Markforged Holding Corp (MKFG) 2022 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Markforged third-quarter 2022 earnings conference call. During the presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Afterwards, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the call over to Austin Bohlig, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon. I'm Austin Bohlig, Director of Investor Relations of Markforged Holding Corporation. Welcome to our third-quarter fiscal year 2022 results conference call. We will be discussing the results announced in our earnings press release issued after market close today.

With me on the call is our President and CEO, Shai Terem; and our CFO, Mark Schwartz.

Before we get started, I'd like to remind everyone that management will be making statements during this call that include estimates and other forward-looking statements, which are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any statements contained in this call that are not statements of historical fact should be deemed to be forward-looking statement.

These statements represent management's views as of today, November 9, 2022, and are subject to material risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Markforged disclaims any intention or obligation, except as required by law, to update or revise forward-looking statements.

Also, during the course of today's call, we refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. There is a reconciliation schedule showing the GAAP versus non-GAAP results currently available in our press release issued after market close today, which can also be found on our website at investors.markforged.com.

I'll now turn the call over to Shai Terem, President and CEO of Markforged.

Thank you, Austin, and thank you, everyone, for joining us on our Q3 2022 earnings call. Despite the challenging operating environment, demand for the Digital Forge continued to grow globally in the third quarter. And our strong cost control allowed us to see sequential operating leverage and deliver on our EPS target.

It is exciting to see more and more customers unleashing the power of the Digital Forge to design new products, to manufacture the products, and to embed Digital Forge parts in the final product itself.

I see examples all over the world and in key industries such as drones in aerospace, electric motorcycles in automotive, and even in medical equipment. However, while we met our EPS target, we did not deliver on our revenue and gross margin targets for the quarter.

In the Americas and EMEA, inflation and geopolitical pressures impacted our mature line of business. And globally, and supply chain challenges continued; we are not able to meet the growing demand for the FX20 and its cost target.

But thanks to our team and growing market opportunity, we exited the quarter with one of the largest pipelines of opportunities in the history of our company.

The long-term fundamentals of our business remain intact and continue to gain momentum, as an increasing number of manufacturers in the Western world onshore more of their supply chain. We couldn't be more excited about our vision to make manufacturing more resilient but is in the Digital Forge to bring industrial production to the point of need.

As we had anticipated, the FX20, our newest production-grade printer is generating unprecedented excitement as manufacturers seek solutions to make their supply chains more resilient and flexible. The FX20 is solving mission-critical applications, such as printing aerospace grade materials, reinforced with continuous carbon fiber, and printing replacement parts for automotive assembly line -- robotic arms.

In Q3, demand for the FX20 met expectations. We shipped every unit we built and still ended the quarter with a backlog of orders. Procurement of materials and production constraints both contributed to building this backlog. We continue to work relentlessly to mature the FX20 production and are planning to reach commercial run rate that will enable us to fulfill orders as we receive them in early 2023.

The APAC region was a highlight for us in the third quarter, meeting our expectations for significant growth in the second half of 2022. APAC currently appears to be experiencing a more modest impact from macroeconomic uncertainties.

For the third quarter, revenue in APAC grew 82% year-over-year and 39% quarter-over-quarter, led by strong demand for our mature products and accelerated demand for the FX20.

EMEA and Americas were not immune to current global challenges, including the war in Ukraine, inflation, and currency pressures. So due to the broader impact of macro conditions on our business and our intention to reach breakeven by the end of 2024, we recently reorganized our go-to-market team and reprioritize initiatives that we believe and the potential for the greatest impact on our path to profitable growth.

With the completion of the Digital Metal acquisition in August, we are excited about our expanded opportunity in high-volume metal production. The addition of this metal binder jetting technology helps us expand our addressable market into the mass production of end-use metal parts.

As I meet customers like [Edgard] who use this digital methods to produce parts for automotive customers, which are used in vehicles such as the Cadillac Blackwing P-Series, they raised about the same things that led us to doing this deal -- best-in-class post quality, coupled with top-notch reliability -- in the field, a year every day from potential new customers, especially those in the medical, automotive, and luxury good industries who want to begin using our Digital Metal solution.

I also want to share a very exciting example of how the Digital Forge is pushing the boundaries of human innovation. Our customers tie the space based on [Cape Canada] is building a network of 100-small satellites, loaded with sensors to provide real-time global insights for transportation, weather, finance, and other critical industries. They are printing almost their entire satellite box with The Digital Forge.

By using our X7 printer and Onyx with carbon fiber reinforcement, Tiger Space is producing radiation hardened satellites that are stronger than aluminum, but up to 40% lighter, saving money on each launch by optimizing weight. This is a great example of how our solution can bring rapid industrial production in-house right at the point of need.

This is a difficult time for global manufacturers. Supply chain disruption, coupled with clouding macro forecasts continue to put pressure on core inputs such as energy and raw materials. While these pressures make capital investment decisions complicated, these very same pressures are driving manufacturers to think differently and bring production back onshore.

With Markforged, I believe we have exactly the solution and our pipeline demonstrate this. Supported by our strong balance sheet, we continue to execute on our strategy towards profitable growth and feel very confident in our business fundamentals.

With that, I now turn the call over to Mark Schwartz, our CFO, who will offer more details on our financial performance and guidance for the remainder of the year.

Thanks, Shai. I will now review our financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2022, as well as review our fourth quarter and full-year outlook for 2022. Please note that my comments reflect our non-GAAP results and outlook. For your reference, our earnings press release issued earlier this afternoon and posted to our Investor Relations website includes our GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliation to assist with my commentary.

Revenue increased 5% for the third quarter of 2022 to $25.2 million compared with revenue of $24 million for the third quarter of 2021. Despite our best efforts, we were unable to secure sufficient electrical and mechanical components to complete production of FX20 units and meet the growing demand. These production challenges slowed our ramp to volume production. And as a result, we were unable to meet our revenue target for the quarter.

Gross profit for the third quarter was $12.4 million compared to $13.8 million for the third quarter of 2021. As a result, we generated a gross profit margin of 49.1% compared to 57.6% in the third quarter of 2021. The current cost of producing an FX20 versus our target at steady-state production negatively impacted our gross profit by $1.1 million in Q3 or over four gross margin percentage points.

We expect FX20 production costs to continue at current levels through the first half of 2023 and then improved steadily through the balance of 2023 and then to 2024.

Operating expenses for the quarter were $28.5 million compared to $25.5 million for the third quarter in 2021 and declined sequentially from $30 million in the second quarter of 2022.

For the third quarter of 2022, our net loss was $15.2 million or a loss of $0.08 per share. As a percentage of revenues, our net loss improved in comparison to the second quarter of 2022, a focus for us as we manage toward profitