Welcome to the Energous Corporation’s Fourth Quarter and Year-End 2016 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note that this event is being recorded. I’d now like to turn the conference over to Evan Pondel of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and welcome, everybody. I am Evan Pondel, Investor Relations for Energous. Before we begin, I need to remind everyone that during today’s call the company will be making forward-looking statements. These statements whether in prepared remarks or during the Q&A session are subject to inherent risks and uncertainties, which are detailed in the company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Except as otherwise required by federal securities laws, Energous disclaims any obligation or undertaking to publicly release updates or revisions to forward-looking statements contained herein or elsewhere to reflect changes and expectations with regards to those events, conditions, and circumstances. Also please note that during this call Energous will be discussing non-GAAP financial measures as defined by SEC Regulation G. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in today’s press release, which is posted on the company’s website. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Steve Rizzone, CEO of Energous. Please go ahead, Steve.

Thank you, Evan. Good afternoon. I would like to welcome everyone to the Energous fourth quarter and fiscal 2016 conference call and update. Joining me today is Brian Sereda, our Chief Financial Officer. I will begin the call by reviewing the Company's progress against both the short term quarterly objectives and the annual objectives established at the beginning of last year. Brian will then review the financial results for the fourth quarter and the fiscal year 2016. I will then close with comments on our key goals for 2017, following these comments we will open the session to questions. In Q4 of 2016 and continuing through Q1 of 2017 Energous has been extremely focused on four objectives each of which has a potentially significant impact on our company specifically finalizing product design and release schedules with our initial customers in order to generate volume shipments leading to revenues for the company. Second, continued progress with our Tier 1 strategic partner as evidenced by milestone accomplishments and engineering services revenues. Third, continuing the current momentum with the FCC and advancing the regulatory process and working toward certification of the first power at a distance transmitter and finally enabling Dialog operations to manufacture what WattUp ICs resulting in reduced manufacturing cost and increased supply chain credibility coupled with the integration of the Energous Dialog sales and business development efforts to increase sales momentum and accelerate our sales process. I will address our progress on each of these objectives individually. Beginning in Q4 and continuing today significant focus has been applied to transition the company from WattUp technology development to integrating the technology into consumer devices to drive silicon based revenues. As noted in previous calls and announced at CES we have a number of customers who are in various stages of adoption.…

Thanks Steve. Before I get started, as you saw at the close of the market today, we issued a press release announcing our operating and financial results for our fiscal fourth quarter and fiscal year ended December 31, 2016. Although we're well underway with our strategic alliance agreements signed with Dialog Semiconductor in November of last year it did not have a material impact on our chip development initiatives and customer activities in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2016 given the timing of the deal signing. For the year we recognized 1.5 million in revenues primarily from achieving milestone deliverables for our strategic customer. Revenues for the year also included small amounts of engineering services revenue from one other customer currently engaged with us on a far afield application. On a full year basis our GAAP operating expenses grew at $47.3 million dollars compared with 30.1 million in 2015. Research and development cost represented almost 70% of total operating expenses of 32.8 million in 2016 compared with 18,8 million spent in 2015. Chip development activity continued throughout 2016 with two new chips completed earlier in the year and included work on next generation devices and completion of the development work on our 4100 chip in the fourth quarter that Steve spoke about. Sales and marketing was essentially flat year over year at 3.2 million while G&A on a full year basis increased to 11.2 million compared with 8 million in 2015. Stock compensation and other non-cash charges represent over 20% or approximately 10.5 million over total GAAP operating expenses compared with 6.8 million in 2015. During the year we added 20 heads bringing our headcount to 70 at the end of 2016 as we hired critical talent primarily in the areas of core engineering and sales and application engineering.…

