Hello, good morning, everyone. My name is Shawn Severson, Co-Founder and Head of Sustainability Research at Water Tower Research. As a reminder, at Water Tower, we're an open access investor engagement platform. All of our content, including our webinar today and all of our research is complimentary for investors to access. I would encourage you to take a look at our website at www.watertowerresearch.com.
You'll find information on today's presenter, as well as all of our other research as an open access portal for investors. I'm very excited today to have Matt Burdyny, Vice President of Global Sales and Marketing with Ocean Power Technologies. Many of you have seen of our research as well as our other webinars on the company.
Today, we're gonna be discussing a variety of topics, but some interesting aspects about the sales side of the business and how that works, as well as some of the bigger macro issues and drivers that are going on at the company. Again, thank you for joining us today, Matt. As a reminder, this will be available on demand for investors as well. If you're good, I'll jump right in the first question, Matt.
Perfect. Thank you.
Great. I guess let's start with a little bit about yourself. I don't know if many investors are familiar with you and kind of your background of joining the company and talk a little bit about your background and what you bring to OPT.
Certainly, yes. I appreciate it. I grew up in Canada, spent the first 20 some odd years of my life there. Ended up going to the University of Victoria, where I got my undergraduate degree in engineering, which is actually where I got involved in the subsea robotics space.
During that time, I got involved building autonomous underwater vehicles as well as remotely operated vehicles. And that's when I actually got involved with some of the defense side, was SPAWAR at the time, now it's NIWC, and got engaged with Teledyne, where I ultimately went to go work for. During that time, I went and did my master's in management at Harvard.
through my experience at Teledyne, I've done everything from the customer service to engineering through sales, business development, and even into acquisitions where, upon departure of my time with Teledyne, I was part of the leadership team at the Teledyne Marine segment, which kind of brought me to OPT a little over a year ago. I joined OPT, March 1st of 2022. since then, been retooling the organization and making a lot of changes to kind of position us to, you know, what the future is going to hold and what we've done over the last 12 months.
Yeah. Thank you for that, Matt. Just a 30-second review of what OPT does for investors that are new would be helpful. Just a quick overview. My question into that is, you know, I'm curious, what does sales and marketing mean at OPT?
Obviously, when you talk a little bit about the business and what you do, technology, you know, military and commercial applications, I don't think many investors are necessarily familiar with how a sales process works in those types of industries.
Certainly. Certainly. I guess, you know, first question is, you know, what does OPT do? You know, OPT is, you know, they really started out as a renewable energy company that does power generation from wave power buoys. They've continued to grow through a myriad of different ways, both acquisition, including the acquisition of 3Dent Technology , now our strategic consulting business, really focused in on efficiencies of systems, FEA analysis, etc.
As well as our Marine Advanced Robotics acquisition in November of 2021, which is our unmanned surface vehicles. That's been a good strong catalyst for us as well in our strategy and the growth we're going after.
Part of what we've been doing is kinda marrying these technologies and, you know, we'll talk a little bit more about that later as we get through this. On the buoy side, that power generation is really an enabling technology that's kinda moved us into the maritime domain awareness space, the intelligence domain, so on and so forth. You know, your other question was, you know, how does the sales and marketing process work?
What does it mean to us at OPT? You know, really sales and marketing is how do we deliver value to our customers? How do we bring that, either making them more efficient or allowing them to do something that they haven't done before? You know, if you think about our customers at large, the markets we're going after is really defense and security, energy, and fisheries.
Those are our core markets that we're targeting. You know, we're fortunate enough at this point in life that all of those are growing, some more aggressively than others. If you think about our customers at the end of the day, the people who really benefit from it, you know, take defense and security as an example.
Y ou know, what they're doing is they're really going after that part of the market where it's drug and human trafficking, it's illegal fisheries, which, you know, in many cases also leads to onboard slavery and other things. What we get really excited about is here at OPT, you know, we're being able to provide the technology to the war fighters, to give them a chance, to give them a better likelihood of finding these challenges.
