5/2/2022

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

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.

speaker
Tom Sipandis
Director of Investor Relations

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.

speaker
Jeff Shealy
Founder and CEO

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.

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