SkyWater Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ:SKYT) Q3 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Thomas Sonderman: Yes. So first on the Florida Build Back Better Regional Challenge, that is not at all tied to the CHIPS Act. So that has been awarded. That is in flight. That’s $36 million of government investment. We also complement that with $9 million of our own investment. So that’s a cost share model. We expect that to materialize over the next 24 to 30 months depending upon, again, when tools arrive, when projects get initiated. As far as the Minnesota facility, that would be the one that would go after initial CHIPS funding the most aggressively because it is an existing facility, we would look at adding capacity. But all that has to be defined and has to be awarded. We don’t expect any of the awards to start until sometime mid next year.

The Department of Commerce is saying February is when some metals will be due. So you can look at Florida, taking immediate advantage of the Build Back Better grant, but that’s independent of CHIPS. And then Minnesota and then even further out with Purdue is all going to be gated on when the CHIPS proposals are being submitted, being approved and begin to move into execution. As I’ve also said, there’s four elements to CHIPS. There’s the building of fabs, which is $39 billion. There’s $2 billion tied to Commons. The Commons program has been launched by the Department of Defense. We are actively involved with that. This is to create innovation centers around the fab – lab to fab concept. And then there’s $11 billion for R&D and innovation. This is the National Semiconductor Technology center concept, which $5 billion is tied to advanced packaging and heterogeneous integration.

So I believe we’re well positioned for both of those. And then the last is the investment tax credit, which is 25% for all equipment procured starting in the next fiscal year, which began in October, so that could be an immediate benefit for SkyWater as well.

Raji Gill: Thank you.

Operator: And we will take our next question from Krish Sankar with Cowen. Your line is open.

Unidentified Analyst: Hi, thanks for taking the question. This is Steven calling on behalf of Krish. First off, congratulations on the strong results and also the strong execution in the quarter. The first question I wanted to ask about either Tom or Steve is related to the RH90 program. So again, I understand that you guys are embarking on this Phase 2 $100 million program with the DoD now which trouble getting a few details here. First just going back to the Phase 1 portion, has the funding for that for Phase 1 have been completed now? Or is there still another quarter or two of funding from that desk still making its way through the P&L? And also related to Phase 2, as it progresses over the next two years, I think you mentioned until production revenues, should we think about that $100 million for Phase 2 being spread decently over the next eight quarters? Or is there a certain ramp profile to that spending?

Thomas Sonderman: Yes. So I’ll start, and Steve can add additional color. Yes, the original program was $170 million total award for the development phase. All of that has been consumed except for around $33 million. We announced a $27 million option, what we call the option grant for that first award. This is tied to two programs we’ve announced. One is Google for $15 million. That’s the open source initiative and then another $12 million for IP development. This is with our partners. So Google is one partner, Trusted Semi Solutions and Case are the other partners. And this is all around creating the design ecosystem for the RH90 platform. In the case of Google, it’s a derivative of that Rad-Hard platform. And then as far as the $99 million, this was for the second phase.