It's a little bit of a needle in a haystack in many cases, looking for those problems. Allows us to, you know, to give a voice to those people who don't normally have one. You know, a lot of the time these victims of these crimes unknowingly, you know, are coming on good intentions, but end up in bad scenarios. You know, we're really excited about what we're able to do and how we're able to help our customers do what they do best.
When you go to sell to a customer and build that pipeline, I mean, is this something that they come to you and they have a need, they need a solution for? Or are they using an incumbent technology and solution that's inefficient and dangerous to the war fighters? I mean, from you in the sales position, what starts this conversation with customers?
No, that. That's a great question. At the end of the day, you know, a lot of our customers are trying to do what they're doing now, but they're doing it in a different way, right? You know, take the Coast Guard as an example, right?
You know, the Coast Guard has their cutters and their helicopters, and they're looking for some of these, many cases, small boats, right? You know, you may have a small panga boat that has, you know, 2 dozen people on it, and, you know, best case scenario, they find it. Worst case scenario, you know, it overturns in the, in the seas and, you know, becomes a recovery situation.
A lot of the time when they are operating and doing this job, they're doing it in a less effective manner. That's part of the technology development, right? You know, these technologies weren't available years ago, and in some cases, they're doing some of this activity from a land-based scenario. Being on the waterline at sea in persistence is a unique capability that we're able to bring to the table.
From that standpoint, when I think of right or wrong, when I think of government contracts, and I think of military, I often think of very long sales cycles. You know, I think a lot of investors are familiar with more like aerospace and defense, right? Take a jet fighter platform, and you're talking a decade maybe of development.
Help us understand how the business works from kind of a long-term development cycle versus shorter term, you know, let's say discretionary type spending. You know, so when we think about the business, we think about the business pipeline, and we think about revenue growth, you know, what are the... Are there different sort of different tracks that this follows?
Yeah, no, that's, you know, that's a great question. You know, the way we're positioned now is we're diversified in terms of markets, and we're also diversified in terms of product lines. You know, each one brings their unique opportunities and challenges.
You know, from our perspective, the way we see it is, if you look at one segment, you know, choose defense and security, you know, it's going to be a balance between the long-term programs, which is, you know, large, long process opportunities, as opposed to discretionary money, which, you know, is usually tied to operation and maintenance. It's different for each product line, as I mentioned, but then also different for each space, right?
In the oil and gas space, or the renewable wind space, you know, if you're getting into the initial FEED study of the project, again, it can be that long, you know, three, 5+ years cycle to get there. You can also have the opportunity to get some, you know, short-term business, to be able to get in there, prove yourself, show the success, which is going to get you some of that longer term stuff as well. It's, it's definitely a delicate balance. You know, we've had some great success, you know, certainly some very material change in bookings over the last 12 months, and we expect that to continue.
My next question is very open-ended and probably could spend the whole 30 minutes talking about just this topic. What's happened at government agencies that have been specific and drivers for OPT? You know, this can of course can be, you know, we're talking about military applications and Coast Guard, but what has been some tailwinds out there recently from the government side that you would point out for investors to take note of?
Yeah, certainly. We've released a series of public statements and public press releases. You know, clearly we're involved in a number of different government agencies. You know, we are fortunate enough that we are both, you know, a green technology as well as, you know, provide both security for, you know, for our borders as well as our members, you know, out in the field.
You know, there's a lot of things we can talk about, but there's a number of things we can't talk about. You know, for those we can, you know, clearly, you know, Department of Energy is, you know, very forthcoming with continuing development of green technologies and what we can do to be able to move that forward.
You know, both, you know, you're obviously seeing what's transpiring in the wind domain. You know, the wave is, you know, the wave domain is definitely very active, although it hasn't picked up the steam that you've seen on the wind side.
Also even on the defense and security space, you know, it's the Department of Defense, as well as our politicians have been very aggressive on their discussions of, you know, what they're planning to do in the unmanned system space. You know, the U.S. Coast Guard came out and launched their unmanned system strategy.
You know, if you look at our product offering across the board, you know, we have a deep capability to go and support where their strategy is going to go. In some cases, you know, we're already working with, you know, Department of Homeland Security and the Coast Guard as you well know.