Thank you, Brian. Before turning the call over to the operator for questions I would like to review the objectives the Energous Board of Directors and Executive Management team have set for 2017. Fundamentally this year the primary topics of subsequently recalls will shift towards revenue and EBITDA as we complete the transition from a development and commercialisation company to a fabless semiconductor company. For 2017 our first priority is to ship fully commercialize WattUp up chipsets through Dialog to customers beginning in the second quarter of this year resulting in WattUp enabled products reaching the consumer in Q3 from one or more licensees. Our second goal for 2017 is to build the scale and predictability of our business model implemented together with our partner Dialog to achieve revenue levels that translate into cash flows that cover our operating expenses. Goal number three is to successfully complete FCC certification of the WattUp mid-sized transmitter laying the groundwork for our Q4 four objective of shifting a WattUp enabled mid-sized transmitter before the end of the year. Goal number five is to continue to expand our customer base focusing on the top two or three market leaders in eight vertical markets we have identified as having the highest potential growth possibilities coupled with the requirement that they be outside our first to market commitments to our key strategic partner which leads us to our six goal to continue to advance the relationship with our key strategic partner and finally our seventh goal is to maintain strong fiscal controls while continuing to expand our silicon roadmap and device library portfolio as we shift our focus from an engineering driven company to a sales driven company. While challenging we believe the objectives we have laid out for 2017 are achievable and we will exit…

[Operator Instructions]. The first question is from William Gibson a Roth Capital Partners.

Yes I'd like to dig a little into the FCC approval process if you get approval relatively near term would there be an announcement or does that wait for products to come on the market?

I think that decision has yet to be made. We understand that it's certainly a watershed event and very, very significant, at the same time there is no obligation on our part to make an announcement and we may make a decision to interact with our customers first before making any public announcement, We'll have to see how that plays out but again we're very, very close and we believe that the path to the FCC certification is very clear for us.

And then a follow up on the R&D spend, so it sounds like that moves up a little bit in the first quarter, does it start declining after that or what's the set up there?

So I think that we're reaching critical mass in our R&D, first certainly in our hiring and also in the pace of our silicon development. We do anticipate making some increase in expenses and heads in critical areas in development but I think our focus is now shifting to marketing and customer facing resources like application engineering. Brian do you want to comment further on that?

I think Bill if your question is how our expenses trend in 2017, these peaks in Q4 primarily because of the wrap up of 4100 tape out costs which are born in the quarter that we incurred them. I think well there's an opportunity for expenses trend down slightly in the first couple of quarters of this year as Steve mentioned we use this term critical mass, we've built out most of our engineering teams, there's a couple of areas of specialty that will continue to pursue heads but we're talking a handful of heads. We don't have to add significant expenses to build out a global sales force, the operations required to offer that supply chain to customers is going to be primarily borne by Dialog. So I'm hoping that we've sort of kept out our infrastructure build you could say in order to approach the opportunity that we have in front of us in 2017. So I'm expecting overall flattish expenses for the year, we will see peaks and valleys as we go through the year depending on chip development cycles and the only caveat I'll give you is that if there is a requirement that we go in a different direction with regards to our science that may require additional spending in some areas of engineering. So with that I think right now our view is that there's an opportunity to reduce expenses slightly in the quarter to quarter and depending on how the customer requirements pan out during the year and any other developments on the engineering side would determine where we spend the money.

I think it's also -- I'd also like to reemphasize the point, Bill that this is a lean model given the magnitude of the opportunity and the verticals that we're pursuing, the number of customers that we have in queue, the number of potential devices associated with each application and the ASP associated with our chipset it doesn't take a large number of customer wins to push us over the mark to where we're generating cash flow that covers our operational expenses and so again I think that this is the year where we transition that and we look to see real breakout next year along those lines.

The next question is from Lou Basenese at Disruptive Tech Research.

Just a couple of clarifying questions. On the unit economics you mentioned single digit dollars per unit, is that for each side for the receiver and then the transmit side separately or is that combined?

To combine for the chipset.

Okay. And is there variability depending on that vertical that you're going into or is that pretty much set across the board?

There's some level of variability especially as it relates to our extremely small footprint devices like hearing aids. So there is some variability but that is an overall average.

Okay. And then on the pipeline, you mentioned I think six or seven design wins that were in that last phase, does that include any design wins or will you include design wins in those counts from the strategic Tier 1 partner?

