Mphase Techs Inc

Q1 2022 Earnings Conference Call

11/22/2021

spk08: Greetings and welcome to the M-Phase Technologies Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Brian Pranova. Thank you, Brian. You may begin.
spk07: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to M-Phase Technologies Fiscal 2022 First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, the Fiscal 2022 First Quarter ended on September 30th, 2021, so all figures presented for this period will reflect that end date. Today, we issued our Fiscal 2022 Q1 Financial Results Press Release, which highlighted a number of financial results for the quarter. A copy of the press release is available on the investor relations section of our website, and the completed financials are posted on EDGAR. Before beginning our formal remarks, I'd like to remind listeners that today's discussion may contain forward-looking statements that reflect management's current views with respect to future events. Any such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in these forward-looking statements. M-Phase does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required. At this point, I am pleased to turn the call over to M-Phase CEO, Anshu Bhatnagar. Please go ahead.
spk03: Thanks, Brian, and thank you for joining the call today. On today's call, I'm going to cover some of the steps that we have taken to build the first-of-its-kind ecosystem in this space. I'm so excited to introduce our new CFO, Anjaliya Gratishan, who will briefly cover the quarter's financials. Our COO, Venkat Gudumudi, will also join us to talk about a new platform that we'll be launching. Even though it's been a short time since our last call, we have a lot of updates to cover today. We are positioning the company to become a significant and unique player in the EV space in 2022. Our strategy is firmly focused on serving tomorrow's green, EV-centric economy. We're building a company that leapfrogs the current thinking in EV to create an ecosystem that serves all of the layers of the emerging EV economy. As a part of our corporate evolution, we will be changing our corporate name from Enphase to Empower. The reasons for the change are simple. Enphase reflected decades of R&D at the company that centered on telecommunications, battery, and other physics-oriented hardware projects. After I took over in 2019, we switched the focus to software-based solutions that utilize primarily off-the-shelf hardware with the goal to create high-margin, reoccurring revenue streams. Empower reflects our commitment to build solutions that serve the EV economy, which will transform the way people travel and interact with retailers. For those of you who are new to this story, Empower is an ecosystem built on EV charging stations, high-speed millimeter wave 5G, and consumer engagement software supplemented by proprietary travel software. Layered on top of this mobile experience, we're also offering a marketplace with rewards and ESG compliance programs. We will utilize the same OEM suppliers as the industry leaders for our EV charging and 5G hardware, but a majority of our ecosystem software is built in-house. We can best be described as a SaaS EV Plus model, building services and functions that supplement the charging experience. As a result, our goal is to be more profitable and to have more revenue streams than any other EV plant in the market today. The changes in the automotive industry go beyond a change from gas to electric. It is also a change from solo vehicles to one that functions as a part of an interconnected world of mobile consumers. When you think of it that way, Your car has simply become your newest and most expensive mobile device. This transformation represents a multitude of challenges for any company connected to travel in any form. And that is where we come in. We're building our Empower platform to address the needs of every point of contact connected to EV adoption. with services that help automotive companies, retailers, CPG companies, and consumers in pursuit of a greener lifestyle. The net result is a cohesive, customizable ecosystem that can produce multiple revenue streams from a single physical location. At this stage, MPower is not a concept, but is based on tested, verifiable technology. The rollout process just began in the second half of 2021 with rapid major expansion planned for 2022. Last week, we announced the signing of 1,440 additional locations in addition to the 1,825 locations announced in the past few weeks. In just one month, we have tied down 3,265 locations in Virginia, Illinois, and Florida. We are moving rapidly towards our goal of having 10,000 locations in multiple states in the very near future. With an additional 20,000 or more sites by the end of 2022. In addition to corporate sites, we're working with independent owner operator sites across all types of businesses and major brands. This is a very overlooked group that has the most to lose during the EV transition. So our solution sets are being welcomed with open doors within this subset of store owners, a majority of whom are looking to participate in EV charging in some fashion. To say this is a highly motivated prospect list would be an understatement. Our initial strategy is geared towards maximizing this exposure. First, we're implementing pilot programs with selected high-profile retailers, particularly in the quick-serve restaurant, QSR, gas station, convenience store, and similar travel-related businesses. We will start with recognizable leaders, though in reality, nearly all major chains, even individual stores, are potential future partners. In terms of contracts with corporate partners, the sky's the limit for us, and we have high confidence that we will be able to showcase Empower across the top tier of retailers. particularly in 2022, after we have multiple sites up and running. We believe Empower will play a key role in helping to shape the way that consumers shop, dine, and fuel. To give you an idea of the potential scale of this platform, a 242-store test of just one consumer engagement portion of the ecosystem resulted in more than 70,000 app downloads. We believe our adoption rate could be significantly higher as we roll out our full stack of incentives and features. Our newly designed Empower app for Android and iOS should be live by Thanksgiving, so we are set for the next stage. The second part of our strategy is to select early partners that can provide proof of concepts across different business categories. So we are working to start programs with gas stations, convenience stores, hotels, sports bars, restaurants, and some surprising chain venues that will be announced in the near future. Each of these business types will give us valuable use cases that will help us sell into these specific categories. The use case path is very important in order to prove not just the viability of our platform, but also to highlight the customization potential for specific industry groups. For example, we're currently working on supplemental gamification for a chain client that will layer on customer-specific features unique to their locations. We have the team of software engineers in-house to complete these kinds of tasks, so our value add in software development differentiates us from many pure EV charging plays. Due to contractual considerations, where we are at in our rollout cycle requires a bit more stealth than shareholders may like at this early stage. But the names attached to these projects will be revealed as we get closer to installing equipment in the ground in the coming months. It is humbling to see the size and quantity of partners that are engaged with us to make our ecosystem a reality. One area that we're very excited about is the utility sector, where we're working on partnerships with multiple major regional energy providers. In fact, in recent weeks, we have seen some major EV charging companies add telecommunication and other features to their offering. Data and connectivity will go hand in hand as this industry matures, so we intend to be perfectly positioned for that future. To see industry leaders move forward with the functionality that we already have built into our platform is a strong validation of our strategy. As the world transitions from gasoline power to electric power, fuel itself will undergo a major consumer change. Simply put, electricity has no branding power with the exception of source, with green power such as solar being superior to fossil fuel electricity. But regardless, The day will come when fuel will lose its branding potential, meaning the brand will have to come from experience of fueling rather than the fuel itself. We are building our ecosystem to fully embrace the benefits of this change. At this time, I'd like to introduce our new CFO, Anjaliya Gratishan, who was recently appointed Chief Financial Officer. We are thrilled to have Angelia on board because of her background is so well suited to the direction our business is headed. Not only does she have a great background in real estate management, but she also held important roles in Constellation, one of the largest utilities in the U.S. Her experience also includes SEC auditing for major corporations at PwC, as well as SEC reporting. We're excited to have Angelia join the team as we begin our new growth phase. Now, I'll turn the call over to Angelia to provide some detail on our financials for fiscal Q1 2022. Thanks, Anshu.
