Strategy Inc

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Q3 2021 Sarcos Technology and Robotics Corporation Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. Please be advised that today's conference may be recorded. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. If you require any further assistance, please press star and zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Ben Mimic, Director of Investor Relations, and please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Sarcos Third Quarter Dynamics Call. Joining us on the call this morning are Sarcos Chairman and CEO, Ben Wolfe, and Chief Financial Officer, Steve Hansen. Then we'll start the call with an overview of the quarter, and Steve will then talk in more detail about our financial results before we take questions from analysts. Before we begin, we must state that today's call will contain forward-looking statements, including statements concerning future commercial availability of our products, market trends, revenues, costs, and liquidity. These statements represent management's best predictions and expectations as to future events as of today, but there are many risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results to differ from what we have projected. We encourage you to review the risks and uncertainties described from time to time in our findings with the FTC for further information regarding these actual and potential risks and uncertainties. We also encourage you to review the special note regarding forward-looking statements included in our earnings release filed with the FTC this morning and which will be posted in the investor section of our website at sarcos.com. In addition, we will be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures this morning. Throughout this call, all financial measures will be GAAP unless otherwise noted. A reconciliation of those numbers to the GAAP financials, as well as the description, limitations, and rationale for such measures, are included in the earnings release filed with the SEC this morning and which is available on our website. A recording of this call will also be archived on our website. The information that we're giving you on the call is as of today's date, and we undertake no obligation to update the information subsequently. So, thanks again for joining us. At this point, I'd like to turn the call over to our Chairman and CEO, Ben Wolfe. Thanks, Ben.

And thank you to everyone joining us for your interest in Circus. This morning, I will be giving you an update on the current state of our business and our expectations for the next few months. After that, I will hand the call over to Steve, who will give you an update on our financial position before we end by taking questions from analysts. This earnings call is our first as a public company since we listed on the NASDAQ global market at the end of September through a business combination with Rotor Acquisition Corp. The public listing of our stock has been a significant development for our company. The gross proceeds from the transaction of over $260 million provides us with the liquidity we need to continue developing our technology, and we firmly believe will be sufficient to enable us to bring our Guardian XO full-body exoskeleton robot and our Guardian XT tele-operated avatar robot to scale commercial production. On a side note, I would like to take this opportunity to share that now that we are listed, more than 80% of our shares are subject to lock-up periods of various lengths. 80% of the equity issued to current and former employees and common stockholders of Sarkos Corp in the merger, including myself, which represents over 34% of our fully diluted shares, is restricted from being sold under lock-up agreements and our bylaws until the earlier of the date on which we have shipped our first 20 Guardian XO and or Guardian XT commercial units and the second anniversary of the closing of our merger with Rotor. By design, given the development stage of our company, we think this better aligns our interests with those of our investors. Events over the past few months have highlighted the ever-growing need for our products and solutions. Shortages of workers to perform physically demanding work have challenged industrial companies all over the world. Our partners and prospective customers are telling us that the need for our unique, highly dexterous mobile robots that can perform non-repetitive jobs is only becoming more urgent. This shortage of skilled workers is not just an immediate problem for the economy, but is one that is forecast to get worse in coming years. The combination of an aging workforce and lower participation rates in physically demanding jobs by younger workers is expected to continue, causing staffing challenges in many industries for decades to come. SARCOS is uniquely positioned to address these worker shortages. We are the only company bringing to market a full-body powered industrial exoskeleton that materially enhances both strength and endurance. Our Guardian Exo wearable industrial robot is capable of lifting up to 200 pounds and can often improve worker efficiency by a multiple of two, three, or even more, while making workers safer at the same time. Similarly, Sarcos' tele-operated Guardian XT avatar robot allows operators to carry out work in dangerous environments or at height while remaining on the ground and out of harm's way. It is no exaggeration to say that our partners and potential customers tell us that these machines have the potential to transform the way work gets done across many different industries and is the reason we expect our service-obtainable market in the U.S. alone to grow to $24.8 billion over the next five years. Given this pent-up demand, we are working diligently to bring our flagship products to market. Over the past two years, we have been working with our partners and potential customers on the alpha version of the Guardian XO exoskeleton robot to generate feedback on improvements and applications for different use cases. We have been doing the same with prototypes of the Guardian XT avatar robot, This work has been invaluable in improving our products, and we are in the process of incorporating feedback we've received on our alpha units into our XO and XT beta designs. To that end, we are making substantial progress in the development of our XO and XT beta units. The first XT beta unit is being assembled as we speak, and we expect to be ready to commence internal testing by the end of this year. Key areas of improvement between the XT prototype and XT beta units our additional degrees of freedom in the arms to enhance range of motion, a new operator wearable control suit, improved hand controllers, and an improved optical system. As I mentioned, we are making good progress on the Guardian XO beta units as well. We continue to develop and evolve the design in response to our continued testing of the alpha units and also initial testing of some of our components and links for the beta units. The design for some portions of the beta are complete, and assembly and testing of components, subsystems, and links are underway. Key improvements from the alpha design to the beta design include additional degrees of freedom in the robot wrist and ankle, enabling the robot to be adjusted to accommodate a range of operator types, and other improvements to make the robot more robust and reliable. As an example, the limbs of the alpha unit use a belt drive system, while the beta units will use an actuator-driven system, eliminating the risk of belt breaking, which could have introduced a safety risk. In order to develop this new actuator system, we are currently testing prototypes on our alpha units, which enable us to advance necessary testing prior to the first beta unit being complete. Another significant milestone we recently achieved for the XO beta development relates to the robot controls algorithms. In January, our controls team was challenged to develop algorithms for the XO that would allow it to balance itself independently of an operator or external control, much as you may have seen some humanoid robots do in popular videos. Achieving this capability on a wearable humanoid robot is substantially more challenging than a non-wearable robot. This achievement is essential to addressing some of the safety aspects of the XO, and I am delighted to inform you that I was able to observe a successful demonstration of this capability just a few days ago. Having said all of that, the XO Beta is running somewhat behind the XT schedule because of the labor and supply chain challenges I referenced back in August. We currently have more than 30 open engineering positions. We are fortunate to be able to continue to hire great people, but we simply aren't hiring as quickly as we expected earlier this year, and this is impacting our ability to develop our products as fast as we would like. Similarly, the wider supply chain issues have become even more challenging since August, with even off-the-shelf components going out of stock with no notice and delivery for all orders lengthening. For example, the lead time of one key component required for the XO beta was recently forecasted to move from two to three weeks to 45 weeks. We, of course, are working diligently to source from other vendors. Fortunately, we have hired the right people to substantially improve our supply chain effort, allowing us to become more agile and responsive to the situation. With the result that our ability to source the necessary hardware, while still not as efficient as we would like, it has improved over the past few months. In summary, we've responded dynamically to mitigate the challenges associated with workforce and supply chain challenges. We welcome new leaders focused on both supply chain and recruitment amongst 10 new team members hired since our merger with Rotor was closed. We've also grown our sales team, bringing in a new senior vice president of sales who has substantial experience in sales to the types of industrial customers that represent our largest opportunities. Expect to see us grow our sales team and ramp up our sales and marketing efforts substantially over the course of next year as we approach the commercial launch of our flagship products. Once our initial baby units are complete and we are satisfied with their performance, we will manufacture more units for pilots by our prospective customers, which, depending on pandemic-related limitations, we currently expect will begin mid-next year. With successful product pilots that demonstrate the value proposition for our customers, we expect to then be able to start booking orders. Following feedback from our beta tests and pilots, we will incorporate our learnings into the commercial product design while simultaneously incorporating design for excellence principles and complete value engineering work to bring down the cost of production. Despite the current staffing and supply chain challenges, we continue to expect to commence initial production of both the XO and the XT at the end of next year. Over the past few months, we've revealed a number of significant milestones in the development of our product line. In August, we announced a collaboration with T-Mobile to integrate 5G technology into the Guardian XT. 5G integration could enable the XT to be operated remotely without reliance on a communications tether, which has the potential to materially expand the potential use cases for this groundbreaking product. We continue to work closely with our partners in the military and DOD In the third quarter, we announced that several U.S. government agencies have purchased our Guardian HRS heavy lift system, a first-of-its-kind human portable system able to lift objects weighing 45,000 pounds during asset recovery and emergency response missions. Sarkos' strong relationships with its defense customers are set to continue as we continue to work closely with the Navy to develop our Guardian DX product, a defense derivative of the Guardian XT. And longer term, we expect to continue our relationship with the Air Force Research Laboratory to develop advanced perception and sensing capabilities for our robotic systems, enabling us to move towards semi-autonomous functionality. While our primary focus remains the development of our flagship Guardian XO and XT products, we continue to receive interest in the award-winning Guardian S, a remote visual inspection robot, which was Sarkis' first commercial product. In August, we named Pine Environmental Services an official distribution partner for the Guardian S. Pine makes the Guardian S available through a rental program throughout the U.S. and Canada, which provides another channel through which customers can access this versatile mobile inspection robot. Looking to the future, I believe the success of our business is dependent on three primary factors. The first of these is ensuring we have sufficient liquidity to develop our products and deliver them to market. At the time of the initial announcement of our business combination in April, we estimated that we would need approximately $140 million of cash to develop the XO and XT and to bring them to market at scale. While our labor costs and cost of initial components may be somewhat higher than expected, our merger transaction has given us ample liquidity to achieve our objectives. The second factor relates to demand and customer adoption of these new category-creating robotic systems. Our view, and that of many of our partners, is that the current shortage of skilled workers is real and is only likely to get worse as the worker population in our target markets continue to age. We believe strong demand for our XO and XT products exist today and will continue to increase going forward. The final factor on which our success is dependent is our ability to develop and deploy products that meet the expectations and needs of our customers. I believe that those of you who have viewed our demonstrations in person, watched the videos on our website, or for those lucky few, have actually operated our alpha units, understand that the key technical innovations required to meet our customers' needs are on track to be achieved based on the past 20 years plus of R&D and the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been invested to date. Now our focus is taking the feedback we received from our development partners and customers on our early prototypes and incorporating it into our beta units and ultimately our commercial products. With that, I would once again like to thank all the members of the SARTOS team who have worked tirelessly this year to advance the development of our cutting-edge, dexterous mobile robotic products, complete our merger, and manage our move into a new facility which was completed this week and from which we are hosting this call today. Thank you all once again for rising to the challenge. With that, I'll hand the call over to Steve, who will take you through our financials.