Steve Rizzone
Analyst · Roth Capital. Please go ahead
Thank you, Laurie. I would like to welcome everyone to the Energous first quarter 2017 conference call and update. Joining me today is Brian Sereda, our Chief Financial Officer. I will start with some remarks regarding the company’s operational progress since our last call. Brian will then review the financial results for the first quarter of 2017. I will then close with some final comments before opening the session for questions. Regarding the operational status and progress of the company it is first important to note that the Energous WattUp technology is ready for commercial deployment. Beyond additional engineering required to meet changes in specifications for some of our early adopter customers, the WattUp technology development is complete. Specifically, development of our core WattUp silicon chips is complete. Manufacturing qualification of both the transmitter and receiver chips is complete for near field and progressing from mid-field and farfield. The qualification of the DA 4100 chip will be completed in time to ship to customers on schedule. Transfer of the fabrication and supply chain processes to Dialog is complete and the system is now in place to take orders and ship significant quantities of chipsets. Wafer inventories are available from the foundry to fulfill orders with 35 days to 45 days from receipt. Development of the enabling software comment to both near field and mid-field applications is complete. Development of the initial and mid-field hardware reference designs is complete. The core mid-field and near field antenna designs are complete, however, as noted above, some developments remain to modify antenna designs to meet changes in specifications for some of our early adopter customers in the final stage of design and integration. While a factor in the release schedules of these products the designs are near completion. Regulatory certification for near field applications is complete. Regulatory approval for midfield power-at-a-distance is in the advanced stages. I also want to again emphasize that the silicon chipsets and the bulk of the supporting technology is common between all three planned transmitter releases, near field, mid-field, and farfield. Therefore we feel comfortable confirming the following schedules set forth in our last investor conference call. We expect to receive our first orders for significant quantities of WattUp chipsets before the end of the current quarter. The resulting shipment of initial chipset orders will be through dialogue and will begin in early Q3. Actual mass production of WattUp enabled consumer products by customers will begin in Q3. Our customers will begin FCC certification processes for the first WattUp enabled near field and mid-field consumer products to coincide with the first customer shipments scheduled for the latter part of this year with increasing momentum going into 2018. To meet these as well as other expectations, we have aligned and focused the company along three parallel tracks. The first management track is the integration of the WattUp near field and mid-field technology into near term 2017 revenue opportunities and longer term higher volume 2018 revenue opportunity. Until we are in a position to report revenues for the sale of chipsets, which we believe is very close, the key indicator of progress towards our revenue goals is our customer funnel. Last quarter, we reported that we were focused on 59 total opportunities. That number has now increased to 68. 41 of these perspective customers are in the opportunity phase. 27 are near field customers and 14 are mid-field farfield customers. This category has increased from 37 to 41 since the last quarter update. The design in phase, we now have 18 opportunities 11 of which are near field and seven are mid-field farfield. This phase is up from 15, last quarter to 18, this quarter. Finally in the critical design wins phase we have nine opportunities, seven of which are near field and two are mid-field farfield. This is up from 7, last quarter. In the next few months it is our expectation that at least four or five opportunities in the design win phase will progress to the final mass production phase. Beyond the 68 opportunities in active status meaning an applications engineer has been assigned to the opportunity and both Energous and the prospective customer are focusing resources on WattUp integration there are numerous additional opportunities that we are evaluating for potential integration into our Q as we move accounts through the process and expand the number of accounts we can support with the increased application engineering resources. The weighting Q is reflective of the strong interest in WattUp technology, as well as a lack of a viable alternative technology with equivalent potential in the market. Given the continuing progress with the customer funnel, we are confident we are on solid ground to our first revenues from the sale of chipsets this year. We also anticipate the company will post a significant improvement in engineering services revenue over last year as several revenue milestones rolled over in 2017. As we enter the final stages of commercialization leading to the part of self-sustaining revenue, there are three important takeaways from our progress to date. First, all of the integration of designs, intellectual property, and trade secrets developed in conjunction with our initial customers become part of our IP library. These designs can then be repurposed for subsequent customer opportunities thereby reducing the time and efforts to bring follow-on customers to the point of mass production. Second, based on the current competitive landscape as we see it today, we believe given all of the complexities we have encountered and overcome which any company looking to penetrate this market must go through, our first to market advantage is very significant, perhaps even greater than we originally thought. There are just no shortcuts to the steps that must be taken to bring a scalable power technology to market and to be in the position Energous is today. Certainly requires lots of time and money, but even more important since we are progressing down a path never taken before it requires an incredibly talented and experienced engineering team with diverse specialty skills, accomplishing groundbreaking innovation. The breakthrough is in efficiency, silicon development, cost, footprint, position and rotational independence, scalable architecture, and long-term road path our team