Anterix Inc.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Antarex second quarter fiscal year 2022 investor update. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode, and the floor will be open for your questions and comments following the presentation. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Natasha Veccarelli, Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications. Ma'am, the floor is yours.

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the Antarex second quarter fiscal year 2022 investor call. Joining me today are Rob Schwartz, our President and CEO, Ryan Gerbrandt, our COO, Tim Gray, our CFO, and Chris Gottman McCabe, our Chief Regulatory and Communications Officer. Before we begin, please note that during today's presentation, we may make forward-looking statements, either in our prepared remarks or in the associated question and answer session. These statements are based on current expectations or beliefs and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially. Risk factors that may impact our performance are identified in our most recent SEC filings. Following our prepared remarks, we will have an operator-led question and answer session. In addition, at the conclusion of today's call, A replay and transcript of our discussion will be posted to our investor relations website. With that, I'll turn the call over to Antarex's president and CEO, Rob Schwartz.

Thanks, Natasha. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining our Q2 investor call. Today, Tim and I will provide you with an update of the key elements of our continued progress since our last quarterly call, including the signing of our third contract, some additional market indications of our progress, and the authorization of a share repurchase program. Following our comments, we'll open it up for Q&A. As you will see, there's a great deal of activity across the industry that's fueling market momentum and our continued confidence. So let's dive into the details, starting with Evergy. As many of you read, on September 20th, we announced that we entered into our third 900 megahertz broadband spectrum contract. Evergy, a Midwest electric utility serving customers in Kansas and Missouri, executed a 20-year spectrum lease agreement with two additional 10-year renewal options. The lease spectrum spans Evergy's 28,000 square mile service territory, covering over 80 counties, including approximately 4 million people. The total prepaid lease payment of $30.2 million for the 20-year initial term was recently paid in full in October. This once again demonstrates the beneficial cash flow trend of the prepayment of our spectrum leases by utilities. Evergy plans to utilize the spectrum to deploy a private wireless network using LTE technology to provide critical broadband communications capabilities in support of their grid modernization initiatives. As highlighted during the recent investor day, Evergy intends to deploy smart devices across its service territory to improve system awareness and control, enable a large-scale expansion of secure interconnected devices, and is also implementing an advanced distribution management system, or ADMS, to automate outage restoration and optimize grid performance. So now in just the past nine months, we've secured three customer contracts for our spectrum with major investor-owned utilities. Ameren was first out of the gate in leasing our 900 megahertz spectrum, and then Sandio Gas and Electric validated the value of our spectrum proposition. And this Evergy transaction, we believe, now demonstrates the trend line toward the industry-wide adoption of 900 megahertz private LTE. Beyond my excitement in welcoming Evergy to the growing list of utility partners embracing the transformative potential of private LTE, there are several attributes of the deal and their journey that I want to point out. First, as we've previously discussed, broad adoption of private LTE networks will create incremental opportunity and benefits as individual utilities come together, first locally, then regionally, and ultimately nationwide. We call this the network of networks. Because Evergy's service territory borders Ameren in 25 Missouri counties, working collectively with these two forward-thinking utilities, we will be able to demonstrate a number of these networking benefits, including the value of interoperable communications, as well as the potential for sharing infrastructure along these border areas. It's also worth pointing out that Evergy has one of the complex systems as defined by the FCC. As we've said previously, and now demonstrated twice, We see these complex systems as part of our addressable market. Also worth noting, just like with SDG&E, Evergy did not conduct a 900 MHz pilot in advance of securing spectrum from Antarex, which is notable in that it further illustrates the multitude of ways we're seeing utilities explore these opportunities. There's a tremendous collaborative discussion occurring across the industry, and appropriately, the visionary first movers are sharing their experiences and lessons learned, and helping their peers at other utilities. This industry collaboration is what we had in mind when we made an early commitment to be a facilitator, bringing together key parties to share learnings, build scale, and drive innovation. Let me take you through three examples that further demonstrate this growing collaborative movement. One clear example is our successful launch and support of the Utility Broadband Alliance, or UBA. In fact, I had the great opportunity to attend in person the live and