Nauticus Robotics, Inc.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Nauticus Robotics 2025 Q1 earnings conference call. At this time, all lines are in listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. To participate, simply press the star and then the number 1 on your telephone keypad. You will hear a prompt that your hand has been raised. To withdraw your question, please press the star followed by the number 2. If at any time during this call you require a meditative assistance, please press the star and the number 0 for the operator. This call is being recorded on Thursday, May 15, 2025. I would now like to turn the conference over to Christine Moorman. Please go ahead.

Thank you and good morning, everyone. Joining me today in participating in the call are John Gibson, CEO and President, Vicki Hay, Interim CFO, and other members of our leadership team. On today's call, we will first provide prepared remarks concerning our financial and operations results. Following that, we will answer questions. We have now released our results for the first quarter of 2025, 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 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.

Good morning and thank you for joining us. Today's call comes at an exciting time for Nautica's Robotics. With the successful acquisition of C-Trepid in March, we've entered a new chapter marked by operational scale, expanding commercial opportunities, and growing demand for our autonomous subsea technologies. Over the next few minutes, you're going to hear from our executive team on our first quarter financials, operational progress, and our emerging pipeline of offshore work, all pointing to a business gaining momentum and maturing rapidly. While Q1 results reflect the seasonal nature of offshore work and the timing of our acquisition, the quarter also marked the beginning of our 2025 offshore season and the formal start of our integration efforts. Early signs are encouraging. We've mobilized equipment, secured extended contracts, and are seeing enthusiastic interest in our Aquanaut platform from both existing and new customers. The conversations have shifted from what if to how soon, and that signals real traction. Now to turn it over to Team Nautica's to explain how we intend to meet the growing demand for safer, smarter, and more sustainable subsea solutions. With that, I'm going to hand it to Vicki, our interim CFO, and let her get us started on the financial side for Q1. Vicki?

Thank you, John, and good morning. I will now discuss our financial results for the first quarter of 2025. The C-Trepid acquisition closed on March 20th and has so far proved impactful to the organization, with revenue being recognized from it in the first quarter and has continued to grow over the past six weeks following the end of the quarter. Other key milestones this quarter included further reducing our debt and associated interest by $3 million as a result of lowering the conversion price of the term loan and subsequent conversions. We also had a $20 million raise from our -the-market facility to fund the acquisition of C-Trepid and current year capital investments and operations. Revenue for the first quarter was $0.2 million, which is down $0.3 million sequentially and down $0.3 million from the same quarter last year. The Gulf of America offshore season just kicked off at the end of March and we are now under contract. Operating expenses for the quarter were $6 million, which is flat from Q1 2024 and down $0.5 million sequentially. G&A costs for the quarter were $4.3 million, which is an improvement of $0.9 million compared to Q1 2024. Sequentially, G&A has increased $0.4 million due to non-recurring professional fees in Q1 2025, primarily related to the acquisition of C-Trepid, which included preparing financials for a two-year audit that was needed as part of the transaction and other professional fees related to the restatement of 2024 quarterly financials that completed in early April. Net loss for the quarter was $7.6 million. This is a $76.9 million decrease in net loss sequentially and a $65.3 million decrease from the net loss in Q1 2024. This large variance is attributable to the loss on extinguishment of debt recognized in 2024. Adjusted net loss for the quarter was $6.8 million compared to $6.9 million for the fourth quarter of 2024. When removing the non-repeat professional fees that occurred in Q1 2025, there would have been an improvement sequentially of $1.1 million quarter on quarter. Cash at the end of Q1 2025 was $10.1 million compared to $1.2 million at the end of 2024. This is primarily a result of funding received through the aftermarket offering offset by the recent acquisition of C-Trepid and cash used in operations. With the second quarter already well underway, we are excited about having a full quarter of operational revenue to report for the first time in Q2 while continuing to keep a strong focus on cost control and value added activities. I will now pass the call back to John.

