Everspin Technologies, Inc.

And welcome to Everston Technologies third quarter 2024 financial results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. At the conclusion of management's prepared remarks, instructions will be provided for the question and answer session. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Cassie Patterson, investor relations for Everston.

Thank you, operator, and good afternoon, everyone. Everspen released results for the third quarter 2024 and is September 30th, 2024, this afternoon after market close. I'm Cassidy Patterson and best relations for Everspen. And with me on today's call are Sanjeev Agrawal, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Matt Tenario, Interim Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin the call, I would like to remind you that today's discussion may contain forward-looking statements regarding future events including but not limited to the company's expectations for Everspin's future business, financial performance, and goals. Customer and industry adoption of NRAM technology successfully bringing to market and manufacturing products in Everspin's design pipeline and executing on its business plan. These forward-looking statements are based on estimates, judgments, current trends, and market conditions, and involve risks and uncertainties, that may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statement. We would encourage you to review the company's SEC filings, including the annual report on Form 10-A and other SEC filings made from time to time in which the company may discuss risk factors associated with investing in Everspin. All forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this call and, except as required by law, The company undertakes no obligation to update or alter any forward-looking statements made on this call, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. The financial results discussed today reflect the company's preliminary estimates and are based on the information available as of the date hereof and are subject to further review by Everspan and its external auditors. The company's actual results may differ materially from these estimates as a result of the completion of financial closing procedures, final adjustments, and other developments arising between now and the time that the financial results for this period are finalized. Additionally, the company's press release and statements made during this call will include discussion of certain measures and financial information in GAAP and non-GAAP terms. Included in the company's press release are definitions and reconciliations of GAAP net income to adjusted EBITDA, which provide additional details. A copy of the press release is posted on the Investor Relations section of Everspin's website at www.everspin.com. And now I'd like to turn the call over to Everspin's President and CEO, Sanjeev Agarwal. Sanjeev, please go ahead.

