Laser Photonics Corporation

Good morning and welcome to the Laser Finetics first quarter 2023 financial results webcast. After today's presentation, management will answer any questions that you have submitted ahead of time or through the webcast. Please note that this event is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Brian Stegall, Senior Managing Director of Hayden IR. Thank you, sir. You may begin.

Thank you, operator. With me today are Wayne Topola, Laser Photonics CEO, Peter Evans, who recently joined us as president, and Bill Campbell, who just joined us as CFO. Wayne will introduce the company and its opportunity to disrupt the market for corrosion control and other applications. Peter will discuss the strategy and the plan for this year, and then Bill will review the financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2023. Any forward-looking statements made during this conference call, whether general or specific in nature, are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those which the company anticipates. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the specific risks and uncertainties discussed in the reports that we file periodically with the SEC. Laser Photonics assumes no obligation to either update any forward-looking statements that we have made or may make or to update the factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those that we forecast. I will now turn the call over to Wayne, Laser Photonics Chief Executive Officer.

Thank you, Brian. Good afternoon, everyone. We reported a solid quarter in Q1 with year-over-year growth of 35%. This growth was led by solid performance across all our product lines, especially in our high-power laser cleaning processing applications and affordable entry-level systems. We attribute this growth to our continued investment in sales and marketing and capitalizing on our existing and newly installed customer base. We are also making investments in R&D to develop world-class products that meet the demands of our customers in industrial, automotive, MRO, and nuclear facility decommissioning markets. Moving to our growth investments, which, as we said on our recent fourth quarter earnings call, would negatively impact profits this year. From a personal perspective, we brought on Peter and Bill, two C-level executives with proven success in relevant verticals at larger companies. We also expanded our marketing department to 13 people to support anticipated growth and added four outside sales professionals to target the DOD automotive and energy industries and strategic geographic areas. Furthermore, we are building an AI and big data team, which will primarily focus on targeting specific end users, such as plant managers, department managers, and chief engineers from selected industries and verticals, including the automotive, aeronautical, and maritime sectors to enhance lead creation while decreasing customer acquisition costs. For R&D, we maintain several programs and activities to improve our technology and processes to enhance performance to reduce the cost of our laser cleaning systems. In Q1, We increase R&D investments to stay ahead of our competition. We equip our application center with state-of-the-art laser blasters and develop new complementary technologies such as remote particle removal for energy transmission power lines and infrastructure projects, maintenance, repair, and construction. Moving forward, we intend to make further investments in R&D to innovate and guarantee the company's long-term future. Now I'd like to turn the call over to our president, Mr. Peter Evans, for a detailed review of our sales and marketing efforts.