Well, thank you, Vicki. I just I want to really thank Vicki and the finance team for doing an incredible job at selling VC companies file a 10Q and then just a few weeks later file a 10K. The restatement caused a delay in getting everything done and so they've been really hard and did an outstanding job and I'm excited that we're shifting from focus on reporting here to focus on executing in the field and so it's a welcome change for us. I'd like to turn it over to Daniel Deckhart, our field operations lead and Steve Walsh, our sales lead, to discuss the emergence of Nautica's first backlog of offshore commercial work. Daniel. Thank you,

John. I'm completed a mobilization of one of our command TROVs on board a vessel and we are currently on hire completing a platform inspection off the Gulf Coast. The integration of C-Trepid and Nautica's operations teams has gone better than expected and continues to expand the commercial forecast for our company. We will mobilize the Aquanaut vehicle once the ROV completes its inspection job in the coming weeks and then the vessel will roll right into multiple scheduled inspection jobs. We will continue to execute our existing contracts and will utilize any idle time between these projects to complete our 3,000 meter test with the Aquanaut vehicle. We have now reached the phase of our company that will become a new norm scheduling current contracts and new opportunities to maximize utilization and margins and continue to diversify our customer base throughout the season. Our goal is to continue to provide autonomy throughout the industry utilizing our combined services with the Aquanaut system and ROV. We are currently negotiating contracts with multiple new customers that are excited about the benefits autonomy can bring to their subsea operations. After significant discussions with our current clients, our technology has the potential to extremely decrease the environmental footprint of offshore operations utilizing an autonomous service vessel or ASV. We will progress these discussions into funded testing opportunities this summer that include pairing the second Aquanaut vehicle with an ASV. Our current clients see extreme value in this operation by completing inspection work without the use of a large vessel, eliminating personnel from dangerous offshore environments and reducing the CO2 footprint exponentially. With that, I'll now turn it over to Steve for an update on our 2025 offshore commercial pipeline.

Steve Walsh Thanks Daniel and good morning everyone. I'm Steve Walsh, Vice President of Sales at Nauticus Robotics. I officially joined the team on March 21st through the Sea Crap at Acquisition and it's been full throttle from day one. Let me tell you, the momentum here isn't just buzz, it's real. It's growing and it's translating directly into opportunity. The offshore energy market is surging now and Nauticus is right at the center of it. We're actively supporting oil and gas operations while making serious inroads into emerging sectors. What's driving this? A clear industry shift towards smarter, safer, lower emissions propelled by autonomous solutions and that's exactly what we deliver. The response from customers since the merger has been overwhelmingly positive. Combining Sea Crap, its operational legacy with Nauticus' next-gen tech has created a powerful offering. Technologies like the Aquanaut aren't just impressing people, they're changing the conversation. Operators are now thinking differently about risk efficiency and how robotics can reshape offshore operations. There's a strong appetite to remove personnel from hazardous environments and Aquanaut is opening the doors that weren't available before. Since the acquisition, we've been hard at work transferring Sea Crap's existing master service agreements into the new Nauticus framework while also signing new MSAs with major industry players. That's a clear signal of confidence from the market in what we're building. And here's the key point, demand isn't our bottleneck, scaling is. Right now, the only thing holding back revenue acceleration is equipment and personnel capacity. That's a high quality problem and we're tackling it aggressively with smart investments and a laser focus on execution. We're also honing our sales strategy around high impact sectors like deep water energy, offshore infrastructure, and defense, areas where our expanded portfolio truly stands out. To wrap it up, the market is ready for the future we're building. Our pipeline is growing, our technology is gaining traction, and our customers are leaning in. It's an incredibly exciting time at Nauticus and this is just the beginning. We're working toward the shift from selling to order taking. And with that, I'll turn it back over to you, John.

I appreciate that, Steve. You know, we made a big shift here from last year to this year. We've really gotten a lot of customer diversification here and have reduced our customer concentration. The number of calls coming in are exciting because it looks as though we can continue to diversify our customer base. And so, exciting time for us. I mean, it's a great market and we really like the equipment we have. I do want to introduce to you Amin and to really sort of talk about our equipment and Jason Close, our Software Lead, and so that you can get some updates from their departments where you can see what's going on in the belly of the beast. So, with that, I'll turn it over to you, Cash.

