Ronald Glibbery
Analyst · Benchmark. Please proceed
Thank you, Jim. Good afternoon, and welcome to everyone on the phone and webcast. We appreciate you joining us. I want to start with a few brief comments on the fourth quarter and our current outlook. Then, I'll get into more detail and the key management and developments and progress that we've been making since our last conference call. Consistent with our prior expectations, multiple headwinds contributed to lower revenue for the quarter. In our mmWave business, our customer demand reflected the continued impact of the industry-wide inventory correction. Separately, while total order backlog for our memory IC products increased sequentially. Revenue was lower in the fourth quarter due to the timing of production and shipment schedules. Since the beginning of the new year, both of these headwinds have begun to moderate. We anticipate revenue growth to resume in the current quarter ending March 31, and also expect double-digit growth for the full year. These growth expectations are based upon two key drivers. First is the overall $12 million of total order backlog for our memory IC products; and second, our new orders we've recently begun receiving for mmWave products targeting fixed wireless access applications, including from our largest customer. Based on this initial return of orders and customer demand, we believe the prolonged inventory correction in fixed wireless is clearing. Turning to Slide 4. I want to provide a brief update on the end of life of our current memory IC products. Since notifying our memory customers of the planned end-of-life in May of 2023, we've received prices orders for the last time buys totaling $14 million. We've commenced initial shipments against these orders in the third quarter of 2023, which were largely fulfilled from existing inventory. Shipments against backlog orders slowed in the fourth quarter, primarily due to the manufacturing lead times required by foundry partners to fabricate additional wafers in these memory products. In total, for the second half of 2023, we completed end-of-life shipments of approximately $3.7 million. As of year-end, we had remaining end-of-life order backlog of approximately $10.3 million. We also had an additional $1.8 million of backlog for regular production orders. Based on current manufacturing schedules at our foundry partner, we expect shipments of our memory IC products to ramp again in the fourth quarter -- first quarter, and we expect to fulfill the majority of the combined remaining backlog over the next 12 months. As previously discussed on our last conference call, we anticipate these collective end-of-life orders and shipments from memory IC products to contribute significant revenue and cash flow throughout 2024. Flipping to Slide 5 and an update on our mmWave business. One of our key strategic initiatives continues to be building a larger and more diversified customer base for Peraso's mmWave technology. Having historically served as a relatively small number of fixed wireless customers in North America, in 2023, we set out to expand our market reach in terms of customers, geographies and end market applications. Our team's ongoing engagement efforts are continuing to drive tangible results contributing to a steady funnel of new opportunities and expanded number of active engagements. Over roughly the past six months or since October, we've increased active engagements to 18 -- from 18 to 25. We continue to put an emphasis on prioritizing the highest quality engagements in terms of both projected economic and anticipated time to market. Today, we believe we have more existing funnel opportunities than that are positioned to transition to active hardware evaluation engagements as compared with our last quarterly update. Consistent with the past, we continue to view our engagement pipeline as a leading indicator to measure our progress towards expanded reach and a more diversified business. With that in mind, one additional highlight related to our current active engagements compared with our last quarterly update, they now comprise a larger number of prospective customers and targeted applications outside of North America. Turning to Slide 6. We believe the value proposition of our 60 gigahertz mmWave solutions for fixed wireless access is continuing to resonate across an expanding number of equipment manufacturers as well as directly with WISPs or wireless internet service providers. The left side of the slide reflects only a sample of the WISP that we've identified with 60 gigahertz fixed wireless deployments enabled by Peraso's hardware. The total number of WISP deployments utilizing our technology is difficult to track because we don't have the visibility with regards to the ultimate end customers. Another way to look at the market traction we're getting with our 60 gigahertz mmWave solutions. On the right side of the slide is a list of equipment manufacturing WISP with commercial fixed wireless access products powered by Peraso hardware. In addition to each of them having multiple products using our technology, I want to point out that collectively, they are targeting a mix of rural and urban market applications. Keeping in mind that early tracks for mmWave solutions were primarily in rural fixed wireless applications in North America, this really highlights our accelerating expansion into urban market applications as well. Additionally, we are increasingly seeing many of the urban deployments targeting geographies outside of North America. Now looking at Slide 7. It's important to understand part of what is driving the expanded market opportunity in urban applications, although, there are shared challenges and needs between rural and urban fixed wireless applications, mmWave offers a unique value proposition for solving a series of challenges encountered in dense urban environments. Demand for Internet connectivity is ubiquitous. However, many technologies simply weren't designed to work well in densely concentrated population centers, especially those found in the emerging markets such as India, South America and Africa. In addition to significant upfront infrastructure and deployment costs, Wi-Fi technology, for example, struggles with the wireless congestion and interference resulted from high numbers of – and density connected devices. Another critical consideration in many dense urban environments and -- is electricity, which can often be limited in less reliable and emerging markets. In order to avoid service interruptions, infrastructure equipment must be able to remain operational for extended periods on alternative sources such as solar and battery power. Leveraging the inherent advantages of mmWave, Peraso technology provides a proven solution to WISPs, targeting deployments in these dense urban environments. Of the core of our solutions, the newest addition to our prospective series mmWave modules, the PRM2144X incorporates a 128 element phased array antenna that provides high gain and narrow beam width, which coupled with excellent power efficiency, make it ideal for achieving reliable connectivity investment environments. Now I'll turn to Slide 8. Building on the positive initial feedback from WISP following our introduction of the PRM2144X. In January, we announced the commercial availability of Peraso’s DUNE platform for fixed wireless access. Designed specifically for dense urban environments, this integrated hardware and software platform provides WISP with a cost-effective turnkey solution. In addition to multi-gigabit connectivity comprising a full suite of capabilities, including dynamic traffic management and adaptive loan balancing. Peraso’s DUNE platform employs network isolation to enable co-existing overlapping networks. This feature is absolutely critical for successful deployments in dense urban environments. The introduction of this platform was a result of first-hand dialogue with numerous operators to understand the specific deployment challenges they face in these environments. We recently announced our first commercial win utilizing the platform which is important third-party validation of the solution, and we have commenced proof-of-concept engagements with multiple additional service providers. Shifting to Slide 9. I want to briefly touch on aerospace and defense. Although, still a relatively new end market for Peraso, we continue to see expanded opportunities for our mmWave technology in various military defense applications. In addition to mmWave's ability to support multi-gigabit connectivity with low latency as well as utilize unlicensed unused frequency bands, our advanced integrated antenna technology allows for communication using unique -- uniquely narrow and focus beams. Unlike other traditional wireless technology, this directional beam forming capability makes it more difficult to intercept or even detect in sensitive data communications. On our previous conference call, I mentioned having secured our first commercial engagement in this area in the form of a customer-funded proof-of-concept. This initial engagement is progressing well and continues to be in the customer evaluation phase. Over the last several months, we have sourced additional new opportunities for our mmWave solutions and defense applications. We have conservative expectations with respect to any material and near-term contribution from these opportunities. However, they serve as evidence that defense applications represent an incremental future market opportunity. In closing, with our expanding engagement pipeline for mmWave solutions across an increasingly diverse customer base and market applications, as well as initial indications of renewed customer demand for fixed wireless access, we're very optimistic about the company's outlook for 2024. As we continue to execute on our strategic efforts to grow the customer base from our mmWave products, we believe there is a large opportunity to realize growth over the coming quarters and beyond. With that, I'll turn the call back to Jim to review the fourth quarter and full year financials as well as our revenue expectation for the first quarter of 2024.