has developed in less than four years provides Energous with a game changing platform that is positioned to continually advance the technology, and drive the company forward on a long-term strategic basis. We do believe that Energous is in an excellent position to maintain leadership in any and all markets we target. Third, along the path to mass production many elements of the latest integration iterations have been incorporated into new patent applications, expanding our already robust IP portfolio. Energous now has over 250 patent applications with 26 patterns awarded and 18 allowed bringing the total patent count to 44. Combine that with our continually expanding IP portfolio with trade secrets developed in conjunction with the technology integration process and Energous first to market advantages, we believe we have built significant barriers to competition. Finally, on the topic of WattUp integration and customer opportunities, in the last several weeks we have doubled the size of our customer facing business development and application engineering organization. The refocusing of this resource from core development to customer facing is consistent with the shift in company focus on should allow us to drive more customers through the various stages faster and more efficiently as evidenced by the increased size of the customer funnel reported earlier. Moving on to our second management track, which is regulatory and the certification of the first power at a distance transmitter, as well as global expansion of both our new outfield and midfield regulatory certification efforts. The update on this management track is very positive as we are confident that we have a thorough understanding of the type and scope of testing necessary to complete the first power at a distance certification process. Given this understanding, we retain the services of a TCB or Telecommunication Certification Body and have begun the formal testing process leading to certification. We expect to successfully complete the testing within the next few days. It is impossible to predict how long the review of the results may take and what if any additional test the FCC may require, but we remain confident that we will receive formal certification of the first power at a distance transmitter well before our current forecast for WattUp-enabled mid-field transmitters reaching the consumer before the end of this year. While on the subject of regulatory, we recently announced FCC certification of our second generation advanced near field transmitter. This is a major milestone for the company based on a number of significant engineering accomplishments. The advanced near field transmitter referred to as the NF 130 integrates the DA 4100 chip, which reduces the bill of materials thereby expanding the WattUp in the box charging solution opportunities for lower-cost smaller form factor receiving devices. This is a key area of development for Energous as footprint and cost, as well as position and rotational independence are the prime competitive advantages compared to traditional inductive contact-based solutions. The result of this effort is even more competitive near field transmitter for small form factor in IOT devices. The new transmitter also utilizes groundbreaking designs which advance the efficiency of these devices, increasing receive power, while reducing the heat enabling smaller, more powerful transmitters. The third management track is focused on continued progress with our key strategic partner. As we have said in the past, there is no guarantee that the WattUp technology will be integrated in any of our key strategic partner's consumer products. However, we can report that our relationship with our key strategic partners continues to advance to fully honor our confidentiality agreement. We will no longer report on milestone progress or engineering services revenue other than to say that the relationship is continuing and what may be reported in our income statement and balance sheet. We appreciate that our investors would like more specifics, but we are not able to provide any additional details regarding this relationship. Let me go off script here for just a minute and say, we are obligated legally and morally to tell our investors if the relationship is terminated or if the relationship has run into problems of any sort. We are not communicating that, we are simply just not able to talk about this relationship in any details or any of our strategic relationships for that matter. And going forward that’s the policy that we will have to follow. Overall, our progress continues at a very rapid pace and remains on schedule. The advancement of the WattUp technology and the resulting IP generated in conjunction with this effort has significantly raised the bar from a competitive perspective. Also it is important to keep in mind that while new outfield represent is a Greenfield opportunity in certain small form factor and IOT markets based on the competitive advantages we have in footprint, cost, and position independence against legacy technologies like inductive, our primary focus and the true differentiator is the ability of RF based WattUp technology to scale across multiple industry verticals, ultimately delivering power at a distance in our fully compatible ecosystem. We are aggressively working towards our forecasts and schedules and have confidence that they are achievable, which will result in significant orders for chipsets in Q2, chipsets shipping to customers from mass production in Q3, the first WattUp enabled near field and mid-field consumer products reaching the markets the latter part of this year. Given the continued advancements of the WattUp technology and the expansion of our customer base, we also anticipate that our farfield transmitter is will be generally available to the consumer in the latter part of 2018. One final comment before I turn the call over to Brian. We are especially pleased with the progress of a strategic partnership with Dialog Semiconductor. Dialog has proven to be an outstanding partner who has already contributed significantly to Energous’ progress in several key areas, including customer funnel development, market presence, and perception, supply chain advancements, and credibility, and silicon device development. We believe the synergies between the two companies will accelerate diversification and growth for both Dialog and Energous and will enable us to capitalize on the massive and growing markets in wireless power. I will now turn the call over to Brian. Brian?