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

Harsh Kumar: Great, guys. Thank you for that color. And then when we – just – so obviously, when you talk about 5G wireless handset type customers, analysts like us to get really excited. You mentioned that you’ll have some revenue starting 2023. Can you talk about maybe, Dave, a proper question for you, maybe talk about how this would scale and what are you expecting in terms of the ramp with these kind of large customers that you are now able to bring home?

Jeff Shealy: Okay. Dave will start with that.

David Aichele: Yeah. So the Tier 1 RF component is the one that we’ve highlighted that we expect to be in production first half of next year. So as Jeff commented earlier, and it was in our prepared remarks, we’ve already started receiving volume orders. And there will be further announcements we’ll have this quarter to shore up everything. But the expected volume will pick up more towards the second quarter of next year and then continue to ramp. And the further announcements we’ll make, we’ll give you more color as to what the end application is and highlight some of the volume, but it will be substantial compared to what we see in respect to Wi-Fi access points and 5G infrastructure. And the advantage is, is you’ve got a fairly small die WLP solution that goes into this end customer’s application. So a lot of the value add that we provide is going to improve the margin and also the revenue will be a nice step function comparably.

Jeff Shealy: Yeah. And Harsh, one more on that. The current orders that we’re receiving are comparable to the orders – so the current orders we’re receiving in mobile are comparable to the quantities of orders that we’re receiving in production in Wi-Fi. So we expect that those – that order size will certainly step up by an order of magnitude what’s we’re in production. So we’re excited about the volume, we’re seeing. And clearly, with in preparing to be able to support even higher volumes. So a pretty exciting market opportunity for us.

Harsh Kumar: Exciting stuff, guys. Thank you so much.

David Aichele: Thanks.

Jeff Shealy: Thanks, Harsh.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Anthony Stoss with Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Please proceed with your question.

Anthony Stoss: Hey, guys. My congrats as well on the nice progress. Jeff, maybe for you. So if you’re going to answer calendar 2023 with roughly 17 customers that you’re shipping to, can you give us a guess how many you – total customers you think you’ll be shipping to by the end of 2023? And then as a follow-up, I’d love to hear as much detail as you can provide now that you’ve been shipping to a bunch of customers, give us the nature of kind of follow-up after they’ve used your parts? Are they coming back for more design wins? Any color would be appreciated there.

Jeff Shealy: Okay. Tony, again, I appreciate your kind comments. Let me start with – I want to answer in reverse and get Dave and Ken involved here. But in terms of follow-up, the – particularly in the Wi-Fi, these are – these programs come up every two quarters, for example, and they’ll run for – they could run for two to four quarters. And then in terms of those customers, if it’s a successful product, there’s certainly a tail to it. But typically, what we’re seeing is things we started in Wi-Fi 6 have been moving to Wi-Fi 6E. That would be a pretty obvious trend. But in what we’re doing in Wi-Fi 6E, we mentioned a customer that we have production with some custom chipsets. They actually have a new platform, and they’re – they could be reusing our current chipsets for that platform or developing new chipsets.