Intevac, Inc.

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss Intervax financial results for the second quarter of 2023, which ended on July 1st. In addition to discussing the company's recent results, we will discuss our outlook looking forward. Joining me on today's call are Nigel Hunton, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Jim Moniz, Chief Financial Officer. Nigel will begin with his prepared remarks Then Jim will review our financial results before turning the call over to Q&A. I'd like to remind everyone that today's conference call contains certain forward-looking statements, including but not limited to statements regarding financial results for the company's most recently completed fiscal quarter, which remains subject to adjustment in connection with the preparation of our Form 10-Q, as well as comments regarding future events and projections about the future financial performance of Intivac. These forward-looking statements are based upon our current expectations and actual results could differ materially as a result of various risks and uncertainties relating to these comments and other risk factors discussed in documents filed by us with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. The contents of this August 2nd call include time-sensitive forward-looking statements that represent our projections as of today. We undertake no obligation to update the forward-looking statements made during this conference call. I'll now turn the call over to Nigel.

Thanks Claire and good afternoon. I'm pleased to have this opportunity today to update you on our year-to-date activities progress on the qualification of our first trio, and discuss the business environment in our primary serve market, the hard disk drive industry. First, though, I will review our Q2 financial results. In Q2, we achieved revenues above the high end of our expectations, including one new 200 lien system delivery and one refurbished 200 lien. Our revenue performance in Q2 puts us well on track to delivering a strong growth year for our HDD business in 2023. As Jim will detail shortly, our gross margin was impacted by nearly $1 million of incremental costs above forecast, which were one-offs in nature. However, with close control of operating expenses, our operating loss was aligned with our prior outlook and the net loss of 19 cents per share was favorable to forecast due to higher interest income and lower taxes. As planned, we continued to bring in material receipts for both the trio and our hard drive customers during the quarter, and our balance of total cash and investments at quarter end was at $74 million. Of the roughly $11 million declined from Q1, About one half was attributed to cash-based losses from the P&L, with the other half comprised of continued working capital investment. This will reverse in the second half of 2023, in large part due to our expectation that we will collect the majority of our receivables from our largest customer. Our collection of receivables in the second half is the foundation of our confidence that we will exit 2023 with an increase in total cash and investments compared to the $74 million balance at Q2's end. Turning to the TRIO and the exciting news reported today that in August, we will begin the qualification process for the initial system with our JDA partner, who is one of the world's leading innovators in glass and glass ceramic materials. This move into qualification is an important validation of the technology and capabilities of this game-changing platform. This will mark a tremendous milestone for our company, demonstrating our JDA partners' continued excitement in the potential of the TRIO to be a significant new manufacturing platform for glass and glass ceramic displays for consumer electronics applications. Over the last few earnings calls, we've discussed what sets the trio apart from other manufacturing options. In our joint development process to date, it's increasingly clear that our JDA partners' enthusiasm and pull in demand for the trio is primarily driven by the platform's superior productivity and flexibility. I'll provide a couple of specific examples of how our trio is capable of providing leaps in advancement on both fronts. compared to available coating options. First, productivity. The reason why we're able to provide significant and very material advances in productivity is due to our unique linear transport system enabling patent-protected high-power parallel processing to take place concurrently in multiple chambers, each of which can be depositing different combinations of chemistries and materials. A drum coater can only deposit one recipe at a time and at a lower deposition power. Furthermore, drum coaters are batch systems that must be completely shut down for loading and unloading, which decreases a tool's uptime, whereas the TRIO's novel linear transport system enables simultaneous loading and unloading of the displays at the same time as process modules are depositing materials. The other unique advantage is flexibility. TRIO can coat glass covers and displays in a broad array of shapes and sizes from very small camera lenses and an array of wearable devices to the wide variety of smartphone form factors available today or anticipated in the near future to much larger displays such as tablets and IT devices. Our TRIO platform is the only manufacturing platform that can be deployed to coat all of these various sizes and shapes with the advantage of high productivity processing thus providing a level of flexibility that is non-existent in the market today. The same advantages could later be put in place for additional end markets not currently addressed by our JDA, such as for automotive displays. In summary, we're extremely excited about the progress made today and we can easily expect to receive initial orders in 2023. As we look toward next year, we believe we will revenue two to three systems, and we'll be building several additional tools ahead of an increased order requirement for our JDA partners to maintain exclusivity by year end 2024. We will also continue to pursue additional customer partnerships for TRIO in end markets outside of consumer electronic devices. Now turning to the hard disk drive market. Since mid-2022, we've been reporting on the softening of demand across all HCDN markets, which has included the continued secular decline of legacy markets and a slowing growth rate in the mass capacity market after several years of strong growth. Near the end of May, we witnessed an unprecedented event for Intervac, which was the cancellation of a very large tool order. This order cancellation primarily affected our revenue forecast for the medium term, As in fact, our near-term forecast for our HDD business is stronger today than it was a quarter ago. Since announcing the cancellation, we've been very clearly communicating that the material receipts for these systems, which a quarter end represented less than one third of our total inventory balance, are the responsibility of our customers. As we look at the HDD market environment today, there is no question the growth trajectory for HDD media is changing. and difficult to forecast. However, it is still a growth market given the dominance of mass capacity drives fueling the majority of customer demands. While the expected timeline for capacity additions has shifted multiple times, first from the original expectations of late this year to the 2024, then to the 2026 timeframe, and now potentially to the tail end of that period, In the near term, our HCD business is bolstered by strong demand for technology upgrades. We are playing a critical role in the industry's advancement towards achieving its goal of significantly higher overall density media for the mass capacity market, resulting in stronger demand for technology upgrades. Last quarter, I expressed concern that the softer HCD forecasts could result in as much as 10% risk to our original $40 million revenue forecast for 2023. While our customers are in the very early stages of their fiscal 2024 capital investment planning, we expect continued movement and quarterly shifts within our HD forecast over the next several quarters. However, this time, we're expecting our HDD revenues in 2023 to be approximately $44 million. As we look ahead to 2024, we currently expect a similarly strong level of HDD upgrades and field service as 2023. At this time, the expected timing of delivery of the remaining two 200 liens in backlog is being reviewed by our customer. Given this, our expectation at revenues next year will consist of at least $40 million in HDD sales, as well as two to three systems for TRIO. Altogether, we expect revenues in the low to mid $50 million range for fiscal 2024. Importantly, at this range of revenues and with the resizing of our cost structure currently underway, we expect our P&L to be cash neutral for the full year of 2024. This is because our actions announced today will result in a significant decrease in our ongoing cost structure, equivalent to at least $4 million of annualized manufacturing and operating We expect our quarterly OPEX run rate to drop to a low $7 million level beginning in Q4. This streamlined cost structure will enable us to be cash neutral at the expected revenue level for next year, given that the non-cash portion of our cost structure is expected to entirely offset our gap operating at loss. Therefore, this restructuring effort is enabling InterVac to eliminate any further use of our cash balance for operations next year. which does not include capex or investments in working capital. We will manage both of these very closely in 2024 to ensure they are aligned with our growth prospects for 2025. Before turning the call over to Jim, I would like to express my sincere appreciation for everything he has done with our finance organization over the past eight years. We announced last month that Jim would be retiring at long last and trusting the financial organisation in the very capable hands of our long-term controller Kevin Norton while we conduct our search for a permanent CFO. Jim initially came out of retirement to be an Interfax CFO for just a few years and yet graciously agreed to postpone his return to retirement not just once but twice. First during the 2020 Strategic Review and again in early 2022 to support the CEO transition. The entire board and I acknowledge his steadfast dedication to the company for much longer than he initially intended. After supporting us through today's earnings call, we all wish him the very best as he enjoys some well-deserved time off this summer. Congratulations on your retirement, Jim. Now over to you.

