Good day, welcome to the Remark Holdings Fiscal Second Quarter 2023 financial results earnings call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. If you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note that this event is being recorded. I'd like to turn the call over to Ms. Fay Tian, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Nick. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Remark Holdings second quarter fiscal 2023 financial results conference call. I am Fay Tian, Vice President of Investor Relations for Remark. On the call with me this afternoon is Kai-Shing Tao, Remark's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Mr. Todd Brown, Vice President of Finance. In just a moment, Mr. Tao will provide an update on our businesses, and Mr. Brown will recap our second quarter 2023 fiscal results. Following these remarks, we will open the call to questions. Before I turn the call over to Mr. Tao, I would like to take this opportunity to remind you that some of the statements made today may be forward-looking statements. These statements involve risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements.
Any forward-looking statements reflect Remark Holdings' current views, and Remark Holdings expressly disclaims any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements after this date hereof. This disclaimer is only a summary of Remark Holdings' statutory forward-looking statements, statements disclaimer, which is included in full in its filings with the SEC. I will now turn the call over to Remark's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Tao, so he can provide additional information on Remark's businesses and recent developments. Please go ahead, Shing.
Thank you for taking the time to listen to our Q2 update, and we're excited to share what lies ahead of us. First, a recap of Q2, which was revenue that was strongly driven by our business in China, despite the current economic and political headwinds that China is facing. First, the construction sector. In Q2 2023, we've completed 25 Remark AI construction product deployments, which contributed over $2 million. The deployments are for Smart Construction platform, which includes worker check-in and check-out, worker PPE monitoring, worker safety enforcement, hazard zone intrusion prevention, fire and smoke alerts, environmental protection monitoring. We continue to develop construction SOP and autonomous operation-related AI algorithms and applications, which will include autonomous crane operation system and autonomous cement mixing system. 2, school sector. In Q2 2023, we continue our Remark AI school product development and deployment.
We've added 43 schools in our customer base in Q2, which makes our AI school products to serve over 700 schools and 1.5 million students. Our school safety, food safety, and AI energy controlling system, along with new products released in Q2, which include eye protection and restroom environment monitoring system, are making us a unique AI product provider in the school education market. We are now expanding our footprint into two new provinces in China and into the city of Chongqing, which is one of the four principal municipalities of China. To date, our systems cover less than 1% of the total of 400,000 campuses in China. 3. Smart Community. We completed the entire deployment of our Smart Community projects. Over 1,800 communities deployed, in which we do that in conjunction with China Mobile for phase one.
We are in the process of negotiating additional Smart Community projects, Phase 2, which will cover an additional 3,000 residential communities and over 5 million residents. Phase 2 is expected to start in Q3, Q4 of this year. 4, airline sector. As we mentioned before on our calls, Remark AI has introduced the first AI aviation platform in the industry. We are currently in the final bidding process for 3 of the airline AI projects after delay due to COVID from 2022. The projects include airport safety system, engine inspection system, and airplane collision prevention system. To remind you of the use cases here, typically it takes 1 hour+ for 10 workers to inspect the engine to make sure there are no burns or cracks in the blade.
With our computer vision AI, we are now able to do this inspection in under 10 minutes and with only one inspector. Lastly, in the retail sector, we are currently working with one of the largest ice cream and pizza chains in China and have deployed our AI smart retail products to over 600 stores. The products include staff check-in and check-out and performance analysis, food processing safety, theft prevention, store food material waste management, product presentation and placement, and loss of sales prevention, replenishment management, and etcetera. We are expecting an additional 600 more chain stores to be online by the end of Q1 2024. Going beyond China. During the last two conference calls, we have shared with you the large total addressable markets, otherwise known as TAM, Remark is seeking to capture.
