to them and how do you partner with your customers and transparency. So it's easing up, is the good news, we still see some challenges as it relates to certain chips availability and certain raw commodities, but the good news is we're a little bit behind that and if we look at our results and what we've done and where we've come from, we could say we've come through that difficult period with flying colors, quite frankly, which is a true testament to our global team.

MICHAEL: So we are coming up on your 40-year listing anniversary on NASDAQ - you actually have two issues on NASDAQ BELF-A and BELF-B. When you think about that milestone, what do the public markets represent to you and how has NASDAQ helped advance Bel Fuse's mission?

FAROUQ: Yeah, you know, I will quite frankly draw parallels to our business. We've been in business coming up on 75 years next year in our industry that's gone through a massive amount of consolidation and folks fell out, we've been able to consistently evolve and be front-footed on where we're going, while partnering with our customers. So as we kind of take that perspective and apply it to the to being a public company on the NASDAQ, it's one, it's allowed a lot of interesting folks to be a part of our journey, also it empowers getting visibility, and obviously, as we know, the ability and availability of the capital markets when we choose to access them at some point. So it's a critical part of our story, quite frankly, just as you know recently, we've turned over near a lot of our shareholders in the last year or two given the run-up in our stock and we continue to see partners and supporters and advocates of our story, and that's really exciting to see and the public markets enable us to get to that.

MICHAEL: So you said it, you've been in business for almost 75 years, and to put that in perspective, you started out in the fuse business during the era of black and white television, right, and we now have 4K TV and VR headsets. So what is the secret behind the company's longevity and how do you think about the future for Bel Fuse?

FAROUQ: Yeah, so you know today, we have a long legacy, our CEO is our second CEO in our history, and that has enabled us to pass on knowledge and the ability to pivot to where we see the trends are going. So back to the customer alignment and employee engagement side of the house, right, you have the right people aligning with the right customer members on an engineer-to-engineer level, where you're solving complex problems, you will have a better chance of success. So as you pointed out, we start on the era of black and white TV, which is a little bit before both of our times, and then from there we're into color TV and now all the advancements that we see. We're on planes, we're on satellites, we're on e-mobility, we're in server racks, we're a little bit everywhere. Fuse was our first product. Until today, fuse is consistent and throughout our history. It's quite a remarkable journey, when we compare ourselves to the industry. It is an exciting time and we've reinvigorated, quite frankly, a lot of excitement given some of our end markets. Electronic components been around for a very long time, but I'd say in the last 10 years, we're seeing a lot more publicity on them and you know this is a game we've been in for a very long time, like I said, but now we're getting more recently more and more discovered and we're at the forefront of this technological evolution that we get to have the privilege of witnessing in our lifetime.

MICHAEL: And how are you thinking, maybe not looking out to the next 70 years, because, I mean, it's hard to even predict sometimes what we're going to be doing next week, but when you think about the next 12 to 24 months, what do you see as the future for Bel Fuse?

FAROUQ: The exciting part is we have a few different avenues for our future, like we said, space is emerging, we're seeing some nice growth in there, e-mobility on the heavy, industrial equipment side we talked about, so these are obviously going to be going, but some of the more legacy things are not to be foregone, commercial air, defense, and so on, but obviously, the theme of the day is AI and we do believe it is the new thing. We are a secondary or third degree beneficiary of that swell of interest and demand that's going to create. Data centers and networking is a big part of our business, so as more demand is placed on those build-outs and replacement cycles, we will see that benefit to us. So AI is kind of the next 12 to 24 months. I think we're in the early stages of that, it's still getting settled out, but nonetheless it's very exciting to harness the power of what it could be.

MICHAEL: Yeah, and we're excited to watch what you achieve and just to be a part of your long company story. So thank you so much for being here. If you want to learn more about Bel Fuse, you could do it on their website, www.belfuse.com. Thank you so much again, for being here and thank you for watching.