Greetings. Welcome to Sequans Communications Fourth Quarter and Year-End 2021 Financial Results. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions]. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand over the call to your host, Ms. Kim Rogers, Hayden IR. Please go ahead.

Thank you to everyone participating in today's call. Joining me on the call today from Sequans Communications are Georges Karam, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Deborah Choate, Chief Financial Officer. Before turning the call over to Georges, I'd like to remind our participants of the following important information on behalf of Sequans. Sequans issued the earnings press release this morning, which was posted to the company's website at www.sequans.com under the Newsroom section. Before we start, I'd like to remind everyone that this conference call contains projections and other forward-looking statements regarding future events or our future financial performance and potential financing sources. All statements other than present and historical facts and conditions contained in this call, including any statements regarding future results of operations and financial positions, business strategy and plans, including financing alternatives for our 5G business; expectations for massive IoT and portable router sales, the impact of the COVID-19 on our supply chain and on customer demand, the impact of component shortages and manufacturing capacity, our ability to convert our pipeline to revenue, and our objectives for future operations are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 as amended. These statements are only predictions and reflect our current beliefs and expectations with respect to future events and are based on assumptions and subject to risks and uncertainties and subject to change at any time. We operate in a very competitive and rapidly changing environment. New risks emerge from time to time. Given these risks and uncertainties, you should not rely on or place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Actual events or results may differ materially from those contained in the projections or forward-looking statements. More information on factors that could affect our business and financial results are included in our public filings made with the Securities and Exchange Commission. And now, I'd like to hand the call over to Georges Karam. Please go ahead, Georges.

Thank you, Kim. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our fourth quarter and full-year 2021 financial results conference call. Sequans exited 2021 with growing momentum in our massive IoT and broadband CBRS businesses, setting us up for a strong 2022 as more design wins move towards mass production. The fourth quarter revenue grew by 16.1% sequentially, and when adjusted to exclude last year's Jetpack contribution increased 61.4% year-over-year. Revenue for 2021 was $50.9 million, on par with last year. But when adjusted by $22 million for the loss of the legacy Jetpack contribution, 2021 revenue grew by over 79% versus 2020. This growth was achieved despite global supply chain disruptions, which limited our shipment abilities and has slowed some of our customers' product. In early January, we announced our extended partnership with Renesas. The expansion of our existing 4G, 5G, licensing agreements strengthens our go-to-market opportunities, and supports two crucial factors to achieving our growth objectives – reducing our manufacturing costs and gaining access to a potential increase in supply capacity. Renesas equity stake and board seat nominee further reinforce the strength of our partnership. We are working closely with all our MCU partners as they are key elements of our go-to-market strategy. For example, NXP demonstrated an energy harvesting system, powering an LTE-M/NB-IoT connection using our Monarch platform at the last CES this January. Similarly, we expect our collaboration with Microchip to result in a new platform launch this year. Our go-to-market strategy, leveraging our MCU partnerships, has scaled our sales capabilities and contributed to our pipeline growth with new design wins and attractive opportunities. We began 2022 with a record backlog of non-cancellable orders. Our business pipeline exceeds $650 million of product revenue, representing the three-year lifetime, of which $310 million are design wins. At this time,…

Thank you, George. And good morning, everyone. Our revenue for the fourth quarter was $13.8 million, a decrease of 12.5% versus Q4 2020 and an increase of 16.1% sequentially. The quarter includes an increase in services revenue, driven by the recent deal with Renesas. And product revenue accounted for 50% of total revenue, an 8% decrease versus Q3, reflecting primarily lower shipments of Cat 1 modules to one of our customers who had boosted their inventory level in previous quarters to anticipate potential supply chain issues. Revenue from massive IoT in Q4 2021 accounted for approximately 45% of our total revenue. As George stated earlier, as of this quarter, we will only report two categories, massive IoT and broadband IoT. Going forward, we will consolidate the services and licensing revenue that are related to our 5G strategic deals under the broadband IoT segment. Revenue from broadband IoT increased from Q3 2021 as growth from CBRS private networks is starting to pick up. Service and licensing revenue generated by our 5G strategic deals increased in Q4 compared to Q3 2021, primarily related to additional revenues generated by the extended Renesas agreement. As expected, compared to Q4 2020, revenue from this portion of our business declined due to the absence of Jetpack sales. For the quarter, we had three customers and one channel partner that each represented 10% or more of our revenue. As massive IoT design wins move into production, we expect to diversify the number of end customers served. Gross margin in Q4 2021 was 57.1%, up from 45.1% in Q4 2020 and up from 49.2% in the third quarter of 2021. The improvements were due to the increase in the mix of chipset revenue versus module revenue and the increase of services and licensing compared to prior periods. Our…

Thanks, Deborah. Operator, we are now ready to open the call for Q&A, please.

[Operator Instructions]. The first question comes from Scott Searle with ROTH Capital.

Nice job, guys, in terms of securing supply for the 2022 outlook. Just real quickly, in terms of sequential outlook, you indicated that services, licensing NRE would remain strong in the first quarter. I'm wondering, like products, how do we expect that to move sequentially as we go into the first quarter and start things out? And then, George, in terms of that $650 million backlog pipeline, I think in the past that it excluded 5G, given that you just taped out the 5G product. Is there any 5G contribution factored into how that pipeline currently looks?

First on the pipeline, Scott, it's really focusing on product revenue. So, that excludes all the services and the strategic deal that you could have there. And what I would like to say we didn't include yet bigger – there is a little bit from one of the deals that we have there, but it's minor to consider in terms of product revenue related to the 5G. So, this will come later on once we will be progressing for those, say, in terms of readiness to go to market.

It sounds like you've got the wafer issues, you've got visibility on that front with TSMC going back into 2021. There were other issues related to substrates and other components within the module and product supply line. How does the rest of that look right now? Are you feeling pretty comfortable on that front as well?

We feel we're measuring this well. I believe, on this angle, it was more a question when we had the problem last year – it was more a question of lead time because the dynamic has changed overnight and [Technical Difficulty].

Ladies and gentlemen, it seems like we have lost the management line. So, kindly stay connected while we reconnect the management lines. Thank you.

George, maybe just to continue along on a couple of different fronts then. Just the 5G strategics, could you just clarify? It sounds like you continue to be actively engaged and things are progressing well. Any other color that you could provide, timelines associated with? It sounds like now any activity that would happen there will fully fund you in terms of 100% 5G development, is that correct?

Yeah, absolutely. We're really quite, what I will say, optimistic, not to say more. But we have we have many engagements, as I said, and at least we have some of them quite advanced in terms of discussion and negotiation. It's very hard to give timeline on this, but we hope the sooner the better will be.

Lastly, and then I'll hop back in the queue, but talking about the growth this year, that 30% to 40% growth in 2022, it sounds like you have both a combination of strong visibility to that in terms of your backlog and pipeline as well as your supply at a wafer level. Can you flex higher, does Renesas help on this front? I'm kind of wondering, in that, what are you factoring in in terms of contribution from the new Cat 1 product portfolio and if there are any larger smart city opportunities in there? Because I think that there were some larger potential opportunities there, timelines there where were a little bit fluid. So wondering what's kind of factoring into your current thoughts for 2022.

We're factoring, essentially, the deal we have in hand more than what could happen or quite an advance and could turn some revenue this year. Obviously, all the new engagement, they are not really on track now to move to mass production quickly. The probability that they will contribute to revenue this year will be very limited, maybe towards the end of the year, but it's on the edge. Specifically, the new platform, Cat 1, we're not factoring revenue this year. We are assuming this will be more beginning of the next year. We could have some positive surprise if things move differently from this thing. And, obviously, we're leveraging the deals that are quite secured with our partners, the design win with Renesas or others. So there will be contribution of Renesas in our revenue this year. We are sure about it. Now, on top of what I said in terms of guidance, we're taking into account the supply chain constraints, obviously, if we have more positive demand from customers and so on, we could start hurting the supply. So, when I'm giving my comment on the supply, it's really the supply we need to cover those kinds of numbers. If at the end, we have much more demand than this accelerating, then the limiting factor becomes, again, the supply. It doesn't mean we'll not be able to fix it. Because, as I mentioned, the Renesas deal could help from this angle as well. But for the time being, I'm just limiting to what we – deals we have in hand and supply to serve this deal. This is the number I'm factoring. This is the element I'm taking into account to mention this number, 30%, 40% growth.

The next question comes from Mike Walkley with Canaccord Genuity.

Just a clarification kind of on one Scott's sort of questions too. Just for the flattish revenue guidance, should we assume a similar mix of revenue? And for the services and licensing revenue, if you're going to remain strong for the year, helps overall gross margins, the $6 million per quarter run rate, kind of a new way to think about or is it even higher?

