Akoustis Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:AKTS) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Akoustis Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:AKTS) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript November 14, 2022

Akoustis Technologies, Inc. misses on earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $-0.28 EPS, expectations were $-0.2.

Operator: Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Akoustis Technologies Fiscal 2023 First Quarter Conference Call. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. At the conclusion of the company presentation, Akoustis management will take questions. A replay of this call will be available on the Investor Relations section of the Akoustis website.

Tom Sepenzis: Thank you, operator. And good morning to everyone on the call. Welcome to Akoustis first quarter fiscal 2023 conference call. We are joined today by our Founder and CEO, Jeff Shealy; CFO, Ken Boller; and EVP of Business Development, Dave Aichele. Before we begin, please note that today’s presentation includes forward-looking statements about our business outlook. All statements other than statements of historical facts included in this conference call, such as expectations regarding our strategies, operations, costs, plans and objectives, including the timing and prospects of product development and customer orders, our expectations regarding achieving design wins from current and future customers, the possibility of entering into collaborative or partnering relationships, potential impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, litigation matters, guidance regarding expected revenue, product orders and milestones for the current and future fiscal quarters and expectations regarding the integration of acquired business operations are forward-looking statements.

Such forward-looking statements are predictions based on the company’s expectations as of today and are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties. The company and our management team assume no obligations to update any forward-looking statements made on today’s call. Our SEC filings mention important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially. Please refer to our latest Form 10-K and Form 10-Q filed with the SEC to get a better understanding of those risks and uncertainties. In addition, our presentation today will also refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of these measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measure is presented in our earnings call highlight release available in the Investors section of akoustis.com.

I would now like to turn the call over to Jeff Shealy, Founder and CEO of Akoustis.

Jeff Shealy: Thank you, Tom, and welcome, everyone, to our fiscal 2023 first quarter conference call. I am pleased to report that Akoustis delivered over 195% year-over-year revenue growth and more than 6% sequential revenue growth as we continue to ramp commercialization of our leading RF filter products. This was in line with the revenue guidance that we gave at the end of the June quarter of up more than 5% sequentially. We were able to accomplish this despite the ongoing challenges in the macro environment, driven by COVID-triggered lockdowns, power outages in part of Asia and semiconductor chip shortages. The silicon chip shortages continue to have a major impact on the number of Wi-Fi access points that can be produced by our customers and has created production backlog across the Wi-Fi landscape.

Nevertheless, we were able to post record quarterly revenue in September of $5.6 million. Looking ahead, we expect to continue revenue growth in the current quarter with 5% to 10% sequential growth and further expect growth throughout calendar 2023. From a product development standpoint, we achieved the majority of our stated milestones for the quarter, including multiple targets in 5G mobile and Wi-Fi, as well as renewed activity in our 5G network infrastructure and other market segments. During the September quarter, two new customers enter production with finished products incorporating Akoustis XBAW filters, bringing the total number of customers ramping production to 15. We expect to see this number continue to grow during the December quarter, including at least four new expected Wi-Fi design wins.

Given the current headwinds, we have decided to protect our cash reserves by reducing spending where possible and by delaying new capital expenditures. Before discussing each of our target market segment in greater detail, I would like to give a brief update regarding the recent passage of the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022, commonly referred to the CHIPS Act and how Akoustis hopes to benefit from the act. The CHIPS Act legislation was introduced and authored in part by Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer. Its goal was to boost U.S. competitiveness with China by allocating tens of billions of dollars to increase domestic semiconductor manufacturing and science research. As some of you may recall, Senator Schumer gave a speech at the Akoustis fab in Upstate New York in June 2021 shortly after he introduced legislation to provide $52 billion in funding to implement semiconductor-related manufacturing and R&D programs in the United States.

This past September, Senator Schumer once again visited our fab facility in Canada New York and was pleased with the growth in manufacturing capacity and new jobs that we have delivered over the past year. Akoustis senior management plans to work closely with the local, regional and state government of New York, along with Senator Schumer’s office to support implementation of the CHIPS Act opportunities in upstate New York, which we expect will present a significant opportunity for the revitalization of upstate New York semiconductor presence, and in particular, the Greater Rochester area where Akoustis RF filter chip manufacturing is located. Over the past 5 years, Akoustis has proudly manufactured its innovative RF filter chip products in the U.S.A. We believe we are an ideal candidate for chips funding and that we fit perfectly as part of Senator Schumer’s Blueprint to make New York the global innovation and semiconductor hub.

