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spk05: Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Ocustees Technologies' fiscal 2022 third quarter conference call. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. At the conclusion of the company's presentation, Ocustees Management will take questions. To ask a question, please press star 1 on your keypad to be placed into the queue. A replay of the call will be available to the Investor Relations section of the Ocustees website. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. I'll now turn the conference over to Tom Sipandis, Director of Investor Relations. Thank you, and you may begin, sir.
spk03: Thank you, operator, and good morning to everyone on the call. Welcome to Acousta's third quarter fiscal 2022 conference call. We are joined today by our founder and CEO, Jeff Shealy, CFO Ken Bowler, and EVP of Business Development, Dave Eichle. 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, operations, costs, plans, and objectives, including the timing and prospects of product development and customer orders, our expectations regarding achieving design wins from current and future customers, the possibility of entering into collaborative or partnering relationships, potential impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, litigation matters, guidance regarding expected revenue, product orders, and milestones for the current and future fiscal quarters, and expectations regarding the integration of acquired business operations, our 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 obligations 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 measure is presented in our earnings call highlight release available in the investors section of Acoustus.com. I would now like to turn the call over to Jeff Shealy, founder and CEO of Acoustus.
spk04: Thank you, Tom, and welcome everyone to our fiscal 2022 third quarter conference call. I am pleased to report that Acoustis delivered greater than 25% sequential revenue growth and over 80% year over year revenue growth as we continue to commercialize our leading ball filter products. We were able to accomplish this despite the ongoing headwinds in the macro environment driven by COVID-19 and the associated semiconductor supply chain shortages. In the March quarter, five new customers enter production bringing the total number of customers ramping production to 10. we expect to see this number continue to grow throughout calendar 2022 we delivered record revenue of 4.6 million in the quarter and we remain confident that we will see continued sequential revenue growth for the foreseeable future currently given our growing customer activity and wi-fi 5G mobile, 5G infrastructure, and other markets, we expect revenue for our current fourth fiscal quarter ending June 30, 2022, will increase by more than 30% sequentially. I would now like to discuss each of our target market segments in greater detail, beginning with the Wi-Fi segment. We ramp production of XBAL filters for three additional Wi-Fi customers in the March quarter, bringing the total number of Wi-Fi customers to eight. We have over 15 announced design wins, including two new design wins secured in the March quarter, and we expect to add both additional customers and design wins as calendar 2022 progresses. I am also pleased to announce that we fully qualified our 5.5 gigahertz and 6.5 gigahertz Wi-Fi 6E XBAL filter products over the past few months and expect a qualifying release into production for additional Wi-Fi 6E7 filters in the current June quarter. Additionally, we continue to advance the progress of our Wi-Fi 7 diplexer, which we are currently developing for one of the largest PC chipset makers in the world. The first design of this new diplexer was shipped to this Fortune 100 customer in December, and we received positive feedback on that design. The initial diplexer performed well and enabled the customer to characterize in their system, providing valuable technical feedback for the next design iteration, which was just released into our New York FAB facility. We expect to ship the new iteration sample filter to the customer by the end of the current June quarter. We remain on schedule for commercialization of this extremely exciting product and have received interest from other OEMs for diplexer, triplexer, and other multiplexer products. We attribute our surge in recent design wins to the fact that we were an early entrant in Wi-Fi 6E and seven ball filter solutions to the market, and today have one of the most extensive Wi-Fi 6E and seven ball filter portfolios to address the enormous challenges of difficult dual band coexist, wide bandwidth, and high frequency operation within the five to seven gigahertz frequency spectrum. To summarize our recent Wi-Fi activity, we now have more than 12 commercialized XBAW Wi-Fi filters, eight for Wi-Fi 6E, and four for Wi-Fi 6. As of today, we have announced a total of 15 design wins, up from 10 design wins at the end of last quarter. Furthermore, we