CVD Equipment Corporation

Greetings, and welcome to the CVD Equipment 2022 First Quarter Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. We will begin with some prepared remarks, followed by a question-and-answer session. Presenting on the call today will be Emmanuel Lachios, President and CEO and member of the CVD Board of Directors, and Thomas McNeil, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. We have posted our earnings press release and call replay information to the investor relations sections of our website at www.cvdequipment.com. Before I begin, I'd like to remind you that many of the comments made on today's call contain forward-looking statements, including those related to future financial performance, market growth, total available market, demand of our products and general business conditions, and outlook. These forward-looking statements are based on certain assumptions, expectations, and projections and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties described in our press release and in our filings with the SEC, including but not limited to the risk factor section of our 10-K for the year ended December 31st, 2021. Actual results may differ materially from those described during this call. In addition, all forward-looking statements are made as of today, and we undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements based on new circumstances or revised expectations. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Manny. Manny?

Thank you, Doug. Welcome to our CVD Equipment Corporation quarterly conference call. My name is Manny Laccio, CEO and President, and I'm pleased to be presenting to you today regarding our first quarter 2022 performance and important company developments and pertinent information related to our business. As we will be providing you substantive information Your thoughts are important to us, and we look forward to your questions at the end of our conference call in the Q&A session. The first four months of 2022 have been an exciting period for all the stakeholders of CVD Equipment. Having spent a majority of 2021 transitioning, reorganizing, refocusing, and realigning the company's resources and strategy towards a path to future profitability and growth, we are beginning to see the results in the form of improved market adoption and orders of our products. Our strategy of focus on markets that support the electrification of everything is fueling our present growth. The market segment includes electric vehicle battery technology, as well as high power electronics for electrical charging and power transmission. Our Q1 2022 orders were $4.1 million compared to $3.7 million in Q1 of the prior year. April 2022 orders were $7.2 million. In the first four months of 2022, we have received orders exceeding $11 million for our CVD equipment products as compared to approximately $5.5 million for the same fourth four-month period in 2021. 100% year-on-year increase in orders for the company. These orders primarily consisted of 19 CVD-first nanosystems compared to 23 system orders for all of 2021. Of the 19 system orders, 14 are for our recently announced PVT-150 system addressing silicon carbide growth and processing, while the remainder of the systems Orders are for battery nanomaterials, both R&D and production, advanced carbon-based capacitors, and for a legacy advanced R&D first nanosystem. The systems are planned for shipment starting in the fourth quarter. According to independent market research, these market segments are expected to continue to grow in the coming quarters and years. As we noted in our earnings call for 2021, which was held at the end of March 2022. We also received orders for consumables that serve our installed base in the aerospace market. We take this as a sign that the aerospace market is beginning to recover. However, it is not expected to recover until at least 2023. We believe the orders we received during the first four months of 2022 and the order rate of the prior three quarters continue to validate our strategic focus on growth and use markets such as battery nanomaterials, silicon carbide growth systems, and advanced composite materials for aerospace and other markets. Our SDC, Tantaline, and Mesoscribe product lines continue to show demand and orders in Q1 and the first four months of 2022, albeit not to the extent of the CVD equipment group. The COVID pandemic and the geopolitical instability in Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe have caused issues in the global supply chain. The negative impacts have been felt by all our companies with increases in commodity and product materials cost, as well as in delivery, product delivery uncertainties and unpredictability. Revenue for the company as a whole was negatively impacted in Q2. the first quarter by supply chain issues. Some of our countermeasures to address the lingering supply chain issue are partnering with key suppliers and expanding our in-house production capabilities. Both are essential to our goal of self-reliance and will support our commitments to our customers. Our plan is to expand our in-house manufacturing capacity in our 355 centralized facility in the second half of 2022. And this plan is well underway and the end objective to be self-reliant. We continue to believe that our 355 facility has ample space in all areas of operations to support our growth. The first quarter of this year, we satisfied the mortgage of our 355 facility. In 2021, we strengthened our balance sheet and liquidity with the proceeds we received from the sale of our 555 facility. our market focus, order rate, operational performance, and manufacturing capacity, along with our balance sheet, all health positions, CVD equipment, along the path to continued growth and future profitability. I would like to now introduce our CFO, Thomas McNeil, who will provide the first quarter 2022 financial summary.