To recap, there are currently approximately 100 million cameras in the U.S. and another 200 million globally, excluding Greater China. Our mission is to utilize our award-winning AI-powered technology to bring intelligence to the 300 million dumb cameras that are in the marketplace outside China, providing detailed analytics such as identity recognition, large density people counting, loitering, object detection, weapons detection through our SSP, otherwise known as our Smart Safety Platform, that is camera and platform agnostic. Modeling a $100 per month analytics fee per video stream, or $1,200 annually, that reflects an annual total addressable market of $3.6 billion in recurring revenue globally, excluding Greater China. With such a large TAM, how are we going to capture this market opportunity?
We have been in discussions actively with sales and marketing partnerships, with technology market share leaders that have wide distribution and a vested interest in participating in the rapid growth and implementation of AI technology. It's not a secret that the competition is very intense for market share out there, and these large companies want to find the best partners to help them rapidly advance their AI business. While Remark AI's platform is broad in its capabilities, what we have uniquely distinguished ourselves is in the specific AI area of computer vision. Our focus is on making industrial applications run more efficiently, as that is a large-scale business that is moving rapidly too, and is what customers are paying for now.
As we deepen our relationship and partnerships, it is very clear that we are one of the leaders in this area, and we are well-positioned to further our lead in this race. We also recently announced our partnership in working with global leaders, with both NVIDIA and Intel. We have optimized our AI computer technology with each respective company's latest chip, which now allows us to jointly market our computer vision technology to their customer bases, utilizing their 5,000-plus sales force, who are trained to help sell our Smart Safety Platform. The collaboration with Intel does not stop within the US, as we are actively partnering to deliver the SSP to their Latin American customers that complement our existing system integrator relationships.
With Intel, we'll be initially working with them in retail and quick service restaurant space, with both understanding how their customers shop and eat on the front end, and then working with their food and customer safety and security on the back end. This is exciting for us as we first worked with Intel a couple of years ago in launching a kitchen safety platform in China, and have now jointly upgraded our offering globally. Each group will be initially focused on different areas. Some may overlap, but in general, it's a divide-and-conquer strategy. Our partnership with NVIDIA, through its Metropolis ecosystem, was recently acknowledged by NVIDIA Program Manager, David Gregory, who recognized our team's successful working relationship in establishing a strong foothold in the smart city space. This includes traffic control and providing meaningful analytics and data insights to cities, stadiums, and major events.
We are now also working with the largest global software company and the largest EV manufacturer in the world to train their product and salespeople on Remark's Smart Safety Platform, and how they can help their end customers enjoy an immediate return on investment by providing real-time analytical data that helps to understand their customer preferences, as well as augmenting their security team's monitoring capabilities with AI tools to prevent disruptive incidents. This operating leverage gained from our partners' existing distribution channels, changes the playing field and allows us to scale quickly. During the quarter, we announced a partnership with one of the best companies in the people counting space called WaitTime. We expect to share sales resources with them, as they have very established sales channels with Cisco and Intel, and have made a strong entry here in the US, selling their people counting products.
Our strategy is to piggyback their sales team and relationships to help expand their offerings to their customers. As you know, once we win this, many similar opportunities will present themselves after we win. As a point of reference, these deals are all 7-figure opportunities with a combination of both hardware and software, which ultimately means high-margin business for Remark AI. To provide another example, previously, we've disclosed our relationship with the Barclays Center, where we are integrating our AI analytics with their existing Genetec video management system to help provide arena security, monitor crowd density, as well as extend coverage for the exterior square attached to the public transit station.
Our software partner has direct relationships with 150 sports teams in the NBA, NFL, NHL, MLB, MLS, as well as over 200 stadiums and arenas, speeding up the sales conversation with decision-makers as we leverage our future placement in their platform marketplace as a preferred supplier, resold directly by their sales force. More importantly, the credibility from this partnership provides an indirect technology stamp of approval for most corporate IT departments, which are already running on their operating systems. Recently, we are in discussions with the world's largest EV manufacturer for them to bring EV transport buses and school buses to Nevada.
