NextNav Inc.

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to NexNav's first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. Participating on today's call are Gary Parsons, NexNav's chairman, Ganesh Paturbaram, NexNav's co-founder and CEO, and Chris Gates, NexNav's chief financial officer. Before we begin, please note that during today's presentation, the company may make forward-looking statements either in our prepared remarks or in the associated question and answer session. These statements, which involve risks and uncertainties, relate to analysis and other information that are based on forecasts of future results and estimates of amounts not yet determinable and may also relate to NextNav's future prospects. developments, and business strategies. In particular, such forward-looking statements include statements about NextNav's position to drive growth in its 3D geolocation businesses and expansion of its next-generation GPS platform, the business plans, objectives, expectations, and intentions of NextNav. NextNav's partnerships and the potential success thereof in NextNet's estimated and future business strategies, competitive position, industry environment, and potential growth opportunities. These statements are based on current expectations of release and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially. Such forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions, and other important factors. many of which are outside NextNav's control, that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements. These risks, uncertainties, assumptions, and other important factors include, but are not limited to, the ability of NextNav to continue to gain traction in key markets and with notable platforms and partners, both within the U.S., and internationally. The ability of NextNav to grow and manage growth profitably, maintain relationships with partners, customers, and suppliers, including with respect to NextNav's Pinnacle 911 solution and its TerraPoint network, and the ability to retain its management and key employees. the ability to maintain balance sheet flexibility and generate and effectively deploy capital in line with its business strategies. The possibility that NextNav may be adversely affected by economic, business, and or competitive factors, including the impact of the ongoing COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, Other risks and uncertainties indicated from time to time in documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission by NextNav. New risks and uncertainties arise from time to time and it is impossible for us to predict these events or how they may affect us. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance upon any forward-looking statements which speak only as the date made. The net And NextNav undertakes no commitment to update or revise the forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Risk factors that may impact our performance are identified in our most recent SEC filings. Following our prepared remarks, the company will host an operator-led question and answer session. In addition, At the conclusion of today's call, a replay of our discussion will be posted to the company's investor relations website. With that, I'll turn the call over to NextNav's chairman, Gary Parsons. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to NextNav's first quarter 2023 earnings call. And as the Operator said, joining me today is NextNav's CEO, Ganesh Pathavaraman, and NextNav's CFO, Chris Gates. Well, 2023 is really off to a solid start. Having established a strong operational foundation and expanded our product and technology capabilities in 2022, we are continuing to execute against our three strategic priorities. As a reminder, those priorities are first being an industry leader and resilient position navigation and timing, or P&T. Secondly, leveraging our recent NestWave acquisition to dramatically reduce our future capital needs and add significant capabilities to our spectrum assets. And then finally, expanding our global reach. To begin, however, I'd like to touch on our newly announced $50 million debt financing, which includes additional levers for potential expansion of the notes up to $80 million. In short, we're thrilled to have closed this transaction and see this both as a significant milestone for the business and a strong marketplace validation of the significant underlying value of our asset base, including our intellectual property portfolio, our nationwide spectrum assets, and our deployed network. Now, Chris will get into some of the specifics, but in my view, the new financing provides us with multiple years of funding with modest equity dilutions. As you'll hear from Ganesh, we continue to see growing customer and governmental traction in our 3D location and our GPS resiliency services, but even without material revenue increases. Given our ongoing management and refining of our expenses, this financing provides multiple years of funding. It's also important to consider this successful financing in concert with several other significant accomplishments over the past several months. which are designed to unlock additional value and strengthen our long-term fundamentals of the business. So remember, starting in late 2022, we closed the NestWave acquisition, and we've spent much of the first quarter integrating the two technologies with field testing of the combined network capabilities taking place as we speak. The rapid integration and testing of the combined technology not only dramatically reduces our future capital needs, as we talked about when we first made the acquisition, but it also significantly improves the spectral efficiency of our network and the underlying spectrum assets through the use of state-of-the-art 5G waveforms. Incorporation of the 5G waveform facilitates data carrying capability, in addition to optimizing our 3D location, in our P&T resiliency capabilities. On future calls, we'll provide ongoing updates on these key efforts. Importantly, in late March, we received an order from the FCC finding that NextNav's network deployment focus covering urban centers and concentration of tall buildings promotes the public interest and the needs of the public safety community. and therefore meets the FCC's substantial service standard. In early April, using this standard, the Wireless Bureau at the FCC approved NextNav's final construction milestones for licenses covering 256 cellular market areas, or CNAs. You know, we felt for a long time this was the preferred deployment approach, both for E911 as well as for resilient GPS or P&T services. and we're obviously pleased that the FCC has concurred in this position. Also in the first quarter, we made significant additional progress in our international initiatives. In March, the European JRC report on alternative P&T technologies was released with a firm recommendation that every European country allocate spectrum in support of resilient P&T. This creates a significant spectrum as well as product opportunity in Europe, much like what we have done with METCOM in Japan. We remain in active conversations with other governments globally and believe there's a substantial opportunity ahead of us as the recognized leaders in P&T resiliency. Ganesh will get into more detail on the European JRC report's findings, as well as on our other P&T resiliency and customer initiatives. With that, let me turn it over to Ganesh.

