Nauticus Robotics, Inc.

Good day, everyone, and welcome to today's Nauticus Robotics 2024 Q1 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, you will have the opportunity to ask questions during the question and answer session. You may register to ask a question at any time by pressing the star and 1 on your telephone keypad. You may withdraw yourself from the queue by pressing star 2. Please note this call is being recorded and I will be standing by if you should need any assistance. It is now my pleasure to turn the conference over to Kristen Moorman, Special Project Lead.

Thank you and good morning everyone. Joining me today and participating in the call are John Gibson, CEO and President, Vicki Hay, Interim CFO, Nick Bigney, General Counsel, and other members of our leadership team. On today's call, we will first provide prepared remarks concerning our operations and financial results. Following that, we will answer questions. We have now released our results for the first quarter of 2024, which are available on our website. In addition, today's call is being webcast and a replay will be available on our website shortly following the conclusion of the call. Please note that comments we make on today's call regarding projections or our expectations for future events are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control. These risks and uncertainties can cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations. We advise listeners to review our earnings release and the risk factors discussed in our filings with the SEC. Also, please refer to the reconciliations provided in our earnings press release as we may discuss non-GAAP metrics on this call. I will now turn it over to John.

Well, good morning. Thank you, Kristen. And thank you all for joining us for our conference call. I'm extremely excited about the company, but as is my style, I intend to go straight into a couple of challenges that the company faces, and then we're going to switch over to the excitement of the pipeline of opportunities that are building around Opnop Toolkit. Now, our listing makes us both unique and valuable. Rather than having to be a limited partner in a venture capital fund, which requires a quarter million dollar minimum to participate, We offer an opportunity to invest directly in an emerging high-growth technology business serving the ocean market, with anticipated cages in the ocean market ranging from 8% to 15% for offshore drilling and wind, respectively, through the year 2030. We have a talented team and an AUV ready to start generating revenue from the industrial, environmental, commercial, and defense sectors. Nauticus is a high-risk investment, but with the potential to generate returns greater than the market. Now, while we are public, we closely resemble an emerging growth company seeking a B round of funding. We are a technology play in the emerging blue economy with a very unique product that satisfies the needs of our customers to reduce costs, reduce emissions, reduce labor requirements, improve safety, and most importantly, gather vast quantities of subsea data to enable the sustainable development of the ocean. We have fantastic products coming into a strong market this year. We are shifting from being dependent upon defense to being entrenched in the industrial, commercial, and environmental sectors as well. We're building a company to attract, buy, and hold investors. Now, the first issue. We need for you to vote yes on the reverse split, item number three, of the special meeting being hosted on May 20, 2024. We want to remain listed. There are two requirements, bid price and market cap. We have until July 22, 2024, to cure having a bid price below $1. We have until August 13, 2024, to cure the market cap being less than $35 million. Let's address the bid price being over a dollar first. We believe we are on track to be daily revenue generating in Q3 2024 with the Aquanaut. We have numerous blue chip customers ready to put Aquanaut to work. Operating margins for Aquanaut should be strong because we conducted an aggressive cost management strategy over the last several months. With revenue, we believe the share price will recover. However, timing is critical to make July 22nd, 2024. We cannot control the overall market, the weather, elections, interest rates, inflation, et cetera. And hence we need to prepare for what we can control. So what are we doing that we can control? Well, we are preparing requests for a six month extension to get in compliance with the bid price being over a dollar. There's no guarantee that the extension will be granted, but we plan to be ready to submit. To enhance our chances of getting above a dollar, we intend to keep you well informed via 8Ks and press releases as we convert existing contracts from contracts to revenue and secure new contracts. We have previously announced contracts with Shell, Petrobras, and Equinor. All three remain committed to deploying the Aquanaut as soon as we complete our certifications. We've found ways with several customers to expand the potential scope of work beyond the announced contracts. We're confident enough in the near-term completion of the final certification that we currently have a vessel on standby in the Gulf of Mexico to get us to location for daily revenue generating work. We believe being revenue generating will immediately improve our share price. How much it improves has uncertainty and is very difficult to model. What we do know is our recommendation for a reverse share split can solve this problem and is 100% within our control. Voting yes on the reverse split, item number three of the special meeting, allows us to get back into compliance on the bid price being above a dollar. Please vote yes. I do not like recommending this vote. I understand reverse splits typically are done as a last resort and typically result in a share price reduction of 10 plus percent following the action. At this time, we're recommending the split because it is within our control. It can cure the bid price compliance issue with NASDAQ. And unlike typical situations, it's a needed bridge to get the company to generating daily commercial revenue and not an ask based upon a company that's failing, but an ask from a company that is emerging. Our second issue, the reverse split does not cure the market cap compliance issue with NASDAQ. We do believe with the cure of the bid price with the reverse split, we can successfully gain an extension of six months from August 13, 2024 to cure the market cap shortfall. We believe the increase in services revenue from leasing Aquanaut in the third quarter will help close the gap on market cap. We could cure the market cap issue without curing the bid price issue, however, at a share price of over 60 cents. And that would still leave us out of compliance on the bid price. Again, the reasoning for asking for the vote on the reverse split is that we need to get in compliance with the bid price as well. Now that we're through with compliance, let's focus on revenue. Things are looking strong in the second half of 2024. That's the reason I'm super excited about the future. And for our operational and business development update, I'd like to turn it over to Jorge. Or if you're in Brazil, Jorge.