Thank you, Nigel. It's been a real pleasure to serve as the Intervax CFO for the past eight years. a certainly much longer time than I originally intended. And I know I'm leaving the company in good hands. Now turning to the second quarter results. Second quarter revenue totaled $10.3 million, above our guidance of $8 to $9 million, and consisted of one HDD 200 lien system, one refurbished HDD 200 lien system, plus HDD upgrade as it served. Q2 gross margin was 24.9%. We mentioned on the last call we expected margins to be down to the mid-30s due to less favorable mix and increased under-absorption. But in Q2, we witnessed nearly $1 million of incremental increase in cost of sale. About half of these incremental costs were the result of higher overhead and other indirect costs, while about one-third was the result of higher direct labor costs and the remainder was increased material costs. We do not expect these incremental charges to continue beyond Q2. Q2 operating expenses were $8 million, below our guidance of $8.5 million, as we aggressively managed our costs in advance of the restructuring announced today. With lower OPEX, we were able to offset the one-time impacts to grow and the resulting operating loss was aligned to our forecast at $5.5 million. With some upside in interest and tax, the Q2 net loss was favorable to forecast at $4.9 million, or 19 cents per diluted share. Our backlog was $58.2 million at quarter end, reflecting the de-booking of the $54 million order cancellation that occurred in May. We ended the quarter with cash and investments, including restricted cash of $73.9 million, equivalent to $2.83 per share, based on 26.1 million shares at quarter end. Cash decreased by $10.9 million in the second quarter. Cash flow used by operations was $9.8 million during the quarter, driven primarily by the operating loss, an increase in TRIO inventory, as well as reductions in liabilities for accounts payable, contract advances, and other liabilities. We ended the quarter with a slightly lower AR balance of $20 million, the majority of which we expect to be collected in the second half. Q2 capital expenditures were $330,000, and depreciation and amortization were $371,000 for the quarter. Now let me move to the guidance for the second half of 2023. Today we also announced our 2023 cost restructuring plan, which took effect in late July and which reduced our worldwide headcount by approximately 25%. There will be about $1.8 million in severance costs in Q3 associated with this action, which we expect will result in over $4 million in annualized labor and labor-related savings. Our Q3 guidance reflects the added severance costs, while our four-year guidance assumes that our Q4 results will reflect the lower ongoing OpEx run rate. For Q3 financials specifically, we are projecting revenue to be in the range of $12 to $13 million. We expect third quarter gross margin to be between 38 and 40 percent. Q3 operating expenses are expected to be around $8.5 million, which includes severance as mentioned earlier. We expect interest income of about $400,000 and gap tax expense of about $300,000 in the quarter. Most of the tax expense will be non-cash. We are projecting a net loss for Q3 in the range of 13 to 15 cents per share, based on 26 million shares outstanding. For the full year, as Nigel mentioned, we expect our revenues to be approximately $44 million, up 23% from last year. This includes the 1-200 lien system recognized in Q2 and a higher level of upgrades compared to 2022. Given this revenue profile and expected mix, we anticipate gross margins for the year will be in the 35% to 37% range. We expect the ongoing operating expense run rate will be in the range of $7 million to $7.25 million per quarter beginning in Q4. We continue to expect interest income and taxes to roughly offset one another with both in the range of one to $2 million for the full year. Finally, it is still our expectation that we will generate cash in the second half of 2023 and we'll end the year with a cash balance of between 75 and $80 million. As we look ahead to fiscal 2024, we expect our results will be cashflow neutral for the full year, given our revenue expectation in the low to mid $50 million range, gross margins of approximately 38 to 40 percent, the Q4 OPEX level continuing through next year, and that the non-cash portion of our cost structure will total $7 to $8 million for the full year. Therefore, our 2023 cost restructuring plan is enabling INIVAC to eliminate any future use any further use of our cash balance to fund our operations in fiscal 2024. This completes the formal part of our presentation. Maria, we are ready for questions.