We plan to apply for funding under the CHIPS Act when the submission window opens in early calendar 2023, to add multiple new 8-inch silicon wafer manufacturing lines at our New York site. In addition, given the supply chain delays, energy shortages and constraints associated with our Asia packaging partners, we hope to secure CHIPS Act funding to build an advanced packaging center to reshore our packaging supply chain to reduce product costs and support shorter time to market. Such funding would position Akoustis to manufacture and deliver billions of XBAW filter chips annually and position us to service both Tier 1 and Tier 2 mobile companies for 5G smartphones, as well as other multibillion-dollar end markets, including 5G networks, high-frequency Wi-Fi devices and other wireless markets.

The outstanding performance of Akoustis XBAW filters has, in fact, attracted the interest of many of the largest wireless companies in the world, names that everyone would recognize. But the reality is the capital cost to build out capacity to service these billion wireless companies is substantial. We believe that CHIPS Act funding would allow us to make that enormous leap and build a world-class state-of-the-art fab and advanced packaging center that makes New York State and our country proud. I would now like to discuss each of our target market segments in greater detail, beginning with the Wi-Fi segment. As I mentioned earlier, the Wi-Fi market continues to experience significant disruption from the supply chain issues, as well as further COVID lockdowns in China, and this continues to impede our top line growth in the near term.

While we continue to gain design wins in Wi-Fi, our end customers simply are not able to procure several other components necessary to produce new access points, routers and other Wi-Fi devices. While this has resulted in lower visibility in our near-term Wi-Fi-related revenue, we are beginning to see signs that the supply chain challenges are being addressed through new capacity, fewer shutdowns and the shift to newer Wi-Fi technologies, particularly Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7. On a more positive note, we had multiple significant product achievements during the September quarter. We started sampling two exciting new Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 compatible XBAW filter solutions during the September quarter, including our next-generation 5.5 and 6.5 gigahertz coexistence filter solution that covers the UNII-1 through 3 and UNII-5 through 8 bands.

We have completed fabrication and plan to start sampling in the December quarter our new 5.6 and 6.6 gigahertz coexistence filter solutions that cover the UNII-1 through 4 and UNII- through 8 bands in the high-frequency Wi-Fi spectrum. Each of these XBAW filters offer significantly reduced form factor relative to our legacy products with a greater than 4 times reduction in size, utilizing our new advanced chip scale packages. The next-generation 5.5 and 6.5 gigahertz solution offers enormous improvements in out-of-band rejection relative to our first generation products and has already attracted significant interest from Wi-Fi ODM and OEMs. Our new 5.6 and 6.6 gigahertz solution can utilize all of the 5 gigahertz bands in Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 to support the North America market, we expect design wins for both our new next-gen 5.5, 6.5 gigahertz and our new 5.6, 6.6 gigahertz solutions and expect the new filters to be qualified and in production by the June quarter of 2023.

Our current generation products continue to have success, and we announced two new Wi-Fi 6E design wins in early September in the gaming market, a new area for Akoustis. One of the design wins is for a specialized high-speed, low-latency gaming router that is expected to enter production in mid-calendar 2023. The second design win is with a leading mobile gaming platform and is also expected to go into production in mid-2023. Both devices use multiuser, multiple in, multiple out architectures and are expected to ship with multiple XBAW filters per device. Recently, we announced three additional Wi-Fi design wins in Wi-Fi 6E for carrier class applications, two design wins are for leading European carrier class Wi-Fi OEM that will be using the Akoustis 5.5 gigahertz and 6.5 gigahertz standard XBAW coexistence filter solutions, as well as the 5.6 and 6.6 gigahertz standard XBAW coexistence filter solution that allows for greater usage of the UNII 4 band.

