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spk00: Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the COPEN second quarter 2022 earnings conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To join the question queue, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star. and zero. I would now like to turn the conference over to Rich Schneider, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.
spk03: Thank you, Operator. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us this morning. John will begin today's call with a discussion of our progress in executing our strategy, and then I will go through the second quarter of 2022 results at a high level. John will conclude our prepared remarks and will be happy to take your questions. I would like to remind everyone that during today's call taking place on Tuesday, August 2, 2022, we will be making forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are based on the company's current expectations, projections, beliefs, and estimates and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those forward-looking statements. Potential risks include, but are not limited to, demand for our products, operating results for our subsidiaries, market conditions, and other factors discussed in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and other documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company undertakes no obligation to update the forwarded statements made during today's call. And with that, I'm going to call over to John.
spk02: Thank you, Rich. Good morning. And thank you all for joining us to discuss our second quarter 2022 operating results. We are very pleased with the results of the second quarter of 2022. Total revenues went up 20% year over year, driven by about 30% growth of our product revenues. In addition, our customer-funded research and development revenues remain strong, which we view as an indicator of our future growth opportunities, as we expect most of these development programs will transition to production in time. Our revenue from previous products were particularly strong, growing 87% year over year in the second quarter. During the second quarter of 2022, we announced additional orders for our displays for F-35 pilot helmets and imaging systems for armored vehicles. In July, we announced a production order for our brilliant higher brightness color displays for helicopter pilot helmets. During the second quarter, we also announced the expansion of our industrial customer base, adding a new Korean 3D automated optical inspection system customer. They use our Spatial Light Modulator, or SLM, as a critical component in their system. With this particular wind, we're now supplying a high-speed, high-performance SLM, which are based on proprietary ferroelectric electrical crystal displays to all the three leading Korean 3D AOI equipment manufacturers. In addition to other markets, leading manufacturers in China, Japan, and Germany. These announcements are very important in several ways. They add to our already strong backlog of orders. But equally important, those programs represent the variety of micro-display technology Coping offers. We believe we are the only company in the world that offers active matrix liquid crystal displays, ferroelectric liquid crystal displays, and organic light-emitting dials or OLED displays. And we are working with partners to develop inorganic light-emitting displays or commonly named micro-LEDs. All our micro-displays, as a reminder, are displays built on silicon. Just as important as our breadth of display technologies to meet customer needs is a variety of advanced, specialized optics which we offer and which provides our customer with an integrated turnkey solution. This allows our customers to offer high-quality visual solutions to meet the variety of needs in the market. For example, our new padding-panning all-plastic pancake optics enables smaller, much lighter-weight VR headsets and also metaverse headsets compared to the optics used in the headsets today. We believe our all-plastic pancake optics are the first in the world. Providing critical components for metaverse headsets that are thinner, lighter, comfortable, and easy to use has been one of our critical objectives. Our all-plastic optics, pancake optics, provide not only the clear advantages mentioned before, But most importantly, they provide a very sharp image with good eye relief. We believe combining our all-plastic pancake optics with our 2.6 OLED micro-displays representing a perfect match, providing magnification of 30,000 to 50,000 times by maintaining a very sharp image. Our goal has always remained the same, which is to lead in these two critical technology areas. They are essential for great VR, AR experiences. This is a good place to put the importance of micro displays and pancakes in the proper context. These two technologies are analogous in importance. as lithium battery technologies are to the electric vehicle industry. As second quarter growth occurred, I was dealt with global supply chain issues. While we are pleased with that growth, it did come at a cost. As our price release indicates, with incurred more costs to keep our customer running and operations running than we would normally expect. Typically, a defense product design has a life cycle of about five to seven years. But given the supply chain issues, there are limited visibility as to when the supply chain issues will get resolved As a contingency, we redesigned several products with alternate semiconductor components so we will have flexibility and a backup plan. This has increased our engineering and park costs, and we also incurred those alternative semiconductor components as we also incurred those semiconductor components. The positive news is based on discussion with our vendors now. It appears the supply chain issues are improving. And we believe our operation in the second half of 2022 will run closer to normal.
