NextNav Inc. (NASDAQ:NN) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

NextNav Inc. (NASDAQ:NN) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript March 22, 2023

Operator: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to NextNav’s Fourth Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. Participating on today’s call are Gary Parsons, NextNav’s Chairman; Ganesh Pattabiraman, NextNav’s Co-Founder and CEO; and Chris Gates, NextNav’s Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, please note that during today’s presentation, the company may make forward-looking statements either in our prepared remarks or in the associated question-and-answer session. These statements, which involve risks and uncertainties relate to analyses and other information that are based on forecasts of future results and estimates of amounts not yet determinable and may also relate to NextNav’s future prospects, developments, and business strategies.

In particular, such forward-looking statements include statements about NextNav’s position to drive growth in its 3D geolocation businesses and expansion of its next-generation GPS platform, the business plans, objectives, expectations, and intentions of NextNav, NextNav’s partnerships, and the potential success thereof in NextNav’s estimated and future business strategies, competitive position, industry environment and potential growth opportunities. These statements are based on current expectations or belief that there are certain or subject to certain risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially. Such forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions, and other important factors, many of which are outside NextNav’s control that could cause actual results to differ material from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements.

These risks, uncertainties, assumptions, and other important factors include, but are not limited to, the ability of NextNav to continue to gain traction in key markets, and with notable platforms and partners, both within the U.S. and internationally; the ability of NextNav to grow and manage growth profitably, maintain relationships with partners, customers, and suppliers, including with respect to NextNav’s Pinnacle 911 solution and its TerraPoiNT network, and the ability to retain its management and key employees; the ability to maintain balance sheet flexibility and generate and effectively deploy capital in line with its business strategies; the possibility that NextNav may be adversely affected by other economic business and/or competitive factors, including the impact of the ongoing COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic; other risks and uncertainties indicated from time-to-time in documents filed with Securities and Exchange Commission by NextNav.

New risks and uncertainties arise from time-to-time, and it is impossible for us to predict these events or how they may affect us. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance upon forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date made. And NextNav undertakes no commitment to update or revise the forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Risk factors that may impact our performance are identified in our most recent SEC filings. Following our prepared remarks, the company will host an operator-led question-and-answer session. In addition, at the conclusion of today’s call, a replay of our discussion will be posted on the company’s Investor Relations website. With that, I’ll turn the call over to NextNav’s Chairman, Gary Parsons.

Please go ahead, sir.

Gary Parsons: Thank you very much, operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to NextNav’s fourth quarter and full year 2022 earnings call. As the operator indicated, joining me today are NextNav’s CEO, Ganesh Pattabiraman; and NextNav’s CFO, Chris Gates. 2022 was a solid year for NextNav building on the momentum from our Go-Public Transaction in 2021. We established a strong operational foundation and we expanded our capabilities from both a product and a technology standpoint. At each step, we’re guided by three strategic priorities. And as a reminder, we’ve said this before, but as a reminder, these priorities are: first, being the industry leader in resilient positioning, navigation and timing or PNT. Next, leveraging our recent Nestwave acquisition to significant abilities of our Spectrum Assets; and finally, expanding our global reach.

Now a major milestone in each of these priorities was achieved in the fourth quarter of 2022 with our acquisition of Nestwave, a privately held global leader in low-power geolocation. As Ganesh will detail later, following the early integration of engineering teams late last year, we are preparing to launch initial implementations of the combined technologies later this spring. With Nestwave, which by the way is now named NextNav France, we incorporate unique intellectual property that allows us to rapidly meet the growing needs of PNT resilience or government’s critical infrastructure, public safety and other sectors. The acquisition and final tech implementation and integration will also enable us to dramatically improve spectral efficiency for our underlying Spectrum Assets, utilizing LTE and 5G wave forms.

And as we’ve indicated in our intention in prior calls, NextNav has now filed modifications for our existing experimental licenses to include testing of those various LTE and 5G configurations. Now the combined Nestwave NextNav technology not only enhances the technical capabilities, and data-carrying capacity of our spectrum, but it also expected to significantly reduce future capital and network operating expenditures associated with the deployment of our TerraPoiNT technology. From a spectrum standpoint, certainly recall that we are the sole licensee of 8 megahertz of contiguous low-band spectrum. We own a total of 2.4 billion megahertz pops, which compares approximately 93% of the U.S. population. Our unique Spectrum Assets fit in existing 3GPP band for LTE and 5G spectrum, which facilitates integration into mobile handsets and provides significant operational advantages.

