Recording in progress.
We're gonna address a number of issues today. As a reminder, you can ask questions, you can submit them in the box below. I'll try to get to some. We try to keep these to a max of 30 minutes, just so everybody's on the same page. As a reminder, this is also being recorded on and will be on demand. You can use the same link, link, to access the on-demand as well, of course, this one that's live. Feel free to send that around or access this fireside chat again at any point. I'd also refer you to the company's webpage for disclosures on any forward-looking statements. With that, I'm going to go ahead and jump in if you're ready, Philipp. We got a lot to cover today.
Yeah. Sounds good. Thanks, Shawn. Good to be on again with you.
Well, so let's start with recent big news and hot topic, the NOAA awards. Okay?
Yep.
So let's, let's begin with that. Kind of a big, big inflection point for the company, a big event, and, and maybe for people who aren't familiar, didn't see the press release, could you just run through again the highlights of what it is, and then maybe we can dig into a little more details about it?
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, no, we were very pleased with the three awards we got from NOAA. So we are one of several awardees for three separate IDIQs. IDIQs are a U.S. government contracting vehicle, stands for Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity. In the non-government commercial world, it's essentially a master services agreement that is set up with the awardees, with a ceiling, for a pre-agreed scope or delivery type of service that you'll provide at a pre-agreed price. So in our case, this is focused on our uncrewed unmanned vessels, the WAM-Vs, and the three awards combined have a combined ceiling of over $20 million. So they've got a three-year award duration.
So it is now really on us working with NOAA to providing our services that were agreed in these awards into specific parts of NOAA projects that are ongoing over the course of the next three years. So yeah, we're very excited about this because it materially reduces the commercial negotiations that need to take place because we have a de facto MSA with call-off orders now in place, and it's, you know, we've got the vehicles to provide the services.
I thought one of the things that was unique is you, you noted the time, how quickly this transpired. One of the things I think I've always been curious about, investors are curious about, is the sales cycle in a business like yours, be it DoD, NOAA, you know, all, all the different agencies, especially on the government side. This was a bit different, so maybe talk about how this transpired.
Yeah. I think in general, we're starting to see a change in the sales cycle overall. Because it's going from... We're moving away from first adopters to our customers. You know, these, the vehicles and the buoys are now known as commercially available systems, so there is less of a introductory requirement of highlighting to a customer, "Hey, here, this is what is this. This exists, you might be able to use it." It is now turning into, oftentimes, customers coming to see us-
Mm-hmm.
or reaching out to us saying, "Hey, I've got this problem. I know you have buoys and vehicles. Let's talk about how they can be used on a specific project." I think that is certainly helping. Generally speaking, obviously, because you're still putting things out on the ocean, you know, there's still a sales cycle associated with it. This isn't enterprise software sales, where you get a call on a Friday morning, and by Friday afternoon you've agreed a contract. You know, we're still talking a couple of months there. But it is no longer the endless cycles that may have been a feature of the past when, you know, there was one or two of these systems out there. I think we're on...
We're well above 70 in terms of serial numbers for the vehicles and, you know, we've got buoy orders being built and working on some other larger orders to come that way.
In the NOAA example, what is this displacing or replacing, I guess, in terms of previous practices?
This is really adding to services. I think if you're looking particularly at the U.S. government in general, and I think you've seen, there's been a lot of public news about this in the last few weeks, in particular. I think the DoD announced its Replicator initiative, which is to get more autonomous technology into the U.S. Navy, specifically, in certain aspects, and the ever-expanding scope government agencies and departments have. NOAA is a great example. You know, there is no additional budget that is coming NOAA's way, but there's more and more work to be done. As some of NOAA's existing assets are aging, instead of replacing a ship at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, just think what you can get in terms of ocean drones, unmanned, uncrewed vehicles that you can use to do the same thing.
So what we're seeing is, it's sort of displacing the traditional way of how this work would have been done, but there is now a broader understanding on the government customer side, but also on the commercial customer side, that we're seeing of people really grasping the benefits these autonomous technologies and zero low-carbon technologies bring to their operations in terms of cost efficiency, in terms of the speed of response, in terms of additional data gathering capabilities, and all of that adds to the value proposition.
Let's talk a minute about the quarterly results. I know you just had them, but I would like to hit those for a minute, just for investors that maybe didn't listen to the call or get a chance to review it. Some of the highlights would be helpful here.
Yeah, I think as you can see, we've continued growing top line. We've continued improving gross margin, and we are building our pipeline. So at the same time as we are converting opportunities that are sitting in the pipeline, converting them to backlog and then, you know, backlog to revenue, we are continuing to put additional opportunities in the top of the pipe.
Mm-hmm.
So this is not a, you know, this is not a one big opportunity-type pipeline. This is a multitude of opportunities that sit there and that we are now able to start converting whilst adding, adding on top. What that enables us to do is to continue down the path that we set out and, and announced, you know, two years ago of where we're heading in terms of strategy, but meaning providing ocean intelligence systems that, you know, use low or zero carbon technologies into the hands of our customers. You know, I think the results highlight the fact that the strategy that we set out to execute is working.
Mm-hmm. And I guess in a, following on that, talking about the overall market demand, what you're seeing, because I think there's a lot of convergence of a lot of different, let's call them megatrends here, autonomy, charging, offshore charging and power capabilities, defense, border, home, you know, home security. I mean, you have tying all these different things. We've got a lot of different, signals that we get from the market. What do you see if you were to summarize this up and say, what's the, you know, what's the range of, of things that you expect on the demand side?
I think we're seeing a material uptick in demand. It's you know, anecdotal evidence is that we can see more inbounds starting to occur, which we haven't seen before. But there is a multiplication of initiatives with real funding behind them that are starting to take off, particularly on the DoD side, you're seeing that. You know, the Department of the Navy is very, very strong on this. You're seeing it in our overseas allies, who are expanding their ocean drone capabilities. And I think on the maritime field in general, we are far behind where, you know, land-based or aerial-based autonomous operations are. So my children have little drones they play.
Yeah.
But we don't have ocean drones available everywhere. And I think that trend is really starting to accelerate. And on the buoy side, what we're seeing is now that the systems are fully commercially available and have been demonstrated in several projects, commercial projects for customers, you know, as I mentioned right at the beginning, that kind of first adopter pressure-
Mm-hmm
... has gone away, and we're starting to see more multisystem. I think that, that is what we've always said is, is part of the strategy that we're aiming for. It is moving away from 1s and 2s into, well, here is 5 buoys going into X field to do, you know, some form of underwater monitoring, be that, you know, vessel traffic or be that mammals or at wind farms. And similar for the vehicles. You know, it is not a vehicle for one project. You know, we've been, we've been public about our partnership with Sulmara. You know, they've, they've now got several of our vehicles out using them, sometimes using them in, in combination with each other. We just completed another 2-vehicle deployment to Alaska for one of our customers to do survey work during the summer season up there.
I think we did 1,300 or 1,400 nautical miles of autonomous survey up there. It's two vehicles working jointly with each other, using their autonomy engine. You just start seeing, our customers are really seeing a material change in what CapEx and OpEx they have to lay out in order to achieve what they want to do, which helps them be more competitive, which in turn increases the demand signal back to us.
So if you look at the government side, DoD, Navy, you know, Homeland Security, for example, what would you say are the priorities or priorities, but the most engaging right now, some of the biggest opportunities there? And then I'd like to address a little bit of the commercial side as well. I'm gonna give you a mention on the survey side, but get into that a bit.
I think, as we, as we said in the past, certainly on the, you know, DoD and DHS side, it is, it is autonomous surveillance of large parts of the ocean. You know, be that looking for illegal fishing that occurs, that could be illegal fishing that is carried out by individual fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico, or it could be large-scale, large-scale state actors, like, you know, in the, the illegal fishing fleet of, of, from China, you know, trying to, trying to poach fish in parts of the oceans that they're not meant to poach fish.