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate that you're live in the question queue. You may press star 2 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 start key. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Our first question comes from Peter Wright with Partner CAP Securities. Please proceed with your question.

Great. Thank you for taking my questions and congratulations on a great quarter and I hope Jim, also, I want to offer my congratulations and thank you for the education over the years on NAPEC and the industry in general.

Thank you, Peter.

My first question is, it looks like clearly I was too conservative in 2024 on kind of some mid-quarter updates that happened. happened some optimism came out of your two key hard to describe suppliers over the last week as well modest as it may be but help us think about 2024 just on the service side of your business without tools how should we think of kind of the steady state of your business is it about a 40-ish million dollar business is there any cannibalization with ck assuming the inventory

that could be temporary or do you or do you do you see that you know that that's a good number to be thinking going forward and I had one photo up okay thank you let me tell take it first and then then you can add to that Jim as well thing is you say with with my major customers doing their announcements and giving a bit more color I mean from As you can very clearly see from a capacity point of view, there's still another couple of quarters at the bottom and continued inventory digestion. So for us, it's absolutely, as you rightly point, focusing on the technology shifts in the industry. And these shifts that are improving the aerial density, these upgrades that we're doing to actually take the 200 lean platform, which is a modular platform, which is incredibly flexible And that has helped us really drive this upgrade revenue over the last couple of quarters. So we see that revenue continuing as they're continuing to roll out their upgrade programs. And we see the level of upgrades to be at a sort of 40 million level for the next couple of years. And that one is underpinned by the visibility we're getting into their technology roadmaps, the requirements and visibility on their sort of forward plan around those upgrade requirements. And that's why one of the reasons we've done the restructuring is to make sure we have the organization now absolutely aligned to that level of revenue for the next couple of years. And that's, I think we've now got a very, a business aligned to that revenue, and we believe those upgrades will maintain and support that business over the next couple of years. So I think we're in a very good position now. Anybody want to add to that, Jim?