Given Remark's extensive expertise in AI-powered video analytics and our proven track record of developing fast and effective innovative solutions, we are well-positioned to have our suite of SSP products to outfit the EV buses to provide functions such as people counting, violence detection, and driver monitoring. The federal government, through the Federal Transit Administration, FTA, will be funding Access 2050, which is focused on improving the transportation system through the US. The number 1 of the top 5 priorities of this plan is safety. Safety is what Remark's products are built to provide, as we have now shown through our deployments around the world. This includes here in Fremont Street, Las Vegas, to Brazil with the police departments, and to the UK with border and traffic control.
Our capabilities drive meaningful change, foster efficiency, and contribute to the realization of Access 2050's overarching mission, solidifying our role as a frontrunner in the pursuit of the $3.74 billion that is allocated for improving safety from the Access 2050 overall spend. As you may recall, in our last earnings, I noted about the opportunity for us to work with one of the largest providers of school buses in the U.S. using our AI safety security technology. We're able to make progress in those discussions, and with this opportunity, Nevada will only significantly enhance the opportunity. In addition, we are partnering with large global systems integrators with deep industry relationships who already sell and service the end markets that we are seeking to capture.
One example of this partnership is with Intelbras, working with them to outfit the Rio de Janeiro police car fleet with mobile facial and license plate recognition capabilities as police officers patrol the city looking for wanted persons or vehicles. In a short period of time, we were able to customize our technology offerings for the Brazil market and subsequently win. While this is just the initial phase, it showcased our ability to move fast and meet the requirements of our customers, and we're confident you will see many opportunities like this in Latin America in the second half of the year. One of the key advantages to Remark AI is the speed we're able to move and the versatility of our Remark AI platform.
Recently, we were presented with a very small window of opportunity to present our platform to address the 911, 311 call center problems that cities around the U.S. are facing. Our competitors thought we would be unable to customize our AI. However, in a short time frame, we were able to do so. We built a platform that was unique and embraced the latest in AI technology to help address the issues the city was facing. Many of you know the wait times for 311 or 911 are very long. A key reason for that is the lack of dispatchers.
Remark AI's 311 platform can simultaneously service 20 sessions in 40 different languages, with the average 311 session costing $3.50 per session and as high as $7 in some major cities. Remark AI's platform immediately delivers cost savings and a return on investment for its urban customers while increasing the speed and breadth of services to a wider audience. Our platform combines the best in generative AI and computer vision AI. When a caller dials 311, our AI agent will speak to them to help understand the situation. Simultaneously, as they are speaking, our AI agent fills out the necessary paperwork to document this call.
Lastly, as we say, a picture is worth 1,000 words, the caller would take a picture or video to showcase the situation. Our computer vision AI would better understand and independently verify the nature of the call. This solution was unique and very well-received by our listeners. We are confident that after we win this opportunity, similar opportunities will present itself not only in other cities, but in any other business that deals with forms and paperwork, and obviously, as well as anything to do with customer service, like airports and restaurants. On a final note, we would like to begin letting you know about the new market, which will be a Q3, Q4 story, is Remark AI entering the Middle East, in particular with Saudi Arabia.
As it appears, this is a special opportunity to take part in the rapid transformation of the Saudi's economy and national infrastructure. Unless you've been hiding under a rock, Saudi is spending hundreds of billions of dollars to transform their economy into one that is not reliant solely on oil. We have been approached by several groups that are involved in this transformation who want our expertise in handling large-scale construction projects like in China and bring it back to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Also we are confident we are one of the very few that can provide such solutions.
These include managing a workforce that will grow from a current number of 50,000 workers to 400,000 workers by the end of the year, using AI and LiDAR jointly for construction planning, and, or having construction run 24/7 autonomously and in the dark to save power. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for Remark. We intend to open an office sometime in 2023 in Riyadh to handle these opportunities. In conclusion, I'd like to emphasize that our business model is built upon annual multi-year recurring subscription revenue that provides a total turnkey AI-powered platform for our customers and partners. Our technology has been proven by our partners and clients to be robust and flexible at the same time.
As we set a solid footing into the various markets we have mentioned, our continuous focus is on the mutual goals of positive cash flow generation and growth, and we believe that this quarter has set us on the trajectory to reach our goals by the end of the fiscal year.
All right. Thank you, Shing, and thank you to everybody for joining us on today's call. As we noted when we last spoke to you during the first quarter earnings call, we expected that our project completions in China would begin to accelerate in the second quarter, and they have. Though China's former zero-COVID policy had been adversely affecting our business in China and such policies' lingering effects, as well as COVID infections, continued during the first quarter of 2023, we were able to ramp up our work with vendors and customers during the 2023 second quarter to complete many more projects than we did in the first quarter of 2023, and even more projects than we did in the 2022 second quarter.
The increase in project completions led to revenue for the 2023 second quarter totaling $3.2 million, reflecting a 24% increase from the $2.6 million earned during the same quarter in 2022. The revenue in Q2 is almost entirely related to our Smart Construction project, under which we were able to complete installations at 25 more sites, and our Smart Campus solutions, which we were able to deploy at an additional 43 educational campuses in China, bringing total installations to more than 700 campuses and helping to protect more than 1.5 million students. With revenue and cost of revenue increasing by about the same amount during the 2023 second quarter compared to the same period of 2022, gross profit remained essentially unchanged at approximately $0.7 million.
Our operating loss also remained essentially unchanged at $4 million. Though operating loss did not change, we did experience a $0.7 million decrease in general and administrative expense that resulted from a $0.5 million reduction in stock-based compensation and a $0.4 million decrease in business development expense. Those decreases in G&A expense were partially offset because we were, excuse me, we recorded a total of $0.4 million of asset impairments in the 2023 second quarter, compared to having no impairments in the same quarter of 2022. Increases in sales and marketing expense and technology and development expense also partially offset the decrease in G&A.
Net loss totaled $5.9 million, or $0.42 per basic and diluted share in the 2023 second quarter, compared to a net loss of $12.5 million, or $1.19 per basic and diluted share in the same quarter of 2022. Since operating loss was unchanged, the decrease in net loss was primarily the result of the 2022 second quarter, including $6.9 million of loss on an investment that did not recur in the 2023 second quarter. Also, a decrease in interest expense because significantly less debt principal was outstanding during the 2023 second quarter than during the same period of the prior year, was offset by an increase in finance costs related to the obligations to issue our common stock that resulted from our transactions with Ionic Ventures, LLC.
On April 12th, 2023, we issued the second of two debentures to Ionic Ventures pursuant to the debenture purchase agreement that we and Ionic signed on March 14th, 2023, and we received $1 million pursuant to such debenture. We also received an advance of $2 million during the 2023 second quarter, pursuant to the equity line of credit with Ionic Ventures that was established in October 2022. The convertible debentures we issued in March and April 2023, plus the advance, the advance pursuant to the equity line of credit during the 2023 second quarter, gave rise to obligations to issue our common stock and in turn, caused the increase in finance costs.
As of June 30, 2023, we were obligated to issue an estimated 5,711,148 shares of our common stock to Ionic, representing an obligation with an estimated aggregate fair value of $5.6 million. As of June 30, 2023, we still owed an aggregate total of $16.3 million to our lenders, an amount which currently must be repaid by October 31, 2023. We continue to have ongoing conversations with our lenders regarding that outstanding debt and are confident that we will reach a positive solution that is beneficial to all stakeholders. As of June 30, 2023, our cash balance totaled $0.2 million, compared to a cash balance of $0.1 million at December 31, 2022.
Net cash used in operating activities was $5.2 million for the six months ended June 30, 2023, representing a 53% decrease compared to the $11.1 million we used in operating activities during the same period of 2022. With that, I will turn the call over to the operator to begin the question and answer portion of the call.
Thank you. Now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press *, then 1 on your touchtone phone. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press * then 2. At this time, we'll pause momentarily to assemble the roster. Thank you. The first question will be from Steve Wagner of Integrity Wealth Advisors. Please go ahead.
