Momentus Inc.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Momentus, Inc. First Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode, but we will open the floor for your questions after the presentation. If you would like to enter the queue to ask a question at any time during the presentation or Q&A period, you may press star 1 on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. Should you wish to remove yourself from queue, you may press star two. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Daryl Genovese, Vice President of Investor Relations. Daryl, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Tom, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Momentum's first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. With me here today are John Rood, Chief Executive Officer of the company and Chairman of its Board of Directors, as well as Jikon Kim, Chief Financial Officer. Each will provide prepared remarks. Following these prepared remarks, we will take questions from analysts. In the interest of time, we would ask that you limit yourself to one question and one brief follow-up. Earlier today, we issued a press release and made a slide presentation available on our investor relations website, which provides an overview of our business and financial highlights for the first quarter. You can download a copy of the release and presentation slides at investors.momentus.space. During today's call, we will make certain forward-looking statements. within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Exchange Act of 1934. Forward-looking statements are predictions, projections, and other statements about future events that are based on current expectations and assumptions and, as a result, are subject to risks on a certain piece. Many factors could cause actual future events to differ materially from the forward-looking statements in this communication. You should listen to today's call with the understanding that our actual results may be materially different from the plans, intentions, and expectations disclosed in the forward-looking statements we make. For more information about factors that may cause actual results to materially differ from forward-looking statements, please refer to the earnings press release we issued today, as well as the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Readers are cautioned not to put undue reliance on forward-looking statements, and the company specifically disclaims any obligation to update the forward-looking statements that may be discussed during this call. Please also note that we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial information on today's call. You can find reconciliations of the non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP measures in our earnings press release. None of these non-GAAP financial measures is a substitute for or superior to measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP. The technology underlying our anticipated service offerings is still in the process of being developed and has not yet been fully tested or validated in space. Our ability to execute on our business plan is dependent on the successful development and commercialization of our technologies. Development of space technologies is extremely complex, time-consuming, and expensive, and there can be no assurance that our predicted theoretical and ground-based results will translate into operational space vehicles that operate within the parameters we expect or at all. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, John Root. Thank you, Daryl.

Good afternoon. I'm delighted to be here today to talk to you about our first quarter and the progress that we've made since our last earnings call in early March of this year. We are on pace to complete our inaugural Vigoride demonstration flight this month. For that, I'd like to extend a heartfelt thank you to the entire Momentus team, which continues to drive progress toward our objective of providing the backbone infrastructure services to support the emerging space economy. I'll provide some high-level comments on our activities since our last earnings call, and particularly our progress toward our inaugural launch, both during Q1 and since the quarter ended, as there has been so much progress in the last six weeks. I'll then spend some time discussing our plan for that launch. After I make my comments, our CFO, Jikon Kim, will take you through the Q1 financial highlights. Turning to slide three. Overall, the team continues to make impressive progress on our technology, as well as on the licensing and regulatory front. We've continued work to bring the Vigoride orbital transfer vehicle to market. During the first quarter, we completed system-level thermal vacuum testing on the Vigoride 3 vehicle that we plan to fly in space on its inaugural mission this month. Thermal vacuum testing is late-stage environmental testing that closely simulates the environment that the vehicle will encounter in space. In April, Vigoride 3 completed system-level vibration testing. This test, which is the last of our major ground-based environmental tests, simulates the environment that Vigoride will encounter when onboard the SpaceX launch vehicle. Our testing sequence is designed to uncover issues on the ground where we can deal with them more readily and effectively than we could in space. Following our thermal vacuum and vibration tests, the team addressed issues that were uncovered and made improvements where necessary. We went through a checkout sequence to ensure that the Vigoride 3's many subsystems were still functioning normally after being subjected to these environments. In April, we also conducted a flight readiness review, integrated customer satellites and other hardware onto Vigoride 3, and shipped it to its launch site in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Vigoride 3 is now at Cape Canaveral, mated to the Falcon 9 launch vehicle that will carry it to orbit on the SpaceX Transporter 5 mission targeted for this month. Turning to slide four. This slide has some great pictures that illustrate the progress we've made in preparing the VigRide 3 spacecraft for its operation in space. The picture at the top left shows the spacecraft in our clean room in San Jose. San Jose, California, that is. The other photos trace its journey through stages of testing and preparation for launch. We're excited to see the Vigoride vehicle integrated on the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that will take it to space and eager for its debut in space soon. Turning to slide five, while our engineers have been busy getting Vigoride ready for our inaugural mission, our legal and security teams have been working hard to further implement the compliance tasks required under our National Security Agreement, or NSA. with the US government. This includes screening all the licenses, securing all the licenses and approvals that we need for our inaugural mission, which we have now done. In particular, we received two license updates from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, on March 21st and April 27th. Our NOAA license authorizes Vigoride 3 to operate its camera in space. Then, on April 28th, we received a license from the Federal Communications Commission, or FCC, authorizing Momentus to use radio frequencies to communicate with Vigorite. Finally, on May 4th, we received a favorable payload determination from the Federal Aviation Administration, or FAA. You may have previously heard this referred to as a Momentus license from the FAA, but in fact what we needed and have obtained is FAA, quote, payload approval, end quote. As part of this review, the FAA consulted with other government agencies to determine whether the launch of a proposed payload would present any issues affecting public health and safety, the safety of property, U.S. national security or foreign policy interests, or international obligations of the United States. The FAA payload determination was the final regulatory hurdle for the company to overcome in order to proceed with its first flight on Transporter 5, which, as I said, SpaceX is currently targeting for this month. I'm proud of our team's efforts to ready the Vigoride spacecraft for its inaugural mission. The next step is for SpaceX to deliver Vigoride safely to orbit. Given the strong SpaceX track record, we have good reason to be confident that we will soon have our vehicle in orbit. We thank SpaceX for the partnership and cooperation they are providing to support our inaugural Vigoride launch. While the company has faced several regulatory challenges in the past 18 months, our substantial progress in implementing our NSA has resulted in obtaining the necessary government licenses and approvals for our planned inaugural launch. The team's focus on implementing the NSA will continue side by side with bringing forward the best product we can for our customers and to the benefit of our shareholders. Turning to slide six, while Momentus plans to take some customer payloads to orbit and generate a small amount of revenue, the primary goals of our inaugural mission are to test Vigoride on orbit, learn from any issues encountered, and incorporate the lessons learned into future Vigoride vehicles. Under our FCC license, the mission could last as long as six months. Our plan is to complete test and demonstration tasks with the spacecraft in less than that time period. As mentioned earlier, VigRide 3 is currently mated to the Falcon 9 rocket that SpaceX is targeting for launch this month on the Transporter 5 mission. The mission plan calls for Vigoride 3 to be ejected into a sun-synchronous orbit at approximately 500 kilometers altitude, or just over 300 miles above the surface of the Earth. After separating from the launch vehicle, Vigoride 3 is slated to go through a disciplined sequence of startup procedures, including powering up, deploying its solar panels, and establishing communications with the ground stations that we will use to control the vehicle from Earth. During Vigoride 3's flight, we plan to deploy nine satellites from the vehicle. We also plan to operate space hardware to support a customer test of this hardware. All told, these services support a total of three customers using Vigoride. As customer satellites are deployed, we will recognize a small amount of revenue. Once we have fulfilled our obligations to our customers, We plan to operate Vigoride 3 in space through powered flight and test its ability to maneuver to different orbits. Over the course of the mission, we plan to operate and monitor the performance of the spacecraft and its subsystems, including our propulsion system, to inform future design iterations. At the conclusion of the mission, we plan to de-orbit Vigoride 3 so that it burns up on re-entry. In the history of spaceflight, it's common to experience issues, particularly on early missions. Our intention is not just to perform the planned flight demonstration mission and meet our objectives, but also to find issues that we can correct on future flights. This approach is critical to our future success. We plan to learn from any anomalies we experience during our inaugural flight and apply the lessons learned to improve our technology going forward. Our core business objective is to become an industry leader, providing transportation and in-space infrastructure services for the burgeoning new space economy, and our planned inaugural mission represents a key step along that path. Turning to slide seven, as I said on our March earnings call, we have secured two ports on the SpaceX Transporter 5 mission. Vigoride 3 has been mated to one of these ports, and on the second port, a third-party deployer system has been mated to the Falcon 9 launch vehicle. This system, which is shown in the picture on this slide, is made by one of our partners, who is also handling the customer and launch vehicle integration work for the second port. This system is slated to deploy in orbit five satellites for four different customers. As I said in our last earnings call, this system cannot provide the last-mile transportation service to precise custom orbits that Vigoride can. However, it meets the needs of some of our customers in our backlog, particularly those that don't need to get to a precise orbit, have less complex requirements, and are looking for a lower-cost way to reach low-earth orbit, or LEO. This represents an effort to explore other market segments that are adjacent to our current addressable market with Vigoride. Offering a lower cost option alongside Vigoride allows us to address the market in multiple ways and serve the diverse needs of our customers more economically than we could if we were to fly every one of them on a more capable Vigoride vehicle. Turning to slide eight, we also continue to plan for our future beyond the first launch of Vigoride. During the first quarter, we signed launch services agreements with SpaceX that reserved space for us on four additional rideshare missions, including Transporter 6, which is targeted for October 2022, Transporter 7, targeted for January 2023, Transporter 8, targeted for April 2023, and Transporter 9, targeted for October 2023. In all, we are now manifested on each of the dedicated rideshare missions that SpaceX plans to operate from now through the end of 2023. Recall that once we've established initial product viability, we plan to broaden our service offerings with Vigoride beyond