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spk04: Good day and welcome to Sigma Additive Solutions third quarter 2022 financial conference call and webcast. Today's conference is being recorded. This time I'd like to turn the conference over to Mr. Chris Tyson, Executive Vice President of MZ North America. Please go ahead, sir.
spk00: Thank you and good morning. I'd like to thank you all for taking time to join us for Sigma Additive Solutions third quarter 2022 business update and results conference call. Your hosts today are Jacob Brunsberg, Chief Executive Officer, and Frank Orszakowski, the company's Chief Financial Officer. A press release detailing these results crossed the wires this morning at 8 a.m. Eastern today and is available on the company's website, sigmaadditive.com. Before we begin the formal presentation, I'd like to remind everyone that statements made on the call and webcast, including those regarding future financial results and industry prospects, are forward-looking and may be subject to a number of risks and uncertainties to that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the call. Please refer to the company's SEC filings for a list of associated risks, and we would also refer you to the company's website for more supporting industry information. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to SGMA Additive's Chief Executive Officer, Jacob Brunsberg. Jacob, the floor is yours.
spk03: Thank you, Chris.
spk02: I'd just like to say everyone bear with me today. I'm getting over a little bit of an illness, the beauty of having a couple of young kids. So apologies about the voice here a little bit this morning. But good morning and thank you for joining us today. Q3 2022 marks my second full quarter serving as president and CEO at Sigma. And I remain excited to work with this amazing team and to share with you the progress we have made in transforming the business to a scalable software solution and quality standard for the additive industry. To help everyone get a clear understanding of the steps that we are taking and the opportunity that we have, I will talk a bit about the results and the company's strategic plan, let Frank review the financials, and then finish with the key performance indicators we use to monitor the execution of our business plan. On results. I'm pleased to report that the business continues to move from the sale of a few expensive perpetual license hardware software systems each quarter to building software-only solutions that augment and add to our subscription-based reoccurring revenue stream. There is still work to do to finish out these products over the upcoming quarters, but we believe this is setting the foundation to allow partners and OEMs to leverage our background IP with our current and future software solutions. putting us in a position to have PrintWrite 3D installed on thousands of production printers. Some noted third quarter highlights and subsequent events. The backlog and subscription revenue tail is continuing to grow, which is great to say for two quarters in a row here. We continue to add additional OEMs and software partners with a growing pipeline of OEM software and hardware opportunities going forward. The sales pipeline remains robust with increased interest in our new products the deal sales cycle continues to shorten for our new opportunities. Now, I'd like to take a second to elaborate on our business plan to contextualize progress and KPIs we will review later. And I will center this around four core areas of focus for our business. First, product, then personnel, partnerships, and strategic investment and M&A. Historically, Sigma has generated revenue through perpetual and most recently subscription-based licensing of our PrintRise 3D technology to customers that seek to improve their manufacturing production processes and through ongoing annual software upgrades and maintenance fees. However, 2022 has been a year of significant change for our business, from our symbolic name change to the execution of a new approach to the market. We have a mission to accelerate the adoption of additive manufacturing by setting the standard for quality. And we have charted our path to deliver the first holistic digital quality experience for the additive industry with the following objectives. Simplify the quality experience from up to 12 disparate software licenses and multiple manual spreadsheets to a single user experience that is holistic and integrated with production workflow. Build strategic partnerships, expand our partner ecosystem, and best ensure the success of our existing customers as they move into production. By offering products that are easier to use and less expensive, both for initial purchase and for expansion opportunities. Remove the need for hundreds of thousands of dollars of software licenses and two years and two million dollars to qualify a safety-critical component. And finally, attracting a strategic corporate investment partner with clear product, customer, and financial synergies. On our products, a holistic digital quality experience connects in-process data upstream to the CAD CAM experience through the downstream inspection and material data experience. This digital quality journey begins by creating a new qualification framework for in-process data. The path to qualified parts and continued production relies on more than just melt pool monitoring, and we are addressing that head-on to simplify our customers' experience and create a single spot for all of their in-process data, analytics, and reporting. In the recent months, we have begun to launch our new software-only suite of solutions. In addition to the just-announced beta release of our machine health module, a future process health module together with our MeltPool analytics for the part, will provide a holistic in-process quality base for us to connect the broader digital quality ecosystem. Our machine