Yoav Zeif
Analyst · Cross Research. Please proceed with your question
Thank you, Yonah. Good morning, everyone. And thank you for joining today's call. As I mentioned last quarter, my first months as CEO have been spent carefully reviewing all aspects of our business in order to improve the corporate strategy. The COVID slowdown has on the one hand created a short-term challenge for the business and we will discuss the measures we have taken to address that. On the other end, it has created more opportunity to focus on this critical exercise to better understand our key growth levers and strengthen the foundation that will help position us for long-term profitable growth. The largest opportunity for us in 3D printing is in Polymers, and the fastest-growing area is manufacturing. We are already a leader in this market and expect to increase our presence through new offerings that will focus on delivering incremental customer value to this sector. I will first go over the current state of the business, and then share details regarding our new strategy. Our second quarter results reflect the impact of a full quarter of COVID-19, with revenues challenged by a weak macro environment, and a pause in capital investments worldwide. Cost-mitigation has been a universal business priority, which naturally impacts the purchasing activity of our customers. In addition, printer utilization, and therefore material usage, was low as many users across our install base were not working on site. We also continued to implement measures to manage costs. Most of our employees worked from home this quarter and we applied a 4-day workweek across the company. On top of that, our executive team took an additional 5% salary reduction; this will last through the end of the year. In early June, we announced a reduction in force of approximately 10%. As a reminder, this resizing was already a planned part of our new operating model, designed to reduce operating expenses as part of the cost realignment program to focus on profitable growth. The implementation was accelerated due to the COVID situation. On the last call we highlighted some of the many COVID-related initiatives where Stratasys led our industry in helping the global medical community address the various equipment shortages they experienced. These activities continued throughout the second quarter and many are ongoing. We are very proud of the positive impact Stratasys has had in helping address the medical supply chain crunch that happened due to COVID, and we see this as an opportunity to educate the market on the benefits and value proposition of our technologies. Despite the slowdown, due to the COVID, we remain very optimistic about where our business and our industry is headed. Our engagement level with our customers remains high and the demand for additive manufacturing solutions continues to grow. 3D Printing is penetrating further into manufacturing across every relevant business sector. In fact, as we stated last quarter, we're seeing businesses and governments reassessing their supply chain and implementing decisions that will drive increased demand for 3D Printing as a strategic imperative, leading to additional business opportunities for Stratasys. Localization and the need for increased self-sufficiency are both on the rise, among the many benefits that are creating a greater need for manufacturers to seek 3D Printing solutions. An April study by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers of 700 U.S. manufacturing professionals found that 25% of them were planning to change their supply chains in response to the pandemic. 3D Printing ranked number one, along with Robotics as their top choice for post-COVID investment out of 11 technologies, ahead of such innovations as 5G, artificial intelligence, and digital security. The companies surveyed ranged across industries, including Aerospace, Automotive, Consumer Product, Defense, Industrial Machinery, Dental, Medical, and Education. Here is further evidence of growing interest. In May, a new bill was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives called the Advancing 3D Printing Act. The proposed legislation would require the Consumer Product Safety Commission to undertake a study to assess the state of the 3D printing industry. It would include evaluating solutions to secure the supply chain and the appropriate federal role to increase and facilitate 3D Printing manufacturing and innovation. To quote Congressman Michael Burgess of Texas, "3D printing may account for up to 10% of U.S. manufacturing in the future." We believe in this visionary statement, and Stratasys has been actively engaged in Washington to help make it happen. We held meetings with bi-partisan members from relevant committees of the House and Senate in late June. We will continue working with legislators to help educate and guide them as they learn more about implementing the many benefits of additive manufacturing. And key customers of ours are seeing these benefits with Stratasys every day, as illustrated by the recent announcements we've made with BAE Systems, a leader in the Aerospace and Defense industry, and General Motors in Automotive. BAE continues to add to its portfolio of F900 printers, making Stratasys an integral part of their "Factory of the Future" initiative. And late last year, GM added 17 production-grade FDM systems to its Stratasys portfolio as the company expanded its additive efforts from prototyping to the production of tooling, such as jigs and fixtures, to be used on the factory floor. The additional Stratasys printers were placed in a new, multi-million-dollar Additive Innovation Lab in Michigan. In March, GM was contracted by the U.S. government to help produce 30,000 ventilators by August to help support COVID-related needs. All of the 3D-printed tooling for this project was manufactured on Stratasys systems. I am also very proud of our