No, I would just reiterate that. I agree with you. We'll do over $30 million in upgrades this year and continue to believe that that'll be strong next year. Do somewhere between $8 and $9 million in fairs and field service. And that's what gives us the confidence of next year being able to do $40 million in upgrades, revenue, and the hard drive business. So I reiterate what Nigel had said.

And just to add to that on the cancellation, I mean, clearly the The cancellation of the order does not impact any of those upgrades at all.

Fantastic. So one small follow-up before I move to TRIO on that. If I look at that now on your revised break-even with OpEx of 72725, it's about two systems. Just looking at hard disk drive alone, you think it's about two system sales a year is a break-even situation for you?

Yeah, what we said as our guidance for 2014 is, you know, a couple of things we said today in prior calls that we believe we'll have two to three TRIO systems next year. And we've communicated previously that those revenues are similar to a 200 lane. So with about a $40 million hard drive business, then, you know, another 10 to 15 million to get us to a low to mid 50s revenue.

that from a cash flow standpoint when you add back in stock-based comp and depreciation we won't utilize cash and you touched on my my second question um if i'm looking at kind of 60 million potential guys 40 on hard drive and two to three systems one of my questions was is there a little bit of price appreciation or movement upwards on on some of those systems I think you got that, but if you could clarify that. And then the last part of that question is on the qualification process you're in now on TRIO, is that only with your partner or are your partner's customers also part of that process?

If I cover the – you take care of it first, then I'll cover the qualifications.

Okay. Yeah, we've said historically that we expect the initial – um with the with the joint development agreement we signed the 100 million dollar joint development agreement that the average price will be similar to a hard drive system which we kind of said is around 5 million so that's how when you take two to three and you add the 40 million you get into the low to mid 50s so that's that's pretty much how we initially set the pricing certainly over time like any business we would expect that the volumes will be ordered will be higher on the trio and they'll be ability for us to lower our costs and therefore lower some prices over time to be able to saturate the market even more. And Nigel, you answered the second question about qualification.

Yes, so as we've said, it's an exciting time to move now to formal qualification. The qualification is to qualify the tool for our JDA partners, process chemistry. And that's a key thing. This is about qualifying a tool that can actually deliver a process chemistry that satisfies and meets the pretty stringent requirements of our JDA partner. And that's the key thing. This machine will be qualified for doing the JDA partner's chemistries, and that will be the key part of the qualification we go into now over the next couple of weeks, months, as we actually go through that endurance testing and that full qualification. The customers are separate, the customers in the market, you know, they go through a different process with our JDA partner, and that gets a qualification of the coating. What we're doing is qualifying the tool so they absolutely can deliver that coating, which is qualified in the market already. So it's about qualifying the chemistries on the TRIO technology that's going to help enable the growth of this fantastic and sort of game-changing technology into the market. So I hope that helps clarify.

That does. I'll come back into queue. Thank you. Thank you, Mark.

Thank you, Peter.

As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from Mark Miller with Benchmark. Please proceed with your question.

Thank you for the question. The strength you're seeing in the upgrade business, are you concerned that your customers are basically pulling in upgrades because there's limited capacity utilization and they want to do it now before things heat up next year?

Yes. I think if you go back to listen to some of the prior calls from our customers, one of the key things they are doing through this industry downturn is taking advantage of that opportunity to actually accelerate and ensure we actually deliver the upgrades so that the equipment starts to become ready for delivering hammer technologies. So for us, it's been exciting and great to see that they're putting that level of investment and capacity into the upgrades rather than not doing any investments through this downturn. So we see it as a very positive step from our customers to maintain this level of investment in upgrades of the 200 lean product.

So even though they're pulling upgrades in, you're still expecting similar upgrade in 2024, is that correct?

Correct. There is, you know, if you look at any product launch and I think some of them talk about the timing of their product launch and their products and evaluation. you phase a ramp of capacity. And I think what we're seeing is they're aligning our hammer upgrades to their requirements for the future. So as they see adoption of it, we're seeing those upgrades going to continue over the next couple of years. And I think it'll be a sort of similar level over the next two to three years.

Besides your primary customer for TRIO, are you in discussion with other firms about the sale of TRIO-type toning equipment?

Yeah, the absolute priority is with our JDA partner. And that's the absolute focus for the company. And that's what we're really making sure we actually get that done. That's why the excitement about getting that into qualification. And that'll be the critical focus for the next couple of months. Absolutely, though, in parallel to that, we are getting interest and approaches around other technologies, whether that be the auto sector, There's been some interest in some unique solar applications. But for us, it's about maintaining that focus, getting the product qualified, getting the product into the market with consumer devices. I think once you've done that and we've achieved success with that, then the opportunities will open up for other market sectors. So we're not ignoring them, but that is not the area of focus.