the hub and spoke transportation mission. Demonstrating some of the technologies for these broader offerings is part of what we plan to do during these follow-on missions. As an initial step toward broadening the product offering, we plan to carry a hosted payload customer on Transporter 6, which SpaceX is currently targeting for October 2022. This will allow us to demonstrate our hosted payload capability and grow our hosted payload business with other potential customers. Hosted payloads involve carrying a payload for a customer aboard Vigoride, in which the payload receives different types of support, such as power, communications, or being operated to test its performance in space. We also plan to fly our first Block 2.2 Vigoride vehicle on Transporter 6. We are planning to introduce a reusable version of our Vigoride vehicle toward the middle of the decade. We expect this move to reusability will allow us to provide more economical transportation services. It will also allow us to further expand the type of services we're able to offer our customers, including in-orbit maintenance, refueling of satellites, removing debris, and de-orbiting satellites at the end of their useful life, as well as other satellite services. We've been continuing work ourselves and with partners on the technologies to enable provision of these services such as a robotic arm for Vigoride. We also plan to test a sensor package to enable rendezvous and proximity operations and a fluid transfer system for Vigoride to replenish its propellant tanks in space. We plan to begin on-orbit testing of some key technologies that we will need for reusable Vigoride on the 2023 SpaceX missions that we've booked. Turning now to slide 9, this slide provides an overview of where we stand in production of our early vehicles. So far, we've produced three complete Vigorides with three more in various stages of production. Vigoride 1 and Vigoride 2 are fully built and tested. As we've said in the past, we learned a significant amount from production of these early vehicles that we plan to retain in storage and potentially use as brownfields. Vigoride development. I discussed the status of Vigoride 3 earlier in this call, but this chart provides a nice visual of its comprehensive ground testing campaign. Our integration and testing process is based on industry best practices for spacecraft manufacturing and testing. We continue to stress the importance of using ground testing, not only to validate our designs and engineering processes, but also as a critical part of a disciplined approach to put us in the best position possible for success on orbit. After our inaugural mission with Vigoride 3, we plan to begin operating vehicles from our improved Block 2.2 Vigoride configuration, beginning with Vigoride 5. During the first quarter, we completed our Block 2.2 critical design review to incorporate design changes relative to the prior configuration. These changes include a new modular tank system that will allow us to swap propellant for payload, depending on the mission requirements, as well as a more efficient structural design and improved payload hosting capabilities. We now have three Block 2.2 vehicles in different stages of production. Turning to slide 10, we continue to build out and improve our executive leadership team, adding high-caliber individuals to bring the type of experience and skill sets that we need to grow our business. During the first quarter, we welcome Jason Garkey as our new security officer. Jason reports to Security Director Vic Mercado, who continues to lead our security function and implementation of our NSA, which is overseen by the Department of Defense and the Department of the Treasury. Receiving the government approvals required for the upcoming Vigoride launch is a testament to the big difference Jason has already made in implementing our NSA. We're also building out our engineering, development, manufacturing, and supply chain leadership, along with restructuring the organization and making sure our people have the resources they need to succeed, including access to technical experts. Charles Chase recently joined our team full-time as Vice President of Engineering. Charles is a world-class talent in innovation and plasma technologies. He has a 30-year track record at Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, taking aerospace and defense technologies from concept to working prototype to production to retirement. Charles has already been an enormous asset to us through his participation in our strategic advisory group, particularly when it comes to mentoring our junior engineering talent. We are lucky to have been able to attract him to join us full-time. We also welcome Nick Zello recently as our new vice president of manufacturing and operations. Nick is another member of our strategic advisory group whom we are very fortunate to bring on full time. Nick is an expert in product development and manufacturing with experience across the aerospace, automotive, IT, and construction industries. Most recently, Nick worked at Maxar Technologies, where he served as vice president of small satellite operations and delivery, among other roles. Prior to that, Nick held leadership positions at a robotics company and at General Motors. Finally, Gary Bartman also joined us recently as vice president of supply chain. Gary brings deep expertise in supply chain management from his experience at Bell Solutions, United Launch Alliance, and Lockheed Martin, where he led teams responsible for strategy development, execution, and supply chain solutions. I would say given the preponderance of supply chain issues across the U.S. and global economies, we're fortunate to have a pro like Gary on our staff who can make supply chain excellence a competitive advantage for Momentus. Consistent with the strategy that we discussed on our prior call, we've also been adding engineering talent below the executive level. And we look forward and will continue to opportunistically populate our company with talented individuals and develop them to position the company for a bright future. Before I hand the call over to our CFO, Jikon Kim, for comments on the Q1 financials, I just want to reiterate my excitement for the progress the company is making, the route to our first launch has not been without its challenges. But with our licenses in hand and our vehicle now at the launch site, the future is bright for Momentus, particularly compared to where we sat just a year ago. I'd like to thank our dedicated team for getting us here, and would also like to thank our customers and investors for their patience through this period. I'll now hand the mic off to our CFO, Jikon Kim, and then we'll take your questions.