Hey, guys. thanks for taking my call. You know, we are hearing so much about AI. I've read, actually, I've read a really good book on it called The Spatial Web. I'm, I'm learning that there, you know, everyone's doing generative AI, but it, it seems like that's a commodity. Is that what you're doing? Is there any difference between what you're doing than what everybody else is doing in this regard with the computer vision and?
Large language models, all that stuff?
I, I would. Thanks, Steve. I, I, I think-
Sure.
You know, within, within AI, and certainly generative AI with, you know, what we're seeing with ChatGPT has definitely garnered the attraction. Where we focus on is, is computer vision. We feel that's a much bigger market. That's where customers are paying, and, and I really believe that the value that AI brings is in the industrial applications. You know, we have our own large language model. We actually, that was, one of our first ventures in AI, and I think goes back in 2017, 2018. We've actually been able to update our model and been able to use that with some of our customers. As a standalone business, it's very difficult. It's very difficult to get customers to pay for it.
And so that's why we had pivoted, you know, almost six, six or seven years ago. We're glad that we do that. You know, you can see once, ChatGPT released a product very quickly, there were a lot of, other companies that, introduced their language model.
The barriers to entry is not very high. For what we do, we think the barriers to entry are very high, because it's not just the, it's not just coming up with the technology, but it's the ability to deploy it as well.
Okay.
The implementation is
Okay
not so simple.
Sure. You know, as you look across the spectrum of AI, outside of the Magnificent Seven, it seems like there's been just a gigantic bear market sell-off, in market valuations. I mean, what, what do you see in private wise, private, private valuations on the, on AI? What... I mean, how would you measure where Remark should be, given, given, what you guys are doing and seem to be really enthusiastic over?
, I mean, it's, it's obviously frustrating where our share price is, you know, and where our valuation is. You know, I think this is a, this is a, this is not a, a sprint, you know, it's certainly a, a long-distance race. Yes, it's, I, I think you see a lot of private companies right now that are raising monies with, you know, in the $several hundred million valuations with less than $2 million of revenue. You know, I just don't think that's sustainable. You know, I, I feel that, you know, where there are companies that are incredibly overvalued, in terms of their, metrics, you know, where we, we obviously feel we're very undervalued. You know, we have a, technology that we built, from the ground up.
We have a, you know, we've got blue-chip customers around the world, and, and we're generating real numbers without taking huge losses to get there. We feel we're on track to break even this year, which I think will be the first for any AI company doing these kinds of numbers. You know, it is, you know, inevitably, it is a distraction when you read it in the press, but when it comes down to actual, you know, execution, you know, I like where we are, what path we're going down.
Okay. In terms of headcount, I mean, where are you guys now that, that way? I mean, do you see, obviously, as you get these contracts, there may be more of a need for capital, or do you think that'll be offset by upfront, deposits or revenue?
And I would like you to expand on that, 'cause I think one, one of the things, you know, we shareholders are kinda looking at is, you know, we, you know, we've, we've understandably been hearing about the revenue, and obviously, it's great to see some money coming in from the China side of things. Like, bringing on a domestic customer, is there any upfront revenue? How is that going to work?
, I mean, you know, we don't, we don't do unpaid POCs, right? That's, it's not, you know, when we go through a proof of concept, they're paying customers. I think we're kind of, we certainly feel we're past that stage where we're doing things for free, right? You know, as we, as we expand, you know, I, I think certainly with our partnerships that we mentioned with Intel and with NVIDIA and the software partners, that will, you know, there, there won't be that upfront cost for, you know, just say additional salespeople, because we'll be able to leverage upon their existing sales team.
As, as far as deployment, you know, we will be covering, you know, as the, as these opportunities are being presented, you know, of course, we're working with local systems integrators, but a lot of times we'll need our guys on the ground as well. There, you know, I could see certainly an expansion there, certainly the ability to handle, you know, so many different projects. I mean, I think we're uniquely positioned to do that. You know, we've been doing this for, you know, almost 10 years now. We didn't do this, spend all this time to just be a one-trick pony, right?