For the Q1 guidance, yes, please, you can consider similar level. We remain strong on this. And for the year, in the second half, we're going to have less than the first half revenue in terms of services revenue. And I can explain why we have a little bit of boost, if you want, in terms of service revenue between Q4 and Q1 and, maybe to some extent, a little bit in Q2 as well. All this is related, obviously, to the revenue recognition model that we use with the percentage of completion on the 5G strategic deal. It happens depending on the progress, when you tape out the chip and so on, you – to land by generating a little bit of revenue. But also, not to neglect as well, the recent deal with Renesas, this deal has some component, again, license and services, that it's being recognized more in the first half of the year. And that's why all this is boosting a little bit in the first half.

With the extended partnership with Renesas and you've talked about how it could reduce costs. As the supply improvement and product revenue ramps throughout the year, how should we think about mix and gross margin leverage on the profit side of the business?

For the time being, we're not really reflecting, what I would call, is cost improvement there because, obviously, it's work in progress. And they need to implement to move the production. So I don't expect this to be effective, really, in the first half. This will be more effective in the second half of the year. And, globally, if you factor where we are today in terms of gross margin on the product, Deborah, how much…

I think overall for the year, we're looking at very high 40s, maybe just under 50% gross margin.

I guess last question for me. As you invest for this growth with the strong backlog, do you feel like you have adequate resources on the team? Do you need to add more and how should we think just about OpEx modeling for the year?

Because we invested a lot, we added a lot of people in the last year and some of them, when we were taping out, for example, the RF chip, we have many consultants, we reduced them at the beginning of the year. So, in Q1, we'll still – maybe staying flat versus Q4. And I consider more flat, a little bit down over the time. Maybe in the model, I'll keep it flat. This will be a fair assumption. But there is no external resources…

There is no plans to add net resources this year.

The next question comes from Tristan Gerra with Baird.

I know it's a different business model and also a different technology. But would you expect to benefit at all from the bankruptcy of Sigfox? Would that result in some customers converting into [indiscernible] IoT technology potentially using your chips? Or is it pretty much a non-event based on their situation and market share?

I believe, locally, they have some good projects in France, to be honest. And obviously, it depends on the guy taking them over after its bankruptcy, what service levels continue there. If they move their business to like LTM with Orange, obviously, this will give us an option to win more projects because we are very close to those guys and the ecosystem in France. So, it can give us some design win. But I'm not expecting really big boom or anything factored for the time being. It will not be negative. It will be more positive to neutral, But it's too early because it depends how their business, they will move, if they will maintain like Sigfox LoRa technology, then it's neutral for us. If those projects, some of them start moving to LTM, we have an option of winning more deals, some couple of years. I believe they have couple of projects in France that are nice to turn to LTM.

Clearly, you have been able to secure more capacity belief notably for the Q2, Q3 timeframe. Is the difference between the revenue growth outlook that you provided today versus what the consensus outlook was for this year, is that the difference we should basically use to assess how much incremental supply you've been able to secure or just any way to quantify how much more revenue you now think you can generate this year as a result of that improved supply versus your expectation a quarter ago?

I don't believe we should take the comparison to the consensus for the supplier. I'm afraid we'll confuse – whatever comment I say on this can confuse with the model. The reality is that we – at the end of the last quarter, I was still optimistic. I didn't give up on the support of TSMC because I saw positive sign and willingness to help us. But, obviously, when I was looking to what I have in hand, I had big problem in Q3 and some problem in Q2. And so far, we fixed them because they help us. We have very minor things pending in the work, but really minor. So, I feel comfortable today with the supply we have, factoring in this growth. In other words, if I take my growth number and business in terms of products and look to the capacity I can serve. Now, obviously, if I have more upside in terms of potential customer where I can do, let's say, 50% or 60%, then I will start hitting the supply again and I will need to resolve it by whether having help from TSMC, which is still option, obviously, but also the support of Renesas, which is now – could help us as well in terms of supply

The next question comes from Raji Gill with Needham & Company.

Good job on the momentum in the business. Georges, just wanted to quickly talk about your partnerships with all the MCU suppliers, the major ones, Renesas, NXPI and Microchip. You talked about that they're very crucial in enabling you to scale and add to your sales trajectory. I'm wondering if you could elaborate a little bit further on kind of what you're seeing each of those MCUs doing this year in terms of rolling out your technology and folding it into their MCU portfolio. You mentioned NXPI, for instance, but wanted to get a little bit more clarity on how those MCU companies are incorporating your cellular IoT in their IoT portfolio.

