Earnings Labs

Energous Corporation (WATT)

Q3 2021 Earnings Call· Thu, Nov 11, 2021

$32.89

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Energous Corporation, Third Quarter 2021 financial results conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. . At today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. . . Please note this event is being recorded. I'm now going to turn the conference over to Matt Sullivan of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Matt Sullivan

Management

Thank you, Anthony, and welcome everyone. Before we begin, I would like to remind participants that during today's call, the Company will make forward-looking statements. These statements, whether in prepared remarks or during the Q&A session, are subject to inherent risks and uncertainties that are detailed in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Except as otherwise required by federal securities laws, Energous disclaims any obligation or undertaking to publicly release updates or revisions to the forward-looking statements contained herein, or elsewhere to reflect changes and expectations with regard to those events, conditions, and circumstances. Also please know that during this call, Energous will be discussing non-GAAP financial measures as defined by SEC Regulation G, Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in today's press release, which is posted on the Company's website. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Cesar Johnston, acting CEO of Energous. Please go ahead Cesar.

Cesar Johnston

Management

Thanks, Matt. Good afternoon, and welcome to the Energous 2021 third quarter conference call. Joining me today is Bill Mannina, our acting Chief Financial Officer. The third quarter of 2021 was significant for Energous for several key reasons. Number 1, we continue to sharpen our vision for the Company, with a focus on far-field technologies, and the deployment of wireless power networks. Number 2, and this is very important; we received FCC approval for our 1 watt WattUp PowerBridge transmitter technology for active energy harvesting power transfer at any distance; no distance limitation. And number 3: we established new partnerships with IOT market leaders that will drive the demand for wireless power delivered at a distance into 2022 and beyond. We at Energous are at an important inflection point that we believe will move the Company into the next phase as we leverage the significant and accelerated investments being made by a number of companies in low powerage devices, including electronic shelf labels, retail tags, IOT sensors, and low powerage computing. We are gaining recognition as a leading player in the development of RF Power Transmission semiconductor devices for deployment of a new generation of wireless power networks. Our vision of RF Power Transmission at a distance, within the context of market needs and regulatory constraints continues to evolve, and is driving development and availability of our WattUp PowerBridge transmitter solutions at 1 watt and 5.5 watt conducted power. We recently announced that we see approval for our one watt solution, which complements our earlier European Union Regulatory certification for unlimited distance wireless charging. Given this positive traction, we're pleased to share that we have started production of our 1 WATT WattUp power breach transmitters, to fulfill orders for our first WattUp wireless power network customer with deliverables beginning in…

Bill Mannina

Management

Thanks, Cesar. As you saw at the close of the market today, we issued our Q3 earnings press release announcing the operating and financial results for our fiscal 2021 third quarter-ended September 30th. For the third quarter, we recognized $201,000 in revenue, compared to $185,000 in the prior quarter, and approximately $62,000 in the same quarter of last year. GAAP operating expense for the third quarter was $12.7 million, approximately $1.5 million higher than the $11.2 million of operating expense last quarter, and approximately $5 million higher than the third quarter of last year. The increase compared to the prior quarter was largely due to a $4 million severance accrual related to the resignation of our former CEO, which was partially offset by a $2.3 million decrease in stock compensation expense. Together with a small increase in product development expenses, the severance accrual accounted for most of the increase compared to the same quarter of last year. Regarding the severance accrual, I would like to note that only 1.1 million of the 4 million accrual remain payable at the end of Q3, 2021. Year-to-date, our GAAP operating expense was $32.5 million, approximately $7.9 million higher than the $24.7 million of year-to-date GAAP operating expense in fiscal 2020. The year-over-year increase was primarily due to the severance accrual for our former CEO, and an increase in stock-based compensation. The net loss for the third quarter, on a GAAP basis, was $12.5 million, or a $0.20 loss per share, on 63 million weighted average shares outstanding. This compares to an $11 million net loss in Q2 of 2021, or a loss of $0.18 per share, and a $7. 6 million net loss or loss of $0.18 per share in Q3 of 2020. Our weighted average shares were 41.9 million shares in Q3…

Cesar Johnston

Management

Thank you, Bill. Operator, we would like now to open up the call for questions.

Operator

Operator

We will now begin the question-and-answer session. . At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question comes from Suji Desliva with Roth Capital. You may go ahead.

Suji Desliva

Analyst

Hi, Cesar. Hi, Bill. So question on the Renasys agreement and the transfer of the four products back. What are the manufacturing cost and budget business model applications of this -- the way you sell the products as that transfer happens? Just to understand the difference of the go-forward model.

Cesar Johnston

Management

Yeah, so you're asking some details of the agreement definitely. As far as the transfer, we own test lines with some local partners, and those are being done as we speak right now. That includes the movement of wafers devices and the setup -- and hardware-related hardware, and the setup of those in our test lines, which by the way, are in parallel with some of the other products that we have related to GAN and CMOS PA controllers. Okay? Now, as far as as the costs are concerned, at a high level, there was an agreement with Dialogue where we share the cost, and that extra expense that Dialogue will share with us is no longer there. So we will pretty much add that to our overall revenue. Any other questions?

Suji Desliva

Analyst

Yes sure -- Yes, that is. And then if we look at these two partners you have Wiliot and Technology, what is the -- where are the next steps in those partnerships in the go-to-market for customers, and what do they bring to Energous in terms of market regions and traction?.