expect to see additional Wi-Fi filter design wins throughout the current calendar year. Further, we have qualified and released into production for Wi-Fi filters, including Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E and 7. And lastly, we are advancing the development of our XBOB multiplexer products, led by our first diplexer, which will allow us to enter the PC market, another very substantial market opportunity in both unit volume and revenue. Moving on to 5G mobile. We continued our momentum in 5G mobile during the March quarter, adding another new multibillion-dollar Tier 1 RF front-end module maker customer, bringing the total number of 5G mobile customers in development to five, including three Tier 1 companies. Our new Tier 1 mobile customer is currently designing multiple 5G filters and plans to use our XBAR technology to deliver multiple best-in-class 5G mobile modules in challenging bands above 2 GHz for use in cutting-edge 5G smartphones and other devices. We received an initial development order from this new Tier 1 customer early in the March quarter for a challenging 5G mobile band with stringent coexistence specifications. We shipped a second XBall filter design to our Tier 1 5G mobile RF component customer in the March quarter and received a follow-on order to optimize the first design for an expected production ramp beginning at the end of the current calendar year. We also received a follow-on order from our first Tier 2 5G mobile RF module customer to reiterate the original filter design and to deliver resonator models for two new additional filters. The redesign was driven by changes to the customer's filter specification and was not driven by our XBAL technology. We remain on track to deliver completed filters using our wafer-level package, or WLP, by the end of the current quarter and are pleased with our expanding relationship with this customer. And finally, We continue to progress with the Tier 1 5G mobile customer we engaged with at the end of the calendar 2021. After shipping initial resonators in December, the customer has characterized and designed new XBAL filters that are expected to be released into our New York FAB in the current June quarter. As we mentioned on our last quarterly update call, we are bringing the production of our WLP in-house within our New York FAB, we continue to work towards a design lock of multiple new advanced packages with full WLP process qualification expected to follow later this calendar year. We believe bringing the WLP process in-house enhances substantially our ability to control the quality, cost, and customization of our advanced packages To summarize our 5G mobile activity, we added a new Tier 1 5G mobile customer during the March quarter, bringing the total number of mobile customers to five, including three Tier 1 customers. Further, we have multiple customer-funded XBAL filters in design, and our current customer engagements include a new Tier 1 mobile RF front-end module and filter OEM, for whom we expect to make multiple filters, a Tier 1 RF component company that we are developing two XBoff filters for, a second Tier 1 RF front-end module maker that is using our XBoff resonators to develop multiple filters for 5G handsets, a Tier 2 RF front-end module maker which has signed a foundry agreement with us for development of one XBoff filter, and a second tier two front end module maker that we are currently developing one filter for with the expectation of additional filters for 4G, 5G mobile if the first filter is accepted. We ship multiple 5G mobile XBAR filter samples to our customers during the March quarter. And finally, we are currently migrating the manufacturing supply chain of WLP into our New York fab which we expect to have design locked and available for qualified production in the second half of calendar 2022. And now I would like to discuss our network infrastructure business highlights. I'm pleased to announce that we officially began ramping production of two citizens broadband radio service infrastructure companies in the March quarter. We expect these two customers to continue to ramp in the current June quarter and beyond. I am also pleased to announce that we have recently received another CBRS design win from a third network infrastructure OEM, which will begin to ramp in the June quarter as well. Given the success and momentum we are experiencing in Wi-Fi and 5G mobile, we shifted our engineering resources in the March quarter. As such, our new C-band 3.8 gigahertz 5G filter for the U.S. infrastructure market is now expected to sample in the current quarter and we remain actively pursuing our next generation massive MIMO materials, and we'll update you as this effort progresses. To summarize our 5G network infrastructure activity, we have four completed 5G network infrastructure XBAL filters, three for 5G small cell base stations, and one for CBRS. To date, we have announced three design wins in small cell with our Tier 1 customer, and one design win from a second