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Ocean Power Technologies, Inc. (OPTT)

Q4 2019 Earnings Call· Tue, Jul 23, 2019

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Greetings and welcome to the Ocean Power Technologies Fourth Quarter Fiscal Year 2019 Conference Call and Webcast. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. The question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions]. As a reminder this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host Matthew Abenante, Senior Vice President, Porter, LeVay & Rose. Please go ahead sir.

Matthew Abenante

Analyst

Good morning and thank you for joining us for the Ocean Power Technologies Conference Call and Webcast. On the call with me today are George Kirby, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Matthew Shafer, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer. Following our prepared remarks, we will open the call to questions. This call is being webcast on the company's website at www.oceanpowertechnologies.com. It will also be available for replay after this call.On July 22, 2019, OPT issued its earnings press release and filed its annual report on Form 10-K for fiscal year 2019 with the Securities and Exchange Commission. All of our public filings can be viewed on the SEC's website at sec.gov or you may go to the Investor Relations section of the OPT website at oceanpowertechnologies.com.Now let me reference the Safe Harbor provisions of the U.S. securities laws for forward-looking statements. This conference call may contain forward-looking statements that are within the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are identified by certain words or phrases such as may, will, aim, will likely result, believe, expect, will continue, anticipate, estimate, intend, plan, contemplate, seek to, future, objective, goal, project, should, will pursue, and similar expressions or variations of such expressions. These forward-looking statements are based on assumptions made by management regarding future circumstances over which the company may have little or no control and involve risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause actual results to be materially different from any future results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements.Some of these factors include among others the following, future financial performance, expected cash flow, ability to reduce costs and improve operational efficiencies, revenue growth, and increased sales volume, success in key markets, competition, ability to enter into relationships with partners and other third parties, delivery and deployments of PowerBuoys, increasing the power output of the PowerBuoys, hiring new key employees, expected costs of PowerBuoys, product and building customer relationships. Please refer to our most recent Form 10-Q and 10-K and subsequent filings with the SEC for a further discussion of these risks and uncertainties. We disclaim any obligation or intent to update the forward-looking statements in order to reflect events or circumstances discussed in this call. Now I am pleased to introduce Mr. George Kirby. Good morning George.

George H. Kirby

Analyst

Thank you Matthew and good morning Matt and good morning everyone and greetings from Tokyo. I'm going to review our business operations and provide an update on our commercialization activities and developments during the fourth quarter up to today, then Matt Shafer will provide a review of our financials, then we'll open the floor for questions.The fourth fiscal quarter marked a pivotal time for OPT with the achievement of key milestones across our business moving us closer towards being the leading provider of power and communications for subsea applications across the globe. We strongly believe that we have positioned OPT's technology to address the growing need for these solutions across our addressable markets including defense and security, oil and gas, communications, and science and research.We have become known as the innovator in offshore power broadening demand for our solutions. Back in May I held a commercialization conference call to provide greater insight to investors into our current project pipeline as well as to establish clear expectations for OPT in generating meaningful revenue opportunities. And currently we have a pipeline of over 80 active opportunities where we're responding to information requests, we're actively providing proposals or participating in customer studies where our PowerBuoy technology can be employed. Information requests and request for proposals are at an all time high which is further evidence of the greater awareness of our brand in offshore power solutions.Our pipeline is robust. The potential value of the current pipeline is greater than $50 million which is a conservative figure knowing that naturally not every opportunity will come to fruition. For everyone's convenience the presentation for this commercialization conference call can be found on the Investor Relations section of our website which provides additional details on each of these opportunities.I want to take some time to discuss…

Matthew T. Shafer

Analyst

Thank you George and good morning everyone. We recorded revenues of $191,000 in the fourth quarter ended April 30, 2019 compared to $222,000 of revenue for the fourth quarter of last year. The net loss for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2019 was $2.5 million compared to a net loss of $3.3 million for the prior year period. The decrease in net loss was mainly attributable to lower costs of revenue due to the timing on new contracts and the decrease in selling, general, and administrative costs.Revenue for the fiscal year 2019 was $632,000 compared to $511,000 for fiscal 2018. The increase over 2018 was attributable to higher revenue on new contracts in fiscal year 2019 that related to Eni, Premier Oil, and Enel Green Power, and the U.S. Navy. The net loss for the 12 months of fiscal 2019 was $12.2 million as compared to a net loss of $10.2 million for the same period in fiscal 2018. The increase in net loss primarily related to the increased costs of revenues versus fiscal year 2018 due to higher upfront spending and material costs on new projects as well as higher spending on new products and buoy builds for customer contracts.Turning now to the balance sheet, as of April 30, 2019 total cash, cash equivalents, restricted cash, and marketable securities were $17.2 million as of April 30, 2019 up from $12.3 million on April 30, 2018. Net cash used in operating activities during the fiscal year ended April 30, 2019 were $12.1 million, an increase of $1.4 million when compared to $10.7 million during the fiscal year ended April 30, 2018. On April 9th we closed on a public offering with total aggregate net proceeds to the company of approximately $15.7 million after deducting underwriter fees, commissions, and other operating expenses paid by the company. Now with that I'll turn it back to George.