Cesar Johnston

Management

Yes. Thanks for -- that's a very good question. There are two types of partners that we have. There are partners that are, call them integrators, or systems partners, in this case technology. What they bring and they add is they add the potential to further our capabilities in the engineering side and development side to support other potential customers in specifically here -- in the European Union. So, it's an extension of our team, our A team or of A team. And they are focused today on training potential customers, and also helping us find new customers that will need access to our development kits. So that's the technology side. Now, when it comes to Wiliot, Wiliot is a different type of partnership. That is a partnership were 2 companies in this case Energous and Wiliot with a very specific low-power tax have together partnered in such a way that we have a very unique and very special solution targeted to Active Power Transmission, okay? Targeted at being able now to open up a new market of low power tags that are very, very similar to RFID but are way much more smarter because they have very specific, very low power CPU base devices with BLE interfaces at -- that are extremely low cost. So, together we are opening up a brand new IOT vertical market that was nonexistent and we add through our very special transmitters, in this case our 1 watt transmitter, we are now able to deploy wireless power networks with no distance limitations across any potential industrial, retail, or healthcare floor, and it has been enable to piggyback on Wi-Fi networks and deploy together systems of that type. Now, as far as what are the next steps with them, we worked very closely together for months in the development of the technology. We certainly will continue to move forward as we progress on this market, on the technology side, and on the business side there are multiple potential customers that we're looking at, that we will be opening up and doing PLCs as we move forward. And as we prove and show the technology, those customers will eventually use that to track devices and being able to find devices anywhere on those three markets that I described to you; industrial, healthcare, and retail.

Suji Desliva

Analyst

Okay. Great. Thanks, Cesar. And then last question on the FCC approval there at any distance. What are the implications of that from a technology differentiation perspective and what are the market implications of that? Is it really the energy tags you can now do across a retail or other setting or? Any color there would be helpful.

Cesar Johnston

Management

Great question. As you know, we've been pushing standards for wireless power networks for years. We've been pushing the technology on that area. In the case of the 1 - watt systems, we have a unique solution that allow us to pass par 15, and which we have now demonstrated, and by virtue of that, have no distance limitation. By using multiple transmitters, again, by spreading those along the lines of Wi-Fi access points or even within shelves and different places in a given plant or industrial site. We can actually have no limit on distance.

Suji Desliva

Analyst

Okay. All right. Thanks, Cesar.

Cesar Johnston

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Jon Hickman with Ladenburg. You may go ahead.

Jon Hickman

Analyst · Ladenburg. You may go ahead.

Hey, I have 2 questions. 1 is I think you mentioned that you were setting yourself up for deliverables for Q4 of this year. Does that translate into chip sales for this quarter?

Cesar Johnston

Management

Hi, John, how are you?

Jon Hickman

Analyst · Ladenburg. You may go ahead.

Am good.

Cesar Johnston

Management

Glad to talk to you today. Yes. And what we're doing is we have chips, and we have actually systems that have been integrated into transmitters, so our -- we're ramping up contract manufacturing lines that allow us to build those in such a way that we can fulfill the orders that we have at hand right now. So it's a combination of the chips, and that certainly has a value on it. But we also benefit from the fact that we're putting those transmitters together, which adds an extra value on top of that.

Jon Hickman

Analyst · Ladenburg. You may go ahead.

So were there any product sales in Q3 or was that our like – our NEE

Cesar Johnston

Management

Definitely. I mean, we have evaluation kits and that's part of the sales that we've done. And we continue to do and we've been doing that for a while.

Jon Hickman

Analyst · Ladenburg. You may go ahead.

Okay, my last question is so now you're going to have to build the sales and marketing organization?

Cesar Johnston

Management

Yeah. Okay so --

Jon Hickman

Analyst · Ladenburg. You may go ahead.

Dialogue's... the picture in

Cesar Johnston

Management

Great question. We always get that question. So we do have a marketing sales organization, okay? It's always been there, and they've always been connected and engaged with dialogue, so it's only the fact the dialogue was there, added to what we have. But the relationship has always been that we operated similar to a business unit where that context came through dialogues, and our team here took ownership and partnered with them. But we always took the lead as we were the ones that have the knowledge of the technology and the operation and could close the deals. So we do have that team, and that team is still intact here. Now, the question is will we need to add further in the future? Yeah, as we grow the business, we will definitely consider that.

Jon Hickman

Analyst · Ladenburg. You may go ahead.

Okay. Are you going to look around for another partner like Dialogue or are you going to just do the manufacturing?

Cesar Johnston

Management

At this point in time where we can do the manufacturing. I mean, we've been enabled for years. Again, if you recall, during the presentation I mentioned that only a limited number of devices were with Dialogue. We have other devices including our GAN line of products and other controllers. So we are perfectly capable of doing that and we'll continue to do that and now certainly we will evaluate if other opportunities show up, but it's a matter of whether the potential partnership makes sense or not to Energous.

Jon Hickman

Analyst · Ladenburg. You may go ahead.

Okay. Thank you.

Cesar Johnston

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Cesar Johnston for any closing remarks.

Cesar Johnston

Management

Thank you. We would like to thank our investors and partners for their ongoing support. We're making the future of WattUp wireless power networks a reality, and have a story to ramping up production and delivery. We will continue working to enable new markets via our regulatory efforts, while we will also continue to push our technologies to deliver higher power levels to open up future opportunities, resulting in new potential revenue streams. We look forward to updating you next quarter. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.