I think that's a great point to maybe spend a second talking about unmanned reconnaissance observation. We hear a lot about it across all the different agencies, right? As well as commercial applications. Help us understand, investors understand how you fit into an unmanned strategy, let's say. It doesn't matter whether it's across military or commercial, just what do you do that makes your solution attractive to those to those applications and roll-outs?
No, certainly. You know, if you kinda look at our systems and what we do, you know, we fill some very convincing niches. What I mean by that is, you know, our buoy is a phenomenal asset from a detection standpoint. Detection and identification.
If you want to sit there and say, "Okay, you know, we wanna be able to know everything and anything that's gonna be coming through above the waterline or below the waterline," this is an ideal asset to be able to make that happen, right? Because, you know, for us, you know, we talk about the Wave PowerBuoy. The Wave PowerBuoy is an enabling technology to provide that persistence.
You know, we can use whatever sensors that are available to the market to be able to go and do that and provide that information in real time anywhere in the world. You know, I've been, you know, I've been overseas in the Middle East, and I can see in real time what's going on in the Port of San Diego as an example. Our buoy acts as kind of that stationary node, right? You can kinda set up a geofence and have a full solution understanding what's going on along the waterline.
Before you even deploy a Coast Guard cutter or a helicopter to go interdict it, you've got all the intelligence, you have all the information, and instead of sitting on a ship and making a decision, you have that information, you know, that is not only, there in real time to make that decision, but it's admissible in a court of law.
When you can then go and actually have that discussion and say, "Do we do this or do we not do this?" You've got that and you've got the proof to be able to go and do that. That's our buoy, right? You have our unmanned surface vehicle that can act as our mobile node and go and actually provide further intel, further interdiction.
You know, we've launched aerial drones off of our WAM-Vs before, and so on and so forth.
Before would've been dependent basically on a regular, you know, Coast Guard boat, let's say, out, cutter out and running normal operations looking for something, right? Happen chance to see it or not see it. Whereas this, as you said, more of a geofence, unmanned buoys that are, working 24/7, right?
Certainly. You know, I think we've all probably seen the viral video of some of the Coast Guard folks jumping on these semi-subs. You know, that's, you know, that's an easy one to think about because, you know, you may have the above the waterline sensors looking for potential challenges, and then you have below the waterline capability too, where if you hear something under the water but you don't see something on the surface, that's a definite red flag.
Being able to go detect that, you know, anybody who's driving a semi-sub, you know, along our coastal waters is up to no good. Providing that intelligence in real time, you know, is invaluable to, you know, to our service members.
Let's continue down that road of commercial versus military and talk about, you know, how do you maintain a solid commercial market offering and position yourself for the government? One of the things that I find interesting about the business is oftentimes technology is developed in military and move to commercial, but I think your situation's a little more unique in that perspective. How do you balance the two? What's the relationship between the two? Well, let's start with that. I do have a follow-up I'd like to discuss on the commercial applications as well.
Absolutely. All of our technologies and all of our capabilities that we build as standard offerings are commercial off-the-shelf, right? They're intended to be dual use purpose, where we can go and, for example, on our unmanned surface vehicle side, go and serve the hydrographic market, where we can provide surveys or force multiplier surveys.
You know, in many cases, you know, if the seas are too rough and a manned vessel can't be on the water, we can still operate our unmanned surface vehicle. Or you can operate them in tandem. Instead of being able to survey and see what the seafloor looks like, you know, you can have multiple vehicles working in pairs, the job gets done a lot quicker. We do a lot of work in that space.
Also even in the offshore wind and the offshore energy space. If you think about what goes into putting these structures offshore, you know, understanding security around these systems to provide, you know, to ensure continual uptime, no bad actors are involved in what's going on out there. Even, even the pre-construction, understanding what the seafloor looks like, being able to map the seafloor and then monitor the environmental conditions in real time.
You know, especially if there's environmental events coming through, like hurricanes. You know, one of the things we do is we've segmented our go-to-market side of the business, so we're paying the right attention and giving the right dedication to each one of those areas, because there's very viable market spaces that we can certainly serve in each one of them.
