Earnings Labs

Ideal Power Inc. (IPWR)

Q3 2019 Earnings Call· Wed, Nov 13, 2019

$3.81

-7.97%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

-0.43%

1 Week

-1.72%

1 Month

+1.72%

vs S&P

-1.65%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day and welcome to the Ideal Power’s Third Quarter 2019 Business Update and Results Conference Call. Today’s conference is being recorded. At this time, I’d like to turn the conference over to Chris Tyson, Managing Director of MZ North America. Please go ahead sir.

Chris Tyson

Management

Thank you and good afternoon. I’d like to thank you all for taking time to join us for Ideal Power’s third quarter 2019 business update and results conference call. Your host today are Dr. Lon Bell, Chief Executive Officer, Daniel Brdar, B-TRAN Chief Commercial Officer as well as Tim Burns, the Company’s Chief Financial Officer. A press release detailing these results crossed the wires this afternoon at 4:01 P.M. Eastern today and is available on the Company's website idealpower.com. Today’s conference call will also include a formal presentation, that listeners can follow via the webcast link provided in today’s press release or a downloadable version in the Events section of the IR website at ir.idealpower.com. Before we begin the formal presentation, I'd like to remind everyone that statements made on the call and webcast including those regarding future financial results and industry prospects are forward-looking and may be subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the call. Please refer to the Company's SEC filings for a list of associated risks, and we would also refer you to the Company's website for more supporting industry information. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Ideal Power's, Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Lon Bell. Lon, the floor is yours.

Lon Bell

Management

We appreciate that your taking time today to hear our story. If I go into our presentation, I will quickly give you a brief summary of critical actions we have taken since late last year when our board concluded we should focus all our resources on our greatest asset PATHION. We divested all other assets, we reduced burn to 700K per quarter, we’ve restructured to focus similarly on commercializing B-TRAN power switch technology. With independent groups model B-TRAN performance to validate our internal assessment of the technologies prompted. Recently, we have fab houses manufacture wafers B-TRAN dives to measure performance. The performance matches our model. B-TRAN is the semiconductor architecture and in that sense it’s like a diode or a MOSFET. That means B-TRAN is materially agnostic and our power switches can be made from silicon, silicon carbide or GaN. Today we’re focused on silicon, so we can use existing fabrication facilities and technologies to speed market introduction. Later when we have strong commercial acceptance, we will add silicon carbide or GaN B-TRAN switches to broaden our market footprint. This product plan should maintain our commercial advantage to at least 2030. B-TRAN power switches have three advantages over present power switch technology. First, the more energy efficient with 80% less loss than today's conventional power switches. Second, B-TRAN operates with current flow in both directions and third, circuits fabricated using B-TRAN switches will have half as many power switches and one-fifth the cooling requirement of conventional AC circuit. We do not see any major disadvantages to adopting our technology. Our IP portfolios are crown tool, we have 47 issued patents and 36 pending. On major industrial markets China, Japan, Europe, North America and Australia covered, we have similar application, so we expect this in India and Korea, our patents have…

Daniel Brdar

Management

Thanks Lon. In the quarter, we actually had some pretty significant testing that went on, we received the most recent version of wafers from one of our semiconductor fabricators. And we've taken them through the complete wafer tests that we do to characterize their performance and what we found when we did that testing was the critical performance parameters that really distinguish B-TRAN in terms of its low losses during conduction, it’s bi-directional operations, those were confirmed. If you look at some of the key parameters, we had done simulations both ourselves and with some third-parties that would indicate that when it was bottled theoretically, the device should have a breakdown voltage of at least 1,200 volts, we were able to confirm that we did even better than that 1,240 volts. So it gives us the strength of device that we need for some of the applications that we want to go after to use it for things like data center and UPSs, renewable energy and so forth. Our simulations also showed that one of the key features of B-TRAN would be this very low conduction loss, the on-state voltage, simulation for predicting 0.25 volts substantially lower than any other technology that's out there, we actually measured correlated really closely with those predictions, we measured 0.22 volts for the conduction loss of the devices. The other key characteristic that we measured was the gain of device. The gain is a function of the configuration, we're testing what are called PNP type devices today, the simulations are predicting 2.1 for the gain and we actually measured 2.2. So again, close correlation with what the theoretical simulations indicated our performance would be. And lastly, we were able to validate through actual testing that although it’s predicted to be a bi-directional device, we…

Tim Burns

Management

Thank you, Dan. Turning now to Slide 16. I will run through the third quarter 2019 financial results. The company had no revenues from continuing operations in the third quarter of 2019. Third quarter 2019 operating expenses were $0.7 million, compared to $1.2 million in the third quarter of 2018, the decrease in operating expense was primarily due to a decrease in our general and administrative expenses due to low professional fees and impacted by our cost reduction plan, inclusive of reduced headcount and the disposition of our PCS business. Third quarter 2019 loss from discontinued operations was $0.1 million compared to $1 million in the third quarter 2018 due to our exit from the PCS business in January and the sale of this business in September. Third quarter 2019 net loss was $0.8 million compared to a $2.2 million net loss in Q3 2018. Third quarter 2019 cash used in operating activities was $0.7 million compared to $1.4 million in Q3 2018. Year-to-date Q3 2019 cash used in operating activities was $2.4 million compared to $4.3 million in the same period of 2018. Looking at continuing operations only, year-to-date 2019 cash used in operating activities was $1.9 million compared to $2.3 million in the same period of 2018. Cash and cash equivalents totaled $0.8 million as of September 30, 2019 with no long-term debt outstanding. Subsequent to the close of the third quarter, the company entered into definitive agreements with certain institutional and accredited investors, including Dr. Lon Bell, our Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board for private placement of our common stock in pre-funded warrants, and warrants to purchase common stock for aggregate gross proceeds of $3.5 million. We estimate net proceeds of $3.1 million from this private placement. As a result of the private placement, we now satisfy the minimum $2.5 million stockholders equity requirement for continued listing on the NASDAQ capital market. With the completed sale of our Power Conversion Systems business in September to CE+T Energy Solutions for cash, equity in CE+T Energy Solutions, the assumption of liabilities and the closing of the private placement earlier today, we now expect on average to utilize approximately $0.7 million in cash per quarter during 2020. This cash burn rate is approximately 60% less than our average quarterly cash burn in 2018. I'll now turn the call back over to Lon for closing remarks on Slide 17. Lon?

Lon Bell

Management

Thank you, Tim and thank you, Dan. We've described the disruptive semiconductor technology, we’ve noted how it is significant in terms of its operating cost. We've talked about its cost and utilization in product and the efficient improvements it can generate, which transform other technologies at this point. We've recently validated our claims and we have a technology that has very, very long legs. We now have in place patents that are issued 47 of them. We have applications, including in countries we currently do not have issued patents, India and Korea. We have a very robust backlog of patent applications that is currently being addressed in various parts of the world and we expect those to issue over time, and so that our patent portfolio will be extremely strong. We now have financing in place, it’s a very recent event and a very critical event for us and we've reduced our burn to a level that gives us sustainability to do the things that we have talked about in this presentation. So we hope to realize many of the things we have talked about and we hope also through our work that is underway now and our diligence as we work through, get the new materials and take those to customers that we will begin to see external validation of our technology during next year. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator