Alpha Teknova, Inc. (NASDAQ:TKNO) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question. And that will come from the line of Matt Larew with William. Blair. Your line is open.

Matt Larew: Hey, good afternoon. First wanted to ask about OpEx. And so, obviously you talked about it meaning sort of flat year-over-year excluding the impairment charges. Volumes starting to stay on that next year, particularly in new facility and remind about – think about the hop back there. The capacity and – right now that you’ll be able to as there is [Indiscernible]

Stephen Gunstream : Hey Matt, you are a little bit quiet. Did you get that? I didn’t you were saying flat year-on-year excluding impairment charges? Are you asking that how those scale over time? The OpEx?

Matt Larew: Yes, yes. Sorry I was just – as the new facility will start to come online next year you kind of think about OpEx trends grow 2024 if they’re going to fly year-over-year implying ‘23?

Matthew Lowell: Yeah, I think – thanks for the question Matt. Yeah, first of all, I mean, I think we’ve obviously been very happy with the way we’ve been able to manage OpEx cost down here during the course of this year. And expecting those to stay at or certainly down from these levels. So we’re demonstrating that we’ve been able to manage costs. In terms of what that means for the future, as we said a little bit in the remarks I mean, when we say we feel like we’ve made the investments necessary to be able to scale the business, with limited additional investments. Of course, we’re not providing any specific FY ‘24 guidance at this point. But I think you can assume that as we start to grow back, which we expect to do in FY ‘24 that we would not need to increase those expenses or substantially in any way.

So we haven’t gotten to all the detailed preparation of our budget or anything. But in principle, we believe that we can grow this business with withholding those up operating expenses. Does that help answer your question?

Matt Larew: Yes, it does. Thank you. The second question, Matt. You reclassified some long-term debt into current portion this period. And noticed that I think there’s a covenant related to PTM revenues as of December 31st. So, is the reclassification related to the guidance reduction? And I guess, just maybe help us get comfortable with that amount of debt standing relative to your cash position and obviously outflow this year?

Matthew Lowell: Yes. Good, good bbservation Matt. We did reclassify our debt from long-term to short-term for this quarter. Just to be open, we did have a covenant. We’re out of compliance with the covenants following the quarter, actually in July period here and we have notified our lender of this situation and are in discussions with them on a preliminary basis so far. They have not issued any kind of notice to us at this point and don’t plan to until after the quarter statement is filed here. So, that is the reason why the debt has been reclassified from long-term to short-term, until we’re able to resolve the situation with them.

Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question. And that will come from the line of Paul Knight with KeyBanc. Your line is open.

Paul Knight : Matt, I guess it’s fair to say the ATM, no, action on that.

Matthew Lowell: Right. We have – but we have – we will of course, be filing the 10-Q tomorrow and at this point, there has been no use of the ATM.

Paul Knight : And staying that, I guess regarding the macro. It does look like if arm data is correct, we have had overall trials start to grow a little bit in the first half of the year. Are you seeing that?