EnWave Corporation

Good morning, and welcome to NWAVE Corporation's Q4 2024 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Daryl, and I will be your operator for today's call. Joining us for today's presentation are the company's president and CEO, Brent Charlton, and Dylan Murray, NWAVE's CFO. As a reminder, all participants are in a listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Finally, I would like to remind everyone that this call will be made available for replay via a link in the investor relations section of the company's website at www.nwave.net. Now, I would like to turn the call over to NWAVE CEO, Mr. Brent Charlton. Sir, please proceed.

Thanks very much. And first off, thank you to everyone who is joining us today for NWAVE's final quarterly conference call for fiscal year 2024. Today, we will discuss our strong fourth quarter performance and provide a business outlook for fiscal 2025. Now, consistent with past quarterly earnings calls, the information we will present today contains forward-looking information that is based on our management's expectations, estimates, and projections. Our statements are not a guarantee of future performance and involve a number of risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. Please consider the risk factors in the filings made by NWAVE on CDAR when reviewing this information. Also, all amounts discussed will be in Canadian dollars unless otherwise noted. NLE's fourth quarter fiscal 2024, as I alluded to, was strong, following up on a good third quarter. We generated quarterly revenue of $3.6 million, royalties of $642,000, and adjusted EBITDA of $450,000, all improvements from our Q3 numbers. Income from continuing operations was $588,000, and we also generated a strong gross margin in Q4, which remains robust at about 40%. For the fiscal year ended 2024, a clear bright spot was that we collected $2 million in royalties, up about $500,000 from the year prior. With several recent additional large-scale machines coming online, we anticipate continued growth in our diversified royalty portfolio. This positive momentum should hopefully continue in fiscal 2025 as we have a solid pipeline of commercial opportunities. EnWave fell short in the number of targeted new rev machine sales confirmed in fiscal year 2024. and we understand the importance of not repeating a slow first half of the year as we move into 2025. In Q4, we also successfully reached global settlements of our civil claim in the Supreme Court of British Columbia against Enwave's former CEO and three other former Enwave employees, collectively I'll refer to as the Durrance defendants. Pursuant to the settlement, the Durrance defendants, together with three companies associated with the former CEO, are permanently restrained and enjoined from directly or indirectly selling, attempting to sell, supplying, delivering, or installing vacuum microwave dryers. The Durant's defendants together with three companies associated with the former CEO are also assigned all issued and pending patents in the name of the Durant's defendants to Enwave. This was successfully done already. The patents have been transferred to Enwave and we deem this outcome to be a positive one for the company and certainly provides an example of our willingness to continue to protect our intellectual property. Speaking of intellectual property, we've recently developed new patentable innovations relating to improved technology efficiencies and flexibility of use with our large scale machines. We're now going through the application process and are confident regarding the novelty and commercial viability of these inventions, which will become public soon. If successful in our application, the collection of royalties from our licensed partners will extend well into 2044. We're excited about many of our royalty partnerships, but here are a few pertinent updates worth sharing. In the past two months, our engineering team successfully commissioned or is in the process of commissioning three large-scale rev machines at BranchOut Foods' new facility in Peru. BranchOut is a royalty partner who is enjoying great commercial success through both branded and co-manufactured product sales. BranchOut projects to generate about $4 million USD in Q1 calendar 2025 in terms of revenue and believes they will earn continued sales growth on a go-forward basis, which may lead to additional large-scale rev machine needs in 2025. We expect BranchOut to be a meaningful royalty payer in coming quarters. Next, our royalty partner Bounty Fresh of the Philippines is also worth discussing. I recently met with their executive group in Manila as part of a federal government trade mission to Indonesia and the Philippines. And Bounty now is a multi-billion dollar revenue company privately held and the dominant producer of chicken products in the Philippines. We've been working with them to perfect a premium chicken powder product, which is expected to be commercialized at scale in 2025. It is quite likely that they will need additional rev machinery capacity in the near term. And if the products under development get traction, they are a multiple large scale rev machine possibility. Blue Chip Royalty partners like Dole and Calbee have also made fantastic commercial progress recently, and we are optimistic about potential future growth in their REV manufacturing capacity. We also expect these companies to expand their respective REV-DRIVE snack product portfolios in 2025. Now within our pipeline, we have several imminent large-scale REV machine order purchase decisions. Many of these opportunities are directly tied to REV-DRIVE product market success as evidenced by our growing royalties in fiscal 2024. More ref capacity is needed to support forecasted volumes from several of our royalty partners. And many of our royalty partners currently using 10 kilowatt machinery are considering making a jump to large scale equipment. It's great to have this current pipeline, but as we know, what matters is operational execution and the closing of these deals. Beyond our current deal flow, we continue to execute a more robust sales effort led by our recently hired new vice president to further expand our opportunity pipeline. Now, in the past three months, we attended major industry trade shows in Mexico, India, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Dubai, and two in the United States. All efforts led to more than 100 new qualified leads being collected and put into our CRM. We are still working towards securing the two international sales hires previously discussed on the last conference call, now with several candidates currently advancing through the application process, and we hope to make those hires in Q2. Our RevWorks business was much busier in the second half of fiscal 2024. We were consistently in commercial production, supporting growing volume needs for current royalty partners. We also ran line trials for new prospective products, including confectionery and instant noodles. Looking at the potential utilization in fiscal 2025 of this showcase of Rev technology, we have three major projects being evaluated currently. Each individually could account for most of the manufacturing capacity of RevWorks, if any of them proceeds. In Q1 2025, we have thus far signed two new agreements. The first was Cinta of Spain, a leading food technology commercialization hub. And the second was Alea of Germany. Cinta purchased a 10 kilowatt machine and will engage with many domestic food companies to use REV technology. Alea is focused on using their own 10 kilowatt machine in combination with their pulse electric field technology to develop better for you potato and vegetable snacks. And with my summarized update complete, I'll now ask Dylan to summarize NWave's detailed quarterly financial performance.