vibrant UBA Summit and Plugfest just two weeks ago in St. Louis, hosted by our partner, Utility Ameren. As many of you know, several years ago, we at Enterix, along with some of the leading minds of the utility private LTE sector, determined that there needed to be a forum to bring together the leaders of the utility industry, complemented by technology companies, to collectively solve the big challenges they're facing regarding utility need for broadband. We've had the privilege to collaborate with forward-thinking utilities, such as Ameren, Southern Company, NYPA, and National Grid, as well as technology innovators, including Burns & McDonald, Cisco, Ericsson, Federated, GE, Motorola, Nokia, and Sierra Wireless, to name a few. Since then, ABBA has experienced much growth and success, now fully independent, self-funded, and utility-led. At ABBA's recent sold-out event, over 400 utility sector leaders, including approximately 20 utilities, gathered to participate in a range of educational panels focused on private LTE, utility opportunities to support rural broadband, utility use cases, and many more topics. There was also a plug fest that demonstrated the interoperability of an expanding range and ecosystem of 900 megahertz devices and technologies. The excitement in the room was really palpable, and I want to emphasize this important point, as I know it can be difficult in this market to really understand the relevant signs of progress. I'll just say this is one of them. The trajectory of ABBA, the fact that there were 400 people safely participating in the middle of a pandemic, all collectively driving for solutions for immediate challenges. This is a direct sign of the collaborative movement underway. Another key side of the industry momentum, in May of this year, we launched the Enterix Active Ecosystem Program to build and grow a collaborative, thriving community of companies and innovators developing solutions, equipment, and services to help address utilities' broadband communications needs. This program launched with 37 companies participating and now has over 65, including telecommunications companies such as Nokia, Motorola Solutions, And Ericsson, providing radio access network infrastructure. Leading metering players, iTron and Landis and Gear. Chipset providers like Qualcomm and Sequans. And industry IoT solution providers such as Cisco and GE. Importantly also contributing value are innovative companies such as IndexAR and CognitiveSpark, breaking ground in emerging technologies of augmented reality and mixed reality. and so many others not only supporting all aspects of private networks, but also bringing fresh perspectives and energy. There is great interest in this collaborative approach to building the 900 MHz private LTE marketplace. In addition, as part of our active ecosystem effort, we have recognized that security, both cyber and physical, is key to a robust utility private LTE network. Accordingly, we have aligned our efforts to help coordinate, facilitate, and organize security solutions for utility consideration as part of their private LTE platform. As a result, you'll hear us soon announce the launch of the security initiative within our active ecosystem program. Security remains one of the top reasons why utilities are turning to private LTE, and our Interix goal is to drive further development and integration of solutions in the 900 MHz offerings. We look forward to sharing more with you on this topic soon. I also recently had the privilege of participating in a discussion hosted by the leading industry association for utilities, Edison Electric Institute, or IEI, through their Institute for Electric Innovation. I was honored to join thought leaders, including Ameren Chairman, President and CEO, Warner Baxter, and their Chief Digital Information Officer, Bhavani Amirthalingam, as well as Puget Sound Energy's President and CEO, Mary Kipp, Our engaging discussion focused on the benefit of Ameren's deployment of a private wireless communications network leveraging our 900-megahertz spectrum. Perhaps most exciting was Warner Baxter echoing our call for collective movement and highlighting the strong partner they found in Enterix. IEI has put together a valuable summary of the event, and a link to that can be found on their website as well as ours. We're also seeing continued significant positive momentum from policymakers. We've engaged with lawmakers and their staffs in coordination with some of the leading organizations in the industry, including Gridwise Alliance and EEI, to support provisions that could facilitate utilities grid modernization efforts. While the legislation still has not been passed by the House, we are excited that key elements of the Senate passed bill align with our belief that a modern grid needs a modern communications platform. We look forward to working with the agencies, the administration, members of Congress, and the utility industry as the legislation progresses. The path and the process that led to the development of this legislation has already enhanced our effort to educate both the industry and policymakers regarding the connection between a modern grid and a modern communication platform. Let me wrap up by saying that all of this collective industry activity, from legislation to the UBA and EEI events and Evergy agreements, support the industry movement towards 900 megahertz private LTE, and enhance our confidence in meeting our objectives and delivering on our mission of becoming the de facto wireless broadband solution provider for utilities. And with that, I'll turn it over to Tim.