Transphorm, Inc.

Q4 2022 Earnings Conference Call

5/24/2022

spk00: Good afternoon. My name is Savannah, and I will be your conference operator. I would like to welcome everyone today to Transform's Business Update conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise, and after the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you would like to respond to a question, please press star 1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. Joining today's call from Transform are Mario Rivas, Chief Executive Officer, Premit Parikh, Co-Founder, President, and Chief Operating Officer, and Cameron McCauley, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I would like to point out that there is a slide presentation associated with today's call, and which management will be referencing during the conference call. These slides can be accessed through the live webcast link in the Investor Relations section of TRANSFER's website, and they will also be posted on a linked PDF subsequent to today's conference call. Additionally, during the course of this call, the company may make forward-looking statements regarding the company's financial position, strategy, plans, and future operations, specific end markets, and other areas of discussion. It is not possible for the company or management to predict all the risks, nor can the company assess the total potential impact of all factors on its business or to the extent which any factor or combination of factors may cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statement. In light of all these risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, the forward-looking statement discussed during this call may or may not occur, and the actual results could differ materially and adversely from those anticipated or implied. Any projections as to the company's future performance represent management's views as of today, May 24, 2022. Neither the company nor any person assumes a possibility for the accuracy or completeness of the forward-looking statement. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update the forward-looking statements for any reason after the date of this call to conform such statements to actual results or to change in the company's expectation. For more detailed information on risks associated with the company's business, we refer you to the risk factors described on Transform's S-1, 10-CT, and other subsequent filings of the SEC. With that, I will now turn the call over to Transform's CEO, Mario Rivas, for opening remarks. Mario, please go ahead.
spk05: Thank you, Savannah, and welcome to everyone in today's call. We appreciate you joining us today. Allow me to review our fiscal four-quarter and recent highlights. We achieved an uplifting of transform common stock to the NASDAQ under the sticker symbol PGAM. The full-year fiscal 2022 revenue increased 89% year-over-year to a record $24.1 million due to strong growth in product revenue. The fourth quarter of fiscal year 2022 total revenue increased sequentially for the ninth consecutive quarter to a record of over $4 million, with total revenue for the quarter at $4.93 million. The secure and our largest super-gen high-power Gen 4 fed production order for the company today put over half a million units of three-kilowatt-class power supplies. The magnitude of this order clearly demonstrates Transform's continuing leadership in high-power GANs. We also secure a laptop adapter designed from a Tier 1 Fortune 100 company, including an initial purchase order of 50,000 units of SuperGAN Gen 4 240 million class PEP. These FEDs provide higher efficiency for 65-watt fast-charging adapter applications when compared with competing e-mode GAN FEDs that require a larger, $160 million device for similar applications. As a result, these transform SuperGAN FEDs allow our customers to do more with less. Cash-in accrual in terms of March 31st, 2022 was $34 million. I now pass the call to Primate for a detailed walkthrough of the development these past few months. Primate?
spk02: Thank you, Mario, and good afternoon, everyone. Transform TGAN has continued our product revenue ramp, delivering our ninth successive quarter of product revenue growth and cementing our leadership position in high-power GAN with a new 500,000-plus unit order for kilowatt-class gallium nitrides. are strong results of our targeted deliberate investments over the past several years in high-performance GaN products for the broad market areas, from low power to high power. To the best of our knowledge, T-GaN is the only GaN company to be shipping anything in the kilowatt range in these high-volume productions today. This places us in a very strong position to address the $3 billion GaN TAM in diverse areas like blockchain computing, data servers, communications, gaming, energy, renewables, and electric vehicles, while systematically growing our share in the lower power fast charger and adapter consumer segments. First, I'll give a short recap of Gallium Nitride, the overall value proposition, our leading position, clarifying market positioning of various types of GAN products, and then review our strong execution in the March 2022 ending quarter, and then our expansion strategy for FY2023. Gallium nitride, GaN, is a wide-bandgap semiconductor material for power conversion that reduces electrical energy waste, enables compact power conversion footprint, and lowers power systems costs. It's also a variety of electrical power conversion applications, chargers, converters, inverters, and does this significantly better than traditional silicon and much better than other new semiconductors like silicon carbide. T-GaN. is an established innovative design pioneer and leading manufacturer supplier of high-voltage GaN power semiconductor products. Over the widest range of applications, from 30 watts lower power to over 4 kilowatts higher power, and in application areas ranging from adapters and fast chargers, for which GaN has been well accepted in the market today, to higher power data centers, mining, crypto mining, communication infrastructure, broad industrial, renewable energy, and in design-in for automotive electric vehicle applications, as a result of our targeted investments and strategy. Our core and strong fundamental IP with over 1,000 patent-strong portfolio, as well as our high-performance, high-quality products have been validated by various Blue Chip investors, customers, and partners, financial partners, design partners, manufacturing partners, and automotive and industrial market customer partners, as well as the U.S. Department of Defense. Our comprehensive and differentiated product offering backed by a high-quality manufacturing base that we essentially own has ramped in the market now with over 40 billion hours in our customers' products in the field, including both high-power and low-power GAN, and resulted in over $24 million of revenue in our fiscal 2022, a record for us and a 1.9x growth about in spite of a challenging supply chain environment. Our focus is on building a product-driven, fast-ramping, profitable business, and we are already off to the races doing that. While we have multiple revenue segments like historically licensing and now government revenue and products, we target over 90% of the mix from product revenue in 2023, representing a 200% CAGR from over 2020. We are committed to making the required operating and capital investments for increased