Berkshire Grey, Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Berkshire Gray Q3 2021 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Sarah Buda, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining Berkshire Gray's third quarter 2021 earnings conference call. Earlier today, we issued a press release announcing our third quarter results as well as other press releases. The releases are available on our Investor Relations website at ir.berkshiregray.com. Leading today's discussion will be Berkshire Gray's founder and chief executive officer, Tom Wagner, and our chief financial officer, Mark Fidler. Following management's prepared remarks, we will open up the call to questions. Before we get started, we would like to inform you that certain statements made during this conference call may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. Future operating performance and financial results of the business may differ materially from those expressed or implied in any forward-looking statements due to various uncertainties and risk factors. Information concerning these uncertainties and risk factors is contained in our filings with the SEC, including our S-1 filed on September 1, 2021, our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and in our other filings with the SEC. Forward-looking statements included in this call represent the company's view on November 11, 2021, and we do not commit to update these statements. As a reminder, we will be referring to some non-GAAP financial measures during today's call. A detailed reconciliation of GAAP and non-GAAP measures can be found in our earnings press release today, which will be furnished to the SEC and is available now on our IR website. These non-GAAP measures are an addition and not a substitute for or superior to measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP and should not be considered an alternative to any performance measure derived in accordance with GAAP. With that, I will turn the call over to Tom Wagner, our CEO.