Thank you, Gary, and good afternoon everyone. It's been a busy quarter for the team, and we've had several notable achievements as Gary highlighted. We closed the debt financing that Chris will get into in more detail, secured approval from the FCC on our build-out requirements for a vast majority of the major markets, and continued to make progress on our resilient P&T activities globally. The debt financing signals significant confidence from the investment community in our portfolio of assets. It also provides us with multiple years of funding to advance our strategic priorities and efficiently maximize the full value of our asset-rich platform for shareholders and customers. We were also very pleased with the many recent FCC approvals regarding our spectrum and build-out milestones. As you may be aware, the FCC requires spectrum holders to demonstrate its ability to meet construction milestones in one of two ways, either using population coverage or using substantial service. Consistent with the latest FCC order on 911, we had planned our initial service to cover multi-story structures around the country. And we petitioned the FCC to adopt the same model for our build-out requirements. This approach really allows us to allocate capital efficiently and provide our service to areas with the highest need first. We were therefore very pleased to see the SEC's concurrence on the approach in the order that they issued on March 29th. The SEC approved 78 of our licenses, which represents about 256 seller market areas in major markets around the country, like New York, LA, San Francisco, and Chicago. The approvals are obviously a significant milestone for our business, marking the final step in meeting our spectrum license obligations in these markets. Turning now to our pinnacle technology, we continue to expand our footprint in the public safety and E911 arena. Notably, earlier this month, we announced the launch of several new devices on multiple Tier 1 operator networks, helping them meet the FCC's 911 requirements. We recently enabled an additional device under our carrier agreement with Verizon, integrating our z-axis capabilities into Kyocera's Dura X5 Extreme Plus feature phone for both Verizon and Verizon frontline customers. This device is available now online and in Verizon stores nationwide. Our z-axis technology has also been integrated into Hot Pepper's mobile feature phones. Tabasco, which is currently being sold in Metro by T-Mobile stores nationwide. This development builds off of Hot Pepper's mobile agreement with NextNav announced in 2022 that allows for Pinnacle's use on Hot Pepper devices across all major wireless carriers, enabling 3D z-axis geolocation capabilities, which are required in major urban areas for 911 emergency services. And now turning to our global initiatives, The European Union's Joint Research Center released its new report at the end of March on trials of the ultimate PNT technology. As part of the report, the GRC recognized NexNav's TerraPoint solution as a mature solution that meets or exceeds all relevant benchmarks to serve as a resilient layer to existing GNSS technology. Of the technologies tested, TerraPoint delivers both horizontal and vertical location services, indoor and outdoor timing capabilities, while remaining commercially deployable and cost effective for end users. As European policymakers begin to develop their resilient P&T policy and strategy tied to the upcoming European Radio Navigation Plan, we look forward to working with them and to use these findings to act quickly before facing serious consequences of a GNSS outage. Finally, before I turn things over to Chris, I want to touch briefly on our work with the federal government. Currently, we continue to believe that the federal procurement language modification that's outlined in Executive Order 13905 will be released in the coming months. As we have more insight into the exact timing, we will be sure to update the market. In the interim, we continue to hold extensive discussions with federal officials on potential implementation architectures of the Executive Order. Therefore, we continue to make progress there. We continue to see government officials highlighting the importance of resilient P&T systems in several of their conversations. Recently, in a presentation to the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, Dr. Parimal Kopelkar, Director of NASA's Aeronautics Research Institute at Ames Mountain View, discussed the work that NASA is doing to develop technologies for urban air mobility operations in the U.S., including its work in the alternate P&T space. As many of you know, we are happy to partner with NASA Ames in support of their ongoing initiatives. With that, let me turn it over to Chris for a review of our financials. Chris?