scale. high-performance products and solutions for our customers, and fostering GAN adoption over multiple end markets to achieve our targets and our target model of well over 50% long-term CAGR with gross margins over 40% and operating margins including over 20%. We are in a unique and differentiated position among the GAN suppliers to have products in the market today that address a tremendous multi-billion dollar market opportunity of GAN for power conversion across the various segments. Again, from lower power adapters and chargers to higher power server, crypto, datacom power that we are already ramped in, our customers are already ramping in, to industrial energy and renewable, now also in production with quite a few accounts, and in the mid to long term, large growth opportunities with automotive electric vehicles further bolstering our long-term picture beyond 2024-2025. Our GaN solutions deliver high-efficiency, compact systems with easy-to-use and easy-to-interface products for the customer with proven performance benefits against silicon, silicon carbide, and other gallium nitride solutions like E-Mode GaN. The GaN TAM is In the multi-billion dollar range, this is the Gantam we show here that is reasonably addressable by products we have today or in the near-term pipeline over the next few years. And from 2021 to 2026, a very strong five-year growth of more than 3x fueled by a robust, faster growth in Gantam versus the overall power semiconductor market in each of the segment areas shown here. And then a further inflection point through electric vehicle power trend segment mid-decade, giving GaN and Transform a 10x larger any segment market in 2026 for a $6 billion GaN TAM. One of our key attributes from early on, this has been our philosophy, is doing more with less. We want to enable our customers by taking the inherent benefits of GaN over both silicon and silicon carbide to the next level and delivering multi-pronged benefits to power conversion customers. Our patented, normally off-gallon nitride-fed architecture delivers high efficiency over a wide range of power levels. With leadership in product qualification and reliability, field reliability rivaling that of standard silicon with a sub-0.3 fit, which is called failure in time per billion hours of operation. TGAN's asset-light vertically integrated value chain allows for in-house GAN wafers with manufacturing control, innovation, and ability to scale. Few other companies are now talking about getting into higher power with GaN. We have been setting these benchmarks for over four years now. For example, titanium class kilowatt scale GaN power supplies with our customers. And in process, also built up very fundamental IP for the same. We offer products spanning from 45 watts to 10 kilowatts. Also, we have led in terms of high voltage offerings. 650 volts, 900 volts, being the only company with a 900 volt product in the market, and are now pursuing in R&D 1,200-volt gallium nitride, which we have proven is well within the realm of GAN, not just silicon carbide territory anymore. T-GAN FET is directly compatible with leading silicon controllers and their inbuilt drivers, bringing ease of design and drivability. No extra components or shrubbery, as we call it, are needed anymore. to interface our GAN with the outside world, a feature that has brought us a rich ecosystem of solution partners, and they appreciate this. Above all, our strong IP, five to ten times versus some other GAN competition, underpins all of this strength. The core patents in not just gallium nitride materials and manufacturing, that's of course very key, but equally important in how the gallium nitride is used in common power application architecture. Like, for example, totem pole bridge topology that is now widely used and is a core example of transform original grand product design innovation another one of our key attributes from early on is the ownership of our gan wafer production supply chain an advantage that is becoming even more important in today's geopolitical climate this starts with the design of our safe robust and easy to interface normally of can fit We directly own and control our epi-wafer manufacturing with multiple MOCVD reactors. These are the tools used to making or growing gallium nitride on, say, for example, silicon wafers that we do in two geographical locations owned by Transform California and Japan. Our wafer factory is a joint venture with our financial strategic partner. And to remind, it is a high-quality manufacturing site with the only formal report of yields for gallium nitride matching those of silicon CMOS. running in the same factory, another feature that has contributed to our high-power GaN products' yield and quality. When packaging is done with our key OSEC partners, we bring transform IT in these designs, for example, allowing GaN to be efficiently used in robust PO packages desired by high-power customers. Last but not the least is our application and design efforts, both with customers and solution partners who work preferentially with our GaN for their controller or driver products. As a result, Transform has enabled our customers with products that range from adapter to automotive, lower power to higher power, as shown in the chart, from 30-watt adapters and wall-block chargers to more than 10 kilowatt. And even higher power systems are realizable by paralleling multiple of our 10-kilowatt Gen 5 solutions, for example, in multi-phase applications. This wide breadth of products is also complemented by the highest voltage range, 650 volts, 900 volts, qualification, JPEG AAC qualification, which Transform has always led in, been the first, and then proven robust qualification product over product, and now in R&D for innovative solutions like the 1,200-volt Gallium Nitride. We are not a one-trick pony. We service the entire market, the entire gamut of customers. Now I will discuss why T-GaN wins in various verticals from lower power to higher power. As GaN adoption is happening fast, which is great, many good companies are in the market with gallium nitride, notably at lower power adapters and chargers, while T-GaN is systematically addressing today high power and low power together. Silicon obviously has been great in the past and still works today, but falls short in efficiency, speed, and the smaller size required for new products. GAN takes off from here. A few factors that outline TGAN's differentiated benefits over competing GAN are that we excel in ease of use and flexibility with standard drivers, controllers, interfacing with our GAN thread as a result of the integration choices that we have made. No extra BOM components or shrubbery is required to interface the GAN, our GAN, which makes the solution cost effective, especially key in lower power chargers and adapters for smartphones and laptops where total bomb cost is key. The intrinsic gallium nitrate performance fully exploited in our products to achieve the highest efficiency or lowest losses among many other GANs. And then bringing reliability and robustness across the entire power chain. This is evidenced very clearly by our proven design wins with customer systems in production as T-GAN is adopted in many more market verticals today with higher range, higher reliability, and higher performance. As you can see, applications like server power, gaming, blockchain, crypto mining, a variety of industrial, and also select high-rel applications like aerospace. Some of these are more than 10 times the power levels that some of the other gallium nitride offerings enable today, namely more or less in the low power range. Along with the ease of use benefits, reduced BOM, and the intrinsic GAN performance, the underlying Results for our high-power dominance stem from the fact that typical e-mode gallium nitride, competing gallium nitride interface to the outside world is inherently weaker and harder to operate in many common package types. The fundamental design innovation in directly controlled manufacturing does enable superior performance, superior dynamic performance, as it is called, from our gallium nitride sets, allowing smaller GANDI to be used for the same power level versus larger or sometimes even two packages for competing GAN versus one from Transform for the same application. We prefer to lay out the facts about GAN products very clearly and hopefully seek to clear any confusion in understanding by customers or investors in this space. First off, power customers, power applications have always required normally off products, whether it's silicon or gallium nitride. This is just a basic safety thing. And gallium nitride FETs on the market today are normally off. The transformed gallium nitride FET, just like silicon MOSFETs, is normally off. How this is achieved, whether e-mode GAN or other type of GAN, are kind of technicalities of little consequence. Other than what matters is the implementation by each particular company, their solutions, the performance, reliability, ease of use, and, of course, the cost of the solutions. High performance. First comes from the underlying GAN, and it is not a function of a particular implementation. For example, a so-called GAN IC just won't give you high performance if the underlying GAN is not high performance. We, our design partners and customers, have validated higher efficiency of the T-GAN FAT with other gallium nitride versus other gallium nitride in the same application. This is not to say that other gallium nitride cannot improve, but just pointing out where the fundamental benefits arise from. And when it comes to high speed, high frequency, that is nature's gift to gallium nitride, at least well-designed gallium nitride, operating at much higher speed than silicon and even silicon carbide. Finally, there are various shenanigans out there about integration. Clearly, integration is a design choice of the offeror. Clearly, integration is important. But where, how are aspects of how each product is designed? For example, We can talk of a driver FET integrated in GAN or other levels of integration, but a lot of modern day controllers have already integrated drivers, inbuilt, literally free. In our transformed GAN FET, we choose to integrate a small low voltage silicon FET with our high voltage GAN. Thus, no need for any external or internal driver in, say, fast charger phone or laptop application, where the controller already houses the driver. Because we have a traditional silicon-like interface with the performance of high-voltage gallium nitride. Now, the higher power space is a very large market for GaN and very important. Very simply put, higher the power, the higher the energy saving impact of GaN, higher the impact on electricity usage and carbon footprint at the holistic level, higher the semiconductor content because the larger the chips enhance the total higher market. Here, our Gen 4 and Gen 5 offerings are compared to leading silicon carbide offerings in this space, as other types of gallium nitride, like the E-mode gallium nitride, are not quite ready today, at least, for high power, especially in thermally robust packages like the TO247, due to the inherent device weakness. Previously, we had shown that with our highest power 15 milliohm product to best, we can tell this is the lowest resistance, highest current, highest power for 650 volt GaN qualified and in production in a discrete package like the TO247. That outperforms silicon carbide, good silicon carbide products like the MOSFETs and the JFETs, and realizes a 25% to 38% lower loss in an apples-to-apples comparison, delivering 10 kilowatt-class power levels from a single part in a half-bridge testing. Now, there are also independent third-party validation confirming the same thing, what we had previously said. For example, a recent technical paper at the PCIM Europe Trade Show and Conference where superiority of T-GAN or silicon carbide in 5 kilowatt applications was published. Customers have selected our high-power GAN products across the spectrum, and some of our wins were all built on the foundation of efficiency, performance, ease of use, and reliability, as our customers, as well as third-party reports, have also shared. Recently, we secured a PO of over 500,000 units for high-power GAN, And mind you, these are 7A, 10 times bigger chips than used in lower power adapter type applications, validating our leadership in high power GAN. Blockchain computing is a power-hungry application where our GAN has enabled a 1% efficiency. And to put that in perspective, one system can save a few hundred kilowatt hours per year and well over 100 pounds of carbon footprint, depending on what your source of energy is. With more than 50,000 metric tons of reduction possible just from our own 2022 outlook in blockchain computing and gaming alone. Shown on the right here in the server power segment, we, with our customers, have enabled titanium rating now for more than four years. Other GAN suppliers are trying to follow suit, which will all be good for the GAN market, and starting to talk about titanium efficiencies. Here again, our existing customers have increased their follow-on orders, and we anticipate further that initiatives and regulations like the EU EcoDesign from 2023, we even increased further the need for high-efficiency high-power GANs like that from Transform. We aim to grow the high-power segment continuously and maintain our leadership position here. While there is a very significant growth for us in the various segments we outlined from low-power to high-power, the EV applications continue to present a massive long-term opportunity As the performance of GAN enables continued performance of the electric vehicles addressing and improving on fundamental issues of power loss, heat generation, and range anxiety, with high power density enabled fast charging, reduced size, lower losses that ultimately result in higher range. Transform is accelerating this opportunity for electric vehicles for GAN. It will accelerate in the next few years. Where today, Transform is addressing the EV markets, specific EV opportunity markets, are in the areas of on-board chargers, DC-DC converters, and off-grid DC to AC inverters with the main drive train inverter opportunity after 2025-26 that can triple the accessible GAN content from about $70 to well over $200. As I also alluded to, we announced our preliminary 1200 volts gallium nitride R&D results. In fact, this week at a premier IEEE conference, the ISPSD, including 800 volt of operation from our gallium nitride, for which a 1200 volt device is necessitated, and with higher efficiency over competing 1200 volt silicon carbide products that, of course, are well established in the market today. But it's a clear proof point that GAN is not sitting still. We are not sitting still. We are moving forward. Besides, TRANSFORM has AEC automotive GAN qualified products today with our Gen 4 power solutions that are already ramped in the market for various commercial and industrial power segments. Now I'm going to turn our attention to our execution in the last quarter and then how we expect going forward. In the December quarter, we had announced several vectors driving our growth. We are very pleased in the March quarter, which is the fourth fiscal quarter of our 2022, to achieve our ninth successive quarter of product revenue growth, with a key highlight of transform dominating in GAN high-power segments. Our latest proof point of our leadership is our largest single order till date for high-power GAN of over half a million units that we recently secured. We also continue to gain our share in the low-power fast charger segment, and have secured multiple early wins at multi customers that I'll outline in the next slide. Our management focus remains squarely on product revenue growth, supply chain management, and capacity expansion. Overall, we are seeing a very strong demand for rest of the year and beyond as well, as we are gaining share in every segment, including continued leadership in high power. We do face near-term headwinds, due to the worldwide supply chain issues facing the industry today. This may land our fiscal Q2, which is the July to September quarter, more in line with fiscal Q1, which is the April to June quarter, resulting in approximately a one-quarter shift. We anticipate that continued strong growth scenario from there on, targeting a robust 50% growth in the second half versus first half of the year. The midterm scenario through calendar 2023 remains very strong as our capacity initiatives, our current capacity initiatives are expected to be online. Thus, supply chain management as well as capacity expansion are our top focus areas over the next several quarters. We expect that with our strong balance sheet, leadership in high power products and gaining share in lower power will allow us to continue this momentum forward. What we show here now is the key metrics and growth factors that we achieved during the January to March quarter and we had previously targeted, as well as how they are shaping our future growth. First, product revenue in the quarter was $4 million, our ninth successive record quarter in this department, and already representing 80% of the quarter's total revenue. We have in place a strong and record backlog till date, driven by continued and robust demand for our products. We continue to win and grow our share in the adapters and fast chargers. We added at least five design-ins in the last quarter, the January to March quarter. We also secured important design wins, including a laptop adapter win with a Tier 1 Fortune 100 company with the first 50K unit PO secured and pilot production wins, additional pilot production wins at a leading Asia-based smartphone manufacturer for 65W and a pilot order for a worldwide e-retailer for 140-watt adapters. We look to grow especially in the 100-watt plus segment. For example, the new USB PD 3.1 standard with enabling 140 watts, where we will have cutting-edge solutions by Transform and our valued partners who like the Tegan solution over competing GANs, say e-mode or other products, because of ease of interface and no external driver needed. We are pleased to lead in GAN for higher power, broadly speaking, 300 watt to 4 kilowatt that is already in production at our customers today, where we continue to add design-ins, now at 35 plus, with over 15 in production. It is notable that more than 50% of our revenues now are already in the higher power segment. That includes multi-kilowatt GAN solution. We aim to further grow and get into areas like energy, TV power, e-mobility, where we are opening up new design-ins. We have 17 high-voltage GAN qualified and released products in our comprehensive portfolio today. Again, low power to high power, 650 volts, the only 900-volt product in the market, and many of these products are either in compact surface mount packages or thermally robust TEO packages. Our products do not have these limitations of package type. Three of these products are already AEC automotive qualified parts today, including our Gen 4 with Gen 5 AEC to follow in future. As I mentioned, a significant emphasis and positive challenge now is on the capacity expansion and managing product revenue for rapid growth in what is still a very challenging worldwide supply chain environment for the next couple of quarters. While we have achieved sufficient PQFN package adapter product codes and capacities, as we previously had also mentioned, now we have expansion efforts underway for high-power package products and both internal and external wafer capacity in the areas of epi wafer growth and wafer production. So three takeaways with our record quarter, product revenue growth with leadership in high power GAN, gaining all round and focus on supply chain execution and multiple capacity initiatives ongoing. Strategic partners have always been important for our business. First and foremost, Top of the list now, this includes manufacturing and capacity increases and partners who we are working with. The global wafers partnership and IP expansion is on track with completion scheduled for mid-calendar year 2023. We are managing on track with our AFS StepLoop FAB joint venture with our financial strategic partner and planning further increases in capacity, wafer FAB capacity, in second half of the calendar year 2022 and 2023 to keep up with the rising demand that we are seeing. In the industrial and automotive segment, our partners, who also happen to be valued shareholders in TEN, are working closely with us. We expect to complete the Yescava development program payment in the imminent future and have updated the development plan with Yescava for cost-effective, innovative solutions for robotic applications. Nixpedia, who is also our automotive partner and licensee, customer partner for IP Wafer and Fab Wafer Supply, has recently demonstrated independently a 35-kilowatt GaN inverter for EVs at the APEC trade show in Houston. The next milestone for us in this area is the AEC qualification of our Gen 5 products, which we are already commercially qualified and already ramped in the market for commercial production. Other EV, DCBC, and OBC opportunities currently with Japan-based Tier 2 Tier 1s, and Morelli for charger and converter are in progress with mid-term insertion possibilities. The government revenue business stream remains steady, with targeted $0.9 million in the January to March quarter done on track, driven by our Navy program of epi-wafer manufacturing. And like before, excellent results on the 1200-volt GAN with our RPIE program. Additional RFIP, especially government IP customers, are ongoing, but the primary focus now is on satisfying our internal power products for the rapid demand and rapid growth that we are seeing. All in all, we are very excited to be in the midst of an all-round GAN adoption growth phase with Transform and our good fellow GAN companies in the market. TGAN focus remains in three key areas, expanding our leadership in high-power GAN, gaining share in the adapters and fast chargers, and capacity expansion, first keeping up and then next year staying ahead of the very strong demand that our products are generating. With that, over to Cameron to present the detailed picture of our financial.
