American Superconductor Corporation

You're currently in hope for today's American Superconductor first quarter 2022 earnings call. At this time, we're assembling today's audience and plan to be underway shortly. We appreciate your patience. Please remain on the line. Please stand by. We're about to begin. Good day, everyone, and welcome to the American Superconductor First Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference call. Today's call is being recorded. And now at this time, I'd like to turn the call over to John Heilshorn of LHA Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, April. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to American Superconductor Corporation's first quarter of Fiscal 22 earnings conference call. I am John Heilshorn of LHA Investor Relations, AMSC's Investor Relations Agency of Record. With us on today's call are Daniel McGann, Chairman, President, Chief Executive Officer, and John Kasiba, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, and Treasurer. American Superconductor issued its earnings release for the first quarter of Fiscal 22 yesterday after the market closed. For those of you who have not been able to see the release, a copy is available at the investor's page of the company's website at www.amsc.com. Before starting the call, I'd like to remind you that various remarks that management may make during today's call about American Superconductors' future expectations, including expectations regarding the company's second quarter fiscal 22 financial performance, plans and prospects constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the State of Harvard provisions under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including those set forth in the risk factors section of American Superconductors' annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended March 31, 2022, which the company filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on June 1, 2022, and the company's other reports filed with the SEC. These forward-looking statements represent management's expectations only as of today and should not be relied upon as representing management's views of any subsequent day to today. While the company anticipates that subsequent events and developments may cause the company's views to change, the company specifically disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. Also on today's call, management will refer to non-GAAP net loss, a non-GAAP financial measure. The company believes that non-GAAP net loss assists management and investors in comparing the company's performance across reporting periods on a consistent basis by excluding these non-cash, non-recurring, or other charges that it does not believe are indicative of its core operating performance. The reconciliation of GAAP net loss to non-GAAP net loss can be found in the first quarter of fiscal 22 earnings press releases that the company issued and furnished to the SEC last night on Form 8K. All of American Superconductors' press releases and SEC filings can be accessed from the investor's page of its website at www.amsc.com. With that, I will now turn the call over to Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer Daniel McGann. Daniel.

Thanks, John, and good morning, everyone. I will begin today by providing an update on our grid and wind business units. John Kasiba will then provide a detailed review of our financial results for the first fiscal quarter which ended June 30, 2022, and provide guidance for the second fiscal quarter, which will end September 30, 2022. Following our comments, we'll open up the line to questions from our analysts. I'm happy to say we started a strong fiscal year 2022. We've established an order book of over $100 million. We are now selling into next fiscal year. This all happened during our first fiscal quarter. This is well ahead of our historical pace to the business. Our backlog is growing. The business is growing. We see an acceleration of bookings due to some of the tailwinds we discussed last quarter. We see a diverse set of orders from renewables to semiconductor to materials and mining to industrials. We even had some orders from the US Navy to continue some research and development work on new products. We see continued tailwinds in multiple markets and believe 2022 will be an important year in the maturation of our business. We see projected growth in the renewables market driven by the move to energy independence and carbon reduction. For example, the recently proposed US Senate Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 contains significant spending and tax breaks which are poised to boost the clean energy industry in the United States. We see investments in the semiconductor capacity increasing for the next several years to address 2030-era demand for memory and key materials for the green economy. The U.S. Chips and Science Act of 2022 is a recent example of government substantially incentivizing the growth of the sector of the economy in the United States. The tailwinds to our business seem to have become stronger just in the past few days. We see strong demand for mining, metals, and materials driven by automakers and their move to electric vehicles in response to the global pressure to reduce environmental impact. We see how current foreign policy challenges demand sustainable security. These tailwinds are expected to benefit our business. During the first quarter of fiscal 2022, we reported revenue just below $23 million. We are seeing challenges of project timelines with customers as well as the availability of parts from our supply chain. We expect a stronger third and fourth quarter. We had over $50 million of new orders booked during the first quarter of this fiscal year. You can see, and John will discuss, that we're carrying elevated inventory levels. These are all indicators of growth. Now I'll turn the call over to John Kasiba to review our financial results for the first quarter of fiscal 2022 and provide guidance for the second quarter of fiscal 2022, which will end September 30, 2022. John.