Rocket Lab Corporation

and number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star and number one again. Thank you. I'd now like to introduce to the call, Colleen Canfield, Head of Investment and Relations. Colleen, you may now begin.

Thank you. Hello, everyone. We're glad to have you join us for today's conference call to discuss Rocket Lab's fourth quarter and full year 2023 financial results. Before we begin the call, I'd like to remind you that our remarks may contain forward-looking statements that relate to the future performance of the company, and these statements are intended to qualify for the safe harbor protection from liability established by the private securities litigation reform act. Any such statements are not guarantees of future performance, and factors that could influence our results are highlighted in today's press release, and others are contained in our filings with the Security and Exchange Commission. Such statements are based upon information available to the company as of the date hereof and are subject to change for future developments. Except as required by law, the company does not undertake any obligation to update these statements. Our remarks and press release today also contain non-GAAP financial measures within the meaning of Regulation G enacted by the SEC. Included in such release and our supplemental materials are reconciliations of these historical non-GAAP financial measures to comparable financial measures calculated in accordance with GAAP. This call is also being webcast with a supporting presentation and a replay and copy of the presentation will be available on our website. Our presenters today are Rocket Lab founder and chief executive officer, Peter Beck, and chief financial officer, Adam Spice. After our prepared comments, we will take questions. And now let me turn the call over to Mr. Beck.

Yeah, thanks, Colin. So we've got a lot of great achievements and milestones to share across Q4 2023 and Q1 2024. Adam will then talk through our financial results for the fourth quarter before covering the financial outlook for Q1 2024. After that, we'll take questions and finish today's call with near-term conferences that we'll be attending. Okay, on to what we achieved in the fourth quarter for the year, starting with our launch business. So we had a successful return to flight in Q4. We rounded out 2023 with that flight, successfully deploying a satellite for a Japanese customer, IQPS. This launch marked the conclusion of an in-depth round-the-clock investigation that got to the bottom of the issue we'd experienced on the previous launch. With mitigations now in place for future missions, we're starting to pick up the launch pace for this year. In Q4, we also had a new annual launch record ending the year with 10 launches, besting a previous record of nine. Not only did we reach this record, but we also commenced launches from our US launch site, introduced and launched our HAST suborbital hypersonic vehicle for the first time, And we were the only small launch provider to launch more than one orbital mission in 2023. Overall, a strong year for the Electron team with plenty of firsts and new records, and we look forward to building on that this year. With the end of the fourth quarter, we wrapped up a record year of another kind, this time for new launch deals. We signed 25 new launch contracts in 2023, including 18 Electron missions and seven HAST missions. Contracts were signed across a diverse customer base, including civil, defence and national security and government customers, as well as commercial constellation operators. Clearly, demand for Electron is strong and continues to grow. With two launch sites now up and running, we're well positioned to meaningfully increase our launch cadence this year. We'll dig into some more Electron achievements since the end of Q4 soon, as well as some key Neutron milestones. But first, let's take a look at some of the key highlights from our space systems business. across the final quarter of 2023. Well, you know, we closed out 2023 and we secured a contract that started a new era for Rocket Lab, and that is the era of being a prime contractor. We were selected by the Space Development Agency to design and build 18 spacecraft for the agency's trunch to transport labs. As prime contractor for the approximately half billion dollar contract, we are leading the design, development, production, test, and operations of the satellites, including procurement and integration of the payload and subsystems. It's our largest single contract to date and establishes Rocket Lab's position as a leading satellite prime contractor, providing supply chain diversity to the Department of Defense. All 18 satellites will integrate subsystems and components built in-house by our team, including solar panels, structures, star trackers, reaction wheels, radios, flight software, avionics, and for the first time, a launch dispenser. This is a vertical integration strategy at work, and it gives us a real level of control over supply chain, enabling efficiencies on certainty, on cost, and schedule and quality, of course. Of course, the SDA contract is not the only spacecraft constellation we have in development build. Our space systems team rounded out Q4 and the start of Q1 with some key milestones and development of our constellation for Global Star. We're now officially progressing from the design phase into production with the first flight frames and build for the constellation of 17 spacecraft. Simultaneously, our spacecraft component teams are getting to work on their subsystems, including solar panels, flight software, and so on. This constellation is still in the early phase, but we're making rapid progress ahead of the 2025 launch schedule. Now, onto a mission scheduled to launch much sooner than that, our escapade mission for NASA and the University of California, Berkeley. We're building two spacecraft headed to Mars orbit via Blue Origin launch scheduled for Q3 this year. In recent months, we've completed both propulsion decks, started environmental testing, and getting ready for ground operations at the launch site in preparation for launch. After a successful mission launch, to the moon for NASA in 2022, we're looking forward to pushing the boundaries of even more in this highly ambitious space science mission. That's just a quick overview of some of the key highlights across Q4 and broader 2023. There's plenty more we could have shared, but in the interest of time, let's move on to some of the exciting progress and achievements so far in Q1. Okay, Neutron's path to first flight. So there's more green across the board, which is what we always like to see with Neutron team delivering on some key milestones at the end of last year and early 2024. But let's dive into some of the details. So with Neutron vehicle development, we've hit my favorite part of the development program. Real flight hardware is not only coming off the production line, but it's entering the integration test phase in preparation for first flight. The avionics team has kicked some major goals with successful hardware-in-the-loop testing for simulated flights to orbit as well as landings. This is a process where we integrate real flight software with real flight avionics and hardware to get thousands of simulated flight environments. Hardware-in-the-loop, or HITL testing as we call it, has really been a key part of Electron's success, enabling us to test like we fly on the ground, and it's exciting and great to be entering that phase for Neutron now. We're also well into the test and validation campaign for the canards, which provides stability and steering to Neutron, particularly on re-entry and descent. We've now tested our first complete flight representative canard, drivetrain, including motion controller, software, linear actuator, and all the canard mounting hardware bearings and so on. Now, this is really a big step forward for Neutron, and this represents one of the things we haven't done before, so it's great to get that behind us. On the structures side, development and production of neutrons fairing and stage one and stage two tanks continue. Fairing molds and plugs are completed. These are some of the final steps before carbon composite flight structures start to come out of the factory. Things start to move very quickly in composites from here, so expect to see some more structures resembling a complete neutron in the coming months. And it's been a big few months for the propulsion team bringing the Archimedes engine to life. The single element pre-burner test campaign was completed, All of the engine components are complete or in final production for the first engine. And once integrated, testing is complete, we'll start to see some fire at Stennis and can move into production of those flight engines following successful test campaigns. And then on the launch infrastructure, Launch Complex 3 in Virginia is taking shape nicely. The team has completed initial piles and concrete foundations work for the water tower, LOX tank and, of course, the launch mount. And having built three launch pads now, even though I said I'd never build another one, we're really starting to get well refined and streamlined in the process to build these quickly and efficiently. One of the ways we do this is by developing lots of key infrastructure in parallel. So we don't wait until foundations to be done to start the cryotanks. We do it all concurrently and so on and so forth for launch mounts. We fabricate all those large steel structures off-site and bring them to sites and install them just as soon as that foundation work is done. That's how we're able to build LC2 in the record time of just 10 months. And now with foundation work substantially underway, above ground infrastructure like the launch mount, water tower and tanks will start to be installed across the next couple of months ready for final integration testing and then of course in preparation for launch. Now over to Mississippi, where our committee's test stand is ready for hot fire at NASA's CENIS. All the major concrete and steel construction work is complete, and commissioning of the LOX cold flow systems is underway. We're on track for the stand to support an engine by the end of March. After that, we'll really start to see some fire, which will be good. And on the neutron production infrastructure, In Q4, we announced we were establishing a space structures complex in Middle River, Maryland, in the former Lockheed Martin Vertical Launch Building. This facility will be home to the development and production of a wide range of large composite structures and products for both launch and space systems, including Neutron. Just a couple of months after taking over the building, we've ready the facility to accept and install the large-scale production equipment, including our automated fibre placement machine, which is really the key to rapid, repeatable production of neutrons composite structures. So across the board, we've reached some really critical milestones on our journey to first neutron launch over the past quarter and a bit. Now we're at the pointy end of the development programme where all the hardware systems and infrastructure start to integrate, culminating in neutrons first launch. Currently, our schedule closes for this by the end of 2024. And we do have a track record for delivering programs faster than typical industry standard timelines. But we'll know more about how close to the schedule and timeline we are and we can hold once our committees breathe fire and we complete a couple of other major tests. So we'll have an update on that soon. And then now back to small launch. We had a strong start to the quarter. So, so far with two successful electron missions. These included a dedicated launch for Spire Global and North Star, as well as a really complex and unique mission for Astroscale. The mission launched a satellite designed to rendezvous on orbit with an old derelict Japanese rocket stage. The purpose was to demonstrate the ability for a satellite to closely follow and monitor a non-cooperative object in space, with a view to understanding how satellites might be able to dock with pieces of space junk in the future, and drag them back to Earth and obviously reduce orbital debris and increase space sustainability. Now, I don't think many people really realise just how wildly ambitious and challenging that mission was for our team. It's difficult enough to rendezvous two items in space that talk to each other, like an astronaut capsule and the ISS. They're both communicating with each other and they know where each relevant object is. But in the case of a derelict rocket stage, it offers no data on its location, speed, tumble rates, all these things you really, really need to know to approach something in space. So to put astroscale spacecraft into exactly the right place at the right time to rendezvous with the stage, a GNC team demanded highly accurate orbital insertion with tighter margins than required on just about any missions. The exact T0 was only able to be defined a day prior to the launch and required an LTAN accuracy of only plus or minus 15 seconds. I should note that the GNC team was able to deliver that accuracy to within 1.05 seconds, so 15 times better than the spec that was required. The team delivered a perfect bullseye. The spacecraft was deployed to exactly the right location, and they were able to contact the spacecraft and prepare to start commissioning it after minutes after launch. It's this level of tailored mission design that