health product that was recently launched is based off machine log data files, where we convert disparate machine log files and live streaming API data from OEMs to a standards-based format for monitoring analytics and reporting functions. Our process health product is for camera-based image data, beginning with layer-wise camera and thermal camera modules for image-based defect detection. We will offer machine learning data training sets that are standards-based definitions for a defect library, while allowing for the use of third-party machine learning and artificial intelligence approaches. For our part health module, this is built off of our melt pool-based part data. This is SGMA's proven melt pool monitoring and analytics, applied to any OEM data, SIGMA retrofit, or integrated hardware, like there are Novanta Firefly 3D announcements, creating a standards-based comparison tool across varying suite monitoring that fits into machine learning and artificial intelligence approaches for defect detection. All of these solutions are being made as standalone modules, but can be connected into a full suite, allowing for correlation of machine data, camera data, MeltFull data, or other third-party applications to have a home for all things in-process. This creates a single user experience to collect, analyze, and report on process quality, agnostic of OEM, and made in an open architecture framework for the industry at large. The consolidation of all in-process data into our PrintWrite 3D suite provides a connection point for our customers to sync to the broader digital quality chains. required for qualification and certification of parts. This foundation charts the path to begin to simplify the quality user experience from 8 to 12 disparate software licenses and several manual spreadsheets to one user experience that is integrated into the production workflow. To provide some context, we began offering our current PrintWrite 3D integrated hardware and software solution on a subscription basis in 2022. Among other things, At present, the change reduced the initial upfront cost to a new user from over $100,000 to approximately $3,000 to $5,000 per month. This combination of subscription pricing and the new and upcoming software-only products that can be embedded into OEM and software partner offerings are intended to make our technology more affordable to acquire, easier to bundle, distribute, and support in an effort to become the industry standard. On personnel, we have reduced overall headcount as we align to our business plan. We are currently focused on continued retention of key employees. We have been blessed to have some of the pioneers of the additive quality on our team and continue to augment their skill set with strategic additions that align with our digital quality future. I'd like to highlight a couple of recent strategic hires. Ryan Hurley recently joined us as an application engineer to our customer success team, supporting the implementation and scaling at our customer sites. He comes to us with a rich engineering and customer support background from SIACI, EWI, and DMG. In addition, we added Stefan Kerr as our GM of European operations. Stefan is an additive industry veteran, was the former founder and CEO of Three Year Mind, a digital workflow company. and he is here to help accelerate our digital quality assurance future, deepening OEM and independent software vendor relationships. On partnerships, in order to expand the number of OEMs distributing our technology, we launched a three-tiered OEM program directed to do three things. One, for new OEMs without their own quality assurance or monitoring solutions. Two, established OEMs with quality monitoring offerings but who have customers with multiple printers from multiple OEMs and want a single third-party quality and analytics solution with consistent quality metrics across printers, processes, and materials. And three, OEMs building open application programming interfaces or APIs to integrate components of Sigma's proprietary technology with their current offerings. We are now working with OEMs on their next-generation printers to offer a software-only solution that will utilize the printer's computing infrastructure and dramatically reduce the overall cost of this technology, enabling the opportunity to move towards a software-only embedded solution on every printer sold by partner OEMs. As an example of progress towards what I just discussed, I want to highlight a recent announcement on our work with SLM Solutions. SLM is one of the market share leaders for metal additives. and we have collaborated to certify and integrate PrintWrite3D with their SLM.quality API. This means our products will be able to integrate to any of their install base with API capability and feature sold printers. All printers have machine sensors and machine logs that our machine health tool can provide value to. Most printers have a LayerWise camera installed either at shipment or added in the field, enabling our coming process health module Additionally, some printers have MeltPool installed from SLM that our process health software will be able to read and connect to our other modules. This expands our reach capabilities while enabling SLM customers to have a central agnostic home for quality. This relationship provides positive outcomes for both companies and is something we plan to emulate throughout the industry. Taking our OEM relationships up a level into agnostic hardware integration, we recently announced our work with Novanta to pioneer the first fully integrated scan head with quality assurance. Integrating MeltPool hardware into a scan head means that any OEM that uses Novanta Firefly scan heads comes ready to connect with Sigma's PrintWrite 3D platform. This removes a huge cost barrier for hardware additions and provides the ability to implement monitoring solutions across machine cleats without retrofits to the optical train.
spk03: Lastly, we recently announced our work with Dindrite this Sunday.
spk02: Dindrite's additive developer kit Users have a single user experience for CAM, material and process development, toolpath creation, and the resulting in-process quality data and analytics. This new solution marks Sigma's connection to further cover the quality value chain in additive manufacturing and simplify our customers' quality user experience. This marries extremely well with our started prior connections in simulation. We look forward to the continued progress of this work. And finally, strategic M&A. As part of our vision to build the future of connected digital quality, we have undertaken an initiative to attract a strategic corporate investment partner with clear product, customer, and financial synergies to Sigma. This work is focused on identified companies that connect to our long-term quality vision. The strategic investment initiative is focused on synergies and potential product integration to accelerate market visibility and customer adoption. We believe the industry is evolving. Application programming interfaces or APIs are opening up as some of our relationships with OEMs have become public. There is also a trend towards consolidation and additive manufacturing as companies align for profitability. Sigma has made demonstrable progress in 2022 connecting to other products in the AM digital quality stream. And a connection to a strategic partner paired with near-term execution, can augment our ability to scale, support the market, and create value. Further, alignment with a strategic partner allows for common growth, vision, and funding of the company to achieve its mission, but also provides an opportunity for other strategic relationships, including potential acquisitions that can further accelerate the execution of our digital quality vision. Now, I will have Frank review the financials And I will close with details on the key KPIs that make up our foundation and provide a basis that we will be judging ourselves by to get to our 2025 and beyond goals, to truly take a seat as a standard for quality in additive manufacturing.
spk03: Frank? Thank you, Jacob.
spk01: Our detailed financial results are contained in our Form 10-Q filed with the SEC this morning. and the press release we issued contains key highlights of our financial results, so today I will provide a brief overview of our results for the third quarter of 2022. As we noted in our last conference call, we are continuing to move away from selling expensive perpetual licenses for PrintWrite 3D, in which most of the cost comes from physical hardware, to setting up for a future software-only subscription model with a potential for much higher margins. As part of this shift in our business, we have realigned our resources in support of this goal, and in the third quarter, we reduced our headcount by a net of five employees. With a further reduction of two employees in October, our full-time headcount now stands at 25, a net reduction of 10 employees from our peak of 35 back in April of this year. Though we will likely hire one to two more people to fill open positions in the near term, we expect our headcount will be relatively stable for the next 12 months or so. Revenue for the third quarter of 2022 totaled $188,000. This compares to revenues of $700,000 for the third quarter of 2021 and is a result of fewer perpetual license sales of our PrintRight 3D platform as a result of our shift in business model. However, our order backlog for the fourth quarter to date defined as firm orders received but not yet shipped totaled $334,000 of both perpetual sales and subscription licenses. This represents an increase in our order backlog of 39% from the second quarter of this year. Our gross profit for the third quarter of 2022 was $109,000, or 58% of revenues as compared to $535,000, or 76% of revenues for the same period last year. As we have previously stated, we expect continued pressure on our margins in the near term. However, I will note that margins have improved from 23% in quarter one and 18% in quarter two. In addition, as you may have seen in our September announcement regarding the formalization of our at-gov industrial network, this marks a formalization of one of the tracks of our business. As we are building out a current production scale track, We wanted to create a focused path for work with the R&D community to build the future of additive manufacturing quality. By creating this network, we are formalizing the way we approach the R&D world by granting easy and more inexpensive access to our technology for educational institutions and R&D labs around the world. We want to get industry leading quality tools in the hands of our next generation production leaders and help propel advancement in AM quality tools. In this regard, we are providing member discounts on our technology as well as other early access incentives to cultivate a community focused on additive manufacturing for production and instilling confidence in the quality of AM printed parts. The work we have done to reduce hardware and manufacturing costs has enabled us to launch this program with discounted pricing. Though 58% margins may not be sustainable until we complete our