Thanks, John. Working with C-Trepid over the past few months has expanded our market reach and introduced us to a wider range of customers and prospects, helping us refine our value proposition and better respond to industry-wide needs. In the first quarter, we made meaningful progress advancing Toolkit across both our primary product line, Aquanaut, and Toolkit-enabled work class ROVs. For Aquanaut, our efforts were centered on releasing the latest version of Toolkit in support of commercial operations for the remainder of the year. In parallel, we continued developing capabilities for a near-term field deployment and established a structured program for 2025 to broaden Aquanaut's operational envelope and further expand supervised autonomy across the subsea industry. We also reached an important milestone in the development of Toolkit for work class ROVs. Following early on vehicle integration and a rigorous round of hardware in the loop testing, Toolkit is now prepared for pool trials as the final step towards our first commercial deployment. We see strong demand for this capability and expect to integrate Toolkit onto our own ROV fleet in the near future as part of this initial commercial release. That said, our assets remain heavily engaged in offshore work, reflecting the growing customer activity we're seeing across the business. As we move through the year, we're focused on delivering value through Aquanaut operations while preparing Toolkit for broader field adoption, setting the stage for long-term growth across both our service and product offerings. I'll now hand it over to Amin for an update on Aquanaut and our electric manipulators.

Thank you, Jason. The engineering team is collaborating closely with the operation and software teams to maximize uptime across both Aquanaut vehicles. This joint effort shows consistent, reliable performance throughout the year with minimal operational disruption. The engineering team has been transitioning from a traditionally &D-focused approach to a commercially driven development model. This shift is essential for enabling scalable growth and aligning our capabilities with evolving market demand. For Aquanaut, design improvements are being implemented to boost vehicle reliability and reduce the maintenance cycle. These upgrades are critical in transitioning Aquanaut into a robust and reliable platform that can meet rigorous field demand. In tandem with our design improvements, the team is enhancing our design documentation and validation protocols to streamline assembly and support reliable maintenance and servicing. Looking ahead, we are developing a capital deployment strategy and actively seeking manufacturing partnerships to scale production of the next Aquanaut fleet in alignment with anticipated market demand. With the manipulators, we are making steady progress on the design of our next generation fully electric autonomous manipulator. This system is intended for integration not only with Aquanaut but also with work-class ROVs, expanding our product capabilities and market application. I will now hand the call back to John.

Thank you, Amin. Thank you, Jason. As you've heard throughout this call, Aquanauticus Robotics is entering a period of significant opportunity. The integration of C-Trepid has not only expanded our operational capacity, it's unlocked meaningful customer relationships and accelerated the deployment of our technology, though we are trying to stay disciplined and balanced upgrading equipment and with getting revenue. And so we will bring it in and make changes as long as it doesn't interrupt the revenue. We're now seeing real traction in market with a growing backlog, expanding pipeline and a clear demand for autonomous solutions that improve safety, lower cost and reduce environmental impact. Our focus moving forward is clear. It's an execute with precision, scale with discipline and deliver on the promise of autonomy and subsea operations. We're confident in the team, in the strategy and the momentum we're building and we believe 2025 is shaping up to be a transformative year for Nauticus and stakeholders. It really does feel like we've made it through the inflection point. And with that, I'll turn it back over to the operator and we'll take any questions that are on the line. Thank you.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Should you have a question, please press the start followed by the number two, sorry, the number one on your touch-down phone. You'll hear a prompt that your hand has been raised. Should you wish to have a question, please press the start followed by the number two. If you're using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. One moment, please, for your first question. Your first question comes from Kunal Madhukar from Water Tower Research. Please go ahead.

Hi, thank you for taking the questions. Two, if I could. One, on the broader oil and gas industry with oil prices kind of declining, what are you seeing in terms of consumer demand and or the demand for your vehicles? How is that changing?