customer. Additionally, we have received four design wins for CBRS from three leading network infrastructure OEMs. Moving on, in our defense contract business, we continued to progress during Q2 on our existing R&D contract with DARPA to further enhance our XBAR PDK. In addition, we are finalizing a multi-year, multi-million dollar contract with DARPA to extend the operating range of our XBAL filters up to 18 gigahertz using novel materials and device manufacturing, and expect to have positive news on this front to share with you soon. These new materials may have implications in our current 2 to 7 gigahertz frequency range that we are focused on today, given higher power handling capability and high Q values associated with these new materials. In our other market segment, We recently announced entering the RF timing and frequency market with our leading XBall resonators. We are working with a leading maker of timing RF components to develop ultra high frequency XBall resonators for use in this customer's finished devices. The timing RF market represents a significant new opportunity for Acoustus in both unit volume and revenue. Our primary customer is developing products that could be disruptive in the timing RF components market, looking to displace older analog technologies with ultra-low jitter and phase noise devices. We are extremely excited that our leading XBall resonators can be a part of this groundbreaking opportunity. And finally, as we announced this morning, we have completed the acquisition of the remaining 49% of RFMI which will enhance our sales channels, supply chain, and addressable TAM. We welcome the entire RFMI staff to Acoustus and look forward to continued success as a team to grow our business in the RF acoustic filter market. To summarize our other market segment activity, we have seven completed XBAW filter solutions for the civilian and defense markets. Further, Our ultra high frequency XBAL resonators are now being used to deliver disruptive digital timing and control products to the broader communications industry. In addition, we continue to refine and improve our XBAL PDK, driven by the direct to phase two contract with DARPA, and we expect to sign a new multi-year, multi-million dollar contract with DARPA to scale our XBAL technology up to 18 gigahertz. Further, we successfully completed the acquisition of the remaining 49% of RFMI. And finally, in addition to the numerous customers acquired through the RFMI acquisition, we have a total of three XBAL customer engagements, two of which have already placed purchase orders with us or provided NRE revenue. I would now like to hand the call over to Ken to go through our financial highlights.
spk08: Thank you, Jeff. For the third quarter ended March 31, 2022, the company reported revenue of $4.6 million, which is an increase of 25% over the prior quarter ended December 31, 2021, and in line with our revenue guidance. On a GAAP basis, operating loss was $14.8 million for the March quarter, mainly driven by revenue of $4.6 million, offset by cost of revenue of $5.4 million, and operating expenses of $14 million. Included in operating expenses were labor costs of $7.2 million, depreciation and amortization of $1.5 million, and other operational costs totaling $5.4 million. As a result, GAAP net loss per share was 27 cents. On a non-GAAP basis, operating loss was $12.3 million, and non-GAAP net loss per share was 22 cents. Reconciliation of these amounts to the corresponding gap measures is available in the press release issued this morning, available on the investor section of our corporate website. CapEx spend for Q3 was $9 million compared to $7.1 million in the prior quarter, mostly related to the continued capacity to expansion and equipment redundancy in the company's New York FAB. I would like to highlight that we expect CapEx to decline significantly in the second half of the year, as the front-end loaded cost involved with bringing the wafer-level packaging in-house tapers off. Cash used in operating activities is beginning to trend down and was $9.7 million in Q3, down from $10.8 million in the prior quarter. We also expect to see our operating expenses decline in the second half of the year as our costs benefit from greater FAB utilization. The company exited the March quarter with $55.9 million in cash and cash equivalents, versus 67.5 at the end of the previous quarter. During the March quarter, the company raised $6.8 million in cash through additional at-the-market equity financing, an average price of approximately $6.03 per share. In the June quarter, we expect multiple new Wi-Fi 6E and network infrastructure customers to ramp production, and therefore we expect to see record revenue up more than 30% sequentially from the March quarter. And based upon our growing backlog of design wins, we anticipate that the top line growth will continue into our next fiscal year and beyond. I will now turn the call back over to Jeff to discuss our fourth fiscal quarter performance and future milestones.