On the related spectrum front, just last week, the Biden Administration announced its seeking public comment on what should be included in the long-awaited national broadband spectrum strategy. That effort is being led by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, or NTIA, a telecom agency within the Commerce Department. The last national broadband plan is over a decade old and this coming effort is seeking to identify up to 1,500 megahertz of spectrum to examine for potential repurposing, expressly for the purpose of expanded broadband availability. The request seeks feedback on three strategic pillars. First, what type of spectrum the government should try to free up for commercial broadband use. Secondly, how to best do long-term spectrum planning.

And thirdly, how technology can improve spectrum management and inform new models of spectrum sharing. NextNav’s technology has already proven its ability to provide critical, public safety and governmental services without interfering with other nearby services. We believe that enhancing these capabilities to improve spectral efficiency and deliver valuable broadband carriage is consistent with the government’s overarching broadband objectives. Now turning to our Pinnacle vertical location technology. We continue to advance our work in the E911 and Public Safety sector. We signed several notable contracts in 2022, led by our agreement with Verizon. Verizon is the first Tier One carrier to launch a device with our Pinnacle technology for E911 emergency calling.

We expect to announce the digital implementations during this year. Overall, 2022 saw us make meaningful progress executing against our strategic priorities and 2023 thus far has continued this promising trend. I look forward to sharing more with you later this year. And with that, let me turn it over to Ganesh to provide a deeper dive into our current initiatives, as well as operational and customer milestones. Ganesh?

Ganesh Pattabiraman: Thanks, Gary, and thanks, everyone for joining the call this afternoon. 2022 was a year of execution for us at NextNav. We made our Pinnacle solution available at scale and with the acquisition of NextNav France, we can make a resilient PNT solution available in more places at a significantly lower cost, and unleash the potential of our underlying Spectrum Asset. As Gary noted, the integration of NextNav France is progressing well. Since November, we have worked alongside Ambroise Popper to complete the integration of our engineering and operations team. With the integration behind us, we’re now focused on the integration and implementation of the overall technology. By combining our TerraPoiNT technology with existing LTE and 5G cellular networks, we can create a highly accurate and highly synchronized resilient PNT network, utilizing TerraPoiNT transmitters only in locations with the greatest need.

Based on our progress to date, we expect to have initial implementations of the combined technologies ready for internal testing in the second quarter. We expect those trials to run for several months with the full technology integration occurring by the end of the year. Additionally, as we noted, we expect the integration to enable us to drive to greater spectral efficiency from our underlying Spectrum Assets, allowing us to harmonize the TerraPoiNT system with LTE and 5G wave forms. As Gary noted, we just filed an experimental license earlier today. With these implementations, we believe we may be able to meet not only resilient PNT needs, but also support data carrying capabilities on our spectrum. As we indicated last fall, unleashing the full value of our spectrum is a strategic priority for us, and this technology integration moves us in the right direction.

We expect to have more exciting news on this front in the near future. Regarding Pinnacle, we continue to establish customer relationship with some of the industry’s leading players, including Prepared, Convey911 and Sonim Technologies to name a few. In January, we announced the integration of our Pinnacle technology into Sonim’s XP3plus flip phone, which is now available to all Verizon and Verizon frontline customers. This is a significant milestone as Verizon is the first Tier One provider to launch with our Pinnacle service for 911 purposes. More importantly, we expect additional devices, including with other Tier One carriers to be enabled by our Pinnacle technology for E911 throughout the year. We’re also beginning to see integration of Pinnacle’s z-axis capabilities in additional Public Safety application.