We had a vision 10 years ago to really build a comprehensive AI platform, and now we're seeing that, and these opportunities are presented to us that no one else is able to execute. You know, they may claim they do it, but when it comes to execution, it's different. , obviously, we would have to staff appropriately for that, but obviously, with these partnerships, you know, that upfront cost will come at a lot lower number than what it would have been if we were to do everything ourselves.
Again, I apologize. I came into the call literally, you know, 20 minutes late, so I, I missed a lot of it. It sounds like these are partnerships, as you mentioned, I think with Intel and NVIDIA, that they will provide funding for. Am I hearing that correctly?
No, you, you didn't, you didn't hear that correctly. What they're providing is-
Okay
... their sales team, right? You know, I think each, each, each company has their own marketing program, where, say, for example, if there is a potential customer that's a little bit hesitant on incurring the costs of a paid POC, you know, that company will come in and provide, you know, $300,000-$400,000 that would pay us to execute that, right? Obviously, that's, that's very, that's, that's, that's exciting. Even more exciting is the fact that now we can leverage, you know, they have over 5,000, you know, kind of a sales force and, you know, being trained on how to sell Remark AI solutions, you know, obviously speeds everything up for us.
You know, we co-cover a lot of areas faster, and get to the, frankly, get to the key decision-makers great, you know. I think in, in any type of enterprise account, you have to hit the company from a bunch of different angles, and I think this just makes our pitch more compelling.
All right. Thank you very much, guys.
Thanks, Steve.
Thank you. Our next question will be coming from Ross Silver of Sylva International. Please, go ahead.
, thanks for taking my question. A question I have for you is, you know, you look at a lot of companies in the AI space, you don't see a ton of execution. I look at Remark, and I see you've already won an initial $6 million agreement for, with the Rio de Janeiro police cars. Then you've got a $1 trillion company in NVIDIA who, you know, you've joined this Metropolis ecosystem. I mean, how are you so differentiated from these other, like, what's differentiating you, or what's your secret sauce as it relates to these opportunities, and what's making you stand out, I guess, is what my question is?
Okay, I think I would answer that in 3, kind of a 3-part answer. You know, number 1 is we've been doing this for a long time, and we're not, you know, we didn't just start this AI company in the last 2 years, and certainly over the last 6 months to capture the wave. It took us 6 years to build the technology and just in the last 3 or 4 years to gain the experience on how to deploy it. Each customer obviously has different requests, and the actual expertise in putting up these cameras, the angles and the placements and all that takes time. Obviously, every type of vertical has their own intricacies.
I would say, taking a step back, the, the 2 most important part and, you know, which, which answers a bigger question, which is why are we able to go into these different industries, is really our core algorithm, right? The way that our algorithm is trained allows us to, 1, number 1, train any type of solution that we don't have under kind of our stable, to do it in a very fast manner. Typically, it takes, you know, 9-10 months to train something new. We can do it under 1 month. The second part is you probably have heard about with these AI algorithms you need, it's all about the datasets and how much data you need.
You know, a key point to ours is that we don't need a lot of data to train our algorithms. We actually call that our few-shot training algorithm. You know, and we'll post a white paper on it just to give further detail on it. That allows us to train the algorithm much faster than anybody else and with a lot of-- a lot less data. Because many times the solution pain point that you're looking to solve doesn't have the data sets to train it under. I think those are the things that really differentiate ourselves from a preparation standpoint, and then number two, from a execution standpoint. I hope, I hope that answers it.
Yes. No, that answers it. Thank you so much, and congratulations on the successes you've had so far, and we'll continue to watch your progress.
Thanks.
Thank you. Again, if you have a question, please press Star then One. Next question will be from Brendan O'Neill of Ionic Ventures. Please go ahead.
Hey, guys. I have a couple of questions for you around kind of, you know, our interest in developing the non-China-based revenue streams. Kind of going back to kind of the earlier calls, April and May calls, you touched on a couple of things. I was wondering if you could give a further update on the Yellow School Bus program in partnership with Netwatch. I think at the time in April, on the call, you had launched a pilot program, and with school starting up here soon, just wondering if you could update us on how that program is going.