Thank you, Cassidy. and thanks everyone for joining us on the call today. We are pleased to report our third quarter results with revenue of 12.1 million in line with our guidance and EPS of 10 cents ahead of our guidance range. Contributing to our results were a number of key wins during the quarter, including the selection of our one gigabit persist STT MRAM for the IBM Flash Core Module 4 or FCM4, and the selection of a persist toggle MRAM for the Lucid Gravity SUV. We ended the quarter with a strong balance sheet, including cash of 39.6 million. Everspin had a number of key advancements and new contracts during the quarter, most notably with FrontGrade and a Department of Defense or DoD contractor that demonstrates the strength of our business and breadth of our product portfolio. I'll start by discussing products for which we recognize revenue in the quarter before discussing new wins and other projects with future revenue potential. During the third quarter, we started to receive orders and began to recognize revenue for the sale of a persist one gigabit STTM RAM into IBM's Flash Core Module 4 or FCM4 for data center applications. This is the fourth generation of IBM's FCM that has featured Everspin's one gigabit STTM RAM solution. Our Persys solution delivers 2.7 gigabytes per second of both read and write bandwidth coupled with non-volatility and a DDR4-like interface. We expect to provide parts for this product line for approximately the next two years. Everspin continued to see modest growth in its product revenue and design wins with its Toggle MRAM Persys products. We observed signs of inventory consumption at our customers and a sequential decrease in our distributor inventory. We are also pleased to share our continued strong traction with our four megabit to 128 megabit STTM RAM persist products. Based on our ongoing customer discussions, we remain optimistic about the adoption of our persist STTM RAM product line and continue to expect additional design wins to go into production later this year with revenue ramping in 2025. As a reminder, this product family was brought to production last year and is the highest performing persistent memory solution in the industry. Turning to our licensing, royalty, patent, and other revenue. As I mentioned earlier, we began to recognize initial revenue from the new 9.25 million contract with front-grade technologies that we announced in August. Under this contract, we are working with FrontRate to develop a custom radiation-hardened STTM RAM macro for embedded solutions using our persist STTM RAM technology. This deal will support current and future DoD strategic radiation-hardened and low-Earth orbital, or LEO, space systems. Upon successful completion of this first phase of the project, the contract allows for the award of future optional phases. As we noted on previous calls, we are engaged in two other RadHard programs that use our STT MRAM technology. The first program relates to an ad hoc 64 megabit STT MRAM project, and the second is focused on building a strategic RadHard FPGA. We are pleased to share that both RadHard programs remain on track to move to their respective next phases as we hit our internal third quarter milestones for both programs and recognize revenue. In addition, we continue to recognize royalty revenue from our customers that have licensed our IP in the field of STT MRAM and TMR sensors. Turning to below the line item, during the third quarter, we received a 14.6 million award for the next two and a half years from a DoD contractor to develop a sustainment plan for our MRAM manufacturing facility to provide continuous onshore MRAM capabilities to their aerospace and defense customers. we began to recognize the benefits of this award during the third quarter. This award is being recognized in other income as Matt will explain later in his remarks. Now I would like to discuss some of our recent awards that will contribute to revenue in future quarters. Last month we announced that Lucid Motors has selected our Persist MRAM for use in its recently released Gravity SUV. Lucid selected our product because it meets the AECQ 100 grade one specification of minus 40 degrees Celsius to plus 125 degrees Celsius temperature operation. This design then is a clear demonstration of the reliability and performance that our MRAM products deliver in demanding environments. We began to ship our toggle MRAM to support prototypes for this project during the third quarter and expect to continue to recognize revenue for approximately the next two years depending on consumer reception of the SUV in the marketplace. We are also pleased to share that in collaboration with Purdue University, we won a project to advance artificial intelligence hardware through the Microelectronics Commons Program in collaboration with the Silicon Crossroads Microelectronics Common or FCMC Hub. This project, CMOS plus MRAM hardware for energy efficient Artificial Intelligence, or CHITA, will leverage the unique capabilities of MRAM for designing efficient in-memory computing hardware fabrics. Everspin will provide its state-of-the-art STD MRAM technology optimized for fast switching and high read margins to support energy-efficient AI solutions. In addition, Everspin will deploy its manufacturing expertise to fabricate reliable STD MRAM arrays. We were one of the four projects to receive funding from the Applied Research Institute and the project will receive a total of 21 million over four years to be distributed across all contributors. Everspin is one of several contributors to this project and we expect to start recognizing revenue in Q4, 24. Earlier this month, we attended the Automotive Chiplet Forum. The event brought together key players from the global automotive ecosystem to discuss how to jointly tackle the inevitable evolution towards chiplet architecture in cars. This complimented our attendance at Semicon West in July, where we had a number of meaningful conversations with automotive companies about the capabilities of our planned STTM RAM chiplets to manage the vast amounts of data that EVs generate. Through these events and ongoing discussions, we continue to support the development of the ecosystem for our STTM RAM chiplets in the automotive sector. We believe this will expand our market opportunity and enhance our growth over the coming years. As mentioned in the past, the first step would be alignment on the interface for the chiplets and then the protocol that manages the data across this interface. We expect to see chiplets addressing these applications over the next three years. As a reminder, the chiplet is part of our Unisys unified code and data memory solutions, which are currently in the design phase. Last quarter we discussed having entered into a strategic agreement with a leading provider of sensor devices to provide foundry services for the latest generation TMR sensor device on our MRAM line in our Chandler facility. The project is progressing well based on results from the first silicon and we expect to meet our customers Q4 schedule and milestones. We expect to recognize non-recurring engineering or NRE revenue for helping with the qualification. We also expect to recognize founder revenue starting in Q4 from their initial production order. This revenue stream will be recognized in our licensing and royalty revenue. During the third quarter, we continue to have meaningful conversations with customers, which we believe will turn into additional design wins for our STTM RAM persist product over the coming quarters. We are particularly excited to start working on the Microelectronics Commons project to deploy STTM RAM for the development of energy-efficient AI solutions. I will now turn it over to our interim CFO, Matt Tenorio, who will take you through our third quarter financials and fourth quarter 2024 guidance. Matt.

Thank you, Sanjeev, and good afternoon, everyone. For the third quarter, we are pleased to deliver quarterly results with revenue of $12.1 million, in line with our guidance range of $11.5 to $12.5 million. compared to $16.5 million in the third quarter of 2023. MRAM product sales in the third quarter, which include both toggle and STT MRAM revenue, was $10.4 million, compared to $13.5 million in Q3 23. This year-over-year decrease was the result of a decline in product sales due to the timing of customer demand. Licensing, royalty, Patent and other revenue in the third quarter decreased to $1.7 million compared to $2.9 million in Q3-23 due to lower royalties and a decline in revenue from our Rad Hard projects. Turning to gross margin, our GAAP gross margin was 49.2% for the third quarter, down from 60.2% in Q3-23. The decrease was due to a decline in product sales and licensing revenue related to our RADHAR deals. GAAP operating expenses for the third quarter of 2024 were 8.1 million compared to 7.9 million in the third quarter 2023. The slight increase in OpEx was largely due to expenses related to our new XSPI family of SCT MRAM products. In August, as Sanjeev mentioned, we announced a strategic award to develop a long-term plan to provide manufacturing services for aerospace and defense segments. Pursuant to the award, Everspin may receive cash payments totaling up to approximately $14.6 million upon the achievement of certain technical tasks and deliverables over a span of two and a half years. Due to the nature of the agreement and our performance obligations, we will recognize these payments over time as other income below the lines. In the third quarter of 2024, the company recorded $4.0 million of other income relating to this award. Driven primarily by this award, we recorded third quarter GAAP net income of $2.3 million, or $0.10 per diluted share, substantially ahead of our guidance range of a loss of $0.05 to $0.10, based on 22 million weighted average diluted shares outstanding. This compares to net income of 2.4 million, or 11 cents per diluted share, in the third quarter of 2023. Adjusted EBITDA was 4.2 million, compared to 4 million in Q3-23. Looking ahead, we remain on track to maintain positive GAAP net income in Q4. We are pleased that our balance sheet remains strong and debt-free. We ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of 39.6 million, up from 36.8 million at the end of the prior quarter. Looking ahead, we continue to believe our capital is sufficient to meet our anticipated capital requirements for the next year. Cash flow generated from operations was 2.8 million for the third quarter. Turning out a guidance. Looking to the remainder of 2024, We believe that product revenue will be essentially flat with the third quarter. We continue to see positive signs of recovery in inventory consumption of our customers, particularly in Europe, and expect this to drive additional demand in the coming quarters. Taking these factors into consideration, we expect Q4 total revenue in the range of $12 million to $13 million and gap net income per diluted share to be between break-even and $0.05. In summary, we are pleased with the continued progress we have made with our customers in the form of design wins and new contracts. Going forward, we remain committed to scaling our business and converting additional design wins to revenue. Operator, you may now open the line for questions.

As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star 1-1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. In the interest of time, we ask that you please lend yourselves to one question and one follow-up. You may rejoin the queue if you have any additional questions. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. And our first question comes from Quinn Bolton with Needham & Company. Your line is open.

Hey, this is Shadi Mittwali dialing in for Quinn Bolton. Thanks for taking my question, guys. I'd like to start off on the Onshore MRAN Strategic Award. Sorry if I missed this, but are you guys able to give more details on why this is getting recognized in other income versus actual revenue?

Yes. Thank you for the question. We analyzed the contract and the agreement and our performance obligations against the Revenue Recognition Standard, ASC 606, and found that it did not squarely fit within that. Because of that, we have decided to recognize it as other income below the line.

Great. Thanks for that. And then my follow-up question is on gross margin. Gross margin was relatively flat sequentially, even though licensing revenue picked up nicely. So I was wondering if you guys can give some more details on what kept margins flat.

I think we continue to see the effect of the lower demand of our toggle products, which run through the Chandler FAB facility. So we are having to absorb the fixed costs associated with that facility against a smaller amount of units that are flowing through that FAB. But as we move forward, we would expect that to improve.

Right. Yeah, that makes sense, and that's all for me.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Richard Shannon with Craig Howland. Your line is open.

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my questions as well. I'm going to follow up on the topic of the DOD contract you're recording and non-operating income here. I guess two questions from me. First of all, is this something that's recognized ratably every quarter, milestone-based or otherwise? And then can you kind of maybe qualitatively or quantitatively describe how much is built into your guidance for the fourth quarter?

Thank you, Richard. Yes. So, as I said, it did not fit into the criteria of the accounting standard for revenue recognition. However – We analyzed and we are using some principles of the revenue recognition by analogy, meaning we will recognize it over the two and a half years, ratably, based on the efforts and some of the milestones that are laid out in the agreement.

Okay. So I guess I'm trying to fit the numbers here into the guides and trying to See how these work together here, and it seems to be implying either higher OPEX or lower gross margins, all those things being equal to kind of get to the midpoint of the EPS guide here. Is there dynamics that are hitting either of those categories to help explain this, or is this just some conservatism built in here?

I think it might be a combination of both. We have factored in what we believe might be contributing from the DOD agreement that we've discussed. and we are also contributing some of the contribution that Sanjeev had mentioned with those other RadHard projects that we have, and combined with, you know, our continued SCT MRAM data center strength.

Okay, fair enough. That's my two questions. I will jump on the line, guys. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star 11. Again, that is star 11 to ask a question. And our next question comes from Richard Shannon with Craig Howland Capital Group. Your line is open.

All right. Well, lucky me, I get to jump right back in here. Let's see here, Sanjeev, maybe a question or two for you here. So Matt's guidance, as he mentioned in his remarks, is for product revenues being flat here. Last quarter and, again, this quarter you talked about, you know, some signs of inventory, forget the word, use stabilization or improvements or whatever. But seeing flat products, you know, cadence here to the fourth quarter, doesn't necessarily show that. Maybe you can help us understand those dynamics here. And then, you know, when should we expect to see, you know, sequential growth kind of layering in over time, and then, and then maybe help us kind of build in how much the new Persyst products are going to help you do that?

