Energous Corporation

Good day and welcome to the Energy Corporation fourth quarter 2020 financial results conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance today, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on a touch-tone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note today's event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mike Bishop with the company's Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Rocco. And welcome, everyone. Before we begin, I would like to remind participants that during today's call, the company will make forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements, whether in prepared remarks or during the Q&A session, are subject to inherent risks and uncertainties that are detailed in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Except as otherwise required by federal securities laws, Energist disclaims any obligation or undertaking to publicly release updates or revisions to the forward-looking statements contained herein or elsewhere to reflect changes in expectations with regard to those events, conditions, and circumstances. Also, please note that during this call, Energist will be discussing non-GAAP financial measures as defined by SEC Regulation G. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in today's press release, which is posted on the company's website. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Steve Rizzone, CEO of Energist. Go ahead, Steve.

Thanks, Mike. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the Energist fourth quarter conference call. Joining me today is Brian Cerretta, our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Our agenda today includes an overview of our fourth quarter and full year performance. a review of our growth strategies, upcoming milestones we are driving towards, and our future outlook. We believe 2020 was a momentum-building year for the company, given the customer validation progress we achieved in contact technology and the introduction of our PowerHub distance technology. Despite the challenges of the pandemic, which has had a delaying impact on many of our customer engagements and resulting revenues, the opportunity base for the what-app technology continues to expand, especially in distance technology. In terms of momentum, in the fourth quarter we announced that Gokhale's Method Posture Tracker received FCC certification. This announcement is important for two reasons. First, It serves as additional validation that the what-up technology is gaining acceptance as the number of companies either shipping to end users or in the final stages of preparing to do so continues to increase and expand in markets served. Second, the announcement marks Energis' formal entry into the large and rapidly expanding market for wirelessly charged sensors and trackers. Initially charged by contact transmitters, and expected to evolve to include distance transmitters. Following on the heels of the GoClay announcement, we announced that the American Equus had finished trials of its Equine Health Tracking Center, and barring any delays, they are preparing to go to market possibly as early as this quarter. Both GoClay and American Equus products designed highlight two key advantages of the WadUp technology. namely the ability to hermetically seal a receiving device, thereby rendering it watertight, and the ability to charge multiple receiving devices simultaneously with a single transmitter. If you've been following the consumer electronics industry, you will know that charging of multiple devices simultaneously on a single mat or with a single transmitter has been a major challenge for the industry, including many well-known CE companies. In particular, they have struggled attempting to implement multi-device charging functionality utilizing first-generation coil-based technology. Our RF technology solves these problems and can simultaneously charge multiple devices, as well as different types, configuration, and charging angles, all providing the user with freedom of placement. Keep in mind that many of the contact charging applications we are talking about today will also benefit from the ability to be charged wirelessly at a distance as a number of our partners and customers are actively engaged in bringing over-the-air chargers and transmitters to the market. Moving on to the hearable segment, we now have two hearing aid customers with products either available to end users or expected to be available soon, possibly as early as the current quarter. The first to market was the Delight PSAP, released in common with our Korean partner SK Telesis, which we believe will be followed by NuSound in the release of their Primo M hearing aid with a true drop-and-charge experience. That is, a user simply needs to place their hearing aids onto the charger, and the charger will identify the placement of these devices, as well as begin to charge the batteries. Battery levels are then monitored by the charger, providing the appropriate charging levels based on information received from the hearing aid's internal power management technology. Energys also announced that Ear Technique has selected the WADAP technology for a new model of hearing aid called the Tie-X. Of special significance to Energys is that the initial Tie-X products will be launched in Europe. The Ear Technique hearing aid will likely be the first WADAP-enabled device on the market in Europe a milestone we're excited to achieve. We continue to see momentum in hearing aids, given the WADAP technology's ability to support full-product hearing aid models, including in-the-ear devices with unique shapes which pose coupling problems for first-generation coil-based charging options. Further, of special interest to hearing aid manufacturers is the ability of the WADAP transmitter technology to support one-to-many giving hearing aid designers and engineers the ability to use a common charging transmitter platform across a broad number of product SKUs. We are particularly pleased in the strong interest in our charging technology continues to expand across a variety of vertical markets beyond sensors and hearing aids. I would now like to provide some updates on customers announced in 2020. Energys is working with companies like Zentris who are exploring a broad spectrum of potential military application solutions, including the soldier of the