transition, we do expect to see continued improvement in the near term. Total operating expenses for the third quarter of 2022 were $2.4 million as compared to $3 million for the third quarter of 2021. This decrease of $634,000, or 21%, was largely due to option grants awarded to employees in the third quarter of 2021, a decrease in investor public relations and advertising expenses, and a decrease in non-employees director's compensation. Partially offsetting this reduction was a charge of $130,000 taken during the quarter for severance and post-employment benefits costs. For the nine months ended September 30th, 2022, our operating expenses totaled $7 million, which are flat compared to the same period last year. Given the headcount reductions, together with other operating expense reductions taken in the third quarter, we expect to realize approximately 10% to 15% in savings from our current expense run rate in the fourth quarter of this year. Net loss applicable to common stockholders for the third quarter of 2022 was $2.3 million, or $0.22 per share, as compared to net loss of $2.5 million, or $0.24 per share in the third quarter of 2021. Cash used in operating activities for the nine months ended September 30 of 2022 totaled $6.4 million, compared to $4.8 million in the third quarter of last year. This increase in cash usage of $1.6 million is primarily a result of an increase in our net loss. However, as a result of our decrease in headcount and other operating expenses, we expect our cash usage to also decline by approximately 10% to 15% beginning in 2023. Cash totaled $4.8 million at September 30, 2022, as compared to $11.4 million at December 31, 2021. Our working capital totaled $5.5 million at September 30, 2022, as compared to $11.7 million at December 31, 2021. At September 30, 2022, we had stockholders' equity of $6.8 million, as compared to $12.9 million at December 31, 2021. And with that, I will now turn the call back over to Jacob. Thank you, Frank.
spk02: As noted last quarter, we are tracking the following key performance indicators, KPIs, to monitor the progress and execution on our new business plan. One, revenue. Two, order backlog. Three, pipeline. Four, deal closure time. And five, partner expansion. These are the KPIs we see as critical to achieving our business plan over the next two years. To be clear, we are focused on moving away from only selling an individual printer solution to supporting the additive industry as a whole at scale. For the KPIs, revenue of $188,000 in Q3 tracks with a shift to subscription pricing heading into the launch of our first software-only product in Q4, with others targeted in the first half of 2023. Our order backlog for the fourth quarter defined as firm orders received but not yet shipped totaled 334,000 of both perpetual and subscription sales. This represents an increase in our order backlog of 39% from second quarter and continued progress in adding subscription sales. Pipeline remains strong with over 250 active qualified leads with aging and stagnant leads shown as re-emerging with our new path to software only. Our average deal cycle closure time shows continued reduction at 4.4 months. And we've had partner additions that increased ahead of plan, bringing the total to six OEMs and hardware partners, Novanta, Additive Industries, DMG, Econody, AMACE, and SLM Solutions, and four ISC software partners, Materialize, AMFG, Sentient Science, and most recently, Dendrites. We continue to focus on where the market is and where it is going to scale. The adjustments to subscription options, more aggressive market positioning, and alignment with product council members is in support of our transition to providing higher margin software-only products. As mentioned in our latest investor presentation, approximately 10% coverage of installed printer market in 2025 could yield an estimated $65 million in annual reoccurring revenue, while even just a 3% coverage of installed market by 2025 could yield a $20 million estimated annual reoccurring revenue. Open architecture, scalable machine process, and part health software modules will enable us to set the standard for quality and give us the ability to go after the full additive industries. To bring back to our start of the call, we have a mission to accelerate the adoption of additive manufacturing by setting the standard for quality, and we have charted our path to deliver the first holistic digital quality experience for the additive industry with the following objectives. Simplify the quality experience from up to 12 disparate software licenses and multiple manual spreadsheets to a single user experience. Building strategic partnerships, expanding our partner ecosystem, and best ensuring the success of our current customers as they move into production. Offering products that are easier to use, less expensive, both for initial and expansion opportunities. And finally, attracting a strategic corporate investment partner with clear product, customer, and financial synergy. We look forward to tracking our progress with you going forward. as we live our mission to be the quality standard for additive manufacturing. Thank you for your time today, and I will now turn it over to the operator for Q&A.