Good morning, and thank you, Sarah. At Berkshire Gray, we make industry-leading AI-enabled robotic systems that fill e-commerce and retail orders. and handle e-commerce packages as they make their way to your door. Our robotic systems automate some of the most labor-intensive and difficult tasks in fulfillment and logistics, including picking and packing items to fill orders, moving and organizing inventory, and preparing items to be loaded onto trucks. The tailwinds for our business are terrific as the explosive growth in e-commerce and persistent labor shortages make automating the supply chain mission critical. This is our first earnings call as a public company. We're excited to share that we are on track with our long-term growth plans and have made strong progress commercially so far this year. Today I'm going to talk about four areas, orders and revenue, market drivers and tailwinds, new products and technology, and scaling our team and our partnerships. With respect to orders and revenue, As expected, we're seeing more repeat orders from our large blue-chip anchor customers as we roll out solutions to more facilities and their networks and their back-of-store operations. This is excellent progress and aligns with our planned long-term trajectory. Year-to-date, we have new orders of approximately 70 million, with approximately 85% of those orders being repeat customers. This validates that our customers are seeing good returns on their investment with Berkshire Gray. Most recently, we received a $25 million repeat order from an Anchor customer for tens of our e-commerce package handling systems. These systems will go into multiple locations, and there are many additional locations yet for us to automate. These systems also apply to operations in both e-commerce, and package handling logistics. This rollout or adoption effect is similar to what we saw earlier this year when we received a repeat order for $23 million plus from a large global retailer for our same-day grocery fulfillment systems. These will also be rolled out to many of their locations with many additional locations yet to automate. We're also making good progress with new customers. some have systems being installed, some have orders under negotiation, and many more are potential business in our pipeline. Recently, we received 11 million in orders from new customers. Total orders since inception are over 184 million through October. This is particularly strong considering we only left stealth mode in Q4 of 2018 and only started to build our sales and commercial teams in earnest in 2020. Progress is strong. We are customer proven with differentiated technologies and demonstrated ROI, and we have received repeat orders from major customers. This strong commercial progress has resulted in our highest backlog yet of 113 million as of early October. We are where we expected to be with respect to our general commercial progress to date, and particularly with orders and backlog. Revenue for Q3 is solid at approximately $19 million, representing year-over-year top-line growth of approximately $16 million. This is also a sequential increase of $14 million from last quarter. Now I'm going to shift gears and talk about market conditions, new products and technology, and how we're scaling for growth. When it comes to our market drivers, macro forces continue to provide strong tailwinds for our business. Changes in consumer expectations due to the Amazon effect put enormous pressure on all retailers, e-commerce and brick and mortar alike, to ensure that the right goods are flowing to the right places at the right times and the right quantities to meet consumer expectations. This flow of goods needs to be extremely efficient to be competitive. Recall, Amazon uses robots in their operations and is operating with them at scale. Labor scarcity, which was a top industry issue even before the pandemic, has become even more of an issue today. Automation is required to be competitive. It's not a nice-to-have but a must-have, and we offer our customers competitive advantage with robots automating functions that previously had to be done manually. Our technology crosses the gap, and makes functions like robotic picking, packing, and sortation useful in a commercial setting. As such, the TAM for what we do is enormous, 280 billion today, and our 184 million in orders, while very exciting, is only the beginning of our growth. On the product and technology fronts, thus far this year we've announced six new offerings, derived from our industry-leading technology suite of AI, robotic picking, and robotic movement or mobility. One such offering is the RPP, or Robotic Pick and Pack, where robots pick items from inventory and pack them directly into outbound boxes to fill orders. Another is what we call the RSPW, or Robotic Shuttle Footwall, which automates a key step in e-commerce order fulfillment and improves operational and performance of this function by up to 300% when compared to a conventional put wall. Another important product announcement we made this year is the second generation of our mobile fulfillment product, or MRF. This second generation includes new mobile robots plus improvements to our AI orchestration software that controls and coordinates the activities of fleets of robots. This enables the aggregate system to meet throughput, and other performance objectives. I'm pleased to report that these new robots are in service and filling orders as we speak. All of these products can be used with other Berkshire Gray products, with legacy systems, and with other third-party equipment like ASRS solutions. These new products are created from our proprietary technology suite. On that front, we combine trade secret AI software with patented hardware to create products. We automate that which was not automatable, and there is a material moat around what we do. Our technical team has over a thousand years of experience in AI and robotics. We have over 30 PhDs, and across the company, more than 75% of all employees have technical and scientific backgrounds. We recently received 11 more patent awards, which brings us to 93 patents in total, up from 72 earlier this year, and we have well over 300 filings. In parallel, our AI continues to evolve. While many of our AI advances are a trade secret and competitive advantage for us, I can share that recent progress includes upgraded software modules that enable the robots to densely pack outbound containers. Great space utilization supports even better ROI for our customers, and helps to conserve packaging, which is super from an environmental perspective. We continue to invest in our leading technology and have more market-changing products in our roadmap. In terms of team scaling and go-to-market, we have enormous opportunities in our market and are scaling to meet those opportunities. We've hired over 160 people this year in functions ranging from engineering to sales, marketing, and solution deployments. Our go-to-market strategy consists of landing and expanding with our Blue Chip Anchor customers, leveraging partners through the Berkshire Gray Partner Alliance, and expanding our new customer base through direct sales. We've made significant progress on all three of these fronts. Our business units are organized into five verticals, retail, e-commerce, grocery, 3PL, and parcels, and each has a dedicated manager, sales team, and customer success team. Our general managers have, on average, 30 years of experience and deep industry knowledge in a variety of verticals. Our partnerships program complements our direct sales activities, expands our range of capabilities and offerings, and helps us to scale deployment operations. We're currently seeing real traction with this program, both from a customer engagement perspective and from interested partners. So far this year, we've signed nine new partnership agreements, ranging from systems integrators such as AHS to global enterprise technology providers like ATOS. Looking forward to sharing with you our continued progress on these fronts. Overall, we're excited by both our progress this year and that it aligns with our long-term trajectory. The macros around the business are strong. We're customer-proven. and we're seeing repeat orders from Blue Chip Anchor customers according to plan. We're also adding new customers through direct sales and partnering into the larger ecosystem. Orders through October are 70 million, and we have 184 million in orders to date. Great progress from our perspective, and this is only the beginning. Mark, over to you.

