Vicarious Surgical Inc. (NYSE:RBOT) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Operator: The next question comes from the line of Josh Jennings from Cowen.

Eric Anderson: This is Eric on for Josh. With the Beta 2 system finalized, the design finalized, excuse me, and you’re focused now on completing version 1.0 of the system, could you help us understand what the remaining steps are for you to finalize v1.0 and just keep that within the time lines that you’ve said here?

Adam Sachs: Yes. So absolutely. We are pretty far along in the process of actually finalizing v1.0. We’ve already taken a ton of feedback over the second half of 2022, and all kind of culminating in that to Tufts Medical Center cadaver lab series and the demo day that we did around that. We’ve taken that feedback, made a ton of relatively small design changes. And we — our aim is to keep them as subtle as possible to minimize the differences, focused on those areas around patient card and patient access. And the kind of subtle changes around the tools and end effectors. We’ll then be taking — we’ll be hitting design lock in the next month or so around v1.0, building it out and bringing it through the verification validation process or at least starting that around the summer.

Eric Anderson: Okay. Great. And then maybe thinking about the demonstration day from December, what sort of feedback have you received from that event? Any inbound interest from folks who weren’t previously involved in communication with the company?

Adam Sachs: Yes, absolutely. So we’ve received a pretty good amount of inbound interest from the demonstration day across, frankly, everything from an inbound investor interest through hospitals and surgeons that have seen the videos and seen the progress of Beta 2 as well. The feedback overall from the demonstration day has been entirely positive. The demo day was fantastic. The feedback around Beta 2 itself, I’d say, was pretty much entirely positive as well with subtle changes that people are looking for again around those areas I mentioned previously.

Operator: The next question comes from the late Adam Maeder with Piper Sandler.

Adam Maeder: A couple from me, and maybe we could just start with the cost reduction initiatives and the OpEx guide for ’23. So the OpEx guidance well below what we were modeling for spend this year. Heard some of the commentary around the cost reduction initiatives. But maybe just specifically frame up kind of what changed? Where those cost savings are? And kind of how do you kind of push your system forward without sacrificing quality of product or speed to market? And then I have a follow-up or 2.

William Kelly: Yes. Yes. No, I think, first of all, it was cash burn guidance, not OpEx guidance. So obviously, our cash burn is lower than our OpEx due significantly to noncash items like stock compensation, depreciation, that sort of thing. So $55 million, $65 million is the cap. But I would say that in terms of the reduction in sports specifically, the source of the headcount reductions was largely focused on G&A and sales and marketing and actually, we’ll see increased spending in R&D. And really the thesis behind the whole thing was to really focus spending on those things that get the quality product out the door fast and divert resources in this economic environment to ensure that we deliver on those things.