Earnings Labs

AgEagle Aerial Systems, Inc. (UAVS)

Q4 2022 Earnings Call· Tue, Apr 4, 2023

$1.05

-1.25%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, everyone, and thank you for participating in today's conference call. Joining us today from AgEagle is Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board, Barrett Mooney; and Nicole Fernandez-McGovern, AgEagle's Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President of Operations. Following Barrett and Nicole's prepared remarks, both company officers will respond to questions that were previously submitted via e-mail by analysts and investors. Before I turn it over to Barrett, I would like to remind you that during today's call, including the question-and-answer session, statements that are not historical facts, including any projections, statements regarding future events or future financial performance or statements of intent or belief, are forward-looking statements and are covered by the Safe Harbor disclaimers contained in the company's public filings with the SEC. Actual outcomes and results may differ materially from what is expressed in or implied by these forward-looking statements. With that said, I'll turn the call over to AgEagle's CEO, Barrett. Please go ahead.

Barrett Mooney

Analyst

Thank you, Kat, and good afternoon, everyone. We greatly appreciate you taking the time to join us on our webcast today. I'd like to start off by inviting Nicole to review AgEagle's key financial highlights relating to our 2022 year-end performance, after which I'll cover some operational highlights from the past year and provide you with some detail and perspective on our growth strategies and outlook for 2023 and beyond. With that, I'll turn it over to Nicole to review our financials. Nicole, over to you.

Nicole Fernandez-McGovern

Analyst

Thanks, Barrett, and thank you all for joining us today. Shortly before the start of this call, AgEagle released an announcement relating to our financial and operational highlights for the year ended December 31, 2023. Our corresponding annual report on Form 10-K will also be filed today with the SEC and be accessible on the SEC's website and on the Investor Relations section of AgEagle's website. We encourage you to read over our 10-K to better understand and appreciate our business, growth objectives, risk factors and greater details relating to our financial results, among other important information made available to you. I'll begin my prepared remarks by highlighting some key metrics relating to our results for the full year ended December 31, 2022, as compared to the prior year. Total revenues in 2022 climbed to a new company record of $19.1 million, up 96% from $9.8 million when compared to the prior year-end. The increase in sales is a direct reflection of our acquisition activities in 2021, coupled with robust global market demand for our new panchromatic sensors commercially released in early 2022. Drilling down, total sensor sales for the 12 months ended December 31, 2022 increased 27% to $8.7 million compared to $6.8 million in the prior year. As noted, the increase was primarily due to growing demand for our proprietary sensor product portfolio and more specifically broad adoption of our new Altum-PT and RedEdge-P multispectral sensors primarily used for sophisticated applications of agriculture, forest management, land management and plant research. Now, looking at drone sales. We recorded revenue from sales of our line of eBee fixed-wing drones of $9.8 million in 2022, which compared to $2.4 million generated from eBee sales in 2021. As a reminder, we acquired senseFly in October 2021 for the prior year only has…

Barrett Mooney

Analyst

Thank you for the recap of the financials, Nicole. Let's jump right into it. Our year was marked by steady progress as we focused on strategically aligning our organization and building a foundation rooted in strong fundamentals all with a deliberate plan to achieve profitable growth. Our efforts to unify the company and provide our customers with a full stack solution comprised of drones, sensors and software has resulted in the continued consolidation of the acquisitions we made throughout the balance of 2021, and we expect to begin seeing these benefits to our cost structure flow through to the bottom line in 2023. I want to repeat that we fully expect this year 2023 to be the year we see the strongest net change in our financial growth. It's been encouraging to see how our efforts have begun to bring us together into one cohesive organization with our various teams collaborating under one unified vision for AgEagle. I'd like to thank our vast and growing global network of over 180 value added resellers. Over the last year, we've been able to leverage their unique expertise and their respective territories to strengthen our market presence and provide the best collaboration with our customers. This strategy is instrumental in delivering sustainable and incremental organic revenue growth as we focus on chipping away at a very large commercial market. Our reseller network gives us access to a greater number of resources, which in turn allows us to expand our geographical coverage and generate consistent and frequent sales. This approach has proven to be effective so far, and we are confident that our reseller network will continue to be a crucial component of our long-term growth strategy. While we're focused on scaling our network of value added resellers and creating a backbone for incremental…

A - Nicole Fernandez-McGovern

Analyst

Thanks, Barrett. Let's address the questions we received from various investors. The first one, do you see a delisting as a potential near-term threat for your stock?

Barrett Mooney

Analyst

Well, we've continued to receive this question from time to time. I'd like to make it clear that we currently meet all regulatory requirements to be listed on the NYSE American Stock Exchange. To the best of our knowledge, these concerns are likely based on listing requirements posed by NASDAQ, which we are not, in any way, subject to.