Mm-hmm.
It could be in border crossings, looking for drug smuggling, or gun smuggling that occurs. And then the other side that we're seeing on the vehicle side is payload to it.
Yeah.
We've been public, and the Navy has been public about the work that's been carried out at Digital Horizon, which is part of the Fifth Fleet. We followed that up at the International Maritime Exercise, which took place just before the summer this year, which again had a multitude of various unmanned vehicles participating. It could be whether you're delivering a communications capability or you might be delivering a mine clearance measure capability.
Hmm. Okay.
It's really about utilizing the platforms to deploy data collection or other payload deliveries into parts that are very hard of the ocean, that are hard to reach otherwise. And if you weren't using drones or buoys, you would have to put warfighters in. And I think this is a great way to kind of... That is certainly how the DoD and DHS are moving, and many of our allies are moving along with that same path.
Mm-hmm. And then, commercial side, private sector side?
Private sector side, there is a definite interest in the low and zero carbon aspects of the technologies because it provides direct carbon savings to our customers. It also lowers the operational cost model. You know, I mentioned the example of the vehicles we had up in Alaska doing survey work. Now, that was for a commercial customer working for a government entity, but similarly, the exact same kind of survey can be done for energy customers, be that offshore wind farm developers that want to do surveys of their construction sites before they start construction. Using autonomous vehicles materially lowers the cost point and the environmental impact that they generate prior to construction. You can then deploy the buoys to do long-term monitoring of the construction area, so you can keep unwanted traffic out of the construction area.
You can shut down construction for the periods that whales are migrating, so you know that, so that you're not, you're not creating any issues under the Endangered Species Act. So I think there, we're seeing on the commercial side, you know, a definite interest in, in multi-systems using zero and low carbon technologies that can do long-term monitoring. Because the solutions we can deploy using our, our underlying platforms have meaningful impact to our customers. You know, that, that is the other part of the turning point that we've seen short, is the fact that it's, it is, and I think we've said this before, it's not about the buoy, it's not about the vehicle.
It is about the solution that they bring and deliver out in the ocean, where otherwise you would have to have a large manned asset that emits carbon and that at the same time costs you way more than the autonomous systems.
Right. Right. Let's move on to growth and more importantly, profitable growth and the path to profitability for the business. It seems like you're starting to hit key commercialization inflection points. You know, and you know, for those investors that aren't familiar, the technology's been refined for, you know, for several years. Obviously, updates and changes and adjustments, but this isn't an R&D project anymore. And so as you're starting to hit these commercial scales, looking at the backlogs, the pipelines, things like that, let's spend a bit of time talking about that and what that means to getting to a profitable business and growth.
Yeah, and if you've seen, you know, the quarterly results that we put out, you know, you see the increases in the gross profit margin, and that's, you know, we've been clear about this. You know, we're pushing for more as an as-a-service model, and the more we're seeing the as-a-service, the more the gross profit margin improves.
Mm-hmm.
As we move further into converting additional opportunities in the pipeline and putting them down and creating backlog, which we then turn into revenues, you start seeing with multi-system orders, how this further accelerates.
Mm-hmm.
Because having a multi-system order enables us to get economies of scale. Because we're not building a buoy or two buoys for a customer. We can now go and place orders for half a dozen of them, or, you know, 10+ systems, which enables our supply chain to become more efficient, which enables us to build an inventory, which enables us to then respond to the customer more quickly. You were asking about sales cycle earlier. I said to you, like, we're seeing the sales cycle shrinking. Having assets available means that I can not only just shrink the sales cycle, but I can then also shrink the time it takes to get from contract to revenues, because I can get the assets into the water more quickly. Same goes for the vehicles.
You know, we've been moving the manufacturing of the standardized vehicles over to New Jersey, because we have the space there, and we're utilizing that to build up our lease fleet.
Mm-hmm.