Well, I appreciate you joining the call and asking the question. It's interesting. For the larger clients that have established bases at higher price points, I think that decline in oil and gas price is going to be more difficult. For us, it really gives us an opportunity to displace incumbents and change the market because they're going to be looking for more efficient solutions that are more cost effective. And so I think it opens up conversations for us. I'm simulation of the economy, it stimulates energy demand. It's sort of an interesting combination. But for us, I think we're at least 20 to 25% below the current price points of the alternatives and with as good or better margins. And so I think it gives us a great opportunity to knock on doors. And what's happening now in the market is I think they'll start knocking on doors if the pressure increases on them as prices go down. So I'd probably be in favor of a little bit further decline in order to help accelerate our business.

That's a very interesting view. And then again, you talked about how the offshore season hasn't really started when we're looking at 1Q revenue numbers. So last quarter, when you were reporting full Q results, you talked about about 16 million in revenue as the outlook you had kind of provided for 2025. So help us bridge the revenue from 1Q25 to the full year revenue outlook that you have kind of provided.

Well, this is a great question, Kenal. And it's the fundamental reason I should never give forward looking statements because then you have to go back in there and explain them. We actually have a tremendous pipeline. And we have proposals being generated that cover the 16 million. You know, better than three fourths of the pipeline is day rate type work, where we, you can take a look at the amount of equipment we have, what our day rate is, and you can go create a model for it. Pretty easy. But we still have about a quarter of the 16 million that is tied up in doing software sales and other proposals with regard to both defense and the advancement of our technology that is yet to close. And so when you start doing the model, we have work to do. And so we are hard at it. Our sales team is talking to customers every day. We've got proposals that are being generated. And it's you're going to see a couple of lumpy things that are mixed in next quarter with what the day rates bring in so that you can do a pretty simple model there and then add in the the lumpy proposals that are associated with the with other activities. And I think, you know, I still feel like we're going to have a tremendous year. It is an inflection point and we're going to deliver good results year over year.

Great. As a follow up, John, if I could, last quarter you talked about like 40 to 60,000 in day rates. Is that so times 90 is how we should kind of look at to Q revenue as a base case?

You know, I really like that $50,000 price point because but it is dependent upon several things, the size of the boat we're using, the use of the ROV, the use of the aquanaut. And it's also, I mean, unfortunately, if you pointed out the oil price market, the guys with all the heavy assets that have the much higher price points in down markets, they'll discount. And so we could come to some discounting pressure as a result of doing that. We have the margin in place to be able to always be and those guys, they'd have to lose quite a lot of money to get to our price point. And so I think, you know, we could see some pressure on pricing, but I don't think it'll be very much and we can hold pricing for a long time, maybe through the whole of the year without having any impact whatsoever with them lowering their pricing. It'll take them a while to get down to us. So it's weird. I think we're in pretty good shape on the pricing, but I think $50,000 is a good number, but that's going to vary. And it's a question that should be asked every quarter because it's going to depend upon, you know, hurricanes, it's going to depend upon boat availability, it's going to depend upon competitive pressures from the likes of, you know, ocean airing and CI and others. And so we just monitor the market.

Great. Thank you so much. You're welcome.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, should you have a question, please press the star followed by number one on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from Robert Mandrella, an individual investor. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Thank you for the update. The question, yes, I appreciate the color on the revenue for this year of being around 16 million. It was a smart pivot, definitely earlier this year with SeaTrepid. And the question I have is, how confident are you with the 16 million this year? And then what is the breakdown on, you know, the software, the command center, I think is very crucial. What do you think the revenue will be over the next year or two with the software sales?

