Akoustis Technologies, Inc. (AKTS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Akoustis Technologies Fiscal 2024 First Quarter Conference Call. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. At the conclusion of the company presentation, Akoustis management will take questions. [Operator Instructions] A replay of the call will be available on the Investor Relations section of the Akoustis website. Thank you.

Thank you, operator, and good morning to everyone on the call. Welcome to Akoustis' first quarter fiscal 2024 conference call. We're joined today by our Founder and CEO, Jeff Shealy; CFO, Ken Boller; and EVP of Business Development, Dave Aichele. Before we begin, please note that today's presentation includes forward-looking statements about our business outlook. All statements other than statements of historical facts, included in this conference call, such as expectations regarding our strategies and operations, including the timing and prospects of product development and customer orders and design wins, possible collaborative or partnering relationships, litigation matters, and expected financial and operating results are forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements are predictions based on the company's expectations as of today and are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties. The company and our management team assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements made on today's call. Our SEC filings mention important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially. Please refer to our latest Form 10-K and Form 10-Q filed with the SEC to get a better understanding of those risks and uncertainties. In addition, our presentation today will also refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of these measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is presented in our earnings call highlight release available in the Investors section of akoustis.com. I would now like to turn the call over to Jeff Shealy, Founder and CEO of Akoustis.