spk01: Furthermore, We expect that our second half revenue will be higher than our first half revenue as our defense business expects to be stronger.
spk02: Now let me provide an update on the progress in developing our micro audit product line. We're currently designing multiple back planes for partners and customers. And we are also in discussion with partners for more advanced audit designs for use in virtual reality and augmented reality systems. What has drawn customers to us is our unique industry-leading 2.6K audit display and deep knowledge of the display and optics as a system. Customers, of course, like high resolutions. But they also value its 1.3-inch size because it enables better optics. The 2.6 display is really a display on a chip. We named it DOC. It has embedded MIPI circuits and digital processing circuits which make the interface with standard video signal simpler and much less power-consuming. One additional technical advantage and advance we have is that folks are now beginning to understand the value of voltage drive in OLED displays as opposed to current drive. Coping designed our 2.6 on a display using voltage drive.
spk01: But most others use current drive.
spk02: Voltage versus current drive are now hotly debated in the industry. I now indicate that voltage drive results significantly in lower power consumption. especially as micro-display resolution increases. Coping micro-OLED displays have been shown to be using significantly lower power than OLEDs by other suppliers. We are now in discussion with folks to put the advantage of our 2.6 display design to higher resolution. such as 4K HDR displays. As we have previously discussed, our OLED product line is based on a fabulous business model. Using our model, we either sell finished OLED micro-displays to our customers by working with our OLED foundry partners, or we sell our highly advanced proprietary backplane wafers to other OEM partners who complete the microdisplay for sale to their own customer base. This business model provides us more flexibility to meet customers' demands. Turning to our research and development activities, we continue to make excellent progress in developing a microLED display. This is a customer-funded project. It has many partners. This consortium of partners working on different elements of displays is how we created our current LCD in the early 1990s with the $50 million funding from DARPA to us. To be clear, this is a long-term development project. But if successful, the display opens us tremendous opportunities. In summary, customer demand is strong in our core product lines, especially in our defense sector. And we're aggressively managing our supply chain challenge. We continue our momentum on innovating and advancing our technology for metaverse applications. We continue to see strong interest in developing products targeted for metaverse. And we feel we're very well positioned to capitalize the opportunities it presents. We're very excited for the growth of COVID. as we see a wave of rapidly growing interest of our micro-displays and optics across AI, VR, and MR products and applications, first in defense, then enterprise, and now starting in consumer sectors. Our technology advances, our current market conditions are very favorable. And we believe coping is well positioned to capitalize. Now we turn the call to Rich to discuss the financial aspect of this quarter and the full year. Thank you, John.
spk03: Turning to our financial results, product revenues for the second quarter ended June 25th, 2022 were 9 million. Okay. With 6.9 million for the second quarter ended June 26th, 2021, a 30% increase year over year. Funded research and development revenues were $2.8 million for the second quarter ended June 25, 2022, compared with $2.7 million for the second quarter ended June 26, 2021, essentially flat. Total revenues for Q2 2022 were $11.9 million versus $9.9 million on the prior year, an overall 20% increase year over year. Cost of goods sold for the second quarter of 2022 was $7.9 million, or 88% of product revenues, compared with $6 million, or 87%, for the second quarter of last year. The slight increase in cost for the product revenues as a percent of net product revenues for the three months ended June 25, 2022, as compared to the primary year, was primarily due to manufacturing inefficiencies caused by supply chain disruptions. R&D expenses in the second quarter of 2022 were $5.1 million compared with $3.7 million for the second quarter of 2021. The increase in the 2022 second quarter R&D expense as compared to the prior year was equally split between R&D, internal R&D expense, and customer-funded R&D activities. The increase in internal R&D was primarily due to an increase in OLED development costs, and the redesign of certain products to incorporate alternative semiconductor components as a result of the shortage of legacy semiconductor components. The