Anterix Inc.

Good afternoon and welcome to the Antarex Second Quarter Investor Update Call. At this time, all participants have been placed on the listen-only mode and the floor will be open for questions and comments after the presentation. I would now like to turn the conference over to Natasha Vecchiarelli, Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to the Antarex Second Quarter Fiscal 2021 Investor Call. Joining me today are Morgan O'Brien, our Executive Chairman, Rob Schwartz, our President and Chief Executive Officer, Ryan Gerbrand, our Chief Operating Officer, and Tim Gray, our Chief Financial Officer. Before I turn the call over to Rob, please let me remind you that any statements we make during this call that are not based on historical facts constitute forward-looking statements and our actual results could differ materially from those implied. A discussion of the factors that may affect our future results is contained in our SEC filings, which are available on the investor relations page of our website. And as always, a replay and transcript of this call will also be made available on our website. Following our prepared remarks, we will open the call to take questions using the process the operator will describe. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Antarex's President and CEO, Rob Schwartz.

Thanks, Natasha, and good afternoon, everyone. Today we'll provide you with an update on the key elements of our continued progress and momentum since our last call. Given that this last call was just about two months ago, Ryan and I will provide a brief update, and then we'll go to Q&A with the full team. So with that, let's dive into the details. Today we're going to cover a few key topics. First, I'll provide an update on our near-term customer contracting process. Then I'll address the continued progress of our top-down state and federal strategy, which when combined with the tailwinds of increasing private LTE market interest, is providing for a catalyst for a potential collective movement by the utility industry for spectrum adoption. Ryan will then follow to discuss our customer pipeline and highlight the key indicators of progress and utility momentum we're seeing. I know Amrit is top of mind with many of our investors, so let me start with an update on where we stand. It's fair to say our contract completion process has been slower than we had anticipated. However, based on our continued progress, we remain confident that we'll get this first broadband customer contract signed shortly. The first one's always the hardest, and while the approval process is not in our direct control, the execution process continues to move forward with sponsorship from their top leadership. and we do continue to remain confident in our ability to report two to three signed agreements before our fiscal year end, March 31st, 2021. With that said, it's important not to lose sight of the fact that we are pioneering, with Ameren and others, a new and revolutionary idea for the utility industry that will have a major positive impact on our nation's electric grid and will establish a differentiated and sustainable opportunity for Enterix. But new innovation with large and risk-averse institutional companies takes time. The resulting value creation, we believe, is worthy of the patience required. As a team, we're used to overcoming challenges, even those that some seem to think are impossible to achieve. Just like the considerable patience that was required during the FCC process, we are confident that once again the reward will be well worth the wait. In parallel, we're also making strong progress with other near-term prospective customers, and despite COVID's impact and slowing decision cycles, we're experiencing strong demand. This can be seen through additional utilities that have recently been publicly vocal about their interest in private LTE and specifically 900 megahertz. New York Power Authority, or NYPA, the largest state public power utility in the U.S., recently announced a pilot of 900 megahertz broadband as part of its goal of becoming the first end-to-end digital utility. As part of this announcement, NYPA CEO Gil Quinones and I were interviewed on an Energy Central podcast discussing NYPA's digitization plan and the requirement for private LTE. During the interview, Gil was quoted as saying, we are excited in our partnership with Enterix and we are looking forward to having a successful pilot because our intent really is to deploy this In another public event, I participated in a fireside chat with the IT lead from Exelon, one of our nation's largest investor-owned utility companies in five states and the District of Columbia. At this fierce wireless event, he publicly identified for the first time both Exelon's experimental use of 900 MHz and their strong interest in private LTE. Additionally, Dominion Energy, the investor-owned utility operating in 16 states, was the eighth entity to file for an experimental license to pilot 900 megahertz private LTE. In their filing, Dominion explained that they plan to evaluate diverse use cases, including workforce mobility, substation communications, and telemetry and automation. Now I'd like to spend a few minutes providing you with an update on the key market forces and our top-down initiatives that we're leveraging to organize and foster the collective demand for our spectrum. As a result of the hard work of the Enterix team, fueled also by the recent conclusion of the CBRS auction in August, we're seeing a growing industry ecosystem focused on the benefits of private broadband networks, including from enterprises across numerous verticals and from major vendors. Fierce Wireless recently well summarized the compelling industry rationale in stating, quote, For many enterprises, private networks offer more control and security as data infrastructure stay on premise and traffic doesn't have to go over a public network. And while our team remains laser focused on closing customer contracts, we are leveraging this growing industry interest to talk with potential strategic partners. We're exploring ways to work together to create even more compelling solutions and in turn, add partner capabilities and heft to accelerate the adoption of 900 megahertz private networks. We're also making progress on our top-down programs aimed at impacting the utility industry as a whole at the state, federal, and industry association levels. By moving the industry towards a collaborative initiative of a nationwide network of private LTE networks, the value and the function of this collective approach can be considerably greater than the sum of the parts for all involved. We refer to this concept as the network effect, which was highlighted in a concept paper recently published by Navigant Guidehouse, articulating the vast scale benefits that are generated when the utility industry works together in the deployment of private LTE networks. The paper, which is accessible on our website, very effectively explains the many benefits of this network effect, and I encourage you to read it. A prime example of one of our collective initiatives that we're involved in with other industry leaders is raising awareness of the importance of allocating some of the expected federal infrastructure funding towards building private broadband communications networks. After the new year, Congress and the Biden administration are likely to consider several pieces of legislation to authorize funding that could help accelerate modernization of the electric grid. The framework and funding amounts of these bills is difficult to fully forecast at the moment. However, it's anticipated that environmental policy, renewable and distributed energy, broadband deployment, infrastructure upgrades, grid modernization, and cybersecurity will likely be key components of any legislation. We believe, especially during this time of COVID, that there's a strong case for the allocation of economic stimulus funds to enable these near-term job producing opportunities to build private utility broadband communications networks. In concert with a number of organizations and thought leaders, including our own advisory council, Interix has been educating policymakers regarding the link between a modern grid and modern communications. A funding mechanism that recognizes the value of private broadband can be instrumental in driving collective industry action and accelerating the use of our 900 megahertz spectrum. So before I turn over to Ryan, I'll close with these thoughts. While finalization of long-term customer contracts takes time, I'm more enthusiastic than ever about where we are and where we're going at Interix. Industry demand for private broadband networks is growing across sectors. We're on target to deliver on our goals. We have a growing and experienced leadership team that's executing on our plan, and we have a balance sheet. Thank you, Rob, and good afternoon, everyone.