And then we are doing one-offs and product development work up here in Richmond, in California, where we just moved into a new facility that also enables us to demo the systems to the large constituent customer group that exists on the West Coast. So put all those together, and we are, we are seeing, you know, an ongoing uptick in backlog revenues, opportunities, and improvements in the various profit margin, which then, then leads us to, to generating long-term profitable growth.
So if we break it down, let's say the drivers towards profitability in this obviously scale, right? So it's over-covering fixed overhead. There's also then an opportunity to take costs out of materials in the supply chain. And then is there a third part, or those are the two major drivers for your profit?
It's a service company. It is, it's a service. I think with more assets being out there and more assets going out as a service model.
As a service, got it. Yeah.
That, that's recurring, and that's recurring.
Yes.
And let's take the example of, you know, take one of the buoys. The buoy is good for 10, 15 years. Not every customer wants them out there for 10 years. Their project might only be two years. So by having the as-a-service model is, we can take the buoys out there, we can monetize the systems over those two years. We can then take them back. The customer didn't have the pain of having to go to the CapEx, but rather it was OpEx for them on a project expenditure. We take it back, we can refurb the system, and then we take it back out. So we end up being able to generate cash flow over cash flow from these assets over their lifetime. And scale obviously helps with that. But the as-a-service model has the higher gross profit margin.
And predictability in cash flows, which the investors love. Of course. We're at 20 after, and I want to leave some time to take a couple questions before we wrap it up from the audience. So first question is, looking for an update on DHS and DOE ongoing projects, the ones you've already announced. Any updates there?
Yeah, I think in the quarterly earnings, again, on DOE, we mentioned that we continue working on the DOE project. Some of those findings have been taken over into the next-gen buoy system that, you know, we've talked about. So that DOE project is ongoing. We are continuing working on refining the installation window for when the buoy will be deployed, you know, to do the work in the DHS, which will be occurring... I don't have an exact date on it, but it's, it's, I can see the date in front of me.
Yeah. It's great. Next question is related to DARPA's. Are the PowerBuoys involved in that, Power Beaming project? I'm not, I'm not familiar with that, but apparently the-
I can't comment on U.S.-
I didn't think you were gonna be able to answer that, but I thought I'd try, at least ask.
But, you know, we work across a range of U.S. government agencies. You know, where we can, we explain in detail what we're working on. I think what we are trying to avoid, I think that is important for investors to know, is we're not chasing every single R&D opportunity.
Mm-hmm.
We're not... You know, if there is a direct need for a U.S.-made system to fill a gap for our armed forces, we will absolutely work with the U.S. government-
Yeah
... to do what we think is our moral duty to do. However, our primary focus is on building up the revenue stack based on the systems that we have commercially available, because we can see the traction from that. I think that is the right approach to take, as opposed to looking for, you know, the next research grant and the next research grant. We would much rather work on commercial contracts with government and private.
And a good time to the next question is, you mentioned, NOAA wasn't getting any more money or not likely to, and, is government increases in government budget important to them purchasing your products and-
No, the increases in budget isn't that important to us.
Yeah.
I think what is more important is the already agreed shift from certain legacy systems into what is commercially available already and what the future holds in terms of autonomy. You know, we are not reliant on, you know... We're, we're not sitting here watching, you know, the news tickers going on. Is it gonna be a 2% increase in the budget, a 3% increase? You know, where are the latest negotiations going? For us, it's more a case of we, we know where the demand signals are coming from, and we're seeing that they're coming from what we have available. And as we've proven with the work we've done with Department of Defense and NOAA more recently, it, it do, it can be done within current budget.
It is really more a case of what we're interested in is how government and where government wants to spend its budget, as opposed to us needing to find a way of creating a budget top-up.
Next question is on, what level of quarterly sales are necessary for you to reach profitability? Do you guys have a target? Do you know at a certain level that it, the business breaks even, or does it depend on the mix? It depends on the mix and recurring revenue and all of that, but-
It depends on the mix, and I think as we've shown over the past two years, it also depends on, you know, we will situate ourselves in a way that means that the business has the highest chance of success.