In February, Radio IP, a leader in secure mobile communications announced that its utilizing NextNav’s technology to empower its industrial-leading VPN solution with mission-critical z-axis location intelligence. As we move through 2023, we expect to see more of these implementations coming online. Shifting to the government side, we continue to believe that the federal procurement language modifications as outlined in Executive Order 13905 will be released in the coming months. We’re continuing to have discussions with various departments and agencies on how best to advance resilient PNT. We held discussions with DHS and Nest as they’re working towards characterizing PNT vulnerabilities. And we were pleased to see Next recognized PNT as a cyber security vulnerability in its latest revision to the PNT profile.

This is important as it enables several of the cybersecurity funds in the infrastructure and Jobs Act, $1 trillion bill that was passed a year ago to be made available for PNT resilience. The DOT Congress and as Congress, as part of the 2023 Omnibus Appropriations bill awarded DOT with $15 million to implement recommendations for PNT resilience following the testing that they conducted in 2020. Interestingly, with the new Nest classification, cybersecurity is now a significant part of the conversations we’re having with several state and local officials around how best to leverage state direct-to-infrastructure funding. We’re now energized by these early stage discussions and we feel confident we’ll make additional inroads later this year. Another area of momentum for us is our work in support of NASA.

We recently expanded our relationship having been selected to deliver PNT services for its urban drone operation at the AMES Research Center in Mountain View, California. The agreement builds on an existing collaboration between NextNav and NASA in which the agency leverages the TerraPoiNT network to support its certain program at Langley Research Center in Virginia. Under our new relationship with NASA, NASA will be utilizing the TerraPoiNT network to conduct drone navigation, detection and collision avoidance in support of better understanding of PNT in GPS-denied environments. Initial tests in the Bay Area will leverage the TerraPoiNT network that we already have present in the region, allowing for beyond visual line of sight testing for drones operating outside the visible range of a pilot.

We are thrilled to have developed such a strong relationship with NASA and look forward to identifying new opportunities to support their work in the future. On the global front, the European Union today published the results of the evaluation of the alternate PNT testing. The demonstrations tested technologies — technologies from seven different companies on their ability to address vulnerabilities and service back up to GNSS. As part of the findings, JRC recognized NextNAV’s TerraPoiNT solution as a mature solution that meets or exceeds all relevant benchmarks to serve as a resilient layer to the GNSS technology. You will recall tests by the U.S. Department of Transportation found TerraPoiNT to be the only commercial PNT alternative to meet identified needs in all applicable use cases.

The JRC also recommends that spectrum be allocated for terrestrial PNT resilience within the EU. This is consistent with the actions the Japanese government is taking to provide Spectrum to NextNav’s JV partner, MetCom. And similar to the DOT recommendations, the JRC report also recommends a system of systems approach to mitigate GNSS vulnerabilities. As European policy makers look ahead to the upcoming European radio navigation plan and develop their infrastructure priorities, we’ll be encouraging them to use these findings as a load start to act quickly before facing the serious consequences of a GNSS outage. We’re also speaking to many of these same officials about the advantage of our Pinnacle solution. Following the commercial launch of our Pinnacle technology in Japan, we are now feeling significant interest from additional countries.

We recently hosted a delegation from a European country regarding possible upcoming trials. And as these conversations advance, we’re hopeful that it will lead to additional trials in the coming months. Overall, we are thrilled with our progress in 2022 and excited by what lies ahead of us. We are working closely with governments and companies alike to make — help make PNT resilience a reality. With that, let me turn things over to Chris for a review of the numbers. Chris?

Chris Gates: Thanks, Ganesh. Good afternoon, everyone. Now we’ll go through our fourth quarter and full year 2022 results. Beginning with the top line revenue fiscal year 2022 was $3.9 million, including $803,000 in the fourth quarter compared to $763,000 and $20,000 in the full year and fourth quarter of 2021, respectively. The increase in both the quarter and year was driven by increased revenue from technology and services contracts with commercial customers. Operating expenses for 2022 were approximately $69 million, including $15.3 million in the fourth quarter, which included $934,000 in transaction related expenses for our acquisition of Nestwave. This compares to approximately $43 million in the prior year period and $14.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2021.