Thank you, Ken, and welcome, everyone to our fiscal first quarter conference call. Revenue in the September quarter was within our guided range of down 15% sequentially. During the September quarter, we had one customer that made up greater than 10% of our revenue. XBAW related sales accounted for the top 5 customers and 7 out of the top 10 customers. Our top 10 customers made up 59% of revenue, our top 25 customers made up 74% of revenue. In terms of regional sales from our top 35 customers which make up 80% of our revenue, 53% of those sales came from Asian customers followed by 35% of sales came from North American customers and 12% of our sales came from European customers. Earlier this calendar year, we commented on the build-up in channel inventory, particularly at our WiFi customers in the Asia region. As we stated on last quarter's call, we expected 2 quarters of slowdown as we transition and ramp to new WiFi AP platforms, work through a slowdown in the infrastructure segment, and transition a portion of our defense activity to new contract business. Consistent with our guidance on last quarter's investor call, we expect revenue for the December quarter to be $7 million or flat sequentially. In reaction to the slowdown in the market, the company implemented 2 rounds of meaningful expense and cost savings plans to significantly reduce cash burn moving forward. Ken will detail our activities and impact on reducing our cash burn during his upcoming comments. However, looking around the corner, at the March quarter, we are seeing signals of inventory channel clearing. We're presently delivering new lower-cost RF filter products and are receiving multiple new design wins in new WiFi AP platforms with more RF filter content in early calendar 2024. As a first look, we expect to return to record quarterly revenue for the March quarter in the range of $8.3 million to $8.8 million or a sequential increase of 18% to 25%. We will update the March quarter guidance during next quarter's investor call. I would now like to take a moment to discuss updates involving the company's activity related to the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022. Regarding CHIPS Act funding, there are 4 updates to share with investors. First, in mid-September, our Microelectronics Commons' proposal focused on EW tech hub was not selected by the DoD. According to the September 20 announcement made by the government, the majority of the 8 DoD tech hub awards went to major universities across the U.S. Second, on October 23, Senator Schumer announced that the Greater Rochester region was selected as a prestigious tech hub opening significant federal funds from the Department of Commerce to boost critical supply chains in Upstate New York. Akoustis is a member of the tech hub consortium and we'll pursue meaningful opportunities with a tech hub residing in our backyard in Upstate New York. Third, the CHIPS Act of 2022 includes a provision for a 25% refundable investment tax credit or CHIPS ITC on investments in facilities that manufacture semiconductors, or semiconductor manufacturing equipment that were placed in the service after December 31, 2022. We estimate the amount of the refundable tax credit applicable to Akoustis to be $3.5 million to $4 million over the next 18 months. And fourth and finally, regarding our proposed expansion of our domestic manufacturing footprint, including both semiconductors and advanced packaging at our New York campus under the Department of Commerce, CHIPS for America program, we have completed a first pre-application with the DOC. The CHIPS Program Office or CPO of the DOC has received the pre-application submitted by Akoustis Technologies, Inc. The CPO recommends that we move forward and submit a revised pre-application addressing questions raised in our original application. Hence, our next step in the process is to file a revised pre-application once we complete a strategic review with our potential semiconductor partners who require a partner to manufacture semiconductor materials, wafers and/or packaging on our New York manufacturing campus. Next, I would like to discuss several updates in our primary target markets, beginning with WiFi. Our first milestone for the September quarter was to receive a design win for next-generation Wi-Fi 7 with a consumer-focused OEM. We delivered a total of 3 design wins on the consumer front with all programs currently planned to begin production ramp in the March quarter of calendar 2024. 2 programs are 4x4 MIMO architectures and the third program is a 2x2 MIMO architecture, all utilizing our recently released wide bandwidth XBAW RF filter solutions in the high-band spectrum. Our second milestone was to secure a design win for a next-generation Wi-Fi 7 solution with a Tier-1 U.S.-based carrier. We remain confident that this carrier will launch with our filters on their platform, but we have moved this milestone to the December quarter in order to see volume shipments to validate our milestone. Our third milestone was to secure multiple RF filter design wins for our Tier-1 enterprise-class customers' Wi-Fi 7 suite of routers and access points. We have been aggressively developing and qualifying these parts for our customer, and have made shipments to our customer over the past few months, and expect to announce this design win in the December quarter. Also during the September quarter, we announced the introduction of our latest single-crystal doped piezoelectric materials into a key product, which is slated to ramp with an upcoming Wi-Fi 7 enterprise customer. These advanced materials are utilized to allow greater design margin and flexibility to the customer in the design of their system. While the overall WiFi market has been impacted over the past 12 months by excess inventory and slowing WiFi AP demand post-COVID, we see signs of reduced inventory in the channels for existing volume programs, along with new platforms launching in early 2024. Looking ahead in the December quarter, we expect to announce a design win for a next-generation Wi-Fi 7 solution with a Tier-1 U.S.-based carrier. Further, we plan to secure multiple design wins for our Tier-1 enterprise-class customers, Wi-Fi 7 suite of routers, and we plan to secure a design win for a Wi-Fi 7 solution with a Tier-1 enterprise-class OEM. Next, I would like to discuss our recent developments in the 5G mobile market. During the September quarter, we made no new shipments to our Tier-1 RF component customer. The slowdown in shipments is due to a slowdown in marketing and adoption of the product in the China market, our customers' inability to secure a production slot on a new design program in the Tier-1 market as well as other market headwinds. During the September quarter, we expected to receive an order for a 2.4 gigahertz WiFi filter for our Tier-2 5G RF front-end module customer. We received not only an XBAW foundry order for the 2.4 gigahertz band, but the customer also added 2 additional high-frequency WiFi bands. This customer has completed previous design evaluation and has down selected the final design for release in the first half of calendar year 2024. With the slowdown in headwinds in the mobile market, we have been focusing our resources on near-term opportunities in the WiFi, 5G infrastructure, and automotive segment. However, our anticipated milestones for the December quarter include: we expect to deliver the first of the 3 WiFi filters to our Tier-2 5G mobile RF front-end module making customer. And finally, we expect to engage a fifth mobile partner offering our XBAW process and foundry for their module and discrete product needs. I will now discuss our progress in our network infrastructure business. During the September quarter, we experienced strong XBAW filter shipments to our CBRS customers targeting the U.S. market. However, we experienced minimal shipments in our small cell RF filters in the September quarter. Overall, we are seeing the 5G ORAN and RAN market slow in the December quarter as operators take inventory of existing deployments. We do expect the 5G small cell market to begin to improve in the March quarter and throughout calendar 2024 as carriers throughout the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and Africa continue to deploy sub-5 gigahertz networks. Regarding our milestone from the September quarter, we received a design win for our XBAW RF filters from a Tier-2 network infrastructure OEM for a massive MIMO base station. The radio design includes 64 TRX paths with 1 filter in the transmit path and one filter in the receive path. Altogether, we have 128 filters of content in the radio unit and expect production to begin ramping in the second quarter of calendar 2024. For the December quarter, we expect to complete the redesign and sample of our new and improved 5G Band 41 in 5G U.S. 3.8 gigahertz network infrastructure filter solutions. The redesign of these filters pushed into the December quarter given engineering priorities related to near-term WiFi business. Finally, before handing the call off to Ken, I would like to provide an update on our defense and other markets' business. It is noteworthy that 6 out of our top 10 customers are in our defense and other businesses category. And I will begin with an update on our published milestones for the September quarter. First, we made steady progress on securing a design win for an automotive wireless battery management system or wBMS solution used in a Tier-1 IC reference design, and we expect to close out this milestone in the December quarter. Second, we received a specification change from a key customer, which delayed the start of the product qualification of our second XBAW resonator for the timing control market. At this point, we already started the qualification and plan to complete this product qualification in the December quarter. Beyond our published milestones, we achieved other notable milestones during the quarter in this segment. As mentioned in the past, our biggest success in the defense and other market segment was the introduction of our new XP3F technology, which incorporates a new revolutionary patented multilayer nanomaterial that incorporates our single-crystal piezoelectric material. This new nanomaterial was developed with funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, to scale the XBAW technology to frequencies up to 18 gigahertz. At the end of the September quarter, we were awarded a multimillion-dollar Phase 2 contract option, which extends our current DARPA COFFEE contract to $4.8 million, including base and exercise options. The new Phase 2 contract extends the funding for the program through December of 2024. During the September quarter, we received a purchase order as a foundry supplier supporting a new DARPA contract unrelated to our current DARPA COFFEE contract, which requires high-performance custom resonators for timing control applications. Further, we completed initial wafer shipments from our New York fab during the September quarter, and we expect additional shipments over the next few quarters. In addition, we achieved a design win at an international engineering and technology company supplying timing products for an electric meter application, and we have received purchase orders for more than 300,000 pieces of initial volumes with scheduled delivery now into Q3 fiscal year 2024. For the December quarter, in the defense and other market segments, we are expecting to achieve a design win of at least one of the following: crystal oscillator BAW filter and/or SAW filter used in an automotive wireless battery management system solution used in a Tier-1 IC reference design. Also, we plan to complete the qualification of the optimized second XBAW resonator for a key customer in the timing control market. And we expect to deliver an X band BAW filter utilizing Akoustis' advanced XP3F technology to a Tier-1 defense customer. And now, I would like to hand the call over to Ken to go through our financial highlights.