spk00: Before I start, I want to thank everyone for the opportunity to be a part of this terrific growth story. I am now in my 18th year in corporate finance. I've been lucky enough to hold positions that prepared me for a full cross-section of corporate functions. from complex long-range planning to the day-to-day tasks familiar to all CPAs and CFOs. Having just started as CFO, I have that feeling you sometimes get just before takeoff, excitement and anticipation for the journey ahead. So let's get started on the highlights of the quarter. Because the company's core business is under recurring contracts, our quarters during our initial revenue cycle have remained remarkably steady for nine straight quarters. So, the clear highlight of our fiscal 2022 first quarter was growth of 8.4% as we crossed the $8 million quarterly revenue threshold for the first time. Q1 revenue of $8.2 million marked an all-time record and showed progress over the $7.6 million we reported in the same quarter last year. So, this is a welcome start to our growth curve. Importantly, after being static for many quarters, we are finally beginning to add new revenue to this core SaaS business, a trend we expect to continue in future quarters. We are lucky to have this profitable base business because it gives us the freedom to pursue a greater level of R&D and development in much larger and faster-growing segments in EV. We expect further growth in this base business in subsequent quarters, so this is a trend that will make our base revenue even stronger over time. We have tremendous scale in our business model. So this modest revenue increase contributed to a significant 576 basis point increase in growth margin, which reached 31.6% in Q1 versus the 25.9% last year. Our goal is to continue layering on business that will eventually generate fast margins in excess of 60%. So this is a strong step in that direction. One other key element that is very important in terms of our ability to qualify for future bank lines of credit involves our invoicing. Effective July 1, 2021, the company was able to begin invoicing through its largest consumer's U.S. office, therefore, I'm sorry, largest customer's U.S. office, thereby making the U.S. the primary geographic region. This change in invoicing is very important for a company of our size. because lenders prefer U.S. domiciled sources of revenue and receivables. This improves our ability to obtain high quality bank lines of credit and similar commercial lines that can significantly lower our cost of capital. One other item of importance to note, because we use a channel partner in our core business, this revenue is listed at 100% concentrated in that single customer. However, That revenue actually comes from a more diverse set of end user customers. Since beginning in this program 10 quarters ago, we have generated approximately 69 million in revenue. So this has established itself as a consistent revenue stream that will continue to improve. About 78% of our revenue was derived from subscriptions, 12 from service and support, and about 10% from application development and implementation. As we layer on new sources of EV revenue, this customer concentration will gradually dissipate as we expect to have thousands of different paying customers at the same time next year. Despite some fairly large non-cash charges in the quarter, we still managed to be modestly profitable with net income of approximately $240,000. The company has been profitable in six of the last seven quarters, no small feat during a period of major product development. This was despite some very large changes this quarter tied to business development efforts, including amortization of debt discounts, deferred financing costs, and original issued discounts totaling slightly more than $1 million, 224% higher than Q1 of the prior fiscal quarter. One of the advantages of our operations is that we already have a strong team of engineering talent who are able to assign and complete projects as we need them, giving us added leverage without ballooning our R&D except. We will be hiring additional professional staff, but have thus far been prudent in right-sizing our organization to match our growth expectations. As a result, our salary and benefits were actually 58% lower in Q1. totaling just over $217,000, compared to almost $520,000 the same time last year. While some of this improvement was from special items, our current expenses are enabling us to manage our cash well as we bring on new revenue streams. Another line item in our financials that was significantly higher than last year, rising about 300%, was our G&A expense. which increased from about $246,000 in fiscal 2021 to just over $1 million in the most recent quarter. The increase is driven by the investments made to support the expected growth from the initiatives previously shared, such as growth from our SaaS and TAS offerings. We finished the quarter with $1.8 million in cash, and our stockholders' equity set a new record at $12.2 million. qualifying us for a NASDAQ uplift without the necessity for an equity raise. Overall, our financial conditions continue to improve as our prospects for growth accelerate, greatly enhancing our status with potential partners. At this time, I'd like to turn the call back to Anshu.
