Raymond Chang
Analyst · ROTH Capital Partners. Your line is open
Thanks, Anna Kate, and thank you everyone for joining us on the call today. I’m going to begin by providing some recent updates on our business, and then our CFO, Tim Oakes is going to discuss our Q2 financial results in greater detail. After that I’ll go over our outlook for the remainder of 2022, and then we will open up for questions on the call. The second quarter was a challenging quarter for the entire cannabis industry. Unfortunately, we are not immune to what’s been happening around us. We’re currently seeing cannabis prices plummeting in several key states, significant capital constraints, delays and construction, local permitting, and licensed issuance across many of our customers. Global supply chains continue to be an issue, which leads to a longer lead time for critical components and equipments. For the second quarter, we ended up generating $19.3 million in revenue, which equates to a 63.5% increase from the period – from the prior year period. We also generated approximately $29 million in new bookings. Even though we believe that our temporary dip in performance was largely attributed to the significant changes in a broader business environment. We also determined that there were a number of adjustments we could make in order to better align our strategy, resources and execution plan with the new realities of the market. The advantage of Agrify is that our organization and technology are incredibly versatile, which allows us to transform our business based on changing market conditions and customer needs. Before diving into some of the substantive changes we have made in response to the industry-wide pressures, I would like to quickly highlight some of the things that are already working in our favor as we persevere through this turbulent time. One, interest and enthusiasm in our highly differentiated portfolio of cultivation extraction solutions remain strong. Our pipeline and qualified sales opportunity currently stands at over $250 million. Our diversified mix of products and services give us tremendous flexibility to adjust our sales approach to capitalize on whatever market opportunities are most attractive at any point in time. Our continued emphasis on innovation has resulted in a flourishing product development pipeline. In June, Lab Society introduced the CannaBeast 13 Short Path Thin Film Distillation System to the market. Precision Extraction Solutions just launched the PX10 Hydrocarbon Cannabis Extraction Equipment. We will be starting production on the new version 3.7 of our Vertical Farming Units, VFUs, and we have enhanced our rapid deployment program, which I will touch upon little later on in the presentation. Our products continue to have global appeal, even though some of the domestic markets that we serve have temporary soften. We are getting tons of interest in our cultivation and extraction solutions from a wide variety of international customers. And it’s worth noting that we are currently having minimal marketing dollars spent allocated to these global growth initiatives. We have a massive customer database to leverage for some compelling cross selling and upselling opportunities. And lastly, with many companies struggling to succeed in this new macro operating environment, we expect that there will be more consolidation in the industry. We obviously have done M&A in the past as well as post-merger integration, and believe we are uniquely positioned to potentially fortify our business further through additional strategic acquisitions. To combat what we are seeing in the market, we have decided to take a different approach to build our install base and capture market share on the cultivation side. While we continue to believe in the long term version – long term vision of our Agrify total turnkey solution, TTK, deployment of this magnitude become far less practical in environment where access to capital is difficult and expensive. Consequently, we have decided not to pursue any additional TTK opportunities without a pre-committed construction loan partner. This should help us with cash conservation as less capital would be tied up in projects where substantial upfront capital is required plus usually at 15 plus month construction period. Instead we are going to ship our focus to the followings. Number one, finalizing our existing TTK projects. We have two TTK customer sites coming online in Q3 with another one going live in Q1 of 2023. The total number of VFUs in these three facilities will be approximately 800 plus. And we expect SaaS revenue to start in fourth quarter this month – this year, and production success fees to kick in, in Q1 of 2023. Admittedly, we did encounter some unforeseen delays in the late stages of our two projects with construction and permitting issues, but we have learned from that and I’m pleased to report that we have overcome most of these major hurdles. We believe these three imminent TTK engagements with customers in Nevada, Washington, and Massachusetts will serve as an excellent proof-of-concept for the underlying business model and the attractive returns of our TTK program. Ultimately, we are confident that this will help attract third-party financing partners for other TTK projects in the future. Second, given this new operating environments in which capital has become increasingly difficult to access. We will be focusing the majority of our new business development efforts on further activating and accelerating our rapid deployment program, officially launch in the spring of this year. We have, since we find and enhanced our rapid deployment program, RDP based on customer feedback. The RDPs are designed to offer our customer based in class – best-in-class plus and play cultivation extraction capability with an accelerated path to profitability. RDP program features eight vertical farming units with an option for a small extraction laboratory add-on, or in a package, pre-package self-contained, and quick to deploy formats. Simply put the RDP [ph] program were allow us to show up at our customers’ facility with two trucks, and get them up and running in less