Thank you, Jeff. For the first quarter ended September 30, 2023, the company reported revenue of $7 million, which is a decrease of 16% over the prior quarter ended June 30, 2023, but still represents an increase of 26% year-over-year. On a GAAP basis, operating loss was $21.7 million for the September quarter, driven by revenue of $7 million, offset by labor costs of $9.4 million, depreciation and amortization of $3.2 million, and other operational costs totaling $16.1 million. As a result, GAAP net loss per share was $0.28. On a non-GAAP basis, operating loss was $19.1 million and non-GAAP net loss per share was $0.27. CapEx spending for Q1 was $4.2 million, primarily to enhance our back-end processing capabilities and complete our New York fab tool capacity to 500 million filters per year. Cash used in operating activities was $13.1 million, which included approximately $3.4 million of year-end expenses for $9.7 million net. In the December quarter, as indicated in our prior call, we expected revenue to be flat given the broader market weakness along with the associated inventory correction. We continue to receive design wins and introduce new products, but we expect a return to record quarterly revenue in the March quarter of up 18% to 25%. We'll update this guidance during our next quarterly investor call. On the expense front, over the past several months, we have undertaken significant expense reductions and cost-saving measures that we estimate will reduce our operating cash flow burn rate below $8 million for the December quarter. Given the top-line projections, the CHIPS ITC refund, and a full quarter of cost savings, we currently expect operating cash burn to be below $6 million in the March quarter, with operating cash flow breakeven less than 1 year away. The company exited the September quarter with $25.8 million of cash and cash equivalents versus $43.1 million at the end of the previous quarter. I would now turn the call back over to Jeff for his closing comments.

Thank you, Ken. We continue to believe the market opportunity for our patented high-frequency XBAW and XP3F filters is substantial. As of September 25, 2023, we have approximately 200 issued patents and patents pending, representing a substantial IP moat around our technology. We continue to work diligently to achieve each of our stated objectives, and we will continue to provide updates on our execution against these objectives going forward. I want to emphasize to investors that while we have been navigating the challenges to our top-line revenue during the first half of our fiscal year, we have aggressively taken steps to reduce operating expenses and achieve cost savings on our products to lower our operating cash burn. We believe this is prudent in the economic environment that we are facing. Finally, I would like to take the opportunity to thank our employees for their hard work, passion, and dedication in working together to position our company for growth in the quarters ahead. I also wish to thank our shareholders who continue to support the company. And with that, I would like to open the call for questions from the investment community. Operator, Please go ahead with the first question.

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question is from the line of Anthony Stoss with Craig-Hallum.

Ken, let me start with you. Can you maybe outline OpEx just for December and then March R&D and SG&A for each? And then your comment about expected to reach breakeven in less than a year, what would the new kind of revenue per quarter to reach that breakeven be?