spk04: Thank you, Ken. I am pleased to report that our view of the June quarter remains positive despite the ongoing semiconductor supply shortages and supply chain issues that are impacting the broader industry. Our momentum continues to grow, driven by Wi-Fi 6, Wi-Fi 6E, 5G mobile, 5G infrastructure, and our other markets segment. By the end of the current quarter, we expect to ramp production from 10 customers to more than 11 customers, with additional customer design wins expected across all our markets segment. as calendar 2022 progresses. In the June quarter, we expect to generate revenue from each of our business segments, including 5G mobile, Wi-Fi, 5G network infrastructure, and our other market segment. We continue to strive towards executing on our targeted milestones and will continue to keep you informed of our progress. Our anticipated June 2022 milestones include In our Wi-Fi segment, first, we expect to announce three additional Wi-Fi 6E design wins. Further, we expect to deliver our second diplexer iteration to our Fortune 100 PC chipset customer and receive feedback. And we expect a development order from a Fortune 100 internet company for two diplexers for design into next generation AR, VR headsets, and other consumer devices. For the 5G mobile segment, we expect to receive our first purchase order for a 5G mobile filter from a Tier 1 customer announced in December. In addition, we expect to iterate the original filter design for our first Tier 2 RF front-end module customer and receive a purchase order for two additional XBAL filters for development. And lastly, We are currently supporting our new tier one mobile customer to develop initial samples of their first XBAL filter. Next, in our 5G network infrastructure segment, we plan to ramp production with three CBRS infrastructure customers, and we expect to deliver a 3.7 to 3.98 gigahertz C-band 5G filter for the US market and expect to sample with multiple Tier 1 customers for both small cell and DAS AAS base station equipment. And finally, in our other market segment, we expect to receive a purchase order for the development of new XBAW multi-chip module for a multi-billion dollar Tier 1 defense customer, and we expect to finalize a new multi-year, multi-million dollar project with DARPA. In conclusion, we believe the market opportunity for our patented high-frequency XBAL filters is substantial. We now have 58 issued patents and 100 patents pending as we continue to build 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. Finally, I would like to thank our employees for their hard work, passion, and dedication, particularly during the ongoing pandemic, as our team has kept the momentum going on our R&D, which has led to the multiple design wins across the Wi-Fi, 5G network infrastructure, and defense markets. We have also experienced exceptional momentum in the 5G mobile market, driven by our leadership and filters that operate above 3 gigahertz and our new and expanding wafer-level packaging capabilities. 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.
spk05: Thank you very much. At this time, we will be conducting our question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. Confirmation tone will indicate your question in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like 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. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. We have a first question from the lineup. Cody Akri with Benchmark. Please go ahead.
spk07: Yeah, guys, thanks for taking my question, and congratulations on the progress. Guys, I guess Jeff or Dave, can you just talk real quickly about China with the lockdowns in the Shanghai area? Are you seeing that impact any of your engagements?
spk04: Hey, good morning, Cody. Jeff here. I'll let Dave start, and I'll follow up with some comments.
spk02: Good morning, Cody. Good to hear from you. The We're not really seeing too much impact from the supply side. What we are seeing is just delays of exporting and importing into the country. It's mainly, you know, going through ports that may be held up on the receipt of materials. So we have some of our OSAT assembly houses located in China and then some of the customers as well. So that's impacting, but that's maybe a one, two-week delay that we're accounting for right now. So other than that, we're not seeing anything significant.
spk04: Yeah, and Cody, Jeff here. Just from the China side, from my perspective, I give a lot of credit to our operations team. As you probably are well aware, we use our OSATs overseas, and our team spends many, many evenings up late managing. We had really one of the strongest quarters out of the supply chain and I credit our operations team for that. We had a healthy backlog, and we successfully shifted against the internal objectives that we had for the quarter. And so I think what this pandemic has done is forced a lot of hand-holding online on calls, but we feel we've got the right team to manage that, and they did an excellent job last quarter.
spk07: Excellent. Thank you for that. Jeff, you gave a lot of detail, and thank you for that on the prepared remarks. But maybe if you could just go back and just summarize your 10 customers going to 11 here in the June quarter and how that is impacting your revenue, if you can just talk about where that expo revenue came from during the quarter, where the bulk of that is coming from, and then into the June quarter, what are your expectations, and then maybe how does that parse through the rest of the year?
spk04: Okay. From a customer base, I'll let Dave touch that, and then I'll certainly follow up more strategically.
spk02: So to the question, Cody, we've got, as we highlighted, 10 production customers right now. And the majority of those are in the Wi-Fi sector. So approximately eight of them are in Wi-Fi and two are in the 5G CBRS sector. And, you know, so as you can see, a larger percentage is in the Wi-Fi. And we have a split between, you know, where I categorize with enterprise and retail or consumer and also, you know, the carrier market. It's a good split and it's also a split that we have, you know, regionally from North America to, to Europe and then also in Asia. Most of the production is being done over in Asia, but at least from a design win. And OEM, it's split between those regions. And as Jeff highlighted, you know, we had a very strong last quarter and shipping, you know, against two of these customers. You know, the 5G CBRS market is just really starting to pick up, you know, in North America, so we're going to continue to track that as well. And I expect, as we have in the early remarks, that we're going to continue with these design wins and transition these customers to production. And it's just a mix on timing. And also, some of the customers are being impacted by the semiconductor shortage. So we're going to continue to layer in new customers to offset some of the ups and downs that we may see.