spk03: Thanks, Anjaliya. I would like to spend the last part of today's call discussing some of the projects we are working on and what we expect to achieve over the next several quarters. One area that I'm excited about is our fully developed plan to manage our ambitious expansion program. We have been working on this strategy since last year and during that time we have assembled a tremendous number of external resources to make our expansion a success. We now have top tier suppliers engaged to provide our level two and level three equipment along with third party support to fill in some necessary technology. We have already placed an order for many MPower branded level two chargers and a number of important pilots that represent a chain of thousands of potential locations. So the MPower EV charging rollout phase is underway in a big way. Depending upon third party schedules, we intend to begin installing as soon as possible as we already have sites selected. Similarly, we are involved in a couple of important super sites and level three projects that have the necessary equipment and support lined up for when those sites complete the engineering stage. As you can imagine, engineering takes longer for these sites due to the high energy usage. In terms of site acquisition, We are in talks with many retail customers representing around 30,000 locations and are also exploring pilots with several major quick-serve restaurant chains. Some interested providers in the personal services space, hotel chain, gas station, grocery stores. Suffice it to say, our ecosystem is resonating at many different levels of mobile commerce. Along with our own in-house technology, we also have aligned with other equipment and third-party software application companies to complete our technology requirements. Every new agreement or contract seems to open new doors for us, but we are lucky in the sense that we are beginning our growth curve at a point when the technology in this space is well developed. With the ability to choose from a very competitive landscape of OEM providers, we are able to be nimble in picking suppliers with superior pricing and technology. So there are some real advantages to being a late bloomer following the creation of an industry. We spoke last quarter about how forecasting is somewhat complicated at the moment because we don't know which sites will implement our full EV5G engagement stack until we complete site surveys. As a rule of thumb, under the current model, every MPower site will carry our engagement software and generate an average of around $50 in reoccurring revenue. About half of those sites will include 5G and generate an additional $50 per month. We expect about 15% of the locations will qualify for EV insulation, representing a more variable rate of revenue. Each site will have an average of about four ports. So to model out our revenue expectations over the next four quarters, we expect strong growth in all of our segments, beginning with our profitability of our core SaaS business, which we expect to grow at a 10% or better rate on top of its trailing 12-month revenue of $31.3 million. The rollout of our Empower EV-centric business segment will add significant revenue in 2022 and become a source of consistent future growth. Using a conservative $600 contribution from each site during 2020, Basic Year 1 development. We expect our current list of sites to generate $2.3 million in annual reoccurring revenue. A subset of these sites could also generate an additional revenue as we add new features to our platform or upgrade the Empower offering at suitable locations. Using the same metrics, our pipeline of higher profitability site not yet announced represent an additional $18 million in annual Empower EV revenue. Counting potential supercharger sites currently in planning stage, we model our EV pipeline at more than $26 million in annual revenue. Adding together all sources, including growth of our existing SaaS business, we are modeling a pipeline of about 30 million in targeted reoccurring annual sales, roughly double the current revenue. It should be noted that these figures do not include any contribution from 5G, where we still have several different paths in development. In terms of the calendar, we expect to begin rolling out our engagement software by the end of 2021. Our mPower charging stations by Q1 2022, our EV Plus 5G by Q3 2022, our EV Plus enhanced platform by Q3 2022 with additional features, and our supercharger sites in the second half of 2022. With tens of thousands of sites in our pipeline, tracking our progress will be pretty straightforward in the future quarters when modeling against these recurring metrics. Burst revenue from each MPower site is highly predictable, as majority of our revenue streams are expected to continue to be reoccurring in nature as we build out our ecosystem. I'm also very excited about a new marketplace platform that we're about to launch. To talk more about this, I would like to introduce our Chief Operating Officer Venkat Kudamudi to provide some detail on this exciting marketplace.
spk02: Thanks, Anshu. I want to spend a few minutes unveiling a brand new blockchain-based marketplace that we think will revolutionize the way green consumers are incentivized for practicing eco-friendly habits in their daily lives. So I'm excited to give everyone an early look at the Empower token, which is a green token backed by the proven blockchain technology. We think this will be a great addition to our Empower ecosystem. We approach the space with a goal to resolve multiple problems in the eco-incentive space. First, we look at ways for green consumers to participate in helping the world move more quickly towards an EV-centric future, regardless of current EV ownership. Many individuals want to have a bigger role in this movement, so we're giving them a digital path that is easily managed via any mobile device. At the same time, we looked at how to integrate this noble pursuit into the corporate need for ESG programs and new ways to offset a company's carbon footprint. Last but not the least, we also considered the needs