Thomas McNeil Thank you, Manny, and good afternoon, everyone. CBD first quarter of 2022 revenue was $4.7 million as compared to $3.4 million in the first quarter of 2021, an increase of $1.3 million, or 38.3%. Net loss for the first quarter of 2022 was $1 million, or 15 cents per diluted share, as compared to a net loss of $1.5 million, or 23 cents, per diluted share in the first quarter of 2021. CVD's operating loss improved by 600,000 to 1 million for the first quarter of 2022, as compared to an operating loss of 1.6 million for the first quarter of 2021. This improvement was the result of leveraging fixed costs on higher sales levels which resulted from improved orders towards the end of 2021, as well as product mix, which more than offset certain component cost increases and compensation costs. In addition, general and administrative costs decreased 400,000, which was primarily related to the reduced legal costs and lower building costs as a result of the sale of the company's 555 facility in July 2021, and the consolidation of operations into the company's 355 facility. Beginning in Q3 2021 and continuing to date, CBD has been impacted by increased costs on certain manufacturing material components, as well as delays in supply chain deliveries. This may also impact CVD's ability to recognize revenue and result in reduced gross profit margins in future quarters, extended manufacturing lead times, and reduced manufacturing efficiencies. CVD has placed orders with increased lead times to attempt to mitigate the manufacturing delays, as well as assessing other material supplies to mitigate the potential cost impacts. In addition, CVD is utilizing its in-house flexible manufacturing to further mitigate both potential delivery delays and material cost increases. With respect to our balance sheet, on March 1st, 2022, we satisfied our remaining mortgage of $1.7 million on our 355 South Technology Drive facility, and as such, have no debt outstanding. Turning to our backlog, at March 31st, 2022, we had 9.9 million of backlog as compared to 10.4 million at December 31st, 2021, a decrease of 500,000 or 4.8%. This decrease is due to the timing of the receipt of new orders during the quarter ended March 31st, 2022 of 4.1 million as compared to revenue of 4.7 million. However, with the new orders achieved in April of 2022 in excess of 7 million, this has substantially increased our backlog. While the effect of COVID-19 crisis continues to negatively impact the aerospace industry, generally in the form of reduced travel and reduction of gas turbine engine sales, industry analysts believe improvement will begin to occur in the late 2022 With respect to our liquidity, our cash and cash equivalents at March 31, 2022 was $13.3 million as compared to $16.7 million at December 31, 2021. This decrease of $3.4 million is primarily the result of the satisfaction of our mortgage debt on our 355 facility in the amount of $1.7 million. million, as well as our net loss adjusted for non-cash items of $650,000 and other operating activities. Our working capital was $15.9 million at March 31, 2022, as compared to $16.7 million at December 31, 2021, a decrease of $800,000 or 5%. For longer term, impacts from the COVID-19 outbreak are highly uncertain and cannot be predicted, especially now with the impacts on our supply chain as we previously discussed. And while we have initiated actions to mitigate the potential negative impacts to our revenue and profitability, there can be no assurance of the ultimate impact and the length of time period that the supply chain factors may impact our business. Our return to profitability is dependent upon, among other things, the substantial completion and delivery of existing orders, which include the significant April 22 orders in excess of 7 million, the ongoing receipt of new equipment orders, the lessening of the ongoing effects of COVID-19 on our business and the aerospace market, managing through the supply chain issues discussed, and improvement in operational efficiencies, as well as managing planned capital expenditures and operating expenses. Based upon all these factors, we believe our cash and cash equivalent positions and projected cash flow from operations will be sufficient to meet our working capital and capital expenditure requirements for the next 12 to 18 months of the filing of a Form 10-Q today. Should the current environment continue longer or worsen, we will continue to assess our operations and take action anticipated to maintain our operating cash to support the working capital needs. And now I'd like to turn the call back to Maddie.

Tom, thank you for our presentation. In summary, the first quarter and four months of 2022 have built on our efforts from 2021, which was, again, a year of transition, reorganization, and focus on everything we do and who we serve. Our focus remains on our customers, employees, shareholders, and the pursuit of growth and return to profitability. We look forward to 2022 and are cautiously optimistic. Your comments and questions are important to us. With the close of our presentation, we'd like to open up the door, the floor that is, to your questions. Thank you.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will be conducting a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, you may press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation . You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star key. Our first question comes from the line of Oren Hershman with AIGH Investment Partners. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, how are you? Hi, Oren. In terms of some of the competition that you face for the equipment and in terms of the magnitude of the ASPs and what that ASP depends on, can you go through some of the applications, whether it's the silicon carbide growth application or the nano battery or some of the other applications that you're seeing renewed interest and demand for? you know, is it just the applied materials, you know, that's the competition to beat, or is there other specialty guys that do chemical vapor deposition, and what are the ASPs like, and what does that depend on?