spk04: So, Cody, just to piggyback that a little bit, just segment-wise, If you look at the 5G infrastructure, we actually had a healthy quarter, as we mentioned in the comments in the CBRS. I believe the volumes were up approximately 5x in terms of volumes in the 5G infrastructure segment. For us, just at a high level, 2022 is really about growing our revenues. We've got design wins that we've been We have been announcing and expanding. And our growth in 2022 is really focused from a revenue basis, going to draw from Wi-Fi. And really the storyline for the second half of 2022 is, you know, we've been working very diligently on wafer-level package as well as uh, these miniature form factors that are, uh, that, uh, enable us to get into the mobile market. Uh, as we said, we've got, uh, uh, currently five customers in the mobile segment and we're, uh, uh, we're really pushing hard, uh, to home in on a first design win in the second half. So that's, that's sort of how the, how the story kind of builds. And, uh, but that's, that's how we're pushing it. Um, and again, uh, With regard to kind of the support for that, what we've been putting in is capacity, and we've been wrapping that up in the New York FAB in order to support the programs that we have as well as some of the initial mobile work that we're doing. So there's some additional color.
spk07: I appreciate that, guys. uh both of you um if you can just talk maybe Jeff a little bit about your current momentum um just your revenue base is obviously skewed right now towards wi-fi and um what I'm I guess I'm looking for is some efforts or some explanation of the maturity of your projects and how that where I expect you would be talking about them being more in the nascency of your relationships, that when can we think about those moving into more mature volumes?
spk04: So from the way I look at it is you know, really in two branches. Number one, you've got to have the right products, and you've got to have the right machinery or operations in order to support that. We've been putting that in place and very pleased that we have a chip fab that can produce the designs, but you also have to have the right product base. So what we're supporting now in Wi-Fi, I think we said in the prepared comments, we've got 12 12 commercialized filters. Eight of those are for Wi-Fi 6E, as well as four for Wi-Fi 6. From a momentum standpoint, I think was part of your question, we've The WLP has really begun to allow us to get shipments to these mobile customers. We've had successful demonstrations of our chips in RF modules, and that's what's given us the confidence on the mobile front. I'd say the momentum is high on the mobile side. We're certainly enjoying the benefit of there being more RF module companies out there than RF filter companies to supply those modules. So we certainly benefit from that. But we're now in a position on the WLP. And again, if you look back from impact of the pandemic, we went from a supply chain that was outsourced and had a very long cycle time to one that's in-source that we can support out of New York. And that's what gives us the momentum as well as the confidence for the mobile market. So those are my comments, at least momentum-wise.
spk07: Okay. Thank you. That's it for me. Thank you.
spk05: Thanks, Cody. Thanks, Cody. Thank you. Thank you. We have next question from the line of Harsh Kumar from Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.
spk01: yeah hey guys congratulations first of all some pretty tremendous you know growth coming I wanted to Jeff ask about the 30% sequential or 30% or more sequential growth rate that you highlighted for the June quarter interestingly you also mentioned that you expect most of your revenue items you know business clients to contribute to that growth number I was curious You know, how you think about that number in terms of the different areas that it's coming from, infrastructure, mobile, slash Wi-Fi, mobile and then Wi-Fi. And then also, my second question, I'll ask it right now. When do you think duplexes for PCs become meaningful for you? Is it in the June quarter or will that be later on?
spk04: Okay, so let's tackle both of those. I think I'm going to go in reverse order. Dave, touch on the duplexer timing for that program.