of green product manufacturers in reaching these target markets. Our solution was to design an Empower green token-based marketplace into an ecosystem that can bring all of these groups together and promote positive change that benefits different participants in the way that best suits their own needs. We are uniquely positioned to create this program because we expect to have a very large footprint of tens of thousands of Empower retailers in place relatively quickly over the next year. Within our ecosystem, businesses can offset their carbon footprint by installing e-recharging or buying tokens in the market to promote green practices. Makers of truly green products can use our ecosystem to promote their products and green consumers can get a little bit greener in a symbolic and a literal way by earning tokens that can be redeemed for other products and services. Under our program, we envision the creation of a green token economy where users can redeem these tokens at Empower sites for incentives such as free charging that are specific to their needs. We are excited by the idea that this type of token can help companies meet their ESG goals, which is more difficult than you might imagine for many firms, particularly those that are struggling to find onsite ways to reduce their carbon footprint. We already have companies that have agreed to be on our token marketplace and locations that want to participate in our ecosystem. So the supply and demand characteristics of this program is already in place. Built on top of an eco-friendly standards-based distributed ledger platform, we also intend to interoperate between standards-based eco-friendly distributed ledger platforms such as Solana, Polygon, and Substrate for our green tokens. This is not just a concept at this stage, as we have the platform built and will be ready to launch the tokens soon. Blockchain is a natural choice for the platform for a number of reasons, starting with transparency. Like the farm-to-table supply chain concept introduced by Walmart, our solution can extend to rank the eco-friendly products sold in our marketplace So we have a great deal of functionality that we can add after launch. Blockchain also gives us the twin attributes of auditability as companies participating in the ESG are required to be audited. And blockchain is tamper-proof. And immutability, a key feature where data cannot be altered. For those familiar with this space, you might be wondering, Why this kind of token versus utility coin? While utility coins are more appropriate for the type of the use case that we're talking about, they cannot give us everything we need for our specific program. Utility tokens either have no value outside their closed ecosystem or they have a static value. This is due to the fact that the supply and demand are both controlled and finite. In our ecosystem, we have an EV charging platform to not only attract the green conscious customer, but also to drive traffic into stores where they normally might not shop. In addition, the marketplace provides us the ability to drive supply and demand, creating intrinsic value for the token, which will be reflected in price changes over time. In that sense, This is not a company loyalty program, but a green loyalty program. We believe that this concept will generate considerable interest and give us some exciting inroads into collaborations that would not otherwise be possible. Our revenue proposition could be very large as retailers could buy credits or tokens and use these as part of their own incentive programs. So, for example, a new purchaser of an EV vehicle could be rewarded with a wallet of mPower tokens that could be spent at our member retailers simply based on the switch away from a gasoline-powered vehicle. We have a long list of potential collaborators and collaborations in mind. This is just one of several programs that we have under development as part of our strategy to become a company identified as a leader in green revolution in commerce and travel. Our team is pretty simple. Make a greener way of life easier, happier, and more productive. This is really the starting point of all our projects and something we believe will distinguish our product offerings as our Empower ecosystem expands. Now, I'd like to turn the call over back to Anshu. for his remarks.
spk03: Thank you Venkat. How exciting does this future look? Our pipeline is full, our new revenue streams have already begun, and we see acceleration across all parts of our business. It took many months to get there, but we are finally beginning what we think will be a significant accelerating growth phase in one of the strongest sectors in tech. At this time, I would like to open the call up for questions.
spk08: Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Thank you. Our first question comes from Chris Jarris with Dunlap Equity. Please proceed with your question.
spk04: I just had a few questions here. It was great to see the core SaaS business get back to growth, and it sounds like you've got a lot more ahead. I also noticed a nice uptick in gross margins for the quarter. Should we expect that gross margin improvement to continue, or is it going to level out here?
spk03: Hi, Chris. So great, great question. No, actually, we're getting a lot of interest on our existing platform. And in fact, we're actually expanding some of that offering. So we can actually expect not only this to continue, but actually continue to see an increase of maybe as much as 10% per year in terms of growth in our existing business.
spk04: And the commensurate margin improvement, so on the gross margin side, that will continue to get better?
spk03: Yeah, no, that's going to continue. I think the way our platform kind of works is we have a fixed cost. So as our revenue increases, our margin increases kind of reflected as you saw that. So our goal is to continue to be a SaaS company and a target of about 60% in gross margin. So you'll keep seeing that those margins increase to those levels.
spk01: Okay, that's great.
spk04: When's the first app going to be installed as well as the first charging station?