Excellent questions. Appreciate you dialing in. And so on the 16 million, the reason I made a statement earlier, I hate giving forward looking information. You never know what the market's going to do or how your equipment is going to perform. But you know, what we're doing is trying to make sure we manage a budget and manage our activities. And so we have to have something that we plan towards. And so that's current planning horizon. So we went ahead and shared it. Okay. So how does that break down? As I said a moment ago, about three fourths of it will fall into the utilization of current assets. And about a quarter of it will fall over into software sales and proposals to advance solutions that are of high interest to our customers, both in the oil and gas, potentially in wind, as well as in the defense sector. We've got some pretty exciting opportunities in working on nonboat driven solutions. If you think about taking the real cost down in this industry is if we can deploy a USB with an aquanaut, no boat whatsoever. If we can deploy from the bank for near shore fields and go out and come back without having any boat whatsoever, completely autonomous, best solution ever. You don't have to worry about the launch and recovery of the vehicle, et cetera. So we think there's some proposals to advance that, that we are working jointly with partners on that have real upside opportunity because that's how you get cost out of the market and let our customers continue to make margin at lower oil and gas prices, is they have to continue to work on what their day rates are. So that movement towards full autonomy, we are extremely advanced in that compared to any other firm. There's no competitor that is looking at doing it in the way that we are. And I think that's going to be something that picks up momentum. And that's likely a proposal for a group of companies that want to push that cost lower in 2026, 2027. And so we'll work to create that project with partners and to go forward. The software, wow. You know, everybody talks about AI, AI, AI. You know, AI is very important and it's certainly utilized here. But autonomy is really what is driving the changes in the marketplace today. And that's taking people off the vessels, taking people out of the equation, improving efficiency, reducing total recordable incident rates. And it's also driving down that efficiency brings down carbon footprint. We're in a position on all of those with our solution. The maturity of the software is coming along. We have the commercial release of the ROV software coming out. And of course, there's nothing better than putting it on your own equipment and demonstrating it before you go out and try to push it in the marketplace. Great conversations occurring there. And I think there will be really good traction. And then we continue to stay platform agnostic. And so our software system can run on any robot. And so we're pursuing other robotics companies to deliver autonomy to them as well. And I think that's why I'm confident in our ability to deliver great results this year.

Thank you, John. And one last question. And I assume the patents that you have on the software and the hardware basically is 20 years plus. How do you see the LIDOS partnership, you know, basically rolling out? Secondly, is it possibly an exit down the road? Well, you know, I should be a director. I know your question.

The fact I can't answer it doesn't change the fact that it's a great question. You know, we can't talk about exit strategies here as a public company. I'll just say that very interested in LIDOS and in the partnership with them, there's a tremendous amount of capabilities we have that we've no bring value to the maritime industry and in the defense sector. And so we're excited as that develops. And I said this a year ago, I just find the defense sector, particularly given the uncertainty that you have in Washington, overspending and budgets and leadership, that we made a really good decision, focusing on the commercial side, because the speed at which these contracts will be left, they're going to be left and they're going to be big. And so you want to be there and you want to participate and we want to work with a great partner like LIDOS. But when you're small, that kind of lumpiness is just not something you can endure. So we're very excited that we've got all this commercial pipeline developing and it will carry us forward. On the LIDOS side, they have contractual commitments to us and we're working with them. The timing on that is extended over a long period. And so, you know, we will be announcing those as we get to them, but we're working slowly with them. And as they navigate the uncertainty with the defense sector and really have more experience and capability than we do, we're delighted to have a great partner and continue to look forward to working closely with them. Thank you. I look forward to your email, John. Okay. Not a problem. Take care.

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call over to John for closing remarks. Please go ahead.

I appreciate all of you joining today. And it's really hard to do an announcement like this where you're talking about a quarter to come as opposed to a quarter you completed. And so Q2 really is our first quarter where we'll be operational for the whole of the quarter. And I think you'll have great opportunity at the end of Q2 to come in and construct models and understand how we're executing and what the margins are going to be and who we're working for. It's an exciting time to be at Nauticus. And the next call in August, I think, is where we're really going to talk about the business and the quality of the business and the quality of the work. And then we'll have really strong statements to make about what we're doing and where we're going at that point because we will actually have a track record. And so thank you for sticking with us all this time. And I look forward to coming out and talking concretely as opposed to abstractly about what we're doing in the ocean and the value that we're bringing and how customers perceive us. So again, appreciate you guys owning chairs. And we are trying to create as much value as possible as quick as we can. Take care.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect.