Participants

Saagar Govil; Chairman of the Board, President, Chief Executive Officer; Cemtrex Inc

Paul Wyckoff; Chief Financial Officer; Cemtrex Inc

Presentation

Operator

Greetings and welcome to the Cemtrex second-quarter 2024 financial results conference call. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.
Before we begin the formal presentation, I would like to remind everyone that statements made on the call and webcast may include predictions, estimates, or other information that might be considered forward-looking. While these forward-looking statements represent our current judgment on what the future holds, they are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which reflect our opinions only as of the date of this presentation.
Please keep in mind that we are not obligating ourselves to revise or publicly release the results of any revision to these forward-looking statements in light of new information or future events. Throughout today's discussion, we will attempt to present some important factors relating to our business that may affect our predictions. You should also review our most recent Form 10-K and Form 10-Q for a more complete discussion of these factors and other risks, particularly under the heading Risk Factors.
A press release detailing these results was issued this afternoon and is available in the Investor Relations section of our company's website, cemtrex.com. Your host today, Saagar Govil, Chief Executive Officer; and Paul Wyckoff, Chief Financial Officer, will present the audited results of operations for the second quarter ended March 31, 2024.
At this time, I will turn the call over to Cemtrex Chief Executive Officer, Saagar Govil. Please go ahead.

Saagar Govil

Thank you, operator, and good afternoon, everyone. I'm pleased to welcome you to today's second-quarter 2024 financial results conference call. The second quarter of our fiscal year 2024 was highlighted by new technology deployments and continued overall growth across our business. For the second quarter, Cemtrex had revenue of $17.2 million, an increase of 7% and our gross margin was 40%.
Operating loss for the second quarter was $1 million compared to operating income of $0.4 million a year ago. Operating loss for the six-month period was $1.8 million compared to $1.5 million in the prior year, despite higher sales. However, these results include approximately $1 million in one-time expenses from employee-related charges and legal expenses that we do not anticipate incurring in the future. Our goal of reaching a full-year operating profit remains, and we are working hard to drive revenue and maintain tight cost controls.
Revenues in our security segment in the second quarter decreased by 18% to $8.1 million. The decrease was due to the delay of certain projects in the security segments, products, and services. Despite the delay in some of the Vicon projects, the segment is still showing year-over-year growth for the first half of the fiscal year. Vicon continued to introduce new technologies and products, including the deployment of Anavio,
The platform enables users to manage their access control, video, and intercom via a single tool to streamline and ultimately achieve complete situational awareness and control. Some of the new features of Anavio include face authentication that ensures only authorized people can access facilities, and a powerful person of interest feature, whereby users can forensically track a specific person or multiple people throughout a facility.
We continue to make investments into our sales and marketing resources in the security segment with the goal of driving sales growth over the next several quarters. We are also striving to increase operational efficiency and have reduced inventory by over $1 million for this fiscal year. With the launch of Anavio along with new technologies and continued improvements to our core software platform, Valerus, we expect to drive further growth and see additional opportunity to grow gross margin in 2024.
Revenue for our industrial services segment, AIS, increased 47% to $9.1 million, mainly due to increased demand for our services as well as additional business from the highly synergistic acquisition of Heisey Mechanical. We believe this segment will produce a record year of revenue, driven by new orders from leading companies and our robust growth pipeline.
We continue to believe, with additional orders ahead, AIS has a potential to reach more than 30% annual growth in fiscal year 2024. During the second quarter, AIS secured orders, including a $1.6 million order for two relocation projects from a leading printing and graphics company and a $0.5 million order to remove existing equipment for an engineering and construction company, which affirms AIS's commitment to delivering excellence across its service offerings.
I'll now turn the call over to Paul Wyckoff, our CFO, to discuss financials.