Yeah. Typically, we don't. Thank you, Arne. All great questions. Let me start off with, you know, we don't really see applied material in our space, and that's just, you know, the... the markets that we focus on. Some of the suppliers that we would see, that we would compete against, we believe we do have an advantage, and that advantage comes now from our expanding our internal manufacturing capability and leveraging the 38 years of technology that the company has developed. I typically do not speak to ASPs in that it gives a bit too much information to potential competitors. I would say that we are competitively priced, and our value proposition is we provide the equipment and service support. We can do that both globally and with a higher degree of... a focus here in the United States. So much of this opportunity, as you can imagine, is spurred from bringing technologies from overseas back here to the United States. So we clearly have benefited from that. In the silicon carbide area, as you well know, or you may know at least, that it is a marketplace that has gone through quite a bit of consolidation of vertical integration. And we're focused on serving the merchant suppliers and many of the emerging companies that I think will continue to serve the broader market. I would say that that's what I can actually say without... extending too far into our marketing plans.

Okay, thanks so much. Our next question comes from the line of Brett Reese with Jenny. Please proceed with your question.

Hi, Manny. Hi, Tom. How are you? Good. I'm good. Congratulations on, you know, good progress on the quarter. The battery nano and carbon-based capacitor orders, you know, you said in your opening comments that you see the growth and demand, you know, continuing, you know, for that type of business. Do you think that the order flow will be less lumpy than your, you know, your past legacy, you know, businesses?

I would say the revenue side could potentially be less lumpy. The order side, depending on the magnitude of the number of units in the order, which would be satisfied over a longer period of time than the month that we take the order in. You may see some months with higher order rates than other months, but this is all in an effort to continue to grow the business, create a backlog where we can be efficient in our manufacturing operations.

Okay. Do you think if we go into a recession, which more people... consider that there might be a possibility. The demand for the battery nanosystems and carbon-based capacitors, do you think that'll be impacted by a recession or not? Yes.

Well, I think that if I had an accurate answer to give you, I would probably not have to be on the call because I'd be independently wealthy. I would say I'm not a macroeconomist. I would say that I believe strongly in this electrification of everything. It also has proven out for us to be a very positive growth area. The initiatives for having the majority of vehicles manufactured in 2030 being electric vehicles requires a lot of infrastructural growth, both in the production of storage devices, batteries, transmission, and charging systems, silicon carbide. I don't see that requirement going away with the recession. So... To answer your question, I really can't foretell the future, but we're going to continue to support this electrification of everything thought process in that I don't think the world has much of an option.

Right. Look, people have to eat, so those type of products, there's inelastic demand. What I was just driving at was whether the kind of gravitational pull, since the hockey puck seems to be moving toward electrification, will be somewhat recession-resistant. And, well, I guess time will tell.

We continue to be opportunistic. We are optimistically conservative. I'm just getting over my COVID, so I apologize. Optimistic, but we still continue to be conservative in our forecasting. But with that, we are ensuring that we have all the backbone infrastructure in our facility to take advantage of any opportunities in a timely manner. So we're not going to turn away business. We're not going to push it out. We'll be positioned for it. But we have a development process for these products, for launching them to a broader market. We have been fortunate that we've received the level of order and adoption of our technology so quickly.

Okay. Now, with respect to the partnering with suppliers to relieve supply chain dislocations. Can you go into a little bit, what is the nature of the partnering that would relieve the supply chain dislocations?

That's a good question. One example is electronics product that we incorporate in our systems. We have multiple potential sources of the product, but we typically will partner with one, maximum two, and we'll provide a longer term visibility and orders for these products. That did pan well for us on some of our tools in that we were able to receive the order and ship them in less time or plan to ship them in less time than we would have otherwise. So it's managing the inventory, managing our supplier's expectation, And we've had to shy away from some suppliers that are in Eastern Europe. So we've gone to a heightened level of selection process.

One last one. You know, it seems that the momentum of order flow for the battery nanoproduct and carbon-based capacitor product you know, seems to be there and will continue. Is it too much? Am I getting over my skis that, you know, we're at the point where we've got a 15 to $25 million annual run rate, you know, just based on those products, you know, for the next one to two years, so that if the aerospace, God willing, comes back, that that will be incremental order flow to CVD over and above the robust product pipeline you're enjoying with battery nano and carbon-based capacitors.

First, I just want to make sure that there's a level of clarification. Thank you, Brett. There was a lot of questions in that one question. First of all, the All of our product technology, you can imagine they're at different levels of product development and launch, product adoption, and technology adoption. The silicon carbide growth systems and associated other processes, those are further along than the nanobattery materials. because we are serving an existing market, granted larger substrates, but an existing market. The nanobattery materials are an evolutionary, not revolutionary, but an evolutionary technology where they add additional capacity and capability to the existing carbon powder used in battery applications. The carbon nanofiber that would be used in capacitors that is still in the technology adoption phase of its marketplace. So I would not suggest that you see that as an immediate growth market. Now with that said, we continue to support our aerospace marketplace. We continue to send out some quotations albeit not at the same level as our other markets for this period of time. But you can imagine that we're not going to turn away aerospace orders ever. We have a very strong footprint in that and also commitment to our customers, and we supply them with spare parts and services presently. So we would be more than pleased to continue to supply them with equipment and you are accurate, that would be in addition to our non-aerospace business that we've enjoyed over the last couple of quarters.

One last one. You have in-house the engineering talent to support all of these initiatives and growing markets because you read about you know, employee shortages and, you know, labor shortages, you know, what's the status there?

Well, we live in the same world. There are labor shortages. Our attrition rate is extremely low. We value and treat our employees very fairly. We are hiring additional staff and we'll continue to do that over the next quarters. as we continue to strengthen, and we believe that there will be additional products in our 2023 plan that we'll want to develop, and we still have our 2022 product development to complete. So, you know, we will continue. It is a risk factor, and it's noted in our reports. We have a... We've hired a... a new HR manager that started at the turn of the year. And she's done an exceptional job on coordinating the acquisition of talent and the programs to both incentivize and motivate and communicate to our employee base.

Great.

It's not easy, but there's a path... navigate these waters at this point.

Great. I'm glad you're feeling better. Thank you and Tom for answering my questions.

Thank you. And thank you for the chicken soup, by the way.

Our next question comes from the line of Morton Howard, a private investor. Please proceed with your question.

Hiya. I'm very disappointed to hear, uh, Maddie, that you are human and cannot foresee the future, but we'll take what we get. Um, That's the brakes. I'm delighted the company is on its way to survival, but for a while there was a dream of glory about the product of Stony Brook that saved the world with better oxygen. There was a dream of glory about graphene as being a product and material of the future. It sounds like you're involved with some growth stuff so the company will grow and be okay. but is there anything that gives you a dream of glory in your product line or a potential product line that could take this stock from where it is now to past boys, 18, 20, 30 bucks? I'm not asking you to comment on the stock market, but is there anything that would justify a significantly dreamy higher price?

Thank you for listening to my question. Legal counsel is on my call. Strangle me. I can't speak to that, but I can tell you that we are focused on not, let me say, bleeding-edge technology. We do some. We'll sell to universities in the legacy products. We'll sell people devices for carbon nanotubes infiltrated to do all sorts of different quote-unquote cool technologies, rocket science of sorts. And something will come out of X number of those, whether that's seven, 10, 20 of those opportunities. But where we've wanted to focus the company is on growth markets and properly positioning ourselves in that growth market. We've received an order of 20 systems for silicon carbide growth and processing. There's a lot of risk that we will win the next orders and the next bunch, and we're up to mitigating that risk and getting those orders. But I think, as you may know, silicon carbide has been around for a while, and there are thousands of tools out there. I'm not saying we're going to get thousands of tools. I'm not saying we're going to get hundreds of tools. but we've already received, before we've shipped the first one of these, we've received up to, we've received 20 units in order. So the demand is there. We command that over 37 years. We've developed and we command that technology. And that truly is a validated growth segment The battery, none of us are going to argue that batteries are the biggest challenge in an electric vehicle, in home storage, in green energy production. And the technology is not there. Whether it's, you know, we today serve evolutionary, not revolutionary. We sell to some universities, which we've announced that We'll sell them a high-capability, high-tech development system for developing these materials, both on the cathode and nano side of the battery. But that's not something that I would say you're going to see large order rates in 2022, possibly even not even 2023, more likely something in 2024 and beyond. By the time that technology gets adopted, Graphic carbon in batteries is going to be with us for a period of time. But the evolutionary element of improving the capability of that carbon powder, that's here today, and that's what people are working on. I'll be able to tell you more about the adoption after these tools are in the field, prove themselves. and we get the next series of orders. So there's a product lifecycle. There's a product development cycle where you have a launch, you have adoption, and we'll continue to evaluate our position. But these areas so far have proven to be multiple orders to multiple customers, and we're pleased with that.

Okay, thank you very much. Thank you, sir.

There are no further questions in the queue. I'd like to hand the call back to management for closing remarks.

Well, we appreciate everybody's participation, your loyalty, and your support of the company. We are a month into the second quarter. We've given you some insight on the first quarter, some insight into the first month of the second quarter. and we look forward to our next communication. And again, we thank you, and we just hope you all stay safe.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's teleconference. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and have a wonderful day.