Ocean Power Technologies, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to the Ocean Power Technologies second quarter of fiscal year 2024 earnings conference call. A webcast of this call is also available and can be accessed by a link on the company's website at www.oceanpowertechnologies.com. This conference call is being recorded and will be available for replay shortly after its completion. On the call today are Dr. Philip Stratman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Bob Powers, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and Joseph DiPietro, Controller, Treasurer, and Principal Accounting Officer. Following the prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session. Now, I am pleased to introduce Joseph DiPietro.

Thank you and good morning. After the market closed yesterday, we issued our earnings press release and filed our report on Form 10Q for the quarter ended October 31st, 2023. Our public filings are available on the SEC website and within the investor relations section of the OPT website. During this call, we will make forward-looking statements that are within the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements may include financial projections or other statements of the company's plans, objectives, expectations, or intentions. These statements are based on assumptions made by management regarding future circumstances over which the company may have little or no control and involve risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause actual results to be materially different from any future results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Additional information about these risks and uncertainties can be found in the company's Form 10-K and subsequent filings with the SEC. The company disclaims any obligation or intention to update the forward-looking statements made on this call. Finally, we posted an updated investor presentation on our IR website. Please take a moment to review it as it provides a nice overview of our company and strategy. Now I am pleased to introduce Dr. Philip Stratman.

Thank you, Joe, and good morning, everyone. We're pleased to have you join us on this call, and your continued support is greatly valued. Before we delve into the numbers, I'd like to highlight that I'm pleased with our quarterly results and our continued positive momentum. The market demand is clear. Our customers are procuring autonomous resident and roaming assets that protect marine environments, collect essential ocean data, and enhance national security. We continue building our pipeline and are converting opportunities into backlog and revenues, as seen with wins like the recently announced multi-buoy and multi-vessel contracts. We believe we're well positioned to translate this momentum into profitable growth in the next 15 to 18 months and deliver value for our shareholders. Let's talk about some recent developments. In November 2023, we announced that we have substantially completed our research and development phase and are primarily focused on commercial activities. We've built a suite of products and solutions that we believe will be the basis for our current and future commercial success, resulting in meaningful progress in backlog, revenue, and profitability. With contracted backlog increasing from $3.1 million at July 31st, 2023, to $4.5 million at October 31st, 2023. This pivot to commercial and operational activities has enabled a reduction and reallocation of headcount, the divestiture of our 3Dent, and the material reduction in third-party expenditures. As a result, the majority of our employees are now dedicated to customer delivery. We expect that recent meaningful contract wins, which I will describe more fully in a moment, the growth in our commercial pipeline, and the expense savings noted, would enable us to reach profitability during calendar year 2025 using current capital resources. This expectation does not account for extraordinary expenses, such as those related to the Paragon litigation that could cause OPT to seek additional capital from financing sources. In December 2023, we secured our first multi-buoy letter contract. This is a subcontract with a US-based crime contractor a $6.5 million ceiling to deliver maritime domain-aware solutions for U.S. government agencies. This contract exemplifies our commitment to innovation and underscores the crucial role our technology plays in bolstering maritime national security and providing state-of-the-art solutions, including multi-buoy arrays that contribute to a safer maritime environment. In October 2023, we were awarded our first multi-vessel 1V order. a volume order from Samara, a prominent player in offshore services. The order, valued at $1.6 million, underscores the recognition by customers of our ability to provide innovative and sustainable solutions for the offshore industry. Due to demand, production is already underway to fulfill the order and will allow for revenue recognition this fiscal year. We recently retained Rear Admiral Victorino Vic Mercado as a Special Advisor to the company's Board of Directors. We plan to leverage Vic's experience, expertise, and networks as we build on our momentum in providing intelligent maritime solutions to the U.S. government and defense and security sectors, and carefully navigate the challenges of securing access to and protecting highly sensitive and confidential information. Finally, we recently appointed Matt Berdini to the newly created role of Chief Commercial Officer. Matt will report directly to me, and we will leverage Matt's vast experience to drive the next phase of our growth. and the commercialization of our cutting edge products, particularly for the national security and defense markets. In short, unlike the increased commercial and operational activity levels I'm seeing throughout the organization, we continue to position the company well within the industries we serve. Our opportunity pipeline continues to grow. In addition to the orders I just discussed, we've also continued to add to the top of the pipeline. Pipeline of October 31st, 2023 is approximately $93 million. for a net gain of approximately $26 million during the first half of the fiscal year. We are continuing to grow our revenues and our gross profit margins are increasing. Our strategy is working and we see additional opportunities for multi-system orders on the horizon. Now, before we dive into the financial highlights, I'd like to introduce our CFO, Bob Powers. Bob will provide you with more detailed information about our financial performance in Q2 fiscal 24. Thanks, Philip.

