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spk01: Good afternoon and welcome to Astra's third quarter 2022 financial results conference call. All participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, you'll need to press star 1 on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 again. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Andrew Xing, Vice President, Strategic Finance and Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
spk06: Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone.
spk09: And thank you for joining us for Astra's third quarter 2022 quarterly results call. After the market closed, we released our financial results. The results release is available on the SEC's website and our investor relations website at investor.astra.com. A supplemental presentation related to our third quarter 2022 results can also be found on the investor relations section of our website. This teleconference is also being broadcast over the internet and will be archived and available on our investor relations website. During our call today, we will reference non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe to be useful to investors as our management team uses these non-GAAP financial measures to plan, monitor, and evaluate our financial performance. These non-GAAP financial measures exclude certain items and should not be considered as a substitute for comparable GAAP financial measures. Astra's methods of computing these non-GAAP financial measures may differ from similar non-GAAP financial measures used by other companies. A description of these items along with the reconciliation of our non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP financial measures can be found in our results release. Today's call will also contain forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements refer to future events, including Astra's future financial outlook. When used in this call, the words anticipate, could, enable, estimate, intend, expect, believe, potential, will, should, project, and similar expressions as they relate to Astra are, as such, a forward-looking statement. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, and as a result, Astra's actual future results and performance may differ materially from those discussed in this call. We encourage you to review our filings with the SEC in which we describe the factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations, including those updated risk factors included in our quarterly report on Form 10-Q. Finally, I would like to remind everybody that this call will be recorded and will also be made available for replay via link available on the investor relations section of our website. With that, I would now like to turn the call over to Chris Kemp, Astra's founder, chairman, and chief executive officer.
spk05: Chris? Thanks, Andrew. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'm excited to also have our incoming chief financial officer, Axel Martinez, and our chief business officer, Martin Atik, on the call with us today. During this call, we will review our operational and financial performance during the third quarter, review guidance for Q4, and provide an update on our launch services and spacecraft engine businesses. Now, during the third quarter, we've made some difficult but necessary decisions which will allow us to focus on our near-term priorities with the appropriate level of resources while also extending our financial runway. Our operating plan is now fully focused on selling and delivering Astra spacecraft engines and the successful first flight of our new rocket. We will discuss the progress we've made toward achieving each of these goals during this call. In the past quarter, we've announced 237 cumulative committed orders of the Astra spacecraft engine as of today, an increase of over 130% last quarter, including orders from Airbus OneWeb satellites, Maxar, and Astrascale, among others. We believe our ongoing conversations with customers and increased order book validate our view that the Astra spacecraft engine is one of the leading in-space propulsion systems currently available in the market. We achieved a positive gap gross margin for the first time in the company's history. We continue to make progress towards the development of Launch System 2, which I'll speak about more in a moment. We continue to build out of a new 60,000 square foot facility in Sunnyvale, California, dedicated to the production of Astra spacecraft engines. We plan on moving into this facility this quarter and completing the build-out in Q1 23. We strengthened our core leadership team, including hiring Axel Martinez as our new chief financial officer and Matthew Sant as our new general counsel. And we ended the quarter with approximately $151 million in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities. This quarter, with the backdrop of continued macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty, increasing inflation and interest rates, and equity market volatility, the team has prioritized resources on our core businesses. Specifically, we are focusing investments in delivering reliable spacecraft engines to our customers, which is rapidly becoming an important revenue stream for Astra, while focusing launch system development on reliability and a successful first flight of Rocket 4. We've also decided to reduce our near-term investments in space services to direct resources to support the growth of our core launch services and space products businesses. We continue to explore opportunities to develop or partner in the development of our space services offerings as it remains a significant part of our long-term business strategy. Now, I'd like to provide an update on the progress we've made on the development of Launch System 2. As a reminder, last quarter we announced that we've increased the design point of Rocket 4 to deliver up to 600 kilograms to mid-inclination low-Earth orbit over the course of the product lifecycle. Launch System 2 represents an important development for Astra to support satellite operators globally in deploying space-based technologies at scale. We focused our resources on designing and delivering our new launch system with improved reliability and operational excellence, increased payload capacity, and an increased launch cadence. We continue to expect test flights for Rocket 4 to begin in the latter part of 2023. Since our last earnings call, we have completed the first design loop of Launch System 2, including Rocket 4, the ground system, and software. We provided an update on this progress, which you can view at astra.com slash launch update 1. We provisioned critical test infrastructure, including upgrades to the first stage engine test stand and commissioned new launch system valve test stands and other test infrastructure at our Alameda factory. And we designed and released tooling required to manufacture the Rocket 4 stage propellant tanks. We expect to continue releasing important details and development milestones in the coming weeks and months, including the release of our first payload user guide for Rocket 4, which will allow customers to better understand the capabilities of our rocket and features of our launch service. I'll now provide some additional detail on our space products business. As we discussed last quarter, Astra leverages its mass manufacturing capabilities to develop and produce products required for the next generation satellites and space services. While our launch services will bring customer payloads to space, the Astra spacecraft engine is a key space product that delivers satellites into their final orbits, helps them maintain their orbits, avoid collisions, and ultimately de-orbit them at the end of their life to reduce space debris. I wanted to discuss the progress we've made with the Astra spacecraft engine. Since the last earnings call, we've announced an additional 134 committed orders for the Astra spacecraft engine since June 30th, 2022. This adds up to 237 cumulative committed orders since July 1st, 2021, inclusive of the 14 committed orders acquired as part of the Apollo Fusion acquisition. We've completed delivery of our second full customer order, and the majority of the spacecraft engines being delivered are for critical national security programs signifying their importance in the space tech ecosystem. We continue to see strong customer demand based on our committed orders and ongoing conversations with customers. As a reminder, orders are delivered to customers over a mutually agreed timeline, which is typically 9 to 12 months from contract signing. Now I'll turn it over to Axel to review our financials and guidance. Axel?
spk02: Thank you, Chris, and good afternoon, everyone. First, I am pleased to join you all on my first earnings call as incoming Chief Financial Officer of Astra. I am excited to bring what I've learned from scaling hyper-growth technology companies, including Google and Uber, to Astra as we work to build a sustainable and scalable business. Let me now review our Q3 results. As a reminder, all non-revenue financial figures we will discuss today are adjusted, unless we state them as a GAAP measure. You will find a reconciliation from GAAP to non-GAAP results in today's press release. Revenues in Q3 were $2.8 million, driven by the delivery of spacecraft engines, as we now have completed the second Astra spacecraft engine program. Cost of revenues related to Astra spacecraft engines was $1.1 million. This resulted in our first GAAP quarterly gross profit since Astra's founding, totaling $1.7 million. GAAP operating expenses totaled $201.4 million compared to $67.8 million last quarter. The difference was primarily attributed to one-time items that I will discuss shortly. GAAP operating expenses included R&D expenses of $32.8 million, reflecting our continuing investments in our core products. Sales and marketing expenses of $4.1 million reflecting investments in ongoing sales efforts for launch services and our spacecraft engine, and G&A expenses of $19.2 million, reflecting ongoing investments in key systems and technologies, among others. Now, let's talk about all of the one-time items during Q3 2022. During the third quarter, the company reorganized from one to two reporting segments, and as a result, assign assets and liabilities to each of the reporting segments based on each segment's operating activities. The reorganization, together with a sustained decrease in the company's share price, existence of substantial doubt about the company's ability to continue as a going concern, and macroeconomic factors, resulted in the company's determination that triggers were present, therefore indicating that the carrying amounts of certain company assets may not be recoverable. As a result, we recorded a non-cash impairment charge on long-lived assets of $70.3 million related to property, plant, and equipment, a $58.3 million impairment of goodwill, a $2.1 million impairment of our trademark assets, and a $2.7 million charge related to definite lived intangible assets. All these one-time items total $133.4 million. Additionally, a loss on change in fair value of contingent consideration was $11.9 million as a result of higher revenues forecasted in estimating the fair value of contingent consideration. A $1 million inventory adjustment related to Rocket 3 was also included in R&D expenses. Astra also benefited in the third quarter from a one-time $4.3 million employee retention tax credit. We expect to receive the cash payment from this credit in the first half of 2024. As a result, total one-time items for the quarter were $142 million. Given these one-time non-cash items, on a GAAP basis, our third quarter net loss was 199.1 million. On a non-GAAP basis, third quarter adjusted net loss was 45.2 million. Q3 adjusted EBITDA was a loss of 41.4 million, a $7 million improvement compared to last quarter. Third quarter additions to capital expenditures were $5.5 million and primarily related