The first Wi-Fi 6E router is expected to ramp production by the end of calendar 2022, and the second router is expected to begin ramping by the end of March 2023 quarter. The third design win is for our global network communication solutions provider that will be using the Akoustis 5.6 and 6.6 gigahertz standard XBAW coexistence solutions to sell a Wi-Fi 6E extender to its carrier partner with a production ramp expected by August of calendar 2023. I am also pleased that we received a development order from a Fortune 100 Internet company for two new diplexer products during the September quarter. This is our second Fortune 100 diplexer customer and the new diplexers we are developing are for Wi-Fi 7 applications, including virtual reality and augmented reality headsets, as well as advanced wearable devices.

The new diplexers are expected to be completed and enter production in calendar 2024. Additionally, we continue to advance the progress of our Wi-Fi 7 diplexer which we are currently developing for one of the largest PC chipset makers in the world. The first design of this new diplexer was shipped to this Fortune 100 customer in December 2021, and we received positive feedback on the design. The initial diplexer performed well and enable the customer to characterize it within their system architecture, providing valuable technical feedback for the next design iteration, which has already been produced in our New York manufacturing facility. We remain on schedule for commercialization of this extremely exciting product and have received interest from other OEMs for diplexer, triplexer and other multiplexer products.

We attributed our surge in recent design wins to the fact that we were an early entrant in Wi-Fi 6, 6E and Wi-Fi 7 BAW filter solutions and today have one of the most extensive high-frequency Wi-Fi portfolios that address the enormous challenges of difficult dual-band coexist, wideband operation within the 5 to 7 gigahertz frequency spectrum. While near-term macro supply chain issues remain, we are executing on design wins, new product ramps and new product development at a higher pace than ever before, and we expect to see the outlook improve quickly once the broader supply chain issues improve. To summarize our recent Wi-Fi activity with the addition of the new 5.5, 6.5 gigahertz and 5.6, 6.6 gigahertz solutions, we will have 16 commercialized XBAW Wi-Fi filters, 12 for Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 and 4 for Wi-Fi 6.

As of today, we have announced a total of 20 design wins, including the 3 we recently announced. We are currently in production with 10 customers in Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E. And lastly, we are advancing the development of our XBAW multiplexer products led by our diplexer efforts, which have resulted in two development orders from two different Fortune 100 companies. Moving on to 5G mobile. We continued our momentum in 5G mobile during the September quarter, getting closer to our goal of securing our first design win in the 5G mobile market by the end of the current quarter and entering production in the first half of 2023, with the first of 3 Tier 1 customers with whom we are currently engaged. We shipped a second design to this Tier 1 customer in the June quarter using our new advanced wafer-level packaging.

We recently completed a quality audit with this customer and received a volume order for the first design during the September quarter, and we remain focused on entering production with this customer. During the September quarter, we received our first purchase order from our second Tier 1 RF module maker that we engaged with in the December quarter of 2021. The new filter was designed using resonator models that were delivered to this customer earlier in the year with our PDK and we’ll target challenging 5G transmit and receive coexistence requirements. We now expect a production ramp with this new filter in calendar 2025. We also successfully developed and delivered one new engineering sample to our third Tier 1 mobile customer, an RF front-end module maker.

We initiated the next phase of this development with new engineering samples expected to be delivered in the first quarter of calendar year 2023. These new XBAW filters incorporate the customers’ designs, and we are targeting production ramp in late calendar 2024 or early calendar 2025. During the June quarter, we also iterated a redesign filter for our Tier 2 5G mobile customer and shipped first samples to this customer in our new wafer level packaging. We continue to target a production ramp with this customer in mid-calendar 2023 for the first filter. And during the September quarter, we received a purchase order for the development of two additional XBAW filters that target Wi-Fi 6E applications. As we have discussed previously, we are bringing the production of our WLP in-house within our New York fab.

We continue to work towards the design lock of multiple new advanced packages with full WLP process qualification expected to complete later this calendar year. I am pleased to announce that we have completed the process flow for our new WLP products and have a design locked the first package for our Tier 1 RF component company. During the September quarter, we shipped a second filter designed to this Tier 1 RF component customer in our new wafer level packages. We believe bringing the WLP process in-house enhances substantially our ability to control the quality, cost and customization of our advanced packages. To summarize our 5G mobile activity, we have multiple customer-funded XBAW filters in design with four customer engagements, including three Tier 1 customers.