spk03: So, yeah, so we actually have, you know, historically our apps were inside the retail, the customer's apps, right? We were kind of built and integrated in there. Our own apps, our Empower-branded apps are – It should be. Before Thanksgiving, they'll be available for download. I think Android is already available. iOS is taking a little bit longer, but before Thanksgiving, we should have that available. And we're just rolling out as we speak in all these locations. So I would say the first, call it the next quarter, we'll start seeing revenue from from our own app uh start start as early as as next quarter and i would say probably the following quarter you we will start seeing uh level two chargers installed and uh we'll start seeing revenue from that and then uh you know as uh towards the latter half of uh of 2022 uh probably the level three chargers will be in place we already have projects and interest in that it just takes permitting and everything else. And also there's a back order on some of the equipment. So all that process takes a little bit longer on the level threes.
spk04: Okay. Fantastic. And I just want to make sure I understood something. So you've got 3,000 locations already signed. You mentioned in the press release something like 27,000 on pipeline. From a revenue standpoint, the bare minimum one of those sites is going to generate is $50 in app revenue a month, which is because it's software, I assume it's very high revenue. And then from there, some will get the 5G, another $50 of probably not as high revenue, but still high revenue. And then charging on top of that. So at a bare minimum, we're talking about $50 a month of very high margin software revenue for each site, plus whatever else you could bring on top of that.
spk03: That's correct. Yeah. So that's going to be sort of at bare minimum. And we expect, as I mentioned in my prepared remarks that, you know, we expect a large chunk of those to about 15% to get EV charging on those sites is kind of what we're estimating. And each one of those sites to have at least four ports. I mean, some are looking at as many as 18 ports, but we're just kind of averaging about four ports per location.
spk04: And how many did you say you thought would get the 5G?
spk03: Yeah, I mean, we're thinking it's going to be as high as 50%. Just about everyone we talk to is actually very interested. It might be even higher than that, but we're sort of estimating about 50%. And, you know, again, this would be building a sort of CBRS network that we'll be building. And because the way we're rolling out our strategy in terms of the density of a particular location, we can actually create a connected private CBRS network and be able to offer services outside that retail location, which, again, will make, one, our app that much more stickier, where people will not want to delete our app off their phones. But more importantly, we can offer services to other revenue streams that we can generate by monetizing that network.
spk04: Okay. Okay. Is this something you're focused on for QSR? I understand they're probably the highest need, you know, desperate for solutions right now to help them in the transition, but is this app kind of focused on QSR, or do you think you can go horizontally across all retail?
spk03: Yeah, no, no, we're actually focused across all retail. I think QSR was just kind of the low-hanging fruit, but we're actually in talks with full-service restaurants, hotels, As I said, gas station, convenience store. We're also in talks with grocery stores, big box grocery stores, as well as other retail locations that are things that you typically won't think of. So, yeah, we're really excited. We think that this opportunity is tremendous. I think the sort of total market here is in the billions of dollars, right, just in charging as things are moving. So we're excited to be able to capture a good portion of that is kind of what we're hoping.
spk04: Okay, that's great. Thank you. I really appreciate the update and good luck with everything.
spk01: Thank you.
spk08: Thank you. Our next question is from Graham Price with Raymond James. Please proceed with your question.
spk06: Hey, good afternoon, and thank you for taking my questions. The first one I had with regard to the Virginia sites that you announced a couple days ago, could you talk about the breakdown perhaps between convenience stores and gas stations and restaurants that you mentioned?
spk03: Yeah, on those locations, I don't have the exact breakdown in front of me right now, but it is predominantly broken up in terms of convenience stores. I would say a majority of those are convenience stores and gas stations. I would say probably a little higher on the convenience store side, and there's some restaurant chains and hotels as well.
spk06: Got it. Understood. And when you think about, I guess, the recurring revenue profile for each of those types of sites, how do you think about that?