than 30 days. The only requirement would be power, water and existing or modular clean room. This program lowers the entry barriers and upfront investment for organizations, entrepreneurs who want to experience the many benefits of our complete solution with urgency, and allows our customers to get to cash flow much sooner. The modular nature of our VFUs when is self to frictionless expansion opportunities. In the current environment where capital is limited, this solution offers the quickest way to accelerate widespread adoption of our VFUs, our VFU a Agrify Insight software, as well as our extraction solutions. We understand and recognize changing industry dynamics and have pivoted our approach. Lower the entry barrier, built install base, and create a quicker path to high margin recurring SaaS consumable and production revenues. We plan to roll out the software into a limited set of customers in Q3 and Q4 and will officially showcase RPD offering at the MJBizCon later this year; we intend to start taking orders for a greater volume of RPD starting in Q1 to 2023. Three, pursue more global opportunities. Within the last few months, we have received VFU orders from two international markets, Portugal and New Zealand. As cannabis liberalization and legalization movements continued gain momentum globally, we intend to achieve even more strategic growth abroad in the future. In looking specifically at countries in European Union quality control is absolutely imperative because EU GMP standards are very high. And EU GMP certification is a top priority for medical cannabis producers. Agrify Solution fills this need for quality control to a level of precision that is unparalleled. Our VFUs and Agrify Insight software provides clearly defined processes with controls and accountability at every step, which enables consistency far beyond that of other modern cannabis cultivation methodologies. Additionally, any producers with export and import licenses in a EU can sell to any other EU country making cross border commerce fluid and given producers the wrong way to scale quickly. As a result, we are very confident that our offering will become highly attractive throughout the European markets, which is expected to eventually become one of the world’s largest markets for legal cannabis. As for extraction, our leading extraction brands continue to innovate. In June, Lab Society introduced the CannaBeast 13 to the market, this cutting-edge short path, thin film distillation system offers cannabis operator unprecedented that flexibility, ease of use dependability, consistency, and quality when extracting cannabis oil. Earlier this month, our precision solution launched the new PX10 Hydrocarbon Cannabis Extraction Equipment, which offers two times the capacity and twice the output of its predecessor at the PX5. By bringing four of the top extraction companies into our broader organization, we now offer the most comprehensive set of extraction solutions on the market and our portfolio of innovative products and seeing the growth. In recent months, we have also integrated all of our individual extraction sales team into a single entity, and we have aggregated their individual sales database to form a centralized database that can be leveraged for a variety of interesting cost selling and upselling opportunities. We believe there are synergies that we are just starting to tap into, and we believe this will pay off eventually with more dividends in the future. Our notable MSO wins in the extraction site in second quarter, includes a $1.3 million from Trulieve an $800,000 order from Verano. The ultimate validation for the broader vision of our combined entity is encapsulated in our recent agreement with New Zealand based Ora Pharm, which we announced at the end of June. Ora Pharm, which is the licensed cultivator and distributor of medical cannabis committed to purchase 20 VFUs that will be used to grow cannabis as well as several cutting-edge extraction technologies include our C1D1 Extraction Pod, a C-15 Centrifuge Extraction System, and the CannaBeast 13 Thin Film Distillation System. We expect to form many more partnerships in the future, both domestically and globally, where we provide our customer with a complete package of cultivation and extraction solutions. Given the industry downside, we’ve also implemented a series of cost reduction and cost efficiency measures in order to preserve our cash, during this challenging times. For example, we reduce our head counts by 7.5%, which is – should result in millions of dollars of annualized cost savings, we have brought a marketing activities in-house and have decreased our marketing expense substantially, our marketing team has proven track record and Agrify of being able to drive impact while operating in a very clean manner. We have consolidated many of our facilities into fewer locations in order to streamline operations. For example, we consolidated in five locations in Georgia into one building and in Colorado, we grew all our Portland location and four Lab Society location into one Denver complex. We will be repatriating our production for our contract manufacturer back to all facility in Georgia during fourth quarter, as we attempt to materially reduce the cost of VFUs and improved capacity. We’re actively managing our supply chain and inventory needs to be closely aligned with our near-term revenue expectations. And lastly, we are no longer offering customer sales and credit, which will ensure we will receive a higher portion of revenue upfront. Despite the tough macro environment, I want to assure you that the underlying health of our company is strong, and we’ve been remain undeterred in our quest to be hugely successful over the long run. In summary, the ability to respond strictly to challenges remain nimble in a dynamic operating environment is at the core of who we are at Agrify. We believe we have responsibly adapted to the headwinds that we are currently facing, that we have instituted appropriate measures to confront these obstacles head on. Now, I’d like to turn this call over to Tim to talk about the financial results for the second quarter.