Operating expenses in 2022 included $26.5 million of equity compensation expense and $3.7 million of depreciation and amortization compared to $1.7 million and $1.8 million, respectively in 2021. Operating expenses in fiscal year 2021 also included $9 million of warrant expenses associated with our AT&T site posting arrangement. Operating expenses in the quarter included — for the quarter included $5.9 million in equity compensation expense and $1.0 million of depreciation and amortization compared to $641,000 and $713,000, respectively in the fourth quarter of 2021. Our full year net loss was $40.1 million including $12.5 million in the fourth quarter as compared to $144.7 million and $46.2 million in the full year and fourth quarter of 2021, respectively.

Net loss for 2022 included a gain of $24.7 million related to the change in fair value of warrants. We continue to maintain substantial capital flexibility with $55.4 million in cash and cash equivalents and short-term investments on our balance sheet. Going forward, we continue to focus on managing costs and our balance sheet as new customers bring our products into revenue service. And as we noted on our third quarter earnings call, the Nestwave acquisition is expected to substantially reduce our future capital needs by decreasing the CapEx and network OpEx required for a broad TerraPoiNT deployment in the U.S., while facilitating our global expansion. And as Gary highlighted previously, allow us to significantly improve our Spectrum Assets.

With that, I’ll turn the call over to the operator for questions. Operator?

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Q&A Session

Operator: Thank you very much, Mr. Gates. We’ll take our first question this afternoon from Mr. Mike Crawford of B. Riley Securities.

Michael Crawford: Thank you. Given we’re more than 90% of the way through the first quarter, what visibility do you have into revenue and cash usage in Q1?

Gary Parsons: Great question, Mike, and I think I can pick that up. Now as you know, we don’t provide revenue guidance as we remain in the earlier stages of ramping our business. For 2023 as a whole, we hold some optimism for revenue growth, albeit with some lumpiness as Public Safety customers bring existing agreements into service. And we work towards potentially larger opportunities that may emerge from E911 and international government initiatives. We are focused on managing our use of cash as we work towards our major strategic objectives. And as we’ve said in the past, I think we may expect some modest amounts of increase in cash usage, but I actually think 2022 we spent $44 — $44.4 million, I think in 2022, with kind of an average cash usage of approximately $11 million per quarter. And while we’ve been a little cautious about providing guidance, I wouldn’t expect dramatic increases in our use of cash as we kind of work through the year.

Michael Crawford: Okay. Should we expect you to put some assets — Spectrum Assets back debt on the balance sheet in the second quarter?

Gary Parsons: That is very good question. Because of our tight focus on managing expense growth and costs, and as I just indicated, we maintain a pretty strong balance sheet, which provides us with a decent amount of flexibility to navigate the market conditions we see right now. As we’ve said in the past, we do have a strong asset base, and we believe that will enable us to secure attractive financing at the right time. Our spectrum licenses constitute a pretty rare swath of high-value, low-band spectrum, obviously, bolstered by a large growing intellectual property portfolio supporting our PNT capabilities, which as we’ve discussed are growing in importance in the U.S. and as we heard from Ganesh regarding the recent JRC report internationally. In the event that we do raise capital, the core focus, of course is minimizing equity dilution and leveraging our asset base as we have in the past. So I think that’s directionally how we would think about it.

Michael Crawford: Okay. If you don’t mind, I’ll just ask one more question about the business and one about spectrum, but would you say that most of the revenue you expect in 2023 relates to the Public Safety and E911 verticals?

Ganesh Pattabiraman: I can take that. Yeah. Hey, Mike. So I think, yeah, I mean, we’re obviously looking at many different opportunities as things mature, but certainly E911 and Public Safety have the greatest momentum in the U.S. market for where we see a lot of desire for our capabilities and we will be pursuing them vigorously in the year. But we do see some international opportunities emerging and potentially some governmental-related opportunities also that may materialize. So I think certainly, some of those are certainly possible and in the realm of what we see potentially occurring in the year.

Michael Crawford: Okay. Thank you. And then final question is, given the capabilities you now have with what you’ve now named NextNav France. Just how much excess data capabilities do you have with 8 megahertz of low-band contiguous spectrum that you have that could potentially ride on LTE or 5G signal, if you got proper authorizations to do so, like, what amount of excess data carrying capability would you have, in addition to propagating the timing signal to enable terrestrial GPS like backup or alternative signal?