spk02: So on the diplexer development that we're doing for the PC chipset OEM, really this is a, you know, we've gotten the first iteration that we shipped to them, and they were able to characterize, provide us feedback in their design, and we're iterating the second design expected to ship that. in the end of this quarter. And then really what we're moving into is a development phase with them. And that development phase is going to take about 15 months, where they are going to start characterizing their systems, start doing their MPI launch, and then also go into a pre-production mode. And then by the end of next year, we expect the product to be in production ramp and relatively high volume. So that's a focus with that customer. We're now just starting to take this design and the technology, the X-Ball technology, which has significant benefit in these type applications for mobile consumer applications where coexist requirements for Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 for asynchronous operation is becoming very important. Benefits that you see with the X-Ball technology on isolation and coexist capabilities. So, as we announced in the Q4, or as we commented in the Q4, we expect to get another order, you know, from a consumer mobile application. So, we're excited about the potential with the diplexor and also the technology lends itself well with triplexors and essentially quadplexors and beyond. So we're going to continue to engage with the market and share our capabilities and technology.
spk04: Okay. Harsh, back to your first point in terms of sequential growth, I think we indicated that growth would come from all the segments. I'll tackle those in the following order. First, in the Wi-Fi segment, what I would characterize is we mentioned the ongoing plans for not only additional design ones, but we already have enough design ones. And just I want investors to appreciate we're just now ramping in Wi-Fi 6E and just started that ramp. So we're going to continue ramping in the Wi-Fi segment. That's both Wi-Fi 6, where we've announced additional sockets in the Wi-Fi 6, We've got design ones that are just starting production in Wi-Fi 6E. There's development that's going on in Wi-Fi 7. And if you look at a very high level in that Wi-Fi segment, where that's going is integration is a big part of the product roadmap. And that certainly is, we would consider that greater than two or more filters in a module. So that's, again, that's just continued growth across multiple design winds in the Wi-Fi segment. If you go to the 5G mobile segment, we've announced additional – the CBRS is a point of strength for us, and we'll see growth quarter over quarter for that. I expect that to be in the single-digit quarter over quarter. And then Dave touched on – what kind of activity we have in the mobile segment earlier. But I can say that we've got active customers that have roadmaps, that have insertion points. And so we're driving hard supplying those designs. And again, I emphasize those designs are coming with the WLP process, which we now can produce in-house. And so we're supporting those, and we'll see growth in that segment as well. And then in the other market segment, as we've been winding down the DARPA PDK men's program that we have, we were pretty light on the details of the new multimillion dollar DARPA program. However, we had no revenue in the March quarter from the new DARPA program. And so that program will be starting as well. And we're really excited about that program for some of the technology that we see that's going to come from that will be, you know, further enhancements in the end products that we'll be producing. So pretty excited about that. But it is across other markets, all of our four market segments that we discussed.
spk01: Thanks, guys, and congratulations.
spk04: Okay. Thank you, Harsh.
spk05: Thank you. We have next question from the lineup. Rick Schaefer with Oppenheimer, please.
spk06: Thanks, guys, and I'll echo Harsh's congratulations. Nice progress, it seems like, on all fronts. I think my question, my first one anyway, is really on mobile, and congrats on the latest mobile PO that you're talking about and the release and everything. I guess I'm curious if you could give us any sense of revenue timing there for that latest PO, and then maybe bigger picture, just sort of if you could level set us and maybe describe your mobile, what your mobile revenue funnel looks like now. just across the five customers. Excuse me.
spk04: Rick? Yeah, no worries. Rick, thanks for your kind comment. Dave will start with the customer perspective there.
spk02: Good morning, Rick. Let me paint a little picture that looks out maybe over the next two years. And I think to echo what Jeff has commented, the WLP enablement has really allowed us to accelerate some of these engagements. Prior to really having WLP in-house, you know, it was more of an R&D relationship. And, you know, we've been engaged with, you know, many of these customers over the last five years and really turning the corner so that we can start looking at, you know, pre-production and production ramps programs. So the one that's the most exciting for us is, you know, the tier one component manufacturer, which we comment on. We've got two designs with them, and both designs have been successful. We look to them to be our first customer in volume production. Our target is by the end of this year, and really that's to align with our WLP qualification as well. That customer has already got favorable response on their designs with their channel. That will lead into production through 2023 with one, if not two. So that's what we're in discussions with right now. With respect to the other four, there are different levels of engagements. The one we just announced in March is early. As you can imagine, that's going to take some time to transition, but our hope is is that things go well with them through the development and that we will see production ramp in 2024. So that is a little bit further out. And then in between that is the other engagements that we're targeting. So our Tier 2 RF front end, the intent would be that design would go into production next year as well, targeting the China ink, the China mobile market. So it's various levels of degrees from ramp into production at the end of this year to other programs that we expect to be in production in 2024. But it's all, you know, that is our next step function and, you know, revenue growth, you know, once we see Wi-Fi continue to grow and then the 5G infrastructure, the mobile will start laying on top of that.