team that despite the challenges of COVID we were able to begin the commercial production of our new PolyJet J55 in the second quarter, which began shipping in late June. The J55 is an exciting and highly innovative printer for the Design community that brings most of the features of our premium PolyJet technology into an office-friendly system featuring a unique, patented turntable format. Market response so far has been solid. With $313 million in cash, cash equivalents and short-term deposits, and no debt, our company is healthy and able to take advantage of opportunities in the market. Even with the revenue challenges this year, we have been able to manage our strong cash position, demonstrating the resiliency of our business model. Now let’s talk about our strategy going forward. When I started as CEO in February my mandate was clear, to reverse the declining top-line and position Stratasys to return to growth as the additive manufacturing leader. We embarked on a deep internal and external evaluation to develop a clear strategic direction that we have already started to implement, to better position us for long term growth. We formed an analysis team representing every aspect of our company, and we undertook a thorough diagnostic and strategic assessment of both our business and the market. The objective of the strategic review was to determine the actions necessary to leverage our core competencies and double the size of our business, while strengthening our leadership position and becoming the industry's first choice across a broader range of solutions. I am excited about the results of our analysis. The market overall is growing and is expected to grow further, dominated by Polymers, the largest value pool. This is consistent with what we're hearing from our customers, as there is greater interest in using 3D Printing to help them be more responsive in an increasingly uncertain world, from bringing new innovations to market faster, to creating more adaptive manufacturing lines and supply chains. Specifically, in Polymers, our area of expertise, we see significant opportunity to deliver incremental customer value, especially in the fast-growing manufacturing applications where we see the longest runway for growth through new technologies that we will offer. We will pursue the right technologies to supplement our portfolio that will help us to address these applications and achieve our goal. It is also clear to us that the competitive landscape and market offerings are fragmented. There is no silver bullet additive manufacturing technology, material or application, and no clear leader across all major segments of our industry. Market leadership will be achieved by the company with the most comprehensive solution set, with the widest scope of technologies to address multiple, attractive, growing segments, supported by industry-leading go-to-market and a global service infrastructure. We believe that Stratasys is that company and can be the first choice for Polymer applications across the industry. We also believe that we have a most trusted reputation for high quality, reliability, and service, which serves as a vehicle to support our customers and help capture the growth. So, let me share the framework and key concepts that will drive our strategy going forward to expand the range of our technology portfolio to include the faster-growing solutions that will help us achieve our objective. Stratasys today leads the industry with the largest share in material extrusion and material jetting, through our FDM and PolyJet technologies. However, these two technologies currently address only about one-third of the total additive manufacturing hardware opportunity. Further, their growth rates have slowed in comparison to the growth rates of other technologies that suit the needs of faster-growing applications, especially in production. We have already started the journey into true manufacturing, evidenced by our experience in our existing high-end FDM applications, including end-use-parts, and our leadership position in the high-standard Aerospace sector. For example, there are over 100,000 Polymer parts flying today that have been printed on Stratasys systems. And as we are witnessing continued expansion in manufacturing applications, there is still plenty of growth opportunity in prototyping as well. Therefore, to help us win in these faster-growing areas, we will invest, organically and inorganically, in new Polymer technologies such as powder-bed fusion, VAT Photopolymerization and others, which will help us generate more opportunities with new offerings to better meet the market demand. As an example, we have a joint venture with Xaar called Xaar 3D, co-developing a powder-bed fusion production-grade system. These expansions will help us address additional manufacturing-focused customer applications, while leveraging our extensive infrastructure and core competencies of the strongest go-to-market vertical industry knowledge and experience, the largest install base, the best reseller channels, and the deepest Polymer additive manufacturing know-how. We have the proven experience to grow with our customers throughout the adoption lifecycle of their journey in Polymers. We believe that leveraging these core competencies across all of the technologies that will be in our portfolio will convert the addressable opportunities into increased revenue and profitability, and introducing the technologies to open up more applications can better serve both our current and potential new customers, grow the overall opportunity and more than double our addressable market. In addition, there will be operational model changes to ensure the success of our strategy. Those changes are still in-process, so I will share more details on the new operating model at a later date. I will now turn the call over to Lilach who will share the financial results of the quarter. Lilach?