spk03: Thank you, Pramit, and hello to everyone joining us today. Let me start with a brief recap of our unaudited results for our most recently completed quarter. Please note that these results are subject to the completion of our audit procedures. We anticipate filing our 10K for our fiscal year ended March 31st in mid-June. For my remarks, I will refer both to GAAP and non-GAAP results, which are reconciled to GAAP in our press release table. Non-GAAP results exclude stock-based compensation, depreciation and amortization, and adjustments to fair value of our previously held convertible notes. Starting with the income statement, total gap and non-gap revenue comprising product and government was $4.9 million in the quarter. This represents a 7% quarterly growth when compared to $4.6 million product and government revenue for the prior quarter. Total revenue for FY22 was $24.1 million, an increase of 89% from the prior fiscal year. This quarterly and year-over-year increase was driven by record product sales from ramping shipments. Product revenue now forms the majority of our total revenue number, over 80% in the quarter just completed and over 50% for the year. Continuing to focus on product sales, our last quarter saw our ninth successive quarter of product revenue growth and record product revenue of over $4 million. This represents a 10% increase from the prior quarter. Product sales for FY22 grew 190% from FY21. This growth has been driven across a broad range of power conversion applications, including fast chargers and adapters, gaming, data center, and crypto. The overall blended gross margin for the year was 48%. The gross margin in the quarter was 23%. The company is progressing nicely towards its long-term model of gross margins in excess of 40%. The number of actions, including new product introductions, discrete ongoing cost efficiency activities, and benefits that we will receive as we continue to grow and scale will contribute to this. Operating expenses on a non-GAAP basis were $4.7 million in the current quarter compared to $4.5 million in the prior quarter. This modest growth has been primarily driven by an expansion in our sales and applications team to support our increased revenue, together with one-off compliance costs tied to our uplifting to NASDAQ. When comparing non-GAAP OPEX in the same quarter to the prior year, we saw a 16% increase, due primarily to personnel increases across the company, ongoing compliance costs, and strong R&D spend. Turning to EPS, I will focus my remarks here on non-GAAP results. The revenue growth allied to continued OPEX management resulted in a non-GAAP EPS loss of $0.08 in the quarter, a $0.01 improvement on Q3. Our non-GAAP EPS for the fiscal year improved 20 cents to a non-GAAP EPS loss of 22 cents for the year. From an operational perspective, we continue to see strong traction in our targeted markets. Q4 saw record product bookings contributing to a strong backlog position. This record is excluding the over 500,000 unit production order the company booked for kilowatt class power supplies, which was received in the current quarter. The company is fully booked for the current quarter, our short-term focus being on product execution and enabling capacity expansion to support medium to long-term growth. Turning now to the balance sheet, FY22 saw a great deal of progress. The cash position improved by $25 million due to our strong rate of activity in the year. We exited the year with $34 million in cash, providing a stable runway for the company to grow. We also significantly reduced our liabilities in the year. Firstly, in the first half of FY22, through our execution on the $10 million development loan, and in October, our long-term partner, Yaskawa, converted their $15 million loan into equity. The combination of these activities has improved the shareholders' equity position by over $55 million in the fiscal year. These activities provide the company a strong platform to enter this fiscal year. Looking ahead, we will remain open to opportunities to further strengthen our balance sheet to ensure that we are able to continue to invest in our growth. We also successfully completed our targeted uplisting to NASDAQ in the quarter and have seen a strong increase in trading volume in the period since this was completed. Transitioning from our financial performance, I wanted to touch on our positioning. The company is well positioned to grow across multiple segments, including consumer, data centres, crypto mining, industrial and, in the longer term, EV. We are now at a stage where we have seen and continue to see strong adoption and, as illustrated in our presentation, revenue growth. Revenue traction exists today in several segments, including customer data centers, crypto, and industrial applications. Looking ahead, our strong balance sheet will allow us to continue to invest in our growth engine across all aspects of the company, both from a staffing and a capacity perspective. With this strong foundation in place, our focus turns to execution, ensuring that we can support the growing demand and what we will believe will be a broad market inflection point in the medium term. In addition to our existing revenue streams, we expect to see initial wins in the automotive segment in this timeframe. From there, the company will drive towards our long-term target model, enabled by continued momentum across multiple segments. Concluding now with a few key highlights. Transform, publicly listed on the NASDAQ exchange, is a pioneer and leading provider of GaN power conversion devices. We have disruptive technology that provides solutions today across a number of significant growing markets. We have established a strong network of blue-chip partners, including KKR, Morelli, SES, Yaskal, and others. We are commercially ramping, with strong production revenue growth now growing for nine successive quarters. We have a comprehensive product offering today that meets our customers' needs across a wide range of power levels and segments. all of which is underpinned by a strong balance sheet, the industry's strongest IP position, and a deep and talented team. This completes our prepared materials and remarks. We'd now like to open the call to any questions. Operator, please proceed with the Q&A portion of the call.
spk00: And as a reminder, that is star one. If you would like to ask a question, our first question will come from David Williams with the Benchmark Company. Please go ahead.
spk09: Hey, good afternoon. Thanks so much, and congrats on the progress. Some very impressive design win results and orders there.
spk08: Thank you. Thanks, David.
spk09: Yeah, you know, if we kind of step back and look at just the strength of those design wins, it seems like there could be more opportunities here than maybe resources. You talked about adding the capacity, but I guess if you kind of look out the next six to 12 months, do you feel that you have enough internal capacity that you can fulfill these orders? at least to some degree, or how do you kind of think about, I guess, the backlog and filling this demand?
spk02: Thank you for that. So, yeah, we are seeing a very strong demand, and like we said, a record backlog is in place. We obviously fulfill, strive to fulfill this opportunity across the range, but like I also said, we have a capacity to fulfill today and are adding more capacity as we go online. The next two to three quarters is really aware of the supply chain in part limited by the worldwide supply chains and what we need in coming to increase that capacity will be something we'll be watching very, very closely. And overall, the picture doesn't change. We have several capacity efforts going on, which will come online all towards the end of this year and then in 2023, like I alluded in the call. So the next few quarters, like I alluded to, we have to grapple with the capacity balancing that with the demand, which is looking very strong.
spk09: Okay, great. Thanks so much for the color. And then you mentioned this in the script at APEC, but there was a traction burger design that we saw that appeared to be a GAN-based traction burger, and it was the first one we had seen. Just curious if you could give us any color, and if I'm not mistaken, I think the experience has a license agreement with your products. Am I thinking about that right? And how do you think about that traction inverter? It seems like maybe that's pulling forward a little bit faster than what we would have anticipated.
spk02: No, it's a great proof point. And as you rightly said, all those statements are correct. And Xperia did it with their products. They have a license agreement with Transform for the GAN as well. And it's a fantastic proof point for gallium nitride that it was a demonstration, but it was a fantastic proof point that a 35 kilowatt inverter was demonstrated.
spk09: Okay, great. And then maybe just lastly for me is how you're thinking about the business. It seems like we're in a bit of a decelerating macro here, but I think at least from your perspective, it's more of a demand is driven by the transition in technology and less from demand from end consumption. So as I kind of think about, I guess, your performance through the cycle or maybe through a downturn, how should we think about your business?
spk02: Well, that is well-framed. So our demand, Gallium Nitride in general, Transform, and Gallium Nitride in general, is the technology transition to newer products, right? So it is – The demand has been strong. Our supply side, supply chain growth, capacity growth, other important things we will focus on. But like I said, this was our – we just recently landed the half a million order in higher power that we mentioned. Our largest order to date was a recent win that we secured, and we hope to be targeting those kind of things as we go forward.
spk09: Good. Thanks again. Appreciate the time, and best of luck.
spk02: Thank you.
spk00: Our next question will come from Ananda Barula with Booth Capital. Please go ahead.
spk01: Hey, yeah, good afternoon, guys, and congrats on the progress as well. I guess this could be for Mario and for Pramit. Mario, I mean, Pramit, just to your point, your remarks just a moment ago about macro. It sounds like you guys are not yet seeing what you would consider to be an incremental impact from macro or sort of slowing economic growth. I just want to make sure that that is, in fact, accurate, that you guys are not yet seeing that as far as you can tell.
spk02: Yes, I'll answer it first. Mario may add his comments after that. Yes, so we are not to a first order. Actually, we are not seeing that yet. Sometimes to a second order, we see, for example, some of our customers are designing complex systems, right, that has many other parts in it. And even though the customer is ready to go with our solution, they could be short of an IC, some other silicon product IC or some other component IC. in their bomb of their system, which could delay our designing. So those kinds of things we are seeing, but overall macro, we have not yet seen a direct impact yet, which I guess is a good thing. And then we are striving to increase our capacity to keep up with the demand.
spk05: Definitely we haven't seen anything like that. The demand is very strong and we're chasing after it for the next couple of quarters. Now, we're in semiconductor, so there's no news. But we haven't seen any evidence at the moment that there's a slowdown.
spk01: Mario, that's super helpful. And then to Pramit's remark, this is more of a clarification question, guys. Pramit made a remark about, and please just sort of correct this for me, made a remark that I heard Something along the lines of we can sort of supply chain isn't really necessarily an issue right now, but maybe two, three quarters out it could be. And Mario, it sounds like maybe that's kind of what you were saying as well. Could you just clarify that for me? I just want to make sure that I understand that accurately.
spk02: No, excuse me. The supply chain, yes, so we have to focus definitely on managing the supply chain and focus on the supply chain downstream, our own way for production and the raw materials production. spare parts, consumables, et cetera, that we need. So we have to manage the supply chain. Our demand is growing fast, right? And we have a record backlog in place. So for the next couple of quarters, the supply chain and our own capacity is important for us to watch out. Beyond that, our capacity initiatives that we have already put in place will bear fruit to increase our capacity, say, towards the end of this year and then going into 2023. So the next couple of quarters – While the demand is very strong, no change in increasing demand, our supply chain and capacity is something we'll be watching very carefully. I see. Thanks for clarifying that.
spk05: Just to add to that, the last couple of quarters, we've been working very hard to monitor very tight supply chain. So that continues going forward, at least for the rest of the year, as far as we can see it. So that's why we consider it prudent to say we could have headwinds because the supply chain continues to be very tight. Hopefully we'll be successful on it.
spk01: That's a really helpful clarification. And last one for me right now is I guess I'm on the new win, the 500,000 unit win. Timing for delivery on that, how are you guys thinking about that? That would be helpful. Thanks.
spk02: The timing is over the next few quarters.
spk01: Okay, awesome. Yeah, thanks. Thanks for that. Yeah, thanks, guys. I'll get back in the queue. Thanks.
spk00: Our next question will come from Fahad Nizam, Business Capital. Please go ahead.
spk06: Thank you for taking my question. Mario, on the 500,000 new unit order VIN, can you maybe tell us a little bit more about this VIN, what applications this is targeting, what ESPs, if you can share, anything you can share with us on this new order VIN?
spk05: Well, we are restricted to customer privacy at this moment, right? But we did say that it's a T1 VIN. Fortune 1100 computer manufacturer.
spk02: I'll just clarify that it's a higher power. It's a higher power design with our TO247 products that Transform is absolute leader in. Like we said, it's in the 3 kilowatt plus class segment. So that is what we said, 3 kilowatt plus. That's the key point that Transform is dominating in this, is leading in leadership position in the kilowatt class segments where other gallium nitride has not yet penetrated. So it's our PO2473 kilowatt class. Generally, they apply to various segments like crypto mining, data server, energy, those kind of products.