increase in funded R&D was in support of customer-funded activities related to defense programs. SG&A was $4.3 million in the second quarter of 2022 compared to $4 million in the second quarter of 2021. SG&A increased with three months ended June 25, 2022 as compared to three months ended 2021, primarily due to an increase in compensation, information technology, and travel costs, which were partially offset by lower Baghdad expense and stock-based compensation expense. Other income expense was expense of approximately $141,000 for the second quarter of 2022, compared with $104,000 of income for the second quarter of 21. During the three-month end of June 25, 2022, We record $150,000 of foreign currency losses as compared to $101,000 of foreign currency gains for the three months ended June 26, 2021. Turning to the bottom line, our net loss of Controlling Interest for the quarter was approximately $5.6 million or $0.06 per share, compared with a net loss of $3.8 million or $0.04 per share in the second quarter of 2021. Net cash used in operating activities for the six-month end of June 25, 2022, was approximately $11.4 million. As John and my discussions indicated, supply chain issues affected our manufacturing efficiencies, which increased costs and negatively affected working capital flow in the first half of the year. In addition, as we discussed, we received a production order for our beryllium displays for rotary wing aircraft, and we expect another program to transition into production in the second half of 2022. and these may require additional working capital. Accordingly, management deemed it prudent to partially fund our working capital needs through the use of our at-the-market equity offering program, or ATM. And so during the second quarter of 2022, we sold 1.7 million shares of common stock for gross proceeds of $2.1 million before deducting broker expenses of less than $100,000 pursuant to the company's ATM. Going forward, we are reviewing other funding alternatives. Copeland's cash equivalents and marketable securities were approximately $18.6 million at June 25, 2022, as compared to $29.3 million at December 25, 2021. We have no long-term debt. Second quarter amounts of depreciation and stock context events are attached in the table to the Q2 press release. The amounts discussed above are based on current estimates and listeners should review our form 10-Q for the second quarter 2022 for any possible changes and additional disclosures. And with that, operator will be happy to take questions.
spk00: Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To join the question queue, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. You will hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. We will pause for a moment as callers join the queue. The first question comes from Glenn Mattson with Leidenberg Thalmann. Please go ahead.
spk05: Hi, yeah, thanks for taking the question. First, Rich, you just touched on it. I'm curious a little bit about the... about kind of the cash burn and where you sit today. So I guess, you know, you expect a stronger second half, some of these new orders coming through and continuing strong defense. Do you expect, you know, but then you also commented kind of like also having to build working capital. So is your expectation that you'll be continuing to burn at a rate at this level or that it would, it would be a burn, but not as bad or, or that, you know, you know, flip to positive in terms of the cash flow from operations, just what's your sense in the second half thing?
spk03: Yeah, the, um, the first half, uh, we, we look at it as an anomaly. Uh, we had, uh, supply chain disruptions in the end of the first quarter that carried into the second quarter. And so what happened was the receivables got collected during the second quarter, but then had to get rebuilt at the end of the second quarter. So when you see the cash flow statement coming out, what you'll see is the change in the receivables is really what caused the issue. So we expect that to moderate. We've rebuilt the receivables so our working capital looks more normalized to what it should be. So you're not going to have those working capital fluctuations we don't expect in the second half. And so with improving operations and the fact that we're not going to have this anomaly of the receiples getting burned down, we expect the cash flow to be better in the second half.
spk05: Okay. And I'm curious about the decision to do stock sales at that level and what this kind of signal sends. And, you know, I understand the issue just to grow more comfortable around preparing for these bigger orders, but also – You know, on top of that, could you maybe elaborate? Have you done any more sales since the quarter ended? Or, you know, you also kind of mentioned that there's other options for capital raising activity if need be. So can you just kind of elaborate on that? Thanks.