to the continued investment in the development of our launch services business and delivery of our spacecraft engines. We ended the quarter with cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities of $150.5 million and no debt outstanding. In addition, we also continued to evaluate various sources of capital as we carefully managed our financial runway. On October 6, Astra received a deficiency notice from NASDAQ, as our per share closing bid price remained under $1 for 30 consecutive trading days. While we cannot directly control short-term market volatility, we are taking measures to increase top-line growth, decrease expenses, and add capital to strengthen our balance sheet, which we believe will ultimately be reflected in our share price. Next, I'll provide an outlook for our fourth quarter ending December 31st, 2022. As Chris mentioned, we focus our operating plan on the delivery of spacecraft engines and the successful first flight of rocket four, allowing us to optimize our operating plan and increase our financial runway amidst market volatility. As a result, as of today, we have reduced our existing headcount by approximately 16%. Payroll savings from this headcount reduction are expected to be realized beginning in Q1 of 2023. As a reminder, our fourth quarter guidance and all guidance is subject to various important cautionary factors referenced in the section below entitled forward-looking statements. In our form 10-K, including risks and uncertainties associated with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the decision to discontinue the product of launch vehicles supported by Launch System 1.0. There is also risk associated with elevated levels of inflation in our supply chain as it relates to geopolitical tensions, a dynamic share across many companies and industries. However, we believe our investment in our factory and vertically integrated manufacturing processes are one of the factors that help mitigate these risks. Now, we will provide future guidance. In the fourth quarter, we currently expect adjusted EBITDA loss to be between $42 and $45 million. Basic shares outstanding to be between 268 and 270 million shares. And capital additions to be between $5 and $7 million. As we shift our near-term priorities to focus on our space products and launch services businesses, our guidance will focus on the metrics that we use to manage our business. Thus, we will not be providing guidance on depreciation and amortization, stock-based compensation, and cash taxes at this time. On the Astra spacecraft engine, you should continue to expect quarterly variability in shipments. until we began ramping up production to support committed customer deliveries beginning in Q1 2023. As of today, we have cumulative committed orders for 237 Astra spacecraft engines, including 14 units we acquired with the Apollo Fusion acquisition on July 1st, 2021. The vast majority of our spacecraft engines have been ordered in 2022. and we continue to see strong customer demand for our spacecraft engines. As a reminder, spacecraft engines are typically delivered 9 to 12 months from contract signing, and Astra recognizes revenue only upon delivery of the spacecraft engines to our customers. We continue to expect the remainder of 2022 and 2023 to be transformative periods for Astra as we further develop our new launch system and scale production for our spacecraft engines. I will now turn the call back over to Chris.
spk05: Thanks, Axel, and we're glad to have you on the team. Before we conclude the call, I'd like to personally thank all of the Astra employees who have been impacted by the headcount reduction. Today, we made the very difficult decision to part ways with some very talented individuals. I'll always appreciate the contributions and the impact that you've had on me and Astra as a whole. And finally, I'd like to thank Kellen for her leadership in helping Astra become a public company and our finance organization's hard work as we've made it through this transition. Astra is now well positioned to focus and execute on shipping and developing our core product offerings. I'm excited to continue to share updates in the coming weeks and months as we deliver on our mission to improve life on Earth from space. With that, operator, let's open the call for questions.
spk01: Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star one again. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. And our first question comes from Edison Yu from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
spk08: Hey, everybody. Thanks for taking the questions. I had three, if I may, two more strategic, one financial, On the strategic side, could you remind us about the agreement with OneWeb and provide maybe some color on the potential to get supplied or win on Gen 2, on the Gen 2 constellation?
spk05: Sure. So the agreement is with Airbus OneWeb satellites. And I've got Martin in the room, so I'm going to let him provide some more color on that.
spk03: Yeah. Hey, Addison. The agreement that we announced with Airbus OneWeb Satellites is for their Aero bus platform. As folks know in the market, Airbus OneWeb Satellites provided the OneWeb Gen 1 satellite buses, and they have not yet made a determination on who's going to supply the, or has not been announced, who's going to supply the OneWeb Gen 2 buses. And so we don't have anything further to add on top of that.
spk06: Do you have any idea when that decision will be made?
spk07: I don't.
spk06: Okay.
spk08: Second strategic, I think in the past you had mentioned you submitted something about the spectrum and seeing a lot about the spectrum, and it sounds like you're sort of de-emphasizing that now. Is there any sort of kind of value that you had there with anything? I don't recall the details of the original plan, but just wondering if there's any sort of like residual value that you can sort of salvage with the spectrum that you had, I think, wanted before.
spk06: Well, spectrum allocation is a long process.