We received our first purchase order from a Tier 1 RF module maker customer that we engaged with last December. We iterated our first RF filter design for a Tier 2 foundry customer and received a purchase order for two additional filters. We received a volume order from a Tier 1 RF component company for an expected production ramp in the first half of calendar 2023. And finally, we have completed the process flow for our new WLP and chip scale package products and have design locked the first WLP for our Tier 1 RF component company customer. And now I would like to discuss our network infrastructure business highlights. We continue to ramp production with three Citizens Broadband Radio Service, or CBRS infrastructure companies in the September quarter, one of which is experiencing higher-than-expected in customer demand.

We expect these three customers to continue to ramp in the current December quarter and beyond and believe we may see revenue upside in this segment given the current demand picture is improving. We announced a new design win for our 3.5 gigahertz 5G network infrastructure filter in the September quarter with a new customer. This is the fourth design win we have received for this filter and it is expected to be one of the first to enter production. Our customer is targeting both Small Cell & MIMO applications with our XBAW filter in the European and Asian network infrastructure markets. We are currently expecting this customer to begin ramping in the current quarter. We recently completed the first iteration of our 3.7 gigahertz to 3.98 gigahertz XBAW infrastructure RF filter for the U.S. 5G market.

We are currently sampling this new C-band filter with multiple OEMs and expect to see greater small cell adoption beginning in the second half of 2023 when we will be well positioned. To summarize our 5G network infrastructure activity, we have four completed 5G network infrastructure XBAW filters, three for 5G small cell base stations and one for CBRS. We are currently sampling our new C-band filter for the U.S. 5G market. To date, we have announced five design wins in 5G small cell. And additionally, we have received four redesign wins for CBRS from three leading network infrastructure OEMs. And now I would like to discuss the highlights from our other business segment during the September quarter. In our Defense contract business, we continue to progress on our existing R&D contract with DARPA to further enhance our XBAW PDK.

In addition, we recently began executing on a multiyear, multimillion-dollar contract with DARPA to extend the operating range of our XBAW RF filters up to 18 gigahertz using novel materials and device manufacturing. These new materials may have positive implications in our current 2 to 7 gigahertz frequency range that we are focused on today, given higher power handling capability and higher Q values. Our acquisition of the RFMi brand continues to bear fruit as the new product line has added to our growing portfolio of filter and timing control products, and we are beginning to leverage the RFMi sales channel with our XBAW portfolio of high-frequency filters. RFMi experienced a significant design win during the September quarter being selected by a leading IC supplier as a reference to be used in a secure wireless battery management system for electric vehicles.

Also in our other market segment, we recently announced entering the RF timing and frequency market with our leading XBAW resonators. We are working with a leading maker of timing RF components to develop ultra-high-frequency XBAW resonators for use in the customers’ finished devices. During the September quarter, we started the qualification of our first two timing control products for our first customer, who is expected to start production ramp in the first half of 2023. I am pleased to announce that our work with this first customer has led to an order from a new second timing control customer, which has placed a development order and we’ll start evaluating our resonators for use in their products. The timing RF market represents a significant opportunity for Akoustis in both unit volume and revenue.

Our primary customer is developing products that could be disruptive in the timing RF components market, looking to displace older analog technologies with ultra-low jitter and phase noise devices. We are extremely excited that our leading XBAW resonators can be part of this groundbreaking opportunity. To summarize our other market segment activity, we have seven completed XBAW filter solutions for the civilian and defense markets. Further, our ultra high-frequency XBAW resonators are now being used to develop disruptive digital timing and control products for the broader communications industry. In addition, we continue to refine and improve our XBAW PDK driven by the direct to Phase II contract with DARPA. We started executing on our new multiyear, multimillion-dollar contract with DARPA to scale our XBAW technology up to 18 gigahertz.