There are no design wins from the strategic partner that are considered. We don't comment or as you know we don't comment or characterize our strategic partner in any of these discussions and so you know their particular status would not be included one way or the other in any of these categories.

So it wouldn't be in there and I guess if you can I know you're limited but on the last call we had talked about the milestone payments slipping from Q4 to Q1 because of the tape outs and then it sounded like you mentioned there was three separate milestones in this in Q1 and then in a couple days several others can we expect the level of milestone payments to be similar to what we've seen here or any color in that regard?

Well I think we forecasted that about 500,000 for the quarter in milestone payments and I think that's probably about as far as we're prepared to go until we see the next set of deliverables or what comes back from our partner based on the milestones that were submitted the beginning of January.

And then just last question and more along the lines of just the evolution of the product and the amount of R&D spending that's gone into it already. From your perspective is the technology risk distinguished largely for the New Year in mid-field, is it really just the far field that requires some additional investment.

Well first of all I think it's important to note that the architecture that our Founder Michael Leabman established is common to all three product lines the near field, the midfield and the far field and so it's basically the same architecture. It involves the more distance and the more power you look to send over distance, the greater number or combination of chips and so from that perspective I think the silicon situation is well in hand. Certainly there is a continuing evolution in terms of the actual implementation of the products. As an example antennas are an absolutely key element in all three product lines, near field, midfield and far field and so we see that that at least at the beginning everyone almost every one of our reference designs involve some element of customization on the antenna level so on and so forth. So I think the best way to answer that is we believe that the core technology is solid that it's very, very scalable but there will be continuing development as we progress through both the verticals and through the three product lines.

The next question is from Ilya Grozovsky, National Securities.

I just wanted to clarify, so given the layout that you kind of put up there for 2017, are you -- is it clear that other than milestone payments the potential milestone payments in the June quarter you don't anticipate any revenues beyond that?

No. We believe that we will have revenues from silicon in the latter part of this year. We are not prepared to forecast that now because a big part of this is how this all plays out with Dialog and the delay between shipments and collections on our part as I mentioned earlier all shipments will go through Dialog they will collect invoice and collect from the customer and then we will collect from Dialog in the quarter following shipments and so there's the element of revenue recognition and cash receipts that I think we've still got to get a feel for as well as you know our better understanding of how quickly the full chip set which includes the 4100 will be available for shipment to our initial customers and how quickly they can turn the chipset into production. Again a long answer but clearly we expect a combination this year of revenues from engineering services as well as a ramp up of revenues from silicon based customers.

No but I was asking specifically on the June quarter not on 2017 overall.

As we've talked we expect to ship late in the second quarter, if we ship in the quarter we will recognize as it stands today as much as we know about how the chips will be delivered to customers and through Dialog. We will recognize revenues in the quarter of shipment and collect in the following quarter.

The next question is from Jon Hickman at Ladenburg.

Just one quick question, can you tell me what the lead time is on the manufacturing of a chip set?

The lead times I think are dependent upon obviously the calendar cycles of the fabs but we don't anticipate lead times being an issue once designs have been finalized and the final [indiscernible] have been built for each customer. So lead times are not an issue Jon.

Manufacturing cycle then?

Well its number of layers and it typically takes three to four weeks to complete a full a full cycle keeping in mind though that our partner is Dialog who has wafers on order on a continuing basis and so in terms of lead times, our lead times would be much different going through the Dialog cycle than going through our own cycle because they have wafers that are already procured in cycle and it's simply a matter of a transmitting or transferring the required allocating wafers for our chipsets at any given time. So again we work with Dialog, we're putting in place a forecasting system. The good news is Dialog is tied at the hip with us in terms of our sales process so they know what is coming down the pike and we don't anticipate the lead times to be any kind of a hurdle for us in terms of delivery of silicon to our customers.

[Operator Instructions]. The next question is from Jim Schneider from Schneider Capital Management [ph].