spk03: Yeah, so each site is actually at minimum looking at our engagement platform, and that's something that they're very interested in. We're also kind of launching this as Venkat kind of brought on this new marketplace, which essentially allows you know, us to not only connect the customer with the retail location, but also incorporate new brands as well. And so that's something that we're very excited about, and they'll bring in sort of additional revenue streams as that continues. But at minimum, you know, is that engagement platform. Just about everyone we had spoken to is interested in 5G connectivity as well, A lot of that has to do with, you know, there's a lot of site work that needs to get done to make that happen. So we're still estimating maybe about 50% is kind of the back of the envelope calculation for us that will qualify for that. But that will be an additional reoccurring revenue stream that we'll be getting from there.
spk06: Got it. Understood. And then my follow-up, just wanted to get your thoughts, maybe this is a little longer term, but your thoughts around international expansion and how that might look.
spk03: Yeah. So we do get a lot of interest in, especially out of Europe and Asia, especially in India. So that's something that we are keeping an eye on. It's not something where we're looking to enter immediately just because we want to get our Our base, which is a U.S. down, but we do see a lot of interest there, and especially as I mentioned, out of Europe and India, just a lot of demand there for EV charging. And even like in China, we had conversations with a few companies there who reached out to us because they like the platform, right? They like what we're doing here. But again, that's not a market we want to enter today, but it is something we're keeping an eye on.
spk01: Understood. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.
spk08: Our next question will come from Cole Wilson, private investor. Please proceed with your question.
spk05: Thank you. So on the, so what we expect it should be roughly the first quarter is mainly just going to be their consumer engagement revenue. Is that pretty correct on that as far as on that?
spk03: Yeah, hi, Cole. Yeah, so next quarter you're talking about Q2, our next quarter? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So next quarter you'll start seeing not only our existing reoccurring revenue, but also in addition to that you'll start seeing revenue around our consumer engagement platform as we roll that out. By next quarter and the following quarter, you'll start seeing more EV revenue from charging.
spk05: All right. The 3,000 locations that we roughly have right now, is that a conservative number to what we can expect growth per month, or is that a high number, a low number, or an average?
spk03: Yeah, no. I think we should be, at least for some time – We'll be growing at a pretty – we have a huge pipeline. As I mentioned, we're looking – we're targeting at about 30,000 locations. And, you know, our sort of first goal is 10,000, which I expect, you know, sometime – I would say in the near term. And then by end of 2022, my goal is at least to get to 20,000 locations. Nice.
spk05: 5G municipal contracts, are those still in progress?
spk03: Yes, they are. They're very much in progress. And I think what's unique about the way we're doing it is because we already have locations, which is always tough for someone to come in, and because if they're coming in from the 5G side, they would have to either sign leases or use government facilities to set up the private networks. Because we already have this in place, we almost can start offering services to governments fairly quickly. So that's something we're working on as well. But as far as our current forecast, we haven't really accounted for that revenue at this point.
spk05: I understand. I understand. Yeah, I guess that comes down to... I guess I see what on the... today's, uh, press release, I see that you had, um, kind of touched down on, um, an uplift. I know that's probably a lot of concern with people as far as, um, how close to the term do you think you might be looking at that? And obviously what, uh, what the plans are to possibly get, uh, some more brand awareness out there for us.
spk03: Yeah, no, absolutely. I think that's something we're, uh, we're definitely mindful of. You know, we feel that there's a lot of, you know, a lot of wins that we still have that we can announce. And at the same time, you know, we qualify for an up list, but we want to do it strategically and we want to make sure it makes sense for all shareholders. And so that's something we're kind of looking at. We're hoping to get, you know, analyst coverage prior to that. And so that way, you know, the story can be be sort of heard a lot more, and hopefully our market cap reflects the true value of the company, which it currently does not.
spk05: Absolutely. Okay. I appreciate it, sir. Thank you very much.
spk01: Thank you.
spk08: Thank you. That is all the time we have allotted for questions today. I would like to turn the call back over to Anshu Bhatnagar for any closing remarks.
spk03: Well, thank you everyone for joining today. We covered quite a few of topics today, but I hope you leave today's call with a better understanding of how carefully we have planned for the EV-centric future that is inevitable. We are very excited about the work that we have done to prepare for this future and look forward to showcasing those efforts over the next few quarters. Thank you again for taking the time to listen to the Empower story today.
spk08: This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.
Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

-

-