George H. Kirby

Analyst

Thanks Matt. As you can see we continue to be very inspired and excited about the potential for OPT. Before we move on to Q&A I wanted to take a moment to thank the entire team at OPT who continues to work tirelessly to execute our vision. We're just at the beginning of this journey in realizing commercialization success and I'm extremely proud to be a part of this team at such an exciting time. With that operator we're now ready to take questions.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. Our first question today is coming from Peter Ruggiere from Dawson James. Your line is now line.

Peter Ruggiere

Analyst

How are you George. Can you hear me?

George H. Kirby

Analyst

Doing well Peter, thank you.

Peter Ruggiere

Analyst

Alright, good, a question on Eni because you just signed a year and a half lease with them, what type of money do you guys make off of that?

George H. Kirby

Analyst

Well right now we're into the lease revenues which occur monthly which is typical of leases as compared to buoy sales when the majority of the moneys are seen upfront obviously for milestones that are captured more quickly than a lease that extends about a year and a half. Matt, anything you want to add to that.

Matthew T. Shafer

Analyst

Yeah, no, that covers it. I mean in terms of we're talking -- there's going to be a difference between Peter as we recognize revenue which is on a different basis as compared to when you actually collect the cash and many of our contracts are structured in a way is where you're collecting cash at different key milestone points in the contract. But under the revenue recognition standards, the new standards that were recently issued revenue is recognized based on performance obligations which could be many times different than those different milestones. So -- but yeah, to reiterate what George said we are now into lease stage with Eni so it's more of a consistent steady stream of cash inflow as well as the revenue that's being recognized.

Peter Ruggiere

Analyst

Okay. Eni has -- they are the one PowerBuoy up there which is I guess the first one or the new one and it's connected to the bottom floor with this autonomous vehicles wouldn't they pour a whole bunch more to get more power down there since it works?

George H. Kirby

Analyst

Well, that's a great question. I really wish that we could talk more about discussions with customers like Eni because we have a great relationship with them. The buoy has been acting flawlessly or I should say performing flawlessly. We're not actually providing power down to autonomous vehicles, we're providing power down to a -- basically it's a dummy load that calls for power periodically where we dump power from the PowerBuoy down to the sea floor. The next logical step would be to provide power to some sort of a charging station for AUV. That's really the intention that we're seeing throughout the industry as AUVs are becoming more prevalent, they're used more, and there's more of a need for charging stations. But back to Eni we have periodic discussions with them, they are happy with the way that the lease and the performance of the buoy is going, and I'm pretty confident we're going to have -- continue to have a good relationship with them and more opportunities as they arise.

Peter Ruggiere

Analyst

You're in Japan right now is what you said?

George H. Kirby

Analyst

I am.

Peter Ruggiere

Analyst

Because Mitsui Engineering is over there. How is that relationship going?

George H. Kirby

Analyst

It's good. I spent the day with Mitsui ENS, they actually reorganized back in April and they basically turned their business into a holding company. So Mitsui ENS we were out speaking with the Japan Ministry of Defense today, we were speaking with some DOD contractors and so forth. And again it seems as though the major focus is around the use of AUV's. Interestingly it's paralleling the oil and gas industry. The challenge is even overseas departments of defense will run out a little bit longer sales cycle than even oil and gas. So we're talking about opportunities that could arise over the coming years. But these are multi-stage opportunities so that's why discussions happen so soon in the process.

Peter Ruggiere

Analyst

Right, on this oil and gas company in the [indiscernible] what's the next stage, is place a buoy out there, and do the same thing as Eni is doing and see how it goes or…?

George H. Kirby

Analyst

Yeah, interestingly with the study that we have conducted for that operator things always take longer not only because of our company but things happen with customer companies and it really is a collaborative approach. It is not just OPT conducting the study and then returning it deliverable. There is transfer of information going on between both companies. So, as operations ramp up in different areas the company they get pulled away so anyway the study is wrapping up, it should be wrapped up over the next week or two. And we are set to continue discussions with this operator beginning in August. In fact recent communications with them are around what the next steps could potentially be and so the process is we'll evaluate the study with the customer, we'll talk about it, we'll talk about how the results would actually translate into potentially a project and then from there a project could launch into even more widespread applications throughout their operations. So we're hoping to really get into those details in the beginning of August

Peter Ruggiere

Analyst

Alright cool, thank you.

George H. Kirby

Analyst

Thanks Peter.

Operator

Operator

Thanks. Our next question today is coming from Hunter Diamond from Diamond Equity Research. Your line is now live.

Hunter Diamond

Analyst

Hi, firstly thank you for the updates, very useful information. In terms of the sales and marketing, I'm just curious where people are coming from, what are their companies, and how the sales really be in conductor the inbound, outbound, referrals I am just trying to get some color on sort of the sales pipeline?

George H. Kirby

Analyst

You know that's a great question. The sales approach that we take is very much hands on. It's person to person and what we're trying to do right now is really expand that by using what would be considered representatives to be able to go out. And not only would they be selling our product but they would be selling other complimentary products. So, we're trying to do more and more of that but over the last few years it's really been about building our brand and getting out there and making operators in the oil and gas industry or engineering service providers, making them aware of our products, aware of what it can do, and essentially building our brand. Today we're still doing that, we're still out talking to operators and trying to pull our business out of them. But we've also got customers throughout the industry that are coming directly to us and asking for information about our products, they're pulling us into meetings or pulling us into studies in order to evaluate how our products could help and do things differently in their operations. But it's very much a person to person and it's a big reason why we're investing in bringing in more qualified sales people.

Hunter Diamond

Analyst

Okay, perfect, that was very useful. Thank you

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. Our next question today is coming from Cory Stanto [ph] a Private Investor. Your line is now live.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Hi guys, good job on the call this morning. I just had a couple of questions. First, I was wondering you spoke on the lead time a little bit and I was curious as to have the feasibility studies produce some rough data that these future opportunities don't really have to go through these lengthy studies and are their buoys ready to be like leased or sold more quickly once kind of the project comes into action and then the same question as how many buoys do you have on standby waiting to be released or bought?

George H. Kirby

Analyst

Cory great questions. So I'll work backwards, we have we have two being fabricated in our headquarters right now. One was shipped to Premier Oil. We also have what we consider two legacy buoys that have been since not totally obsoleted but we had more advanced designs now that we're actually using with customers. So those two are also out of the facility, we have one in the water for Eni in the Adriatic. But with regards to studies and really the whole sales process these types of engineering studies are typically the same, will be given a scenario from a customer, what they want to do, what types of equipment they want powered. Oftentimes it takes quite a bit of time going back and forth with the customer in order to get the information that we need from a technical standpoint. For instance if they're using certain equipment not every customer uses the same equipment so we need to find out things like voltages, power draw in watts or kilowatts. We need to understand placement on the seafloor and configuration.When you think about the problem that we're trying to solve it's not just power and communications but it's also 3 dimensional and we're putting our buoy in a particular location, site that has different wave conditions. So we have to figure out how much power we can continuously create, we have to design a mooring system because every say is at a different depth. So there's quite a bit that goes into these studies. Once the study is complete then we go back and we sit down with the customer and we talk about truly what is the technical feasibility of actually executing the work, what's the risk. We look at it from not only our standpoint but also…

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Yes, it does, thank you for the insight. It seems like you definitely are trying to streamline all the opportunities that you have that kind of cut back on these times that you mentioned, so yeah thank you for the light on that, sounds like everything is going well over there. Thanks guys.

Operator

Operator

Thank you.

George H. Kirby

Analyst

Thanks Cory. And one thing that I'll mention along those lines is the more PowerBuoy's that we install which is a big focus of ours, the more that we deploy for different applications for customers the more that we can leverage those with likewise other service providers and customers. And we believe that there's an acceleration of that there. So our biggest focus right now is contracts, revenues, but also getting buoys operating in the water.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is coming from Robert Littlehelp [ph] from J.P. Morgan. Your line is now live.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Hi George, could you maybe compare and contrast the PB3 to the Hybrid PowerBuoy differences, similarities is there any context in that regard?

George H. Kirby

Analyst

Sure, no, great question. The PB3 is typically meant for a longer-term deployments and the reason why is it's a larger device, it's 40 feet long. We're working on ways to be able to deploy this thing more quickly in a less expensive manner. But for the most part it's intended for deployments that are let's say six months or longer whereas the Hybrid PowerBuoy is really intended for shorter-term deployments three months to six months or even weeks depending on the customer's operations. The PB3 PowerBuoy can be towed out to site but oftentimes it's quicker and we can also deploy in higher seas in a larger waves if we actually put the buoy on a boat and bring it out to site. The Hybrid PowerBuoy is purely designed to be towed. It can certainly be put on deck but it's been fashioned into a boat like shape in order to minimize the cost for deployment so you can literally hook it behind a small vessel and you can tow it out to site.The PB3 PowerBuoy is a wave energy generator so again that's renewable, it's meant for persistent power. Whereas the Hybrid PowerBuoy is based off of liquid fuel. It's an external combustion engine and the idea is that you have energy storage on board this PowerBuoy that is both refuelable at sea or you can simply hot swap a Hybrid PowerBuoy one that is full for the one that's empty. It uses liquid propane fuel. Interestingly we've been working on some studies recently and now that we have a PB3 and a hybrid option and subsea battery now we can start mixing and matching these products together in order to come up with very creative solutions for customers. Whereas in the past it's only been we have…

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Thank you George.

George H. Kirby

Analyst

Thank you Bob.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. If there are no further questions at this time I would like to turn the floor back over to management for any further or closing comments.

George H. Kirby

Analyst

Thanks operator. Before we conclude here I just -- I really want to thank everyone who's been a stakeholder in the company including our employees, our customers, our vendors, and our loyal shareholders. I want to invite everyone to follow us on social media including LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and to watch our YouTube channel for some terrific footage of the PowerBuoy's capabilities but also other videos such as footage from our upcoming deployment event which should be posted shortly afterwards. So thank you very much for joining and we will be speaking again very soon.

Operator

Operator

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