spk03: Sure. Yeah, I mean, nobody was really particularly happy exercising at that price, the ATM that we had at the end of the quarter. But we did think it was prudent. You know, there was a lot of talk about recession. We really weren't sure what the supply chain was going to go. As John said in his prepared remarks, the good news is it looks like, from what we're hearing, that supply chain issues, for us at least, seem to have been, for the most part, sorted out for the rest of the year. So, you know, we took a lot of actions just in case. You know, we redesigned some of the boards that we use in the products. So this was incremental development costs we hadn't anticipated. We bought alternative semiconductor materials, which now it looks like we probably won't use, at least in the short term. So there was just expenses associated to making sure that we could fulfill our contractual obligations. But we don't see any of that in the second half of the year. We have in the past, you know, when we had sufficient time to – do other types of funding, usually around getting prepayments on long-term contracts from customers. And so we'll continue to explore those opportunities. And I think the other important factor is that, you know, sitting here today, we have two programs, F-35 and FWSI, which are in solid production, and we have three emerging production programs. And we are sole source to all those programs. And so maintaining a very strong balance sheet is very important so that those programs continue. And so for those reasons, we thought it was the right move to go out and exercise the ATM.
spk05: Yeah, yeah.
spk02: To give you more things, I think, yeah, we are looking at it the other way. But our customers, because we are so soft to them, they also are – Some of them are actually helping us to alleviate some of those park procurements and all that stuff. So we'll be at much better – we'll be at better performance next half.
spk05: Great. That's it for me. Thanks for the call, guys. The defense business seems to be going really well, and so it'll be exciting to watch that continue. Thanks.
spk02: Yeah. Well, we are winning. I mean, we have a lot more orders coming in, and this is certainly the most important thing, the technology and orders. We do have them, yeah.
spk01: And we're so strong, so I'm with all of them.
spk00: The next question comes from Kevin Deedy with HC Wainwright. Please go ahead.
spk04: Good morning, gentlemen. Thanks for having me on the call. A couple of things. I guess one is tied to inventory. I understand the supply chain issue and sourcing. Inventories seem to be up, right, sequentially, where they were probably depressed in the March quarter. I know, Rich, you just said that you probably acquired material you won't sell. What do you suspect happens with inventory and the tie to margin just through the balance of the year?
spk03: So we expect improving growth margin and the inventory level we would expect to maintain where it is. We don't see any major fluctuations in inventory levels at this time.
spk04: Okay. Defense products are projects that, aside from the FWSI and F-35, can you talk to the three that you mentioned, Rich, and I guess where you see them in terms of their development cycle and perhaps going to, you know, full production?
spk03: Yeah, we would expect all of them in full production in the first half of next year. As we mentioned, one is the Beryllian display for rotary aircraft. Another is an international weapons site, similar to, in some respects, the FWSI that we currently sell. And as we said in the press release, the recent results, the chaos in Europe right now, is actually sparking demand for those types of products. And so we're getting positive feedback from customers. future orders on those. And the other one's kind of a unique targeting system that we sell that I really can't get into a lot of details about, but it does.
spk04: Okay. Fair enough. Has the chaos in Europe spurred development? It's interesting when you look at the the sequential change in research and development down a couple of million. I left the March quarter call thinking that military development might increase. I guess I just was hoping you could help me understand that.
spk03: Well, again, we recognize revenue based upon percent completion. And as John mentioned, for instance, the micro-LED program is a consortium of companies that are developing that display. And so in some respects, our revenues are tied to how well they complete their tasks. So to the extent that they get stuff done and we move further down the road, we recognize more revenue. So it's really important. That's why it's always difficult to project that funded R&D line because, as I said, particularly in the micro-LED, we're relying on a number of other subcontractors to perform.
spk04: So is that the lion's share then, Rich, of that line?
spk03: Well, it's a good piece of it, and then part of it is the fact that the –
spk04: the beryllium display that's going to production was winding down okay all right that helps um john can you talk a little bit about the micro led development understand partners in japan and china uh I'm wondering if you'll be able to transition that technology and its development into defense-related products given a lot of the development, or at least it seems to me from outside, a lot of that development is happening outside the U.S.?
spk02: Yeah. This is a consortium. This is a technology and early... demonstration of micro-LEDs. Of course, it runs from here, but they are also run in the U.K. Consortium has a lot of activities in the U.K., which is actually through our subsidiary in the U.K., and then in Japan, and partially also in China. But almost all the activities really reside in the U.S. and the U.K. right now, and Japan.
spk04: Okay. I know you said it's long-term development. You know, over the past year or so, you've added some interesting tidbits on it. Could you maybe hone in on the timeline a little bit better? you know, where you think it might get to commercialization?
spk02: Yeah. It is targeted to, at this point, this is actually the product in mind, targeted to defense and enterprise applications. The first, and then eventually it goes to consumer. And it's a very aggressive target. If we succeed, and I can't say that we definitely succeed, it will be the most advanced micro-LED in the world.
spk04: Okay, but is it too early to offer some type of timeline?
spk02: I mean, we are optimistic, of course, but we have a bunch of very, very good people working on it. I think anybody in the city would probably have a good chance.
spk01: Okay.
spk04: The balance of DOD stuff that you folks haven't spoken to, I understand the issues in Europe, but is there any way to sort of quantify how – projects sort of in the wings and then develop might be moving forward more rapidly?
spk02: Yeah. This is Kevin, right? Yeah, it's Kevin. I think we did announce not too long ago about some activities that our imaging system for armored vehicles. And that's very, very critical. I really think all the political tensions that are happening is everybody needs new imaging systems for using armored vehicles. And again, we're so sourced there. And that activity is actually going full steam. And as you well know, our working capital obviously has increased. because a lot of productions, new programs go to productions, a lot of activities in R&D, some of them are internally funded. But that's normal when things are, we're actually in the winning cycle right now. And, yeah, we're not on either way. ATM is just one of our options of raising more money, and I think we'll continue to do so.
spk04: Okay, the... There was a $2 million development order for the in-vehicle imaging. Is that the one you're referring to, John? It appears that it was the second system development order.
spk02: Yeah, that's exactly, Kevin, you're right. And that program, to me, I'm very excited about that program because I really believe there will be a major, major pipeline of revenue for us. We are so soft, and we're working with a huge customer.
spk04: Right. So just to kind of get back to timing, John, I mean, apologies for harping on this, but would you suppose or is it fair to assume that this second order came in faster than it would have had there not been issues in Europe? And if so, how much more or how much faster do you think it came in?
spk02: I can't speak to that because there are a lot of activities going on. I cannot comment on them.
spk01: Okay.
spk04: All right. Can you talk a little bit about the metrology market, John? I mean, I know you mentioned that there were – that you have three – all three customers, I guess, in South Korea. But I – I'd love to hear your perspective on, you know, fab development in the U.S. I know that's a highly controversial topic right now, and it would be really interesting to hear your vision on how, you know, foundries and semi-manufacturing might expand in the U.S. and how that could benefit Copen.
spk02: Yeah, this is a very interesting insightful question. As you all know, every country is trying to build up a new FAPS, a new semiconductor FAPS, and you probably read Even this weekend, I think there was a past weekend, there's an article that said that the chips are getting three-dimensional. They're stacking our chips together on top of each other. So we are seeing a situation where people no longer look at putting chips in 2D format, in a 3D format. So this is what we call 3D metrology. Currently, it's still a very emerging business. The market now is divided into three parts. Coping of our 40-year-old subsidiary, FDD, we own about 40% of the world market. TI, using a DLP, owns 40% of the world market. And the rest of them are using laser and other stuff, small ones. So we have about 40% of market share of an emerging business but turn everything from 2D to 3D, and as you can guess, everything is going to go to 3D. It will take some time. People don't like to change their factories, but it will happen. And a new factory definitely needs it.
spk04: Okay. Thank you, gentlemen, for entertaining my questions.
spk01: I appreciate it. Okay, Kevin.
spk00: That is all the time that we have for questions, and I would like to turn the conference call back over to Dr. Phan for any closing remarks.
spk02: Thank you for joining us today, and hopefully you'll hear about it next time.
spk00: This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.
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