I had a question in terms of business development I know that you know there's a profit in terms of integrating some of these new opportunities out there with your engineering resources. Can you tell us how quickly you can begin to service some of these new potential customers and also how will Dialog help in terms of integrating some of these new potential customers and their actual products.

Well I think the time frames vary based on the complexity of the application and also the product involved. The more distance the more complex and so it's quicker and easier and faster to integrate with the near field opportunity than it is a mid-field and farfield opportunity. Again I can't give you a specific time frame as it relates to that. Dialog is our I guess you would consider our sales lead, we're leveraging off the Dialog sales force but all of the technical elements, all of the application engineering resource and working with the specific customer to develop prototypical devices first designs is done by our application engineering team.

The next question is from Brett Conrad at Longboard Capital.

I've question on the vertical markets, can you guys give us some more color on those just terms of what are the best ones, what are you expecting percentage say this year and if you could even next year but let's say it may be easiest for this year to look at what vertical markets you're focused on and what percentage of sales would be going into those vertical markets?

I think on a broad basis we have said that wearables, hearables, hearing aid devices, small form factor IoT devices are the primary focus. Again we are looking to aggressively pursue markets, we're basically we have a green field and so that would be markets that require a very small footprint that are very, very price sensitive that are where rotational position is important and because of that the competitive solutions that are on the market today really can't participate. So I mean those are the kinds of verticals that we are aggressively pursuing. I don't think I want to get into too much detail other than [indiscernible] but as I said suffice to say those at the high level of the kinds of markets we're pursuing.

And just a question on the Tier 1, is there a sunset clause in there you know in terms of when actual you know products got to be activated using the technology so you couldn't get dragged out for several years for instance on continuing doing engineering but nothing was really happening on the sales then.

We can't comment at all on the specific terms of our agreement with our Tier 1 partner other than to say we believe it's a very fair and equitable agreement and we're very fortunate to have it.

And just further question on branding now that you're rolling this out consumers are going to be seeing this around -- is there a set of brand guidelines you've given and I guess through Dialog into the customers hands so consumers can start to -- you can develop a brand out in the marketplace for the WattUp eco-system.

I think is we made it clear that from a branding perspective the chipset is going to be Dialog, I think over time as the WattUp technology gains in acceptance and starts to expand that there will be opportunities for us to begin to establish our brand I don't see that happening initially. There are very, very tight proprietary agreements in place with virtually every one of our early customers simply because of their own respective competitive situations but I think that will ease up over time as the technology gains traction and more and more customers and consumer devices are enabled with the technology.

So interoperability isn't a big deal then you're saying this year kind of in the near term but you know it will become a bigger deal later which that means the branding is more important to me at least--

I'm not sure what you mean about interoperability as it relates to this. One thing is clear is that at the core of our ecosystem build out is the fact that everything that is WattUp enabled is intraoperative, we have clauses in all of our agreements that require certification through the air fuel alliance that ensures that that all WattUp enabled transmitters are compatible with all WattUp enabled receivers and so from an interoperability perspective that is an inherent trait or characteristics of our ecosystem build out strategy. So I'm not sure what you're talking about in terms of interoperability you did, maybe you can clarify that further?

Sure. Just so the customers actually know that there's interoperability realizing that the technology allows it but customers go to know hey, this is all going to work together with other transmitters and products out there that from other vendors they buy from one vendor and then they know it works with other products same with using the same technology.

That’s a great comment and question, yes. Initially I think there will be a little of that but I think that as I said as this technology gains traction there is significant advantage and a big one of the big draws from our customers is the fact that there are very, very specific requirements in some of the competitive arenas you can have enabled device and even if it's the same technology it is not compatible that is absolutely not the case with Energous, all Energous devices will be compatible and I think over time the customers will become aware of this but certainly this is a big factor for our customers because they see how important that is to both to their benefit and to the benefit of the ecosystem build out.

At this time this concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Steve Rizzone for closing remarks.

I would like to thank everyone for attending our Q4 call and a reminder that we will be presenting next week at the Roth Conference in Laguna Beach. So thank you again and good afternoon.

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.