spk04: Thank you. We'll now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then 1 on your touchtone phone. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then 2.
spk03: This time, we'll pause momentarily to assemble the rosters. First question will be from Scott Fox, AC Wainwright. Please go ahead.
spk05: Hi, good morning, guys. Thank you for taking my questions. The first one on the backlog, Jacob, how should we think about the cadence of the revenue delivery there? Is that spread evenly over 12 months, over 24 months? What's kind of the right way to think about that?
spk02: Yeah, so typically our contract structures, I'd say the most common one is a three-year subscription model that continues to reoccur after that, but it's structured that way originally. And it's a monthly revenue recognition for our subscription-based products. So as you see that backlog kind of grow, we see that revenue being recognized more on a monthly type basis in the subscription side of things.
spk05: Okay, understood. That's helpful. You guys have done a nice job of adding partners over the last six months or so. Where is that inflection point where we start to see that manifest itself in the revenue line?
spk02: Yeah, I think from a direct partner perspective, we've recently added one of the larger space industry companies in the recent past, some other tiered suppliers to the additive industry. So I think as we start to work directly with our prior customers and current additions, you know, we will start to scale as we prove out that technology over kind of a 12-monthish period as it scales into their production infrastructure. But I think from an inflection point perspective, really some of these software-only solutions that link to large OEM APIs are going to be a very strong path to market for us. And so our software-only product just started being launched in the prior month or so here with our machine health product. You know, that's something that can be pretty easily implemented into the install base of the industry is the work to partner with API implementations at OEM. Additionally, we'll have a couple more products finalizing and coming to market through estimated Q1, Q2 of next year. I think that really is a point where we become a downloadable solution just from our web page, which completely changes our path to market there and can be something that drives an inflection point there for us on just ease of the sales process and implementation throughout the marketplace.
spk05: Super. That's really helpful. And then last one from me, just curious if you've received any feedback yet on the beta release of the machine health module. and maybe what the expected wider launch date for that is.
spk02: Yeah, so we actually got to sit down with a number of our customers a couple weeks ago at the ASTM Consortium Standards Convention. The reception has been really positive so far. We're really looking at making this a really good tool for standardizing all the different data logs out there in our user base. That's really kind of the focus for the next few months here with those early product council beta tester groups is to ensure that the reporting infrastructure and everything is set up for them to really scale that aggressively as a software. So our target right now is to kind of finish up that work in Q1 and have that really readily available to the market, like I said, as a downloadable solution in the late Q1, early Q2 time frame.
spk03: All right, super. I appreciate the time this morning, guys. Thank you. Thank you, Scott. Appreciate it. Thank you. Our next question will be from George Renton.
spk06: Thanks for your capital. Please go ahead. Hey, gentlemen. First of all, congrats on the KPI progress. Maybe for you, Jacob, two things I want to ask. All these partnerships that you're announcing, just curious to know, are the partners also helping sell the product, or is it just you guys? adding value by integrating more with these other applications?
spk02: Yeah, it's a little bit of both. So the go-to-market is a little dependent on the partner. Specifically, if you look at somebody like Econody, our OEM partner, we actually are going to be an option on their website. So if you're buying a machine, you can include our whole suite there within their offerings. I think in the API or certified access like our work with SLM, we certainly will be something that is certified to work directly with their API. We'll probably be the primary path to market there, but one that is well integrated and done together with the SLM team. So it's a little bit dependent on kind of where that lives. If it lives as an integrated solution with an OEM off of the shipment of their machine or if it's you know, a more established group that has kind of their own offerings on their machine, but we're a certified quality tool for them.