My follow-up on the commercial side was, you know, is this an ROI sale to, let's say, a wind developer, right? I mean, what is the, what is the return that they get on using this versus doing nothing or whatever they were doing before? I'm trying to understand the value proposition to a commercial user. I think it's clear the military, right, in defense applications, security is security. In the commercial world, what is their thought process and economic process to make a decision to work with you?
No, certainly. We have, you know, I would say we have several different operating models, right? In many cases, depending on the customer, they may really wanna own the asset for a myriad of reasons. In other terms, you know, they're just interested in the data, right? They don't necessarily worry about the logistics of how they get there.
They may want a green solution, or they may want this, that, or the other thing. At the end of the day, what they're really interested in, what they really need is the data. You know, we're able to provide that to them. If it's off of our buoy, as an example, it's in persistence, so we can put it there.
You don't have to worry about sending a vessel out every several months to service it, recharge batteries, replace batteries, take data off of the instrumentation. It's the vessel time that chews up a lot of. You know, if you're thinking from an ROI perspective, you know, a lot of that cost. You know, especially if it's a week transit out to the location, you know, a week there, a week back, plus your time on-site, you know, that becomes very expensive very quickly.
You know, even, you know, from our perspective, the cost of deploying something like a buoy that generates power and can provide that persistent information or even, you know, other assets that can transit autonomously, those costs end up falling in the noise compared to the cost of the vessel alone.
Yeah. Absolutely. Next question. We do have a number of questions from the audience, so we'll try to take a couple of those. I did wanna get this last one in, as a reminder to everybody, participants, we try to keep these max 30 minutes, so I will try to get through a couple more here. It's been a great conversation today.
When you look at, when you look at technology and you look at the roadmap, I've been familiar with the company for many, many years. I think it's important for investors to understand as well that this isn't some bleeding edge technology that's in the, you know, in the pilot stage. Technology's been around. You guys have been developing it for quite some time.
If you give a very brief history just to help investors understand what has already happened and the heavy lifting side. Even more importantly, let's talk about what is ahead for you. Technology roadmap, R&D spend, you still have a lot to do. Obviously, you know, a question investors always are curious about and commercialization spend, things like that. A moment to address it would be helpful.
No, certainly. I think, you know, we've all probably seen, you know, the latest press release around our MOSWEC buoy. You know, just so everybody knows, MOSWEC stands for, you know, Mass-on-Spring Wave Energy Converter. That's an exciting technology because it's a shift from how we're currently doing our wave power buoys, which means no exterior moving parts.
The value to this is driving longer-term, higher reliability. In addition, it also means you don't necessarily have to have a surface footprint, right? We can deploy below the waterline without having that float that needs to move up and down. All the moving parts that generate the power are internal.
In addition to that, you know, we've also got things in the works that's going to give us kinda multiple buoys in our portfolio, which means if a customer is interested in doing A, B, C, or D, you know, we look at the power requirements associated with that, and we can choose the right tool for the right job.
Meaning that we can provide them, you know, depending on what they wanna do, 100% uptime anywhere in the world that they wanna deploy. You know, we all know that, you know, in many cases, you know, things like wave energy is strong during the winter, but, you know, less so in the summer, as opposed to something like solar, which is stronger in the summer and less in the winter.
Doing things like that allows us to minimize the size of our platforms, you know, bring down the overall cost, require less batteries, and do all these things, which allows us to be more aggressive in different places and operate more dynamically too.
Expanding on that a bit, looking at the spend, what you would need to do, I guess these are more development costs, let's call it that, or implementation and application costs. I assume there, you take the core technology, right, that you've already developed, and now you're just continuing to. Or maybe you're not.
Don't have a lot to do but tweak for multiple applications. Long way, I guess, I'm asking, is it doesn't take a whole lot of money and spend on the R&D to continue to grow, both the commercial and the military applications. Is that understanding correct?
That's correct. It's the same core technology that's used for all of our markets and all of our applications. It's just deployed in different ways, the different-- the data that comes out of it is different as well. We're sensor-agnostic, so if customer is interested in collecting additional information, we can certainly do that very easily.