And finally, in addition to the numerous customers acquired through the RFMi product line acquisition, we have a total of three XBAW customer engagements, two of which have already placed purchase orders with us or provided NRE revenue. And now I would like to hand the call over to Ken to go through our financial highlights.

See also 11 Best Streaming Stocks To Buy and 10 Undervalued Chip Stocks To Buy.

Ken Boller: Thank you, Jeff. For the first quarter ended September 30, 2022, the company reported revenue of $5.6 million, which is an increase of more than 6% over the prior quarter ending June 30, 2022, and representing an increase of over 195% year-over-year. On a GAAP basis, operating loss was $18 million for the September quarter, mainly driven by revenue of $5.6 million, offset by labor costs of $9.9 million, depreciation of $2.5 million and other operational costs totaling $11.2 million. As a result, GAAP net loss per share was $0.33. On a non-GAAP basis, operating loss was $15.6 million and non-GAAP net loss per share was $0.28. A reconciliation of these amounts to the corresponding GAAP measures is available in the press release issued this morning available on the Investors section of our corporate website.

CapEx for Q4 was $4.8 million, a decline from $5.9 million in the prior quarter, reflecting the ongoing capacity expansion and equipment redundancy project in the company’s New York fab. Cash used in operating activities was $15 million, up from $11.9 million in the prior quarter, mainly due to year-end expenses and certain expense items outside the normal course of operations. The company exited the June quarter with $60.7 million of cash and cash equivalents versus $80.5 million at the end of the previous quarter, primarily resulting from cash needed to fund operations and CapEx spend. In the current December quarter, we expect multiple new Wi-Fi 6E and network infrastructure customers to ramp production, and therefore, we expect to see record revenue with revenue up between 5% and 10% sequentially from the September quarter, and based upon our growing backlog of design wins, we anticipate that robust top line growth will continue into our next fiscal year and beyond.

I would also add that I expect our cash operating burn in the December quarter to reduce by more than 25% from the current quarter, resulting from our spending reduction efforts and normalization. I will now turn the call back over to Jeff to discuss our second fiscal 2023 quarter performance and future milestones.

Jeff Shealy: Thank you, Ken. The ongoing semiconductor chip supply shortages and supply chain delays that are impacting the broader industry continue to impact our customers, while our design win momentum and customer activity continues to grow, driven by Wi-Fi 6, Wi-Fi 6E, Wi-Fi 7, 5G mobile, 5G infrastructure and other markets, our ability to grow revenue continues to be impeded in the near term given the broader market disruptions. Despite the near-term supply chain impacts, we were able to deliver revenue growth of over 195% year-over-year in the September quarter, and we are currently expecting between 55% and 70% growth year-over-year in the December quarter. We are expanding our market share in CBRS and now 5G infrastructure experiencing strong demand for our new Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 7 products and are targeting production ramp in the 5G mobile smartphone market in the first half of calendar 2023, which should result in accelerated revenue growth.

By the end of the current quarter, we expect to ramp production to more than 17 customers with additional customer design wins expected across all our markets to finish calendar 2022. In the December quarter, we expect to generate revenue from each of our business segments, including 5G mobile, Wi-Fi, 5G network infrastructure and our other market segments. We continue to strive towards executing our target milestones, and we’ll continue to keep you informed of our progress. Our anticipated December 2022 milestones include, in our Wi-Fi segment, first, we expect to ship samples of our next-generation Wi-Fi 6E, Wi-Fi 7 filter solutions to multiple customers. Further, we expect to secure at least three new Wi-Fi 6E design wins during the quarter and we expect to secure a Tier 1 SoC chipset Wi-Fi 7 reference design win.

For our mobile 5G segment, we expect to receive a volume production order from our Tier 1 RF component company customer while securing our first mobile design win. In addition, we expect to complete our WLP and CSP technology qualifications and release our new packages into production, and we expect to deliver the first sample to the Tier 1 5G RF front-end customer announced in September. Next, in our 5G network infrastructure segment, we expect to receive a development order for a new 5G massive MIMO infrastructure receive filter solution. We expect to sample 6 gigahertz XBAW filter to a Tier 1 OEM targeting a new radio unlicensed 5G 6 gigahertz IMT application, and we expect to scale our 5G n77 XBAW filter for a recently announced design win.