spk06: All right. Understood. And then there's a comment in your guys' press release I found interesting. It said your average deal cycle closure time got reduced to 4.4 months. It seems like everybody in the additive space is seeing lengthening sales cycles as given the current environment. So can you just kind of touch on just the values resonating better with clients or, you know, why you think you're seeing shorter closures you know, deal cycle times versus kind of what the industry is seeing right now?
spk02: Yeah, no, thank you for that question. I think that's something we're very excited about, and we were hoping to see as we kind of launched our upcoming software products here. Really, I think we were on a similar sales cycle to Capital Equipment before as we were more of the hardware software retrofit world of that 12 to 18 months. Today with our software products, kind of getting them to market in a more accessible price point, as well as just an easier kind of download capability versus a retrofit, we're able to move a little bit faster than a typical capital sale market now. So our new opportunities that are coming to light, we're able to react quicker to them. You know, instead of having a prolonged amount of meetings and budgetary sessions, we're a little bit more of a subscription software today, a little easier to buy. And that's really bringing down our sales cycle, which is something we want to see. And as we release our software-only products as more just direct downloads, that's what we're really targeting is getting that from months to weeks if we can. And we've certainly made a ton of progress in the last two quarters, going from 12 to 18 months down to about 4.4 months. So that was even a little bit better than I was expecting, which was good. So I was happy to see that.
spk06: Congrats. Will you be in Germany this week, Jacob?
spk02: I am currently taking this call from a hotel room in Frankfurt right now.
spk06: This is a Marriott, I can imagine. I'm going to miss you this year, but good luck over there.
spk03: Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
spk06: Thank you.
spk03: Thank you.
spk04: And again, if you have a question, please press star the one. Our next question will be from Scott Belladew of Walrus Partners. Please go ahead.
spk07: Oh, hi, Jacob. Congrats on moving things forward. Just a couple quick questions. One, can you talk about what's the mix right now, and is there going to be a change from retrofit to new installs at this point? What's that mix look like? And then the second question, as you talk about that, obviously getting rid of 10 folks, over the last 10 months or so. Can you give a mix of how much of that, what are the resources devoted to sales and partner support? Did you impact those resources during that with the 10 people let go?
spk02: Okay, certainly. I'll start with the first question here, which was around the retrofit versus kind of new installs or integrated installs going forward. This is kind of a three-part answer for me here. Still today, a lot of our work is retrofit in nature as we get to our software solutions being more prolific. The difference is most of the retrofits we're doing today are transitioning to subscription-type models and pricing. So that kind of triggers some different revenue profiles here in the short term. But all of that is really gearing up for us closing out and finishing these software products over the upcoming next two quarters here so that we are in a position to scale via more of just a download direct type software versus any kind of retrofitting. The third piece of this is... removing the need to retrofit and creating directly integrated solutions with OEMs or hardware partners. So, you know, the Novanta relationship as an example is really, really exciting for us. Having our hardware integrated into a scan head is a complete change for the industry. That means zero retrofit to an optical train there. That really looks to go on kind of the next generation printers for their OEMs that they're working with. So that's a similar integration type cycle as we have with our OEM partners that we're working direct with as well to integrate our hardware. So that won't be immediate, but that is something that we're really excited about the future for because that puts it as part of every single machine versus a custom solution that needs to be purchased or an optional solution that needs to be purchased, which is really setting the industry up to get quality in the hands of every user. So does that answer your question there? And then I'll move on to the second one.
spk07: Yeah, that helps quite a bit. Just trying to figure out what's the leg lift to you know, to get installed and start recognizing revenue. So, you know, certainly the goal has been to significantly reduce that in any way possible. And I just wanted to understand kind of how that was working.
spk02: Yeah. So, yeah, we're still, you know, revenue starts when we integrate a hardware software solution today via subscriptions. But in the very near future, you know, early next year, that starts changing into a software download, which is kind of that first inflection point. And then the second inflection point is not far after that when we start OEM integration and Novanta scan head integration at next-gen printer launches. And those will kind of be the next two major inflection items for us. Great. For your question on the headcount, We've been really, as I said before, blessed with just an incredible team that's been at the forefront of additive quality for 10 plus years here, starting out of Los Alamos and then adding some really core talent over the past 10 years. Our retention of those critical engineering infrastructures is certainly an important factor for our team and an important factor for us going forward. So the The expertise in the hardware patents that we have as well as the software patents is a critical core we wanted to keep with the company that can help us progress our installation or integration with OEMs and other hardware and software partners. I think what has changed with the company is a lot of our path to market and how we are working with people. specifically kind of transitioning more to a customer support and acceleration. So we established a customer success group. We've realigned some people into that and have been adding some talent on really focusing on, you know, taking the blue chip customers we have and working with them towards scalability and implementation, especially as we have a more enterprise type software approach that makes it easier to do that. So the talent restructuring has been a little bit in that area with, you know, some reductions but increases as well in specific skill sets there. Likewise on the commercial front, I think that infrastructure has changed a little bit. Stefan was somebody we brought on really to kind of lead and lead the charge on the OEM and software integration front. So you can kind of look at it as more of a change in large direct need for sales into a smaller direct need. per sales, more customer support and more focus on OEM and software integration as a path forward. So that kind of aligns with our business strategy as we move forward here. So I think we've been lucky to kind of be able to keep some of our core expertise and excited to do that and then add and really help support them taking their talents and skills to our digital future here.
spk07: Great. Just one quick one for me and then I'll let you go. Also, you talked about, you know, a partnership and talk about, you know, what's the tightrope to walk to, you know, partnering but trying to stay, you know, the third party independent guy who is, you know, defining quality or giving quality results. So, you know, what's the tightrope there and is that alter the type of partners that you discuss, who you partner with.
spk02: Yeah, so is that along the lines of who we integrate and partner with from an OEM and software perspective, or more along the strategic investment side of the question?
spk07: I guess more along the strategic investment side, because certainly you want to integrate with everyone if you can, but in terms of the strategic, you want to be careful that I guess I'm coming more from the strategic investment side.
spk02: Sure. Okay. Perfect. Yeah, I think you're right. On the OEM and software front, we've taken a very agnostic approach to the market. So working with OEMs who already have monitoring is not a problem for us. We want to be the tool that allows a facility to take any printer and have a very singular same quality experience. for that. And I think that that really aligns well with API strategies from a lot of the major OEMs. We can still maintain that agnostic approach, and that's well received. And Novanta echoes that, too. They're agnostic OEMs, too. They're trying to provide scanners to the market more broadly. That really fits our strategy going well. On the strategic investment side of things, I echo exactly what you said, right? We have an agnostic approach to the market. So we really focused on a very discreet list of strategic investors. We believe these strategic investors can help accelerate our business and align with our strategy going forward while providing some cash for us to get there. And this is really our preferred outlet to raise capital in the near term while further advancing our business. And we've moved forward with that pretty aggressively. We've spoken to everybody on our list that kind of aligns with that strategic vision of being a really large agnostic quality player in the market. And we're going to keep moving that forward as aggressively as we can here in the near term so that we can hopefully accelerate this business here. And so I think we've been really thoughtful on that list of companies for the exact reasons that you said. You know, there are a lot of people who are very synergistic with an agnostic approach versus, you know, an OEM specific investor. And that's really kind of where we focused our time is on the agnostic side of things.
spk03: Great. Thanks. Thank you. This concludes our question and answer session. Now it's time to call back over to Mr. Jacob Brunsberg for closing remarks. Please go ahead.
spk02: Yeah, again, just thank you for everybody for joining us today. Thank you for the questions and the engagement here at the end. We remain extremely excited about our progress that we've made in the past two quarters, and we'll continue to push to become the quality standard in additive manufacturing. Thanks for the time, and have a wonderful day.
spk03: Conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.
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