American Superconductor Corporation

Good morning and welcome to the AMSC fourth quarter fiscal 2023 financial results conference call. All participants will be in listen only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to John Heilshorn of LHA. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Gary. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to American Superconductor Corporation's fourth quarter and full fiscal 2023 earnings conference call. I am John Heilshorn of LHA Investor Relations, AMSE's Investor Relations Agency of Record. With us on today's call are Daniel McGann, Chairman, President, Chief Executive Officer, and Daniel Cacibo, Department John Cacibo, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, and Treasurer. American Superconductor issued its earnings release for the fourth quarter fiscal year 2023 yesterday after the market closed. For those of you who have not yet seen the release, a copy is available in the Investor's page of the company's website at www.amse.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 first quarter of fiscal 2024 financial performance, plans and prospects constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor 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 and reported on Form 10-K for the year ended March 31, 2024, which the company filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on May 29, 2024, and the company's other reports filed with the SEC. These forward-looking statements represent management's expectations only as of today, It should not be relied upon as representing management's views of any date subsequent 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 referred to non-GAAP net income loss as a non-GAAP financial measure. The company believes non-GAAP net income 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 income loss can be found in the fourth quarter full fiscal year 2020 earnings press release the company issued to furnish the SEC last night on Form 8K. All of American Superconductors' press releases that SEC violates can be accessed of its website at www.amsc.com. With that, I will now turn the call over to Chairman, President, Chief Executive Officer Daniel McCann. Daniel.

Thanks, John. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I'll begin today by providing an update and sharing a few remarks on our business. John Cassiva will then provide a detailed review of our financial results for the fourth quarter and full fiscal year 2023. He will also provide guidance for the first quarter of fiscal 2024, which will end June 30, 2024. Following our remarks, we'll open up the line to questions from our analysts. I'll begin with a brief recap of our fourth quarter before discussing fiscal year 2023. Our fourth quarter results exceeded our forecast by nearly every measure, with remarkable revenue growth in both grid and wind segments, and a third consecutive quarter of non-GAAP net income. We saw revenue grow by more than 30 percent against the year-ago period as we reached a record level recently of revenue surpassing $40 million. Both wind and grid grew. Our wind business revenue increased significantly by more than 125 percent over the year-ago quarter. while our grid business revenue grew more than 20% for the same period. We believe this unprecedented quarterly revenue level and product mix illustrates our ability to generate cash through the improved operating leverage now built into our business. In the March ending quarter, our fourth quarter, we saw dramatic operating cash flow improvement when compared to our operating cash burn in the year-ago quarter. Gross margins doubled when compared to the year-ago quarter. We are being pushed by customers to accelerate shipments. Our manufacturing team and supply chain have been able to respond. We see this in wind, ship protection, and new energy across the entire business. Fiscal year 2023 was one of continued business diversification, outstanding operational performance, and strong overall growth. We saw total revenue grow over 35 percent to nearly $146 million. During the year, we booked on average over $37 million of new orders per quarter. We booked over 39 million of new orders during our fourth quarter. Of those fourth quarter orders, over $33 million came from our new energy power systems. Our robust 12-month backlog stands at $140 million at the end of March. We have decided to move away from issuing new energy power systems orders press releases. We're reporting orders during our earnings call. The initial purpose of these press releases was to have you understand and value our company's grid growth. We talked a lot about growth through grid. We feel we're past that point with growth now coming from both our new energy power systems and ship protection systems in our grid segment, as well as the return of growth in our wind segment. All parts of our business are now positioned for growth. Our prospective order sizes are increasing, and as I've mentioned, the balance sheet is supporting this. In fiscal year 2023, we saw diverse revenue in renewable, industrial, mining, Navy projects, as well as semiconductor. About one-third of our sales were to renewable projects. Industrials represented about a quarter. Metals, mining, and materials were over 15%. and the Navy was just over 10%. Semiconductor projects accounted for nearly 10%. Our diverse orders for the power grid include military resiliency markets. The orders serving the US military represent an exciting new opportunity for AMSC's new energy power systems. These orders have come and are expected to continue to come from serving the US military by providing efficient and reliable shore power to naval vessels. We reached nearly $20 million in military revenue, which includes both ship protection and new energy power systems revenue. We successfully delivered and tested the first ship protection system. The system is now operating on the ship. We delivered our second ship protection system, and we're currently delivering the third. In our wind business, we more than doubled our year-over-year growth as INOX business prospects demonstrate improvement, and our 3-megawatt ECS demonstrates its capabilities. Now I'll turn the call over to John Kasiba to review our financial results for the fourth quarter and full fiscal year 2023 and provide guidance for the first quarter of fiscal 2024, which will end June 30, 2024. John?