Indeed, as I mentioned, this is really – since two years, we took this path by partnering with the MCU partner knowing that none of them has cellular and, obviously, we can be for them what ARM is for them on the MCU, providing the cellular technology. And our strategy with them, to be honest, is really to play fair play with all of them and not to have an exclusive relationship preventing us from working with the other guy and offering to every one of them the full potential from a deal which could be just only partnering on the marketing side, to go further in the tools and the development, to get an integrated product by resell, and even towards IP integration, if this makes sense for MCU. So, this portfolio, it's very transparently offered of options to all of them. Now, obviously, each one of them has his own agenda, his own way of moving on cellular, the timeline, how critical it is, and I cannot elaborate more because everyone has really his own strategy and everyone has his NDA with me. So, I will keep it confidential, what I know about each one of them. But in general, all I could say, they are different. The way we are approaching with them, everyone is following a track which is different from the other, which is, to some extent, nicer for me because I see which one is more successful. And the public one, we know that today, NXP, they have now platform with us, which is not my resell. In other words, we are joining customers and offering a platform together. And they will sell and I will sell. Renesas took the decision to integrate our products in their portfolio. So, they resell. Their team is…

In broadband, I'm wondering if you could elaborate the opportunities in CBRS. There's kind of a multitude of end markets and use cases exists, such as private networks for stadiums, campuses, remote education. 5G is going to be a catalyst for that. I'm wondering how you're thinking about the CBRS rollout maybe this year and going into 2023.

The CBRS, we are present in all this, Raji, and we did really phenomenal job last year because we have many design win, many customers. The challenge about this is that it remains fragmented. To be honest, all of them – each deal is a small deal, maybe excluding the tablet where it was sizable. I qualify it. And this is really, for example, a tablet for a jail just to give for prisoner. It's ruggedized tablets used by the prisoner and we were shipping in volume for it. And there is nice market, by the way, there. I'm sorry for the prisoner, but it's not a bad market for us. And it's very hard still to see where it can go in terms of market. All the study, all the analysts, they remain very fragmented. We can talk all about application. When we come to our number, the projection are really not accurate and we remain cautious on this. however, we see it for ourselves that maybe doubling year-over-year and this year maybe go to close to $7 million, $8 million revenue coming from CBRS. $6 million, $7 million, maybe $8 million. So, this is the target I'm putting for myself this year based on design win we have it in hand and customer moving to production. And beyond this, obviously, the 5G, what you're talking about, the private 5G – because when you when you push it further, you have a lot of private 5G beyond as well CBRS. We have the Anterix, we have the utility. So, there is a lot of stuff which is – could develop in the future. But it's going to take longer time to happen.

[Operator Instructions]. The next question comes from Craig Ellis with B. Riley.

Georges, I wanted to start with a follow up to some of the helpful color you provided around this year's growth, the 30% to 40%. I think in the past, we had looked at the business as having 50% year-on-year growth potential on a longer-term basis. And clearly, there are a lot of supply chain dynamics. So, the 30% to 40% is understandable. The question is this, looking beyond this year – and not asking for specific guidance, but just thinking about the dynamics in the business, especially given the acceleration in the share that seems possible in some of your big end markets, how do you think about the longer term growth potential when we get into the 2023 to 2025 range for the business, given the traction you're seeing with massive IoT and the scale you're getting in CBRS?

Obviously, here, this is really focusing on the current year and giving a kind of – to give more visibility of what we are seeing and factoring in. Two things. The supply, but also the projects ramping. All the projects are not in full year number. And obviously, there is more in the pipe that didn't turn yet to design win. We remain in a market which is – the growth of the market, in average, is around 40% year-over-year between Cat M and Cat 1. And the way we look in our addressable market outside of China, we believe our position is like today in the teens, maybe market share, and below 15%, I will say. 14%, 13% in aggregate, percent of the current market in 2021. And we see this market, really – we see our market share really doubling. And I mentioned this clearly. We made analysis bottom-up, segment by segment, looking to the design win and so on. We feel comfortable of claiming that our market share, obviously depends on the segment, some will go from the teen to above 20% and some will go above 30%, but in average, we see this going close to 30%. And this means, in average, our growth should be much more than the market, bigger than the 40% market share. And I remain in a position saying that our growth trajectory, in average, when you look to 2023, 2024, 2025, in average, we should be above 50% growing year-over-year. And more than what I'm projecting this year, I will say, with the 30%, 40% number.