Okay, sure. You know, that was what I kind of alluded to, in, you know, in our discussions with, the, the, the transit school buses. I would say the, the, the, the, the discussions are moving along. As you can imagine, this is covering, covering a large school bus base, but the opportunity is right there in front of us. We continue to customize our algorithms for their needs, and we, we hope to have something for you over the next couple of months, as this is a big deal for everyone, right? Because we would be outfitting over 50,000 buses, using our, our algorithms.
We, we think there will be something where you'll see in the future where we would tie in what we're doing with them, also with the large EV company we mentioned on our call and what they're doing in, in Nevada.
Okay. Similar to other opportunities, I know on August 1, you announced your 311, you know, product that you kind of alluded to on the May call of a various opportunity. Is that product launched? Do you have a current customer, or what would be your strategy to now get municipalities and people to use this product?
Yep. Right, right now, as you can imagine, when you deal with municipalities, is that you, you know, you have to go through their technology governance board, which is always, you know, is always a hurdle. We've, we've, we've passed one. Right now we're waiting for the formal approval from the other one, from the other city, where right now, I'd say, close to the finish line for really on two major cities in the U.S. You know, it, it's a major problem, and it's, it's a very, of, a very high urgency.
You know, we were doing one presentation just three weeks ago, and you know, tragically, a mother was shot while the daughter was waiting on hold for a 911 call. This, this is something, then, this is when we're presenting to the technology board. This is obviously something of very high importance, but obviously we have to, you know, jump through the, the hoops. I say we're-- because of the urgency, we're moving faster than any other group is on this area. It would be one major city on the West Coast and one major city on the East Coast that we're doing this.
Okay, great. . Look forward to, to those announcements.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question will be from Jeff Wolin of Brighton Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi, everyone. I have a quick question. I know you mentioned, Neom, the, the new Saudi Arabian city of the future and all the, investments they're making in AI. I'm wondering how you think you're able to compete there and what your competitive advantage is to participate and win, the business there. It seems like all the really big players are, are trying to get, stuck in there.
, I mean, it's, it's, it's not easy. I mean, a lot of these things, you know, we're, we're, we're for sure the smallest company that's probably participating there. You know, what we do have and what we keep on saying is our AI is unique and very few companies have the experience in working on large-scale projects like we do. You know, we, we've had, you know, over 5-plus years of working with the largest construction company in China, working on their largest projects. We can take that expertise and bring it to Neom, which is where, you know, similar-sized projects are now being designed and built. I think we're uniquely qualified for that.
It's not just the qualification, it's that we-- there aren't many, if you to look around, there are, there are AI companies in the construction industry that provide, you know, one or two features rather than a real, full, complete platform. You know, we're able to go in, provide 20 different solutions immediately. We don't have to wait six to nine months to customize, but we can be up and running within four to six weeks. Everything you realize as you spend more time, you know, in, in Saudi, is that, you know, they, they want to move fast. They don't want to wait. The capital is not an issue. It's-- the issue is, are you able to deliver and execute? We think we are.
You know, construction is just one industry of where we potentially may work with them. They are building one of the largest seaports in the world. They're building one of the largest airports in the world. These are all areas that we have uniquely developed a platform to handle, and we just don't see, you know, other competitors doing the same thing. I mean, they, they tell us the same thing. I think many of the counterparts, when we talk to them, are surprised that there is, is even something out there like this. You know, we are just, you know, going through the process. I think it's, you know, when we first started having conversations with them was back in late spring.
Things are moving along, pretty fast where we can. You know, right now, when he talks about the construction, but there are 3-4 other verticals within that we think we can bring to a project like Neom, you know, over the course, by the end of this year.
Thanks. Appreciate it.
Thank you.
Thank you. That concludes our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Miss Tian for closing remarks.
Thank you, Nick. Thank you everyone for participating in Remark Holdings second quarter fiscal 2023 financial results conference call. A replay will be available in approximately 4 hours through the same link issued in our August second press release. Have a good afternoon.
The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.