And then finally, in our other market segment, we expect to receive a purchase order for the development of a new XBAW multi-chip module for a multibillion-dollar Tier 1 defense customer. Further, we expect to complete the qualification of two resonators for the timing market for our first customer. And finally, we expect to demonstrate a 10 gigahertz XBAW resonator targeting X band applications and continue both development projects with DARPA. In conclusion, we believe the market opportunity for our patented high-frequency XBAW filters is significant. As of October 28, we have 73 issued patents and 123 patents pending as we continue to build a substantial IP moat around our technology. We continue to work diligently to achieve each of our stated objectives, and we will continue to provide updates on our execution against these objectives going forward.

Finally, I would like to thank our employees for their hard work, passion and dedication, which accounts for multiple design wins across the Wi-Fi, 5G network infrastructure and defense markets. We have also experienced exceptional momentum in the 5G mobile market, driven by our leadership in filters that operate above 3 gigahertz and our new and expanding wafer-level packaging capabilities. I also wish to thank our shareholders who continue to support the company. And with that, I would like to open up the call for questions from the investment community. Operator, please go ahead with the first question.

Q&A Session

Q – Suji Desilva: Good morning, Jeff, Dave, Ken, congrats on all the progress here and the outlook, sounds exciting. So on the smartphone wins, the mobile wins, Jeff, what dictates the timing of various customer production starts? Is it your product availability? Or is it their program plans? What are the factors across the 3 or 4 rather?

Jeff Shealy: Hey. Good morning, Suji, Jeff here. I appreciate your opening comments. I’ll let Dave start, and then I’ll give some comments on that.

David Aichele: Good morning, Suji. With respect to the Tier 1 RF component, it was a combination of both the availability on the WLP, which we’ve addressed, and as we highlighted in the remarks that is released or will be released by the end of this quarter. So the timing aligns well with their release into production. And we talked about that being the first half of 2023. With the – respect to the other Tier 1s, it’s mainly going to be driven by their product road map and inserting with the design that they’re working on, and it’s a multiple iteration that we’ve highlighted in the calls, you know, design efforts with them. So it’s the timing of that and then inserting it to when they would release with their end customers.

Jeff Shealy: And Suji, I’ll add to that. The WLP, just as Dave said, gave you the qualification timing. I just want to know for everybody that we’re currently shipping in volume WLP to this customer. And so they’re getting the final version of the product. And so – and then in terms of other things that contribute to the timing is the qualification of their customer as well. So there is a few things that go into it, but not only our customers’ qualification, but also their customer qualification. So as we said in the prepared comments, we’re looking forward to a pretty significant milestone this quarter in the mobile with the milestone of first design win in mobile.

Suji Desilva: Okay. That’s very helpful color, guys. And then separately on the wireless infrastructure, CBRS, seeing the accelerating demand perhaps upside versus what you’d expected. Can you talk about the drivers there versus macro – you would think macro would cause spending to be a little bit more conservative, but it sounds like you guys are seeing momentum there. I appreciate any color there.

Jeff Shealy: Yeah. I’ll let Dave start on that one…

David Aichele: Yeah. We – as we’ve highlighted in the prepared remarks, we’ve got three customers that ramp and two of them are medium volume, low-volume type customers. One of them is ramping significant volume. And part of that is driven by the design. One of the units that we’re in at the – I guess, the central office is more of a higher count MIMO. And then the one that’s at the home is a lower count MIMO. So you’ve got multiple filters that are in each of the designs and also this customer or this customer is aligned with the service provider that they’re making some investments in the CBRS rollout. So we expect this demand to continue to be robust. With this one customer, we’re launching other service providers and the investment that they’ve got in the CBRS spectrum and working with several different OEMs as well.

So we expect continuous activity with the CBRS rollout, and we’re also looking at the additional 5G spectrum that the U.S. has released as well. So these are, I think, right in our sweet spot from a frequency and performance and particularly with these higher MIMO count architectures. So we’re looking to see how infrastructure continues to grow in the next 2 years and expect it to be pretty robust comparably to what we’ve seen in the Wi-Fi as well.