future. We believe that there will be broad federal and military sector interest and opportunity in second-generation WPT solutions utilizing WADAF's unique capability to support both contact and distance charging, and in response, we are dedicating resources to focus on developing our market business. We are already starting to see the benefits of this investment, which we will believe could result in the military and federal applications becoming a meaningful percent of our future revenues. We are still in the development stages with Grepao, the top-tier battery manufacturer based in China, to integrate battery and charging technology into a single, easy-to-implement, cost-effective solution for a broad spectrum of applications. Grephow has significant market share and important target markets including hearing aids, medical devices, and sensors. We expect to report additional progress with this partner in future quarterly calls. On a side note, earlier today we announced our second battery partnership with ThinFilm to enable ultra-thin, wirelessly charged solutions for applications such as hearables, wearables, and connected sensors. Designers of these types of devices face constraints around form factor. Many need to be waterproof, highly durable, portless, or very thin, adding challenges to their design. ThinFilm is a leader in solid state lithium micro battery technology. And with our complimentary RF-based wireless charging technology, together we are actively working to promote solutions for today's small form factor applications that we believe will enable some truly disruptive wearable designs in the market. Moving on, our collaboration with POSCO in conjunction with the partnership efforts of Phibex and SK Telesis is still progressing. As you will recall, last quarter we successfully completed the field trial of a WattUp-enabled ultra-wideband industrial tracking device. We believe this opportunity will accelerate as soon as Korean regulatory certification has been formalized. Cost is always a major consideration for the introduction of new consumer technology. Energis is fortunate to have the support of a prime ODM who has developed a common transmitter platform for what have enabled contract receivers. We have been able to direct a number of customers and prospects in this direction where they can take advantage of the economies of scale, reduce risk, and lower startup costs. As the what have technology continues to expand adoption and mature, We see both the number and role of ODMs expanding as we shift more of our customer integration requirements to them, thereby lessening the demands on NRGIS internal support and development resources. Now for an update on our regulatory efforts. There remain three important markets for certification of what up technology is pending, China, Korea, and India. Our goal is to have the path to certification in these three markets complete before the end of this year. However, we will continue to caution our investors that we are dealing with government agencies, so there can be no certainty in terms of timelines. We believe India will likely be first, followed by Korea and China. The situation with China may accelerate as we continue to increase the number of customers in this important market, as well as the possible impact of expected improvements in the trade relationship between the U.S. and China by the new administration. On the technology side, Energist made a very, very important and far-reaching announcement in September regarding a major advancement in our new power broadcasting technology designated the Power Hub. We announced FCC regulatory certification of the Power Hub, expanding the distance charging zone out to one meter. This announcement has had major implications, both tactical and strategic, for Energist. As most of our investors are aware, Energis was the first company to complete an FCC Part 18 certification for power at a distance back in December of 2017, which essentially allows for greater power than one watt to be transmitted over the air as long as predefined health and safety standards are met. To achieve this industry-leading milestone, our engineering team developed a multi-antenna transmitter that concentrates power in a small three-dimensional space. This certification represented a validation of our technology and was an industry breakthrough for distance-based WPT. However, in response to customers' concern about size, cost, and complexity of implementing beamforming technology, our engineering and regulatory teams combined their efforts and developed a completely new single antenna non-beamforming technology that is inexpensive, easier to implement, all in a small form factor, which meets the FCC-mandated health and safety standards as evidenced by the September announcement. While beamforming continues to be an active technology that may be used in future applications, our focus has shifted to the Power Hub, which is experiencing strong interest in creating a workspace or desktop charging environment for things like wireless keyboards, mice, Bluetooth, earbuds, essentially anything battery-powered that sits on a desk. The interest has been far beyond our expectations. I will address this issue in a moment, but suffice it to say we are rapidly realigning our resources to support the interest in PowerHub and believe it will help accelerate the commercialization of both the desktop as well as far-field distance applications. Many of our investors have asked about the dialogue relationship, especially in light of the recent announcement from Renesys to acquire Dialog. To be clear, Dialog continues to be our go-to-market partner. We believe the accelerated traction we are seeing in the distance market is expected to be appealing to both Dialog and Renesys as this is where Energist is uniquely differentiated and where the ultimate value creation and major revenues for the company reside. Though the acquisition may take months to complete and is very early in the process, at this time we are not aware of any decisions that may have an impact on our relationship. During the fourth quarter we completed an at-the-market equity offering or ATM. Brian will provide additional details but our balance sheet is the strongest it has ever been and will set a solid foundation for us to grow our financial fundamentals. Brian, I'll now turn the call over to you.