Let's begin with revenue. In Q2-24, our revenues reached $900,000, marking a significant increase compared to the $300,000 reported for the same period in the prior year. Year-to-date, our revenue generation is in excess of 2x where we were last year. This growth can be primarily attributed to the conversion of backlog from our strong performance in WAMB sales and revenue generated from our DOE contract. Our orders are 2.9 million year-to-date and growing, with backlog standing at $4.5 million at October 31st, 2023. We continue to expect order activity and revenue to ramp meaningfully throughout the second half of the year. Our gross profit for Q2 24 stood at $500,000, a substantial improvement compared to the Q2 23 figure, which showed a gross profit of under $100,000. This improvement is primarily attributed to our unmanned vehicles business. particularly the higher margin WAMB leasing business. I am enthused about progress we've made in this area and the expansion of the progress made in fiscal 2023. Our operating expenses for Q2 24 amounted to $8 million, reflecting our investments in both personnel and systems to support the growth Phillip and I discussed previously. As for the net result, we reported a net loss of $7.2 million for Q2 24, compared to a net loss of $5.9 million for Q2 23. We continue to manage our costs tightly, making targeted investments in the personnel and structure needed to support our strategy and plans for growth. As Phillip mentioned, we expect our operating expenses to decrease materially going forward as a result of our plan to achieve profitability. On the balance sheet front, our combined cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments as of October 31st, 2023, totaled $18.9 million. Notably, we continue to maintain a debt-free balance sheet with no bank debt in our financial structure. In terms of cash flow, the net cash used in operating activities for the first half of fiscal 2024 amounted to $15.5 million. This primarily reflects our net loss, the payout of employment bonuses accrued during fiscal year 2023, and the payment of the earn out accrued during fiscal 2023 related to the outstanding performance of our autonomous vehicles business. Finally, you will note that our inventory balance increased by approximately $1.5 million to $2.5 million. This investment in inventory was necessary in order to satisfy the growing backlog, as well as our planned growth in revenue for fiscal 2024. That covers our financial update. Before we enter the Q&A, I'd like to remind everyone that the purpose of today's call is to discuss our second quarter of fiscal year 2024 results, as well as our financial outlook. As we head into the Q&A, we ask that you limit your questions to these topics. Thank you.

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. Please press star 1 on your telephone keypad to join the question queue. Confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you want to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Once again, that's star 1 to ask a question at this time. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Thank you. Thank you. Our first question is from Sean Severson with Water Tower Research. Please proceed with your questions.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Philip, great move on the pipeline. And I'm curious, when you talk about the pipeline and look at that $93 million, is there any way to look at that and figure out how much reoccurring revenue something like that can drive? I guess I'm trying to understand the mix of that pipeline. and what it would look like, you know, should it convert and go into backlog and sales? Is it really heavy towards this mix of recurring revenue?

Good morning, Sean. Thanks for the question. One thing we are definitely noticing in the mix of the pipeline is an ongoing shift from what the company was two years ago when the current management team stepped in to, it was primarily product sales back then, to now really materially shifting towards lease opportunities, which obviously are recurring revenue, as well as sort of more the data and robotics as a service side. If you look at some of the examples, even some of the larger multi-volume orders that we got contain, whilst there might be leases in the first place, They also contain minimum operating day guarantees, so it ultimately becomes a take or pay contract under which we can provide assets to our customers. And what that enables us to do is to provide and stack on top of each other as we move into the forecast and start providing guidance moving forward.

And just a second question on that. I know it's going to vary project by project, of course, but What are the key triggers that convert this pipeline? I mean, are you waiting for budgetary approval, for pilot programs? Just trying to understand what triggers conversion in that pipeline in a generalization.

Thank you for the question, Sean. It partially depends on the customer. As we said, the bulk of our customer base and opportunities that we have now are government related. And within that government sector, it is primarily defense and national security. And in those instances, it is oftentimes just the speed of contracting and definitizing terms before anything can be provided. In other cases, it is just, it is aligning the project that these assets are being deployed on if it's on a larger project until that project gets financing. But overall, we're also seeing a shortening of the pipelines from a conversion perspective as we're stepping from opportunity identification into pipeline, into discussions with the customer, and into it being a purchase order. And that is largely due to the fact that we're not really seeing a lot of demonstration requirements anymore because, you know, the vehicles and the buoys are now, you know, being seen as commercialized and productized offerings.

Great. That's great. Thanks a lot.

Thank you. At this time, I will turn the floor back to management for any closing remarks.

Thank you. We continue progressing towards profitability. We never take any of your support for granted, and we thank you for being a valued shareholder. Thank you for your participation today.

This concludes today's teleconference and webcast. You may now disconnect your lines at this time.