simply is just not possible on rideshare missions and why demand for Electron continues to grow. With two launches down, we have two more to complete this quarter, including a mission for Suspective from LC-1. On March 9, UTC, followed by a dedicated launch for the National Reconnaissance Office. On March 20, UTC from LC2 in Virginia. The missions are a testament to the trust and value of our customers' place in Electron, since this will be Electron's fourth launch for Synspective and fifth launch for the NRO. It will, however, be our first NRO launch from U.S. soil, so we're excited to demonstrate responsive launch capability for the DoD on two continents. Not only did we launch two missions from Q1 so far, but we brought an electron back too. We recovered electrons first stage from the Spire mission in January, bringing it back for an ocean recovery. Electrons recovery process has been iterative, enabling us to make small modifications and improvements to the stage and marine recovery process without causing a slowdown on the rocket production line, enabling us to keep increasing electrons launch cadence. Generally, a program like this would cause a lengthy pause in production to allow for design freezes and production changes. But by taking small steps on each flight, we've been able to continue delivering the launch service to our customers and the one that they rely on. Happily, this process has yielded successful results. The January mission saw Electron come back in the best condition yet. The stage is currently undergoing hydrostatic testing to determine if we're comfortable to put it back on the pad. The next milestone for the recovery program is to fly a mission with nine pre-flying Rutherford engines. You'll remember that we successfully relaunched a single Rutherford engine late last year, so now we're going to put all nine of them through their paces, so keep an eye out for that milestone coming. Right, on to some of the key highlights for our space systems since the end of Q1, and just last week we achieved a world first. Successfully re-entering a capsule from orbit that was used to manufacture pharmaceutical products in space. We designed and built and operated the spacecraft for Varda Systems Industries to host their in-space manufacturing capsule. Launched in June last year, the spacecraft was initially designed to operate in orbit for around four months before being de-orbited into the Utah desert. However, lengthy delays and regulatory approvals to bring the spacecraft home meant that we ended up on orbit for more than eight months and in a testament to both our spacecraft builders and operators that performed flawlessly for that extended duration. Now, operating a spacecraft is one thing, but bringing it home and landing it within a tiny designated area is quite another. Our team managed 24-7 flight operations, conducted multiple engine burns, and carrying out real-time trajectory calculations and adjustments to set the capsule on a course for the UTAR testing and training range. For context, the margin of error is less than 0.05%, and if an engine burn is even a fraction of a second too long or too short, you end up hundreds of miles away from your designated landing zone. This is typically the stuff of huge government programs and decades of development. The only other company to successfully re-enter a capsule from orbit for a purely commercial mission is our friends over at SpaceX. So we've joined a very elite club on our first attempt. This mission was the first of four missions that we have booked for VADA, and the next spacecraft is built and ready for launch in the middle of the year. Sightingly, the lessons we've learned on this program are helping inform future projects, including scientific sample returns, point-to-point cargo delivery, and, of course, human spaceflight capability on neutron in the future. So on that note, before I hand it over to Adam to talk through the financial highlights and outlook, it's fitting time to share an update on our wider spacecraft programs. In 2020, we launched our very first Rocket Lab-built satellite called Photon. It was really a defining moment for the business, a line in the sand where we became an end-to-end space company, not just a launch provider. Since then, we've had the privilege of developing, launching, and operating spacecraft for a broad range of customers, and they've all told us the same thing. They need reliable, highly capable spacecraft, built quickly, affordably, and at scale. And we've done this. We've developed a spacecraft that has delivered a successful mission to the moon for NASA. We've developed a twin spacecraft for a mission to Mars. We're building constellations of half-ton spacecraft for SDA and NDA. And, of course, we've proven spacecraft range capability now, too. As we've delivered more and more successful spacecraft missions, you know, demand for these spacecraft or similar variants on them has grown. So we've expanded beyond Photon to create a full family of standard spacecraft buses. So allow me to formally introduce Lightning, Pioneer, Explorer, and, of course, the original Photon. Lightning is our newest spacecraft bus designed for a 12-year-plus orbital lifespan at LEO. It utilizes electric propulsion, delivers high power and radiation tolerance, and incorporates full redundancy in all critical subsystems. This is a half-ton, three-kilowatt bus, ideal for communications, imaging, and remote sensing. Then there's Pioneer, a highly configurable platform designed to support large payloads and unique mission profiles, including re-entry. For interplanetary missions, there's Explorer, a high-delta-v spacecraft with around about a kilowatt of power, large propellant tanks, and precision orbit determination system, ranging transponder, and all the things you need to go into deep space. Explorer enables small spacecraft missions to planetary destinations, near-Earth objects, and Earth-Moon Lagrange points. And of course, Photon is sticking around as the original spacecraft plus launch option. Thanks to our virtual integration strategy, these spacecraft share many common components and subsystems designed and manufactured in-house by us, enabling us to deliver spacecraft quickly, affordably, and reliably using flight-proven components. Each of the spacecraft are currently on order in a range of quantities with 40 plus satellites currently in air production backlog. So from humble beginnings with one spacecraft just four years ago to a full family of them designed to serve commercial and government partners is certainly an exciting time for our space systems business. So that wraps up the key business highlights from Q4 2023 and Q1 this year so far. So from here, I'll hand over to Adam. to take us through the financial updates. Over to you, Adam.