spk04: And Rick, Jeff here, I just was going to add a little more color around that just to have you appreciate what we see from our side. Until the really late in the March quarter, WLP, which is that enablement technology that allows very miniature designs that can be integrated in RF modules, I would just characterize that as a pain point for us to get parts to customers as we were building that supply chain in-house and beginning the qualification for it. So we've moved from struggling with that technology to actually now delivering full wafers with complete WLP integration into the technology module. So we've gotten very positive feedback from the customers. In terms of, just to reiterate a couple things Dave said, we're really focused on a second-half design win. which design win for us would also include a fair amount of pre-production units, and those we expect would be second half 2022 going into production, as Dave said, in 2023 with one to two customers is kind of what our business plan looks like. Also would like to characterize a type of engagements that we're having That could be one to two engineering weekly meetings with these customers, meetings separately with procurement, separate meetings with quality, a lot of quality documents coming through, coming across for us to satisfy their quality requirements as well as management on really building bridges and strategic engagement with them. for us as a supplier. So that's just a little more color to what Dave added.
spk06: No, thanks for all that color. And I know, I guess my second question is just around capacity. And I saw in the release, you know, you're talking about $500 million, I think, by the end of the year. And obviously, a lot of that, I would assume, is for mobile and opening the doors there to ramp that business. I guess I'm curious where capacity So how far you have to go to get to that 500 by the end of this calendar year. I believe it's calendar year comment. And Jeff, I was curious if maybe we could get your perspective on sort of what the latest you're hearing on the CHIPS Act is, or I guess whatever it's being called now. You know, because again, I just am curious, you know, I guess how long sort of once it's approved, I guess really my question is what's the strategy there around ordering tools given long lead times? Do you start throwing orders in now? Oh, if out, you know, past a year lead time. So do you order ahead of, of any kind of chip sack money or are you treating that as found money if and when it comes or just sort of what's your strategies around that would be, would be helpful too. Thanks.
spk04: Okay. So, so Rick, I want to be, I'm going to tackle your first or your second question first, if you don't mind. So just in terms of the latest on the CHIPS Act, I think it's pretty well documented that the House, first the Senate voted successfully on their bill. The House voted separately on a similar, but had some differences in it. So what the process is, is that Both houses of the Congress are gathering a committee which is made up of approximately 80 members thereabouts. And that committee will then sort through the differences. We expect those differences to be hashed out as early as later this month. and then it would be sent to the president's desk for signature, which I think all indications that we've seen is that will happen. So pretty optimistic about that bill being signed into law. In terms of our strategy, it kind of goes back to your first question, which was we've said all along that we were going to invest in capacity that could get us to better than cash flow break even. And the investments that we've made, this isn't about ordering equipment now in anticipation. We've always said that we weren't going to put the mobile market requirements on the backs of our investors. However, we have made the investments to get to 500 million filter chips. At the end of this year, just to characterize that for you, We actually model out the factory for 18 months and react accordingly. And so what I would characterize is from an equipment standpoint, what you see in our CapEx reflects the equipment that we've already had the foresight to order to get to the $500 million. So we're not ordering equipment at this stage to get to the $500 million. That's more about the labor aspect to actually run the wafers. So we're We're very comfortable with the investment we made. As you know, lead times on some of this equipment can be pretty challenging. However, we didn't want to jeopardize an initial capacity to get to $500 million in this type of timeframe where it's pretty challenging. So we had the foresight to order that. Those equipments, some of the final installs will be happening around middle of the year. So we're not in the ordering phase of that. We're in the receiving and installing phase of that. But predominantly, the limitation on filters for us will be labor, and we'll add that as warranted. So I think I covered your question. If you've got any follow-up, let me know.
spk06: No, that was great. Thanks a lot, Jeff.
spk05: Okay. Thank you, Greg. Thank you. We have next question from the line of Suji De Silva with Roth Capital. Please go ahead.