Thanks, Tom, and good morning, everyone. I'd like to start off by providing some more detail around the substantial commercial progress that we've made this year so far. Orders to date were $184 million, an increase of over $70 million or over 60% from the end of 2020, and an increase of over $130 million or approximately 250% over the third quarter of 2020. Backlog is $113 million, growth of $43 million from the beginning of this year. and more than $100 million higher than the third quarter of 2020. As a reminder, we defined backlog as signed contracts with systems yet to be delivered and installed. This backlog includes two contracts signed shortly after the end of the third quarter. We previously communicated that both orders and revenues would be back-end loaded in 2021, so we are where we expected to be with our commercial progress so far this year. We also continue to make substantial progress expanding our relationships with our blue-chip Anchor customers, as Tom noted in his remarks. Approximately 85% of our backlog consists of Anchor customers, and 85% of our orders so far this year represent follow-on orders from Anchor customers as well. This is generally in line with our plan for this year and supports our strategy of expanding our long-term Anchor customer relationships. Also, as part of our plan, we're investing in the vertical teams focused on acquiring new customers. Our early results are encouraging and align with our long-term growth strategy of adding future anchor customers from each of our target verticals. There is strong interest from the market in our solutions. We'll continue to update you on our progress with respect to orders and backlog each quarter. Revenues for the third quarter of 2021 were approximately $18.8 million. The significant increase in revenue for the third quarter represents an increase of 750% over the same period in 2020 and an increase of 317% sequentially from the second quarter of this year. Turning to other operational metrics, gross profit for the third quarter in 2021 was negative 2.7 million or negative 15%. During the third quarter, we commenced deployment at some project sites with technology that was being installed for the first time. And I will note as well, COVID and customer global supply chain issues still adds complexity to these installations on site. As a result, and since our revenue base is still relatively small, gross profit for the quarter was primarily impacted by higher than expected costs at these sites. We fully expect that as our revenues continue to grow, our gross margins will improve, and we are confident in our ability to achieve our long-term gross margin targets of approximately 50%. Moving to operating expenses, 2021 continues to be a year of investment. In particular, we're making investments in our go-to-market and engineering and operations teams to best position us to capitalize on our massive $280 billion addressable market. Total operating expenses in the third quarter were $44.2 million. Excluding stock-based compensation, total operating expenses were approximately $30.3 million in the quarter, representing an approximately $4.6 million increase sequentially from the second quarter in 2021. The increase in total operating expenses excluding stock-based compensation was driven primarily by increases in headcount. And for perspective, as of September 30th, 2021, we had about 400 people, and we hired about 160 people globally since the beginning of 2021 to gear up for our growth, including senior leaders in sales, engineering, and operations. Although we expect to continue to add resources, we do expect that the pace of new hires will slow in the coming quarters. Adjusted EBITDA, which is defined as loss from operations adjusted for depreciation and stock-based compensation expense, was negative $32.3 million for the third quarter of 2021. Total stock-based compensation for the third quarter of 2021 was $13.9 million, and depreciation expense was about $800,000. Moving to the balance sheet, We ended the quarter with a solid cash position of $203 million. Capital spending was about $600,000, and we expect capital spending will be less than $4 million for the full year. Looking ahead for the full year of 2021, we expect to deliver revenue of approximately $50 million. The entire amount of remaining revenue is under contract for this year. That said, because we recognize revenue on a percentage of completion basis, There can be variability in the actual revenue recognition driven primarily by customer deployment schedules, which, again, could be impacted by ongoing COVID issues and global supply chain issues or other customer scheduling issues. So to summarize, we are growing orders and backlog as expected, and we remain very bullish in our long-term growth plan. We look forward to executing on that plan, and we're excited about the successes we've made to date. and we remain enthusiastic about the trajectory of our business. Now, operator, we're ready to turn it over for Q&A.

As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. To withdraw your question, press the pound key. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of John Walsh from Credit Suisse. Your line is now open.

Hi. Good morning.

Good morning, John.

Hi. Congratulations on the first quarter public here. I'm sure no easy or no small task accomplished.

Thank you.

Wanted to ask a little bit about what you're seeing with your own kind of supply chains and as you think about delivering on kind of the orders and the backlog that you have. Can you give us any kind of color around the phasing of that backlog? How much visibility do you have in the next year? And then kind of do you have all the chips and the components that you need to kind of deliver and execute on that? Obviously, you gave us the comment on Q4 that all those revenues are already under contract.

Yeah, so, you know, We can start off by, you know, giving you some facts, right? So we talked about backlog being 113 million. And, you know, as we exit this year, we expect that about 90 of that will be in backlog, which we feel really good about. Now, other orders that we may receive in Q4 and into Q1 could also potentially contribute to revenue next year. But obviously, what can really impact that would be things that are not in our control, things like ongoing COVID issues, ongoing global supply chain issues, directly or indirectly, and customer schedules. So the exact timing and when we would realize those revenues could be impacted by those factors. But the facts are, You know, we're at $113 million in backlog now. We expect to exit this year with $90 million, which we feel pretty good about. But there are some of these uncertainties that could impact the exact timing of realization of that $90 million.

Great. Thank you. And then maybe a bigger picture question here. And you touched on it, obviously, in your prepared remarks around labor and wage inflation. I think, you know, last time you talked at the Analyst Day, you put some metrics around, you know, customer ROIs, et cetera. If we were to kind of mark to market for where we're seeing wage inflation go, can you just talk to us a little bit how some of those ROIs to your customers, have they changed at all? You know, just any kind of perspective on that.

Sure. Thank you. When we do the ROI modeling with customers, the main inputs are labor savings, capacity increases, and process efficiencies. Labor is one of the larger levers in that calculation. To the extent that wages rise, this improves customer ROI and is reflected directly in those calculations.

Okay. Is there any kind of rule of thumb on kind of the payback if labor inflation is higher by 10% that cuts the payback or improves the ROI? Do you have any kind of rule of thumb for investors and ourselves?

It's going to vary greatly from customer to customer. One analysis that we did you know, very briefly with one particular customer, you know, showed that a $1 increase in the hourly wage rate would, you know, result in like a half a percentage point in return for them. So, you know, it's pretty big. And, you know, I think as wages rise, we're seeing more and more of a sense of urgency in with the customers and trying to get things done and automate.

Great. I will pass it along to my fellow analysts. Appreciate it. Look forward to seeing you guys next week.

Thank you. Likewise.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Greg Palm from Craig Hallam Capital. Your line is now open.

Yeah, thanks. Good morning, everyone. And, again, I'll offer my congratulations on your first report as a public company and just the continued progression so far.

Great. Thank you, Greg.

I guess sort of along those lines, I'm assuming your entrance into the public markets has probably helped broaden awareness for the company and what sort of solutions you have. I mean, can you talk about what your current pipeline is Looks like, I know you gave us some metrics as of, I think, February or earlier this year, and just curious how that's trended to date.

So, you know, we think that, you know, orders and backlog are really the more meaningful metric to track because that's really sort of commitments for future revenue. And, you know, when you look at, when we measure ourselves on that basis and the progress that we've made this year at $70 million, you know, we're quite pleased with that. And What that's really showing is our ability to grab the market opportunity as we expected in a relatively short period of time. It's only really been in the last 18 to 24 months or so where we really began to build our commercial team. Orders and backlog are really the metric. What we can say qualitatively, though, is that the number of companies that we've been engaged with continues to grow. We're targeting over 1,000 companies out there globally that we believe have a need for automation. And a lot of folks have reached out to us as well. We're as engaged as ever with our anchor customers and with their rollout plans for automation in our technology. And I think that's sort of proven out in the numbers that we've talked about today with the repeat orders. So generally speaking, there's this sort of general rising tide. in terms of interest and progress building our pipeline.

Yeah, that makes sense. And just given all the trends around labor scarcity and wages going up, et cetera, the last few months, do you think that makes at least some of your anchor customers more aggressive in the timing of their rollout of automation or not necessarily?

Greg, this is a conversation that actually I think you and me have had before, which is there's the prior to the pandemic and prior to the current conditions where labor is highly exacerbated, there is already tremendous energy in the system. And so for the folks that planned into that, they were already in high gear. Additional energy comes into the system. due to the current labor conditions and due to the pandemic, accelerating some of our shopping trends and our behaviors as consumers. But for the anchors, the big folks, I would say that already were they on alert, and they continue to be on alert, and we continue to be providing them with systems. We're bullish on everything we've spoken about, but they were already in motion.

Yep. Got it. Okay. And then the $25 million repeat order, can you just confirm, is that going to be for fiscal 22 installation? And I guess in terms of how many locations might be appropriate going forward, it sounds like there's a lot more locations left to automate. Is that so?

Yes, so the order is targeted at delivery in 2022, subject to some of the issues that Mark pointed out, which is we always have to plan the schedules with customer at another level of detail, right? It's tens of locations. With that same customer, there are hundreds of other locations that are amenable to automation of this type.

Got you. So tens of locations, meaning actual addresses or locations inside a specific facility?

No, I understand the question. Actual addresses, tens of different facilities.

Interesting. Okay, great. All right, well, I'll leave it there. Best of luck going forward. Thanks. Thank you.

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. To withdraw your question, press the pound key. At this time, I'm showing no further questions. I would like to turn the call back over to Tom Wagner for closing remarks.

Well, thank you all for joining today. If you have any questions, please reach out to the team. We hope you have a good rest of the day, and this concludes our call. Thank you. Thank you.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.