spk06: Got it. And what kind of ESPs do you think this segment enjoys and what are the trends in this segment?
spk02: Generally speaking, those ASPs, as you can imagine, scale with the power level and are well in the multi-dollar range.
spk06: Got it. And then on the supply chain side, are you guys able to get access to your technology, like from your suppliers like Exatron? You can share with us on your – supply chain constraints or anything, or any updates on that supply chain?
spk02: Yes, so we work closely with our partners like Extron that you mentioned. They are extremely collaborative working with Transform. We also have, as you can imagine, there are many downstream elements in the supply chain, including from larger companies like Extron to smaller companies for spare parts and consumables. So all of that entire value ecosystem has to be managed. So it's not just one kind of out there, right? The key partners, like the example you gave, we work extremely closely together.
spk06: Okay. And then one last question for me. Maybe I misheard you, but if I recall, in the past you had targeted entering the EV market by 2025, but I think on the call today you said 2026. Did I hear that correctly? Maybe can you rehash or remind us when do you expect to have meaningful penetration in the EV market?
spk02: In part, correct. So what we have said in kind of the 2024 timeframe, getting the onboard charger and DC-DC converter opportunities that we are in the design today, What I said is from 2026, it opens up the TAM for the inverter, the EV powertrain, which significantly increases the GAN content possible in the automotive by three times because these are much higher power levels, hence the larger amounts of total semiconductor area and total semiconductor products used. So we are today designing into the onboard charger DC-DC converter. That's midterm, but that's an earlier timeframe. The inverter, the drivetrain inverter, that's a later time trick.
spk06: Got it.
spk02: I appreciate the clarification. Which is what we had said before as well.
spk06: Got it. Thank you. I appreciate the clarification.
spk00: As a reminder, that is star one to ask a question. And our next question will come from Richard Shannon with Craig Callum Castle. Please go ahead.
spk07: Well, hi, guys. Excuse me. Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my question. I'm going to ask a financial one here. I just want to make sure I'm kind of putting the teamings together here right. So you're talking about pretty strong demand, but perhaps some supply chain constraints here. So I guess just thinking about, you know, revenues going forward here, especially as we look at it more from the product standpoint, side point of view. Are we looking for a flattening of the curve here for a quarter or two? Or is it still going to grow at a slower pace? I just want to make sure I'm getting the key leads right on this. How can you help us understand that better, please? Sure.
spk03: No, I think, Richard, we are seeing, as Pramit mentioned, we are seeing some headwinds there. And, you know, it may be that the September quarter lands more in line with the June quarter. So there's a flattening there. But, you know, from there, we do see a resumption of strong growth. And, you know, there's a 50 percent target in the second half versus the first half of the year. So really just a one quarter shift and as much as anything else. It's certainly not a demand issue and it's certainly not a growth issue.
spk07: Okay, so just to make sure I'm understanding this, Cameron, so you said September kind of in line with June, but how do we think about June? Is June still a growth quarter here, at least from a product point of view, or not necessarily?
spk03: I think that you can expect to see a continuation of growth in the June quarter. I mean, I think we don't guide specifically, but the demand is there, and we're continuing to execute toward that. I did mention that we were fully booked as well, Richard, so there are constraints in that regard, but I think the flattening is more in June to September quarter, and then a resumption of the growth trajectory from there.
spk07: Got it. Okay. That is helpful. Maybe, Cameron, another one for you on gross margins, specifically on the product side here. Obviously, you don't do any of that specifically, but if I'm trying to read the numbers here right here, it seems like product gross margins have grown here a bit, quarter to quarter here. Maybe you can give us a sense of the degree to which that is mixed versus yield and how that's tracking and how you think about kind of the path to getting to that 40% plus gross margin number.
spk03: Sure, sure. I think over the course of the year, I think product and government was 23% for the quarter, 22% for the year. And I think that's relatively stable over the course of each quarter, aside from the occasional blip that you get, which is kind of typically mixed driven. I think for us, we're pleased with where we are. I think what we have to do now over the course of the next year and beyond is look at different opportunities to improve the margin. That's cost efficiency, that's new product introduction, that's the opportunities you get from growing the business as well, Richard. And I think that each one of those factors will help improve the margin as we think about the long-term target of 40%. Okay, perfect.
spk07: Thanks for that, Cameron. Permit, my last question for you as we think about the kind of high-power segment of the market here. I think you're suggesting or even stating directly that you don't believe any other GAN companies are supplying kilowatt-class opportunities here. So maybe if you can discuss whether you're seeing that imminence. inflation by other GAN guys, and then also thinking on the other side against silicon, what are the obstacles and accelerators for you getting more share of that market?
spk02: Sure. So to the first point, to the best we can say, no other GAN companies is at least ramped to the extent that we have. There may have been an isolated product announcement a year or so, but not certainly in the volumes that we have had and the diversity of customers and products in the market that we have had. Not the company's product, but customer systems in the market. That is what we have achieved in high power. Second, actually, it will be good to have more GaN companies in the high power segment, right? Multiple companies with this market is tremendous. We are looking at a very strong year-over-year growth, multi-year growth here in all low power, high power, but high power in specifics. And multiple GAN companies will buy for that, and that is what it takes to make a strong market as well. Because that leads to the second part of your question is clearly there is an efficiency and loss advantage over silicon operating at higher speeds, higher frequencies, smaller systems. And as you go to high power, the impact of energy savings is also very important, right? A 100-watt adapter with a 1% improvement. one watt. If you are looking at five kilowatts, that says 50 watts and that much amount of electricity. So the shift from silicon to gallium nitride at the high power, we believe, will be a strong one over the next few years. Okay.
spk07: Well, that's helpful. Thanks for a minute. That is all for me. Thank you.
spk00: Our next question will come from Michael Manning with the Riley Security. Please go ahead.
spk08: Good afternoon, guys. Thanks for letting me ask a couple questions. This is Michael on for Craig Ellis. And congratulations on the kilowatt class win as well. Maybe to start with capacity regarding adapters. So I believe, if I recall correctly, in the last quarter's presentation, There was a point that you expected to get to 5 to 10 million monthly units maybe by the end of 2022 or next year in 2023. I was wondering if that target still held with everything going on and how you thought you were tracking to that. And then if you could just walk us through the milestones to get us there in terms of investments quarter over quarter and getting equipment, just how do we get to that goal? Thank you.
spk02: Yes, so overall, I believe we had mentioned the total wafer capacity, and that obviously is a mix of high power, low power, and various levels of segment, right? So that depends on our mix of the products, how much gets allocated where. For the adapter specifically, what we had shown and we proved it, we had said that our packaging OSAT capacity we wanted to demonstrate well over $1 million a month with two OSET subcontractors, partners in place for packaging, and that we have achieved. We showed proof point that we could ship over $1 million a month, including we have now two qualified OSET suppliers. The expansion, the second part of your question, the expansion that we refer to and I refer to in the call today are for continued expansion in the higher power packages, as well as expansion of our own wafer capacity expansion, both on the EpiWafer side and the WaferFab side.
spk08: Got it. Thank you. And then maybe just a quick follow-up on the Kilowatt class win. I was just wondering if you could talk about the potential for further orders from the same customer or whether your backlogger engagement to other customers you sense that you can secure similar design wins at other customers above the same size in the higher power segment?
spk02: Yes, we believe so. The answer to both those questions is yes, the same customer and the same types of customer in the application areas in similar power range. We expect that will continue to be a growth segment for us.
spk08: Great. Thank you.
spk00: And our final question will come from Oren Hirschman with AIGH. Please go ahead.
spk04: Hi. Thank you for sticking me in the question queue. And congratulations on the progress. Just to follow up on the last question, could it also be for the exact same application for another customer? Is it a standard type of application where it could just be for another customer as well for the same exact thing?
spk02: Yes, that is correct.
spk04: Okay, and can you just go through again quickly some of the higher power design-in verticals, meaning the end products right now, not only stuff that you're shipping today, but where you actually have design-ins, you know, besides, you've mentioned server crypto, but let me, if I can just ask you to rattle them off again.
spk02: Yes, so it is locked. I've got some people over there, but I'll start again, but I'll start again. I am hearing some echo, but you guys are not. It's a blockchain computing, gaming, data centers and servers, UPS and renewable energy.
spk04: Would it hold true that you could be in a graphics chip card or something of that nature?
spk02: Yeah, it is possible because those servers are also having those servers will have a multi-kilowatt class. So not so much in a graphics chip card, Oren, but, for example, a graphics chip card that necessitates, due to the high-performance graphics here, a 3-kilowatt server, for example, or a 2-kilowatt server, right, or for that matter, a 1.5-kilowatt server. Those types are, we have not talked explicitly about that, but those type of applications where very high power in a compact footprint is necessitated, their GAN and transform GAN definitely should have a value play over existing silicon products.
spk04: Do you have any design-ins on that very high-performance type of product for the data center?
spk02: Yes, the data centers we have. We have design-ins in the data centers in past. We have talked publicly about some customers that have done public announcements with us, for example, Bell Power, has a whole slew of power supplies starting from 2 kilowatts to 3.6 kilowatts, a number of power supply designs with our GAN targeted to the data server.
spk04: And a high-performance card, like you were just describing.
spk02: The high-performance card, we have not publicly talked about that yet.
spk04: Okay. So you're saying it's something you could address or are addressing but haven't announced any definitive wins.
spk02: It's potentially that level of power. Again, 2 kilowatt, 3 kilowatt level of power, which at the end of the day, it will be a server, right? That can be addressed.
spk04: Okay. And I just want a last question, just clarification on the auto opportunity. Could you just go back? 2024 was actually for revenue from the initial auto product. And is that correct? I'm not sure I caught that.
spk02: Yes, that is what we are targeting. That is correct.
spk04: In terms of announcements on design wins, you know, it sounded like just in passing that you had indicated that it sounds like there are some early car design wins, but I want to make sure I got that right.
spk02: No, not design wins. That is design ins, which, as you can appreciate, the auto designing is a long process with the tier two, tier ones, and then ultimately they're designing with the OEM car manufacturer. So we are in design ins. the process, not yet a completed design win, because that has to be validated not only with the Tier 2 or Tier 1, with who we would work with, but the end OEM customer as well.
spk04: In terms of getting those design wins in order to get revenue in from the autospace in 2024, knowing how they work the model years as well, when would you have to actually see the early wins?
spk02: Sometimes in mid-2023, mid to late 2023 is what we would have to nail it down.
spk04: Do you think there's a chance to see anything still in 2022 or not likely yet?
spk02: We expect more in the mid-2023 segment because it just takes time with not only our direct, like even if we have a direct win with our tier two, tier one, they have to also secure subsequently a design with the end automotive customers. But as we alluded to, you know, we have a variety of partners also. They are also, for example, our licensee partner in Xperia. They will have their own independent partners. efforts that are on their own, increasing the so-called reach of GAN, TransformScan, and we supply wafers into that. So there could be multiple options or avenues for us. Okay.
spk04: Thank you so much.
spk02: Thank you.
spk00: And that will conclude today's conference. Thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect.
Disclaimer

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