Mm-hmm.
You know, we've shown that successfully. When we rejigged the entire management team over the past two years, and, you know, the results are starting to speak for themselves. We will continue taking, you know, looking at, taking a close look at our costs and making sure that they're in line with where we're seeing bookings and then revenue growth coming.
Next question is regarding capacity, and I think what they're getting at here is... You know, you're hitting these commercial inflection points, right? And all of a sudden, you know, you know, no one comes back to you and says, "Hey, we'd like, we'd like 9 more of those." Right? What, what, what happens or what happens inside internally to-- that you can do to accommodate that?
My operations people start sweating.
Yeah.
But all joking aside, I mean, you know, we have capacity. We have a flexible and regional supply chain, I think, in particular, and that's one thing we're very proud of. You know, for our busy facility, most of our stuff comes out of the Tri-State Area. You know, we buy U.S. steel. We're not reliant on overseas imports for our steel parts. And we are continuously looking at who else we could partner with in order to help with sub-assembly work and others. But generally speaking, we feel comfortable with where we're at in terms of vehicle output, buoy output, and the way we've scaled up operations and manufacturing, at the same time as keeping our headcount costs-
Mm-hmm.
Fairly, fairly flat. We've done that by taking a hard look. Okay, if we no longer need to do some of the R&D work—
Mm-hmm.
That's an opportunity for us to take costs out of the business. And then, at the same time, we add some more blue-collar labor because we need the output, because the output is directly responsible for the revenue side.
Mm-hmm. I'm gonna take one last question. We're almost up on the half hour here. The question is regarding recurring revenue and what it is, and I think also why, well, why it's profitable, too. They're asking about the profitability of it. So maybe the way to position this is what... Just what is recurring revenue? How do you get it? And then why is it so profitable and attractive to the business?
Cool. So if you're looking at the recurring revenues, it's, you know, some of the customer contracts that we have out there. They're saying, "Hey, I need this vehicle for the next 18 months.
Mm-hmm.
We then know that for the next 18 months, here's the agreed day rate that we've put out for the vehicle, here's the service rates that they're putting out, or the service technicians that come with the vehicle. So we, we can start planning our business along those lines. Same would go for the buoys. Somebody says, "Hey, I've got this 2-year monitoring project in the Mid-Atlantic." You know, we're like, "Okay, fine." So we know for the next 2 years, here's the monthly revenue we're going to have, and you can start to really start forecasting and budgeting on that basis. The reason it's so profitable, which is what I mentioned earlier, is because if you're looking over the lifetime of these assets, they, they sort of pay for themselves multiple times over.
They're great cash flow generators once they're put into service, and they continue being cash flow generators because you can use them over and over and over again. And that's what we're so excited about the transition we've made as a service model.
And so, what about the data side of it as well? Maybe address that. I don't know if they're familiar, investors are familiar with that, but data side is also very profitable.
Absolutely. Well, as I said right at the beginning, there's no point in having the platforms for the platforms. We deploy various sensors that collect data, and then we can take that data and slice and dice it, and then monetize that through data as a service subscriptions, either with a single customer or, you know, depending on the instances, we might be able to take a subset of that data and monetize that with other customers.
Great. Thanks. Thanks, Philipp. I'll leave you with some... Do you have any final thoughts? And then we'll wrap it up for today.
Just want to appreciate you having me on again. As I said, we're really excited about where we are now as a business and where the trajectory is pointing to us. I think the ability of combining the service offerings that we have and having them as a coherent offering that our customers seem to certainly understand is really helping grow the business and putting it into a position that we all believe it can be in. You know, we look forward to continuing to execute with this.
Great. Thank you. Look forward to having you back. Lots of exciting stuff. Thanks, Philipp.
Thank you, Shawn.
Thank you, all, everybody attending today. Apologize for questions we didn't get to. I know we had several more, but appreciate everyone's participation and thanks to everyone.