Yeah, good question, Richard. So let me start with the Persyst HVM product that we brought to the market last year. We continue to see design wins on that project with those products. But as you know, the qualification time is anywhere from 12 to 18 months. So I don't think we're going to see significant product revenue from that part of that product line in Q4. But we do expect to see some ramp in 2025. And as far as the product revenue with respect to our existing products, the toggle MRAM and the one gigabit, we have a very modest growth built in going in from Q3 to Q4. It's just that the signals that we're seeing are very difficult to decipher. Some are positive and some are not so positive. So there is some conservatism built into the plan over here.

Okay, maybe touching on that last comment, any way you can describe where in market geography where you're seeing this? In the past, you talked about some weakness in Europe and I think Japan. I think Japan may have even hit by some currency dynamics there. Maybe you can help us kind of peel the layer back on that one a little bit, Sanjeev.

So I think, like we've discussed in the past, I think Japan continues to be a challenge. And then in Europe, you've seen that Germany seems to be going through some turmoil as well. So I think those two combined are impacting our revenue profile for Q4 as well.

Okay. Fair enough. I will jump in line, guys. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. And our next question comes from Quinn Bolton with Needham & Company. Your line is open.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my follow-up. This is more of a technical question on MRAM's Persyst family of products. But maybe can you guys clarify the differences between Persyst, Unisyst, and AgileSyst? And then maybe talk about the different use cases and markets those product lines specifically address.

Sure. I can give it a shot. The persist family, the way to think about it is you're looking for very fast read and writes, and you're looking for a large number of read and writes. So, for example, 10 to the 12th, 10 to the 14th are larger read and writes, and you're looking for basically persistence in the operating temperature range, which is anywhere from minus 40 to 125 degrees C if it's automotive, or minus 40 to 85 if it's industrial grade. And that's the Persist family. That includes our 1 gigabit STD MRAM that we are shipping to the IBM Flash Core modules. It includes the new product family that we brought to the market last year, the X SPI family that goes from 4 megabit to 128 megabit. And then our toggle MRAM family, which is basically we've been selling since our inception in 2008. So all of those products come under the Persist family, and they have these characteristics that I was talking about where you have fast data read and writes, or data logging, and then unlimited number of read and writes in the operating temperature range, which could be automotive or industrial. The Unisys product family is basically, you're looking for not so many reads and writes. You're looking for, let's say, a million to 10 million or 100 million read and writes only, okay? And you're looking for, again, fast read and writes. That is the built-in advantage of STTM RAM compared to other technologies out there that include NORFLASH or NANDFLASH or even resistive RAM. So that's the Unisys Tramly. That includes the chiplets that I was talking about during my script. And it also includes any SOC-type solutions using this type of product. And Agilist is actually our forward-looking, where you're still in a research environment, we're trying to build a fast data logging, zero standby current, and trying to match the speeds of an SRAM. And that's the project that we talked about with Purdue and the ME Commons that we're just getting started and we're really excited to show what STDM RAM can do over there. Now backing up, persist applications, you should think of industrial automation, like PLC computers, you can think of gaming, casino gaming, and you can think of medical and aerospace and defense industry. For the Unisys products, you should think about automotive, FPGA, configuration memory, and also industrial applications as well over there. And with the Agilis, it's going to be mostly artificial intelligence, AI solutions on the edge. I think I can speak a lot more to it, but I think this is enough for now. So if you have any further questions, we can take it offline maybe, Shadi.

Awesome. Yeah, no, thanks for all the comment on that.

Sure.

Thank you. And our next question comes from Richard Shannon with Craig Hallam. Your line is open.

Shadi, just one question for me, kind of touching on when you prepared the marks and something you just mentioned here, but the Purdue program. Maybe you can talk to us a little bit about any more detail, what you expect out of this, over what time, any sort of financial contributions to your model over time, et cetera.

So as far as the financial contributions over time, Richard, we haven't actually signed the contract with Purdue, so I don't have visibility to that that I can talk about today. But as far as the output of the product is concerned, I think we're going to learn how to tune our STDMM technology for AI solutions. And one thing you already know is that you're looking for very fast median writes, and you're looking for much higher signal margin for reads, because it's going to be a read-intensive application. And then you've got to basically build the fabric around it to be able to transfer the data from the edge to the center, to the data centers. I think that is what we're going to learn out of this. As far as the product is concerned, I think we'll take the learning and have to go and build a product outside of this project. This project is not going to lead to any product solutions that we can talk about today.

Okay. Fair enough. That's a great detail. That's all for me. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. I'm showing no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn it back to Sanjeev Agarwal for closing remarks.

Thank you, operator, and I want to thank everyone again for joining the call today. I also want to take the advantage of those of you that are actually celebrating the Indian Festival Diwali. I want to wish you guys all a happy Diwali, and also for those of you guys that are celebrating Halloween, happy Halloween, and talk to you at the next earnings call. Thank you.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.