spk09: Hi, Jeff. Hi, Ken. Dave, I'd like to raise congratulations as well. Great progress here. Jeff, in your prepared remarks, you talked about shifting resources between segments to address new opportunities. Perhaps it was around wireless infrastructure. Could you clarify or elaborate on what that was in reference to?
spk04: Yeah, I mean, we have, let me just maybe back up and help you appreciate a little bit about our engineering. So we have a, we've got a product engineering and advanced engineering. And, you know, the goal of the product engineering is being focused on low risk, high predictability schedules to get to market. Where we do have flexibility, though, is in the advanced engineering team to go after opportunities as they come in. I think Dave mentioned some of the opportunities, and I think it's a strength of the company being able to rapidly respond. We actually, from a business process, will look at opportunities as they come into the company, Pareto those for opportunities, and have the flexibility to shift. The beauty of what we're doing is we're not shifting technologies, per se. The technologies that we're using, with the exception of the WLP, have relatively mature technologies and are pretty comfortable. So we have the flexibility in the FAB to run product from different markets. I think we've got very good supporting evidence We can run dozens of different products in the fab just because it follows a very similar process flow. So I think specifically we certainly have moved resources from the 5G infrastructure small cell market. We've moved those onto into the mobile market as well as some of the advanced chips that we've been very vocal about in the Wi-Fi where we're integrating uh, more than one filter into a module. And, um, and we do so really with, um, uh, with the, uh, customer support and commitment. So we've got agreements in place as well as, uh, orders in place, uh, to actually produce those as well as line of sight to, uh, programs. Uh, anything you want to add to that, Dave?
spk02: Yeah. So a couple of comments that I'd like to make is, uh, you know, early investments in the 5g infrastructure was primarily the China market. that return on investment has not really panned out as well as we had hoped. And a lot of that is due to the way that China's been rolling out their spectrum. The infrastructure market's a little bit slow to adopt new standards. And, you know, the deployments in Europe and also in the U.S. is going to take a little bit of time. So what we have been looking at is where is the really growth opportunities. And one of the things that is clear, at least with our engagements with the Wi-Fi market is we're now recognized as one of the leading, you know, ball filter suppliers. And the industry is starting to shift pretty significantly away from traditional type filters to, you know, more of these high performance, you know, filters. So we see the activity and what we've established with 6E and upcoming 7. As a way to continue to leverage that, we want to continue to have a portfolio of products that we will be, you know, the primary source that they go to, they being the end customer, you know, comes to us, you know, to have these engagements. So with that and the activity level on mobile, we've had to put some design resources there. So that's the main, you know, reason for some of the shifts.
spk09: Okay. Thanks, Jeff. That's a very helpful color there. And maybe just on this question may not be fair, but just to ask it, The mobile customers that are coming versus the Wi-Fi customers you have now, is there a way to kind of take the average run rate of the two as they mature over time and say what kind of multiplier a mobile customer may have, customer opportunity may have for you versus a typical Wi-Fi customer?
spk02: Yeah, so the multiple is pretty significant, and it really depends on if you're talking a Tier 1 or if you're talking a Tier 2. So with respect to the tier ones, you know, depending on the end platform that they're going after, that multiplier can be pretty significant with respect to, you know, an OEM that we get in the Wi-Fi market. So that multiplier can be, you know, five to ten times, you know, with respect to, you know, what we're seeing right now in run rates, you know, on the Wi-Fi side. So that's something that, as we talked about, that revenue will start layering on in calendar year 2023 and then going into 2024.
spk04: Yeah, and Suji, I'll just add to that, that the pre-production levels for the mobile market are more in line with what the production levels are in the Wi-Fi market. That's a another colorful way of saying what Dave said.
spk09: That's a helpful visual. Thanks, Jeff. Thanks, guys.
spk04: Okay.
spk05: Thank you, Suji.
spk09: Thanks, Suji.
spk05: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the end of the question and answer session, and I'd like to turn the call back to Jeff Shealy, founder and CEO, for closing remarks. Over to you, sir.
spk04: Okay. Well, I'd like to thank everyone for your time today. We look forward to speaking with you during our next update call to discuss the the June quarter's execution against our milestones and future expectations. I'd like to wish everybody a good day and goodbye. Thank you.
spk05: Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.
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