The next question relates to a point that came up a quarter ago, and it was the fact that the massive IoT business was breakeven in the calendar third quarter. And I know at this point in its growth, that might be a little bit lumpy quarter to quarter. But can you just talk about the visibility you have to massive IoT being, one, more consistently breakeven and then, two, consistently moving into profitability, when might that occur? And what are some of the things that would drive this to sustained profitability in that business from here?

When you talk about profitability, it depends what you load under massive IoT, right? So, in general, we tend to talk about our legacy business, which is – include all what we have and take out the 5G investment, if you want. This is in referring to the timeline and so on, what we have spoken about. We remain in this game. If we take this year, in average, with the growth factor – growth targets we put to our ourselves, if I take out the 5G investment, definitely, we'll be profitable as a company. There is no doubt on this. And, obviously, the driver behind it making this growth because you can imagine the broadband is very limited, the services, they are what they are, they're more flat, so the main growth is coming from massive IoT that we said doubled year-over-year in terms of product revenue. And we expect to continue to see it, the growth on the massive IoT is expected, if not doubling, in any case, to be close to 70%, 80% – 70% this year year-over-year. So, the main growth is coming from this segment. And this is based on the – again, the four segments I spoke about between smart homes, smart cities and the tracking and the health and medical, with design win in hand, turning to mass production. And this is what gives us the confidence that we'll achieve this.

And then one product question before I flip one to Deborah. I was very interested in the Monarch 2 chip with iSIM and GNSS capability. And you commented that was a high ASP product. Can you provide a little bit more color on where ASP shakes out relative to the rest of the portfolio? And how should we think about that product's ability to contribute this year and next year?

Indeed, if you take a GNSS, GNSS, we expect to sell our feature, I'll say on average, let's say, $1. I don't want to give precise number there, but you can add $1. And this is just only your software, more or less. There is there is limited. So, if you take a module in the $7, $8, and you add $1, it gives you the value if it's module sales. If you're talking about chip sales, you're talking about $3 to $4 chip sales and you add $1 on this. So, it's significant. Obviously, now, that rate of the GNSS is not 100%. So, you're talking about maybe 10% of the deals we'll be getting GNSS or 20% will be taking GNSS and not all of them will use software GNSS from us because some of them could be looking for a separated GNSS with more features, if you want, and they are willing to pay $2 for this feature to have a separate chip. The iSIM is different picture because you could go above $1.50. All included, I will say. Obviously, we'll have [indiscernible] to pay back. All this is not pure margin. But in the $1.50 range. And iSIM, that actually could be strong because you can go to an attach rate of 100% of the product using the iSIM of Sequans because customer will save space, will get flexibility, will get power and they will pay less in general. The cost of ownership will be less. So, the only limiting factor of the iSIM to penetrate the market is really having this, the adoption and acceptance, if you want, by the carrier to push it to the customers. Because the carrier, they resist a little bit and there is some steps that we need to go through before making this market. So, I believe the iSIM revenue will not impact this year. It will be more next year. The GNSS, we could have some extra revenue happening this year. But on the surface, I will say I will not change too much the model.

But two nice kickers nonetheless with different contribution timing. Nice to see that. Then, Deborah, just coming back to cash, and nice to see the significant early 1Q boost taking cash levels close to $22 million, it sounds like. Can you just comment on any notable items that would either be a benefit or a use of cash beyond just operating [indiscernible] as we go through calendar 2022?

So I think the main item is we're expecting about $3.2 million in grant proceeds from the French government grant for 5G that should come in in Q2. And otherwise, no particular items. We now have the – the French tax credit is financed, and so that contributes each quarter rather than one big lump in the third quarter, as it used to be. And the other grant revenues we have coming or grant proceeds are much smaller and come in scattered over the year. So, the one big one is the $3.2 million that we're expecting in June.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the end of question-and-answer session. And I would like to turn the call back to Dr. Georges Karam for closing remarks. Thank you.

Thank you again for all of you joining the call today. We look forward to catching up with you on our first quarter 2022 earning calls. Note that we are participating in the upcoming ROTH Capital conference on March 14 and 15th in Dana Point, California and the B. Riley institutional investor conference on May 25 and 26th in Los Angeles. We look forward to seeing you at one of these upcoming events. Thank you again. And thanks, operator.

Thank you. This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.