spk05: And I think one of the things that we tried to make clear here is that space services is the North Star for the companies. and some of the space technology and the space launch services are enabling of that long-term vision. But given the contracts that we have on hand for both spacecraft engines and for launch services, given the current economic climate, cost of capital, availability of capital, it's pretty clear our focus should be on delivering for customers that have purchased spacecraft engines and launches. And so we're really just prioritizing the investment of our both capital and human resources in the short-term goals for the company right now over the next year or so. Now, that could change. Should we secure additional financing? Markets change. Should we secure funding for any of these programs or projects? But given right now, what we want to do for our shareholders and for our customers is focus, focus, focus.
spk06: And what you're seeing is you're seeing an emphasis on what's in front of us. Understood. Understood and appreciate it.
spk08: And then last one for me, just a quick financial one. I know, you know, it's a tough, it's a tough restructuring, 16%. Any way to quantify the benefit next year in terms of how much you're saving on OPEX? Any color that would be appreciated. Thanks.
spk02: Yeah, well, so thank you for the question. While we're not providing guidance at this point for 2023, Our plan, as Chris mentioned, right, is to focus our operations in our top two priorities, which is the spacecraft engines and the development of the new launch system. At the same time, we want to continue, you know, optimizing our cost structure. And our goal is to, our plan is to increase our runway well into 2024.
spk07: Great. Thank you.
spk01: As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. And our next question comes from Ron Epstein from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
spk04: Good evening. Good afternoon, guys. I guess a couple of questions. What assets are being sold? Kind of curious about that. So what's being sold?
spk02: Actually, no assets are being sold. All we did was just a revaluation. Like, as you know, many companies are particularly with, you know, capital markets being what they are, what's happening to the stock market, companies are revaluing their assets. And so all the one-time charges are related to that for the most part, right? $133 million was just related to that one specific revaluation.
spk04: Got it, got it, got it. And then, you know, Are there risks to losing other key people? Typically, when rifts happen, it's not so great for morale. It looks like Mike Cassidy left. He was the Apollo CEO. How should we think about that?
spk05: Speaking of Apollo, that was a company we acquired in the development stage. They hadn't tested the product yet. Over the past year and a half, we've seen that product becomes paid qualified. And that team has been transitioned to a team that's focused on quality engineering and production and scale. And so it's a process that you'll see with the development stage company being brought into a company where we have customers like Maxar, Airbus and WebSatellites that really demand a level of focus on quality and scale that you're not going to see it as a small early stage company. So as a result, folks like Mike, who are great at starting companies, I think this is his fifth startup, Mike's going to go off and start another company. And that was always anticipated by Astra. To your broader question, I think that we've grown really fast. I mean, keep in mind that as we announced our intent to go public, we had about 150 people. We now had over 400 people. And we tripled the size of the company recently. in the time of a year. So I think what we're doing here is we're focusing. And through that focus, I think we're going to give the team here a new level of energy and intensity around flying Rocket 4 and having that flight work and on delivering these spacecraft engines for our customers. And I think, frankly, it's going to energize the team to have that focus. And we're pretty excited about it, frankly.
spk02: And if I can add to it too, you know, we have an incredible leadership team that goes well beyond the people you see in our website. And all these incredible individuals were very much part of this kind of development of our strategic plan. You know, since my arrival, we've been working with some incredible people. And I think what you find at Astra is we have some of the brightest minds working in a really unique opportunity. And so they're all very much part of this process. And so, you know, this is not something that was done at the C-suite. It was done something across the organization. And so it really reflects the commitment that we have towards each other. And so this is why we feel like, you know, everyone's bought into what we're trying to do.
spk06: Yeah.
spk05: Finally, I want to add one thing, Ron. When we talk to employees and we talk to customers, frankly, one of the most important things is that we have the time to deliver on the contracts that we have. We have time to come back and fly Rocket 4 successfully. And so when we set out to do this, we looked at what gives us well into 2024 from a runway perspective. And it required some tough choices to be made. And I think the team understands that. And the team that we have here, which is over 300 people strong, is an incredibly talented team that frankly appreciates the fact that they have the runway to deliver for our customers. And so I think it's going to actually increase our team's level of confidence in leadership and the commitment to the mission.
spk04: And then maybe one little more detailed accounting question. What's the contingent consideration in the liabilities?
spk06: Yeah, that's related to the Apollo acquisition.
spk02: It's an earn-out related to shareholders, related to the number of units that we are able to ship over the next year.
spk04: Got it.
spk07: Got it, got it, got it. Okay. Thank you. Excellent. Thanks, Rob.
spk01: We have no further questions in Q. This will conclude today's conference call. Thank you, everyone, for their participation. You may now disconnect.
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