Nicole Fernandez-McGovern

Analyst

Thanks for that, Barrett. Next question. Do you intend to pursue a reverse stock split in the near future? Are there any specific conditions or factors that would prompt your company to consider this strategy again?

Barrett Mooney

Analyst

At this time, we're not looking at completing a reverse split. In fact, on our last proxy statement, we sought shareholder approval to only provide our board with the right to complete a reverse stock split in the event that it made strategic sense to do so or was a requirement. Since that's not the case, no, at this time, we are not seeking any approvals to do a reverse split. This may be considered as part of a full recap strategy in the future that will better position us to pursue attractive M&A prospects or other compelling growth opportunities, but not at the moment with the strides we've made to push the company forward and the bright future we see in both potential future earnings and in our growing pipeline, we are confident that a split is not necessary now. Nonetheless, as we prepare for our 2023 annual meeting, we expect to re-evaluate our growth initiatives and the prevailing market conditions to determine if we will once again ask our shareholders to give the board the option to do a reverse split if and when the board deems it makes strategic sense and will deliver long-term value creation for our shareholders.

Nicole Fernandez-McGovern

Analyst

Yeah. Barrett, I do appreciate you clarifying that for our shareholders based on our last proxy. So next question. Do you have any intentions of venturing into the drone delivery market in the near future?

Barrett Mooney

Analyst

That's a good question. As we have discussed in previous shareholder calls, we're looking forward to the growth of the drone delivery market and what that will mean for our industry as a whole. We've chosen to state previously and remain resolute that for us to be in that market, we'll need to partner with other companies and other technologies. We continue to focus our efforts on regulatory and safety accomplishments that will generate confidence in drones to operate in urban and suburban areas, paving the way for drone delivery in neighborhoods. But at this time, we're actively seeking the appropriate partners for a growth of that industry and our role that we're going to play in it as it respects their technologies.

Nicole Fernandez-McGovern

Analyst

The next question is, in the past, you've spoken to the goal of getting cash flow positive as soon as possible. Can you provide an update on your progress and when we can expect to see some improved profitability in our cash flow and financials?

Barrett Mooney

Analyst

We've made great strides in finding synergies in the teams we've brought together under the AgEagle brand. While we still need to grow our way to profitability, we have both increased revenue and cut our burn over the last six months. We are confident that you will see improved performance and continuing improvements in profitability and cash flow in the coming quarters. The path to profitability is a road that we've been paving for some time and due to the positive financial growth in 2022 without ballooning everything on the cost side, we feel like we've remained quite restrained and with our active management of our cash position and our active management of our burn to continue in the coming quarters, we do expect to see strong signals that will be reported in our future financials for this year.

Nicole Fernandez-McGovern

Analyst

Yeah. Thanks for that, Barrett. I do think that's something that the entire C-suite and the rest of the executive team agrees with you in terms of making this a priority. Next question is, what are your main capital allocation priorities for 2023? You've discussed M&A opportunities in the past. Anything else imminent?

Barrett Mooney

Analyst

Well, we don't have anything M&A related to announce today. We are absolutely looking for opportunities in companies with talented teams. Mostly we're focused on skill set and product offerings that will expand our reach either by a unique technology or expertise in an industry that varies from our own current markets or things that are related to skill sets and revenue generation in new markets that we've been going after and attacking. We are expanding constantly what AgEagle can do and M&A will absolutely be part of that in the future. But in the current economic conditions, it's best to be prudent and look for the best growth opportunities rather than the quickest or easiest M&A opportunities.

Nicole Fernandez-McGovern

Analyst

Perfect. Thanks for that. And our last question for today is, could you provide more details on the progress of your efforts to pursue military and government opportunities, particularly with the introduction of the eBee VISION drone? How do you anticipate these developments impacting your sales growth in the upcoming quarters?

Barrett Mooney

Analyst

Our government strategy is evolving and we are investing heavily in an approach to access that market with the right talent and the right products. We've actually already begun to expand the government sales team by adding experienced personnel just this year with a mandate to build up new market access and opportunities. We're also looking to new drone developments like the VISION and new software features to improve our access to civil government and military markets. We have previously been pulled into these markets up until now, thanks to our great technology, robust design and strong value proposition. This year we're proactively pushing into the global defense markets by leveraging the same products and features that have made us a great value to the military in the past, with a new team focused entirely on where we can best serve those customers.

Nicole Fernandez-McGovern

Analyst

Okay, great. So that was our last question for Q&A. It was a great opportunity to showcase the company's vision and progress, not only in terms of our financial results, but also in our progress in uniting our operational efforts. Thank you all for joining our webcast today and we extend our gratitude to all of our stakeholders for their unwavering support. Barrett and I look forward to sharing our continued progress on our next corporate update webcast. Thank you and good afternoon. Operator, back to you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. This does conclude today's conference. We thank you for your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time and have a wonderful day.