Thanks, Brent. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Please note that the figures I'll be discussing can be found in our press release from yesterday and in the financial statements in MD&A filed on CDAR, and all amounts are in Canadian dollars unless otherwise noted. I will make reference to adjusted EBITDA, which is a non-IFRS financial measure, So please refer to the non-IFRS financial measure disclosures and reconciliation to gap net income, both in the press release and under MDNA. Also, please note that the comparative period I'll refer to throughout this presentation is the prior year Q4 ended September 30th, 2023. Revenues for Q4 were $3.6 million compared to $1.5 million for Q4 2023, an increase of $2.2 million or 149%. The increase in revenue for the period was primarily a result of the company repurchasing a 120-kilowatt machine from a cannabis multi-state operator to expedite the completion of an equipment purchase agreement to branch out during the period. Third-party royalty revenue was 642K in Q4 2024 compared to 381K in Q4 2023, an increase of 261K or 69%. Royalties for the year ended September 30th, 2024 were 2 million compared to 1.5 million for the year ended 2023, an increase of 496K or 34%. Royalties grew to an increased exclusivity payments, partner product sales, and larger production volumes. The increase in exclusivity payments was driven by a new commercial license agreement with an existing royalty partner for the right to use N-Wave technology in a country in South America. As our royalty partners grow their businesses and increase capacity utilization of installed REV equipment, further REV installations will follow up with new sales contracts, and material royalty growth should continue in the coming quarters. Gross margin for the company in Q4 2024 was 40% compared to 29% in Q4 2023. The increase in margin resulted in machine resale during the period. SG&A expenses, including R&D, were $1.3 million for Q4 2024 compared to $1 million for Q4 2023, an increase of $269K or 26%. The increase primarily related to increased legal fees, travel costs, marketing, and trade show attendance, like Brian mentioned. The company will continue to further invest in sales and marketing activities in the company in quarters to drive sales growth. Adjusted EBITDA is a non-IFRS financial measure, so please refer to our MD&A for the reconciliation from gap net income to adjusted EBITDA. The company reported adjusted EBITDA of $450K for Q4 2024 compared to an adjusted EBITDA loss of $324K for Q4 2023, an increase of $774K. The increase in adjusted EBITDA was primarily driven by the machine resale during the period and increased royalties. We finished Q4 2024 with cash and cash equivalents of $4.8 million and a networking capital surplus of $7.2 million as of September 30th. And subsequent to the quarter, and we've entered into a credit facility with Desjardins for growth and working capital purposes. The amount available to the company under the credit facility is calculated as the lesser of 5 million and a function of royalties receivables and inventory. As at the date of our quarterly filings, approximately 1.8 million is available to the company at a rate of Canadian prime plus one and a half percent. Additionally, and we've signed a term loan with Desjardins for 500K with an amortization period of 48 months. The term loan is to be repaid monthly on equal and consecutive payments of principal plus interest at a rate of Canadian prime plus 2%. This non-dilutive debt, in addition to the company's available working capital, will be used to fund Enway's growth strategy and for general working capital purposes.

Thanks, Dylan. I'd now like to open the call for your questions. Operator, please provide the appropriate instructions.

Thank you. At this time, we'll be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. The confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two 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. If you have joined us via the webcast, please refer to the ask a question text box on your webcast player. If there are any outstanding questions at the end of the call, the company will be happy to take them by email at ir at nwave.net. One moment please while we poll for your questions. I'm not showing any questions at this time. I'd like to hand the call back over to Brent Charlton, CEO, for any closing remarks.

Thanks very much. Yeah, seeing no questions being submitted today on the conference call, we are available after the fact to engage with any investors that would like to discuss the current progress of the business. Thank you all for joining today's Q4 2024 earnings conference call. At this time, you may now disconnect.

Thank you. That does conclude today's conference call. You may disconnect at this time. Enjoy the rest of your day.