Those are the product developments that are right ahead of us, right? You know, there are other things in the works, you know. You know, it doesn't take a lot of imagination to look at the technologies that we have and understand how can we marry those and provide further value downstream.
Great. I do wanna take a couple questions. I like try to get the audience involved with it. We've got a bunch of questions, only a few minutes left. I'm gonna hit a couple of them. The first one is a specific question, but I wanna broaden it out.
Question is, how does this compare with what, say, a satellite can do or does do today, from a security perspective, obviously, or even some commercial applications, quite frankly. Let's take that and expand it a little bit. We talked about some of the other existing solutions, right? You know, the incumbent solutions, but maybe run through the some of the big advantages you have and compare with the satellite especially.
Are there any other technologies out there that would have crossover with what you're doing, at least in the near term?
No. Yeah, I appreciate the question. I would say satellite is complementary to what we're doing. That's good for a number of reasons, right? It's, you know, it's like anything, right? It's you're only gonna get the satellite image if there's a satellite, you know, over top of the location of interest at that point in time.
What I would also say is what we're able to do is we're able to provide, you know, real-time direct maritime domain intelligence right from the waterline, right? That means we have direct access to what's going on below the surface, which, you know, you won't necessarily get from a satellite unless they're sitting right on the surface.
In addition to, you know, being able to pick up other images and, you know, other pieces of data that you are from directly there. You know, merging in and marrying the satellite technology to what we do is only gonna be complementary and more beneficial to the end user.
If I take that question and run with it a little bit more about looking at a network solution, let's say a multiple solution, is that the right way to think about this? You would have a basically a spectrum of buoys, right? Potentially unmanned watercraft, unmanned aircraft.
You would have satellite. Is that the way, you know, we should think about this when we look at deployment? Or maybe the way the defense agencies are looking at this is creating a net using multiple technologies to provide a solution.
Yeah, that's a great example. You know, if you kinda look at what Naval Postgraduate School has done with the SLAMR consortium, and we've been a partner in that, you know, for some time with the team there.
What you know, Task Force 59 has done during Digital Horizon and the information that they've put out. That's the absolute direction, is how do we take these different technologies. You know, they all have their unique perspective, their unique advantages, and how do we take all of that intelligence and marry it together to be able to provide the most intelligent response.
Last question, we're running out of time, is regarding unmanned watercraft versus buoys. I think this ties in a little bit to the last question and answer. How does that, how do those two marry? Do they compete? Are they complementary? What's the advantage of one versus the other, is the gist of the question?
Certainly. You know, that again, they're I would say they each have their place. You know, even on the unmanned surface vehicle side, you've got a number of different unmanned surface vehicles in the market, and each one of those has their place, right? You know, there are folks that we're complementary with, there's folks that we compete with, there's folks where we still overlap.
On the buoy side, you know, what it the unique perspective it adds is it gives you that stationary node. It is a line in the sand, "If you're gonna come through here, we will see you, and we will know what's going on." As opposed to unmanned vehicles, they're continually moving.
You know, if it's there, you will see it, but if the vehicle moves and something comes through that area, you know, you're kinda leaving a hole in the fence, so to speak.
Understood. This has been very helpful, Matt. Really appreciate your time. Appreciate the audience's participation, thank you for joining today. As a reminder, you can access all of the research and content about the company at www.watertowerresearch.com.
Feel free to email me as well, shawn@watertowerresearch.com, of course, reach out to Matt and Philip and the team at OPT as well if you have any questions. I'll turn it over to you, Matt, for any final comments, then we'll wrap it up for today.
Oh, no, I just wanted to say thank you. You know, really appreciated the time today and the conversation. I know here at OPT, we're really excited about where we're going, you know, how we've retooled the organization, you know, in the last 12 months or so. Just stay tuned. You know, let's watch the next 12 months. I think we've got some very exciting things ahead of us.
Great. Thank you, Matt. Everyone have a great weekend, and we'll talk to you again soon. Thank you.
Fantastic. Thank you.