Any estimate when you might be shipping a qualification system to any of these other opportunities?

Now, we're aiming at the moment to get a qualified tool for the consumer devices completed this year and shipped into the field by the end of the year for qualification in the field in Q1 2024. And that's been consistently the message of the last couple of calls. That's going to take time. We need to get that in, the machine qualified, get through all of that reliability data, endurance testing, et cetera. I think once we're successful on the back of that, we'll then look at actually putting tools into other market opportunities.

Final question, in terms of the TRIO sales expected for next year, is this going to be a more back-end loaded year because of those sales?

It's too early to say.

Yeah, that's what I would say as well. We certainly will have tools shipping early in the year, but it depends on how they get installed and called, but it is too early to say.

And Jim, let me just add my thanks and congratulations to you for your service to Intervac. and best of luck for your future.

Thank you, Mark, and it's great working with you at Inevac and other companies throughout the years. Thank you.

You're welcome.

Our next question comes from Peter Wright with Partner Cap Securities. Please proceed with your questions.

Great, thank you. Nigel, I was hoping you could help us understand If there's any opportunity, two-part question, any opportunity to monetize the coding chemistry separate from the tools themselves of discussions, whether it be a royalty or whatever. And the second part of that question is when you look to non-consumer electronic markets, is the chemistry going to be the same or is it going to be different or too early to tell? And then, Jim, I don't know if it's too early to say this, but Would we be able to get any idea or your best guess on number of units on the TRIO side for books delivered and we gave us revenue for TRIO in 2024?

Okay, just to pick those out. If I cover the question around royalty, I mean, we clearly have a strong partner. We have announced that as part of that agreement, we have a hundred million commitment over five years for a certain number of tools. And those are based around equipment sales. So therefore we have a very clear initial business case and business plan around equipment sales into this industry. Longer term, and we said on prior calls, we are looking at all types of models for the future. We recognize absolutely value of sustainable revenues aligned with coatings. I would think if we look into the future, whether we get two to three years, I think you'll see an interest level of looking at royalties and different types of revenue streams. I think is that in particular, as we look at other market sectors as well, some of that is more common in some sectors like the auto sector. So therefore, that is an area that we are considering. We've said all along, we look at multiple models for this. We see the TRIO platform. been game-changing, not just for the industry, but for Intervac overall. So I do see at some point in the future some level of sustainable revenue through whether it's a license model, a royalty model, or a shared earning. So I do see that being part of our future strategy. It is not part of the short-term strategy, and we have a clear agreement with our JDA partner at the moment around exclusivity for the consumer device market.

One clarification. The coating that you're developing is co-owned, is that correct? The chemistry is co-owned by you and your partner?

No, the chemistry that we have done, we have our own chemistries, which again, if I go back in time, we developed some phenomenal coating capabilities. That capability was what excited our partner. Our partner has their own unique capabilities, which are their coatings. We've talked about those coatings that over time have been only able to be applied to very small parts of the consumer device market. The TRIO platform is a game changer because it enables their technology now to be coated in a very cost-effective way and opens up a much broader application for the product into the future. So it is their coating that will be run and qualified on our tool. Fantastic.

All right. So then Peter, I'll answer the question I think you had for me as well. It's, it's a little too early to give you a specific numbers, but we have consistently said we expect TRIO bookings this year. And I think it's Nigel has said there's a minimum quantity that our JDA partner has to order this year and it's increases each year throughout the five years. So we expect multiple orders to be booked this year. And as far as revenue next year, We said that we expect two to three in our forecast that we shared with you today. And so therefore, we would expect multiple units to be booked in 2023. And you can imagine we would expect higher number than that to be booked in 2024. But for revenue, we said could be two to three trio tools for revenue next year.

Fantastic. Thank you, guys. Thank you. Thank you, Peter.

There are no further questions at this time. I will now send the call back over to Nigel Hunt for his closing remarks.

Thank you. I wish to thank all of our employees as well as their counterparts with our industry partners for their hard work and dedication as we enter the qualification phase for the TRIO and continue to be a key technology enabler in the HCD's industry transition to Hammer. I also wish to thank all of our investors for their ongoing support during this period of immense change and operational challenges during the near term. Again, please reach out to Claire directly if you'd like to follow up with us. I look forward to updating you on our Q3 call in early November. With that, I will conclude today's call. Thank you.