Yes, I'll dive into some of those answers for you. So with the expense reductions and cost-saving measures that we've undertaken, in essence, we've cut about 20% of our operating expense. We won't see a full quarter of that until the March quarter as some of those were undertaken earlier in Q2. So we'll start to see up to 10% to 20% in December and then in March, 20% savings in OpEx overall. The question on operating cash flow breakeven, we still are projecting that to be within the next 12 months. Still within $12 million to $15 million of revenue during that time period. And that -- some of that depends on mix. We are -- a number of our new products are coming into production during the next 2 quarters, over a dozen. And those products are of a lower form factor and have lower laminate costs and back-end processing costs. So we'll start to see not only a reduction in the overall cost from the cost savings plan that we did, but also an introduction of our new parts that are lower back-end in cost, and those margins are -- we're now negative, we'll turn positive. And then by this time next year, we project to be operating cash flow breakeven.

And then as a follow-up maybe for Jeff. Just what gives you confidence in the $8.3 million to $8.8 million in March? And then again, ramping from there to get to your $12 million to $15 million? And then Jeff or Ken, again, where would you expect gross margins to kind of exit calendar 2024?

Jeff here. I think the confidence is coming from what we're seeing. We made in the prepared comments some discussion about what we're seeing in the WiFi channel with inventories, particularly in the Asia market, and our WiFi segment clearing. We've seen firsthand some of the evidence of that. I think most importantly and maybe more importantly, is that we have multiple programs that we've been focused on, which are ramping in the Q1 calendar year, which is our March quarter, of course. So it's confidence in the transition of some programs in WiFi. We also made mention of some transition in our defense and other segment. We had -- really, we had a perfect storm in the first half of this fiscal year with some of the headwinds in the market with -- we were wrapping up certain contracts. So that's, as well as some of the slowdown in the inventory buildup in the channel. So for the March quarter, it's all about new programs in WiFi, which we have high confidence in, as well as the defense and other segments that are really picking up. And the infrastructure segment has been a little lumpy. But we've seen some signs of an ongoing recovery in that as we head into next year.

And Tony, I'll comment on gross margin. So in the next quarter or 2 by March, we will turn positive margins. and then exit our fiscal year above 10% margin. And then when we come to the operating cash flow breakeven time period of this time next year, we're projecting to be 20% to 25% of positive gross margin. And some of that, as Jeff just alluded to, is some of our product mix. We're also starting to see more interest in infrastructure and some of our base station products. So those, if you recall, have a very high ASP and very good margins. So that is a piece of the mix that we're talking about when we're going into those time periods in the future.

Our next question is from the line of Craig Ellis with B. Riley Securities.

So I wanted to follow up on the earlier questions to just better understand the dynamics in March. So it looks like revenue is going to be up about $1.3 million sequentially led by WiFi followed by defense. Within WiFi, can you characterize the incremental gains in the consumer part of the market versus the enterprise part of the market for the March quarter?

Let me pull Dave in and he can give you kind of what we see on the mix in WiFi. Maybe I'll add some comments thereafter.

Yes. So it's evenly split between the consumer side and the enterprise side. There's 2 dynamics that we're seeing. So we've got good traction with WiFi 6E programs that we've done with carrier market. That is going to start picking back up. It's gone through this inventory slowdown. So we expect that to pick back up. Plus we've got further design win announcement we made in this recent call today is that we've got 2 consumer programs that we've already seen substantial POs on for new Wi-Fi 7 products that we launched probably about 3, 5 months ago. And then the other one is our Tier-1 enterprise customer who is going to start ramping. And also, their previous platform is picking back up. They've had a slowdown probably for the past 6 months. So we have both of those coming together. Plus we announced in the call today another and revised customer that's also going to be planning to ramp. And both of these enterprise customers have a significant amount of filter content per system. So even though the volume of the system shipping are less on the carrier side, you still get very good dollar content and also total ASP per system. So I think it's going to be a balance between the 2 of them. We're still focusing on the big-box retail side. That we don't expect any real growth contribution probably until the second half of calendar year 2024. So I put an emphasis mainly on the carrier and the enterprise side.

And then the follow-up question is somewhat similar. But for the second half of calendar '24, first half of fiscal '25 guidance. If we're getting to cash flow breakeven at mid-teens revenues, then our revenues are going to basically double through the year. So can you just help us understand what your assumptions are around mobile's contribution to that ramp? And to the extent that it exists, how much of that is Tier-1 customers versus the Tier-2 that's ramping a little bit in the first half of calendar '24. And then beyond mobile, just the relative contributions out of WiFi, defense, et cetera.