Energous Corporation

Good day and welcome to the Energist Corporation first quarter 2021 financial results conference call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, 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 your touchtone phone. And to withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mike Bishop, of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Chuck, 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 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, and are just 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 regards 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 Brian Cerretta, CFO of Energis. Go ahead, Brian.

Hey, thanks, Mike. I'm Brian Cerretta, Chief Financial Officer at Energis, and joining me today on the call is Cesar Johnson, our Chief Operating Officer, and Neeraj Sahejpal, our Senior Vice President of Marketing and Business Development. At the close of market today, we announced our results and highlights for our first quarter of 2021, ended on March 31st. The team would like to give you an update on several aspects of our business, beginning with an update on customers and markets. along with engineering and regulatory, followed by an update on our operating results before opening the call up for Q&A. On our last quarterly call, we had stated that we were expecting quarterly revenue growth to occur. Accordingly, we recognized $145,000 versus $90,000 in the prior fourth quarter. In combination with this modest growth, we also saw an expansion of interest in our technology, including notable potential customers owing to the release of our WattUp PowerHub Developer Kit in March. This technology continues to evolve in terms of power levels and at-a-distance charging capabilities, and we are excited to see the varied potential applications that are being considered by our partners. Previously announced, contacted charging-based partners such as NewSound, GoCal, and American Equus continue to progress towards general commercial availability. We and our partners continue to navigate the challenges associated with the direct impact of COVID-19-related closures, IC part shortages, and working remotely. This is leading to some delays, but we are excited about these upcoming product releases as they further highlight RF as the next generation and next evolution of wireless charging for both at contact and at a distance or over-the-air charging. In addition, we continue to work with these customers as they prepare to bring their respective products to market in the coming months. We are also working with a number of additional partners who have not been announced that are looking to implement our RF-based contact charging technology due to certain advantages over coil-based charging. In general, interest in true wireless power as an industry continues to grow, especially regarding RF-based charging, as evident from the recently announced early and early conceptual demonstrations by the likes of Xiaomi, Oppo, and Motorola Mobility. It is clear the freedom to charge at a distance is the next barrier to overcome, and we believe Energist, with its portfolio of chips, system, software, and regulatory understanding, is uniquely positioned to create the ecosystem of next-generation wireless power at a distance. Case in point, our PowerHub Technologies value proposition is to allow device manufacturers, consumer, medical, industrial, and other markets to enable over-the-air wireless charging in the most cost-effective and practical way, something that we believe is not possible with older first-generation coil-based charging technologies. Backed by our ability to secure early regulatory approvals using proprietary non-beamforming technology, we are seeing various distance charging opportunities evolve at a faster pace than our earlier expectations. In addition, the availability of our PowerHub transmitter reference kit has brought device manufacturers to the table that need to solve added distance charging requirements that can only be currently solved with RF-based solutions. And we believe that our first partner product enabled with true over-the-air wireless power will be launched later this year. While we also continue to make progress with opportunities in near field, we see three trends emerging in distance-based charging. Number one, new medical devices, especially wearables, are being designed in various sizes and shapes with a clear need for no open contact points that you find with pogo pins. Difficulty in embedding coils into these devices along with a desire or requirement to offer charging at a distance has led to companies to RF charging to solve these issues. We are seeing the same trend in consumer IoT applications that we are working with partners on today. Number two, the industrial segment is also quickly evolving thanks to the introduction of faster communication standards and data gathering via Bluetooth with more display, sensor, and control applications. We believe this will require charging solutions in difficult environments capable of charging at much longer distances where batteries cannot be easily accessed. And third, active harvesting is growing especially in commercial and industrial settings and is evolving into applications where a dedicated charger transmitter is needed to ensure that required amounts of energy are reliably available. Receivers in this category will most likely not have batteries but will need to receive enough energy to power data gathering sensors in areas such as logistics and manufacturing. Our strategy involves bringing an ecosystem together where more of our partners can enable our transmitter technology, providing a complete range of power and distance solutions. Our announcement yesterday of European regulatory approval is just one example of where Energys is leading the worldwide effort to expand the reach of wireless power transfer. We are seeing an increase in the number of potential partners with industrial medical applications needing functionality that can't be supported by older, first-generation wireless charging technologies. Our continued evolution of our power hub technology and future introduction of longer range capabilities with meaningful power at distance is expected to continue to expand our prospects in these areas and we expect could lead to future higher volume commercial opportunities. To summarize, what is becoming evident with our most recent customer engagements is the scale of the opportunity and the prominence of the customers in their respective applications that are pulling us and our technology into emerging opportunities especially into markets such as medical devices, logistics, and other potentially high-volume opportunities, where contact-based charging is either not an option or is not ideal. We believe this is a testament to the progress we have made in establishing Energis as the leader in next-generation wireless charging solutions. I'd like to now turn the call over to Cesar, our COO, who will bring you up to date on our innovation, technology, and regulatory progress. Cesar.