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

Jeff Shealy: Yeah. Suji, Jeff here, the CBRS, I think, as you know, but maybe for the broader audience, it’s unlicensed, so that is really a fast track to get higher data rates deployed into the marketplace. So we expect that market to continue to grow. And as Dave briefly touched on the licensed C-band spectrum, we’ve got product that’s available into the market for that band, and we expect that to be heavily adopted as it’s a license band. So just some additional color on that.

Suji Desilva: Okay. Helpful, guys. Thanks, congrats, again.

Jeff Shealy: Thanks, Suji.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Harsh Kumar with Piper Sandler. Please proceed with your question.

Harsh Kumar: Yeah. Hey, guys. First of all, congratulations on all the strong activity that’s going on in the wireless space, particularly. I had a question around that. You mentioned two Tier 1 customers, one of them being a Fortune 100 customers. Just the question is, are these customers telling you to get the WLP facility and the packaging inside your own umbrella versus letting you outsource? Is that the onus of the move that you’re making towards the packaging facility?

Jeff Shealy: Hey, Harsh, Jeff here. I appreciate your opening comments. Dave will start just on exactly what the customer is telling us just to give you…

David Aichele: Yeah. So Harsh, we’ve got two initiatives from packaging that we’ve been investing in. One is chip scale packaging and then the other one is WLP packaging. The WLP solution is primarily being utilized right now for the end customers that are integrating it into their module. So this is more of the RF TAM front-end module manufacturer Tier 1s that we’ve engaged with, and then also the RF component customer as well. The chip scale packaging is being utilized in our discrete and multiplexer designs. So the two customers that we commented Tier 1s that are doing Wi-Fi 7 are utilizing a typical packaging approach. So we’ve had both of those initiatives that we worked on and deployed on the chip scale packaging and actually have a product in production. That’s been able for us to reduce the form factor, increase performance and also due to these more complex multiplexer designs, and hitting really world-class performance.

Jeff Shealy: Yeah. And Harsh, just some – a couple of comments on the broader significance of chip scale package and WLP. These represent significant cost savings to our company in the cost of goods or the bill of materials, if you will. We’re able to – with these innovations in both of these, we’re able to shrink the size of the package by at least 4 times and that has a significant impact on cost savings. And of course, the WLP doing that in-house actually eliminates the cost of doing it through a third party and is being rolled right into the wafer fab. So significant cost savings road map is really the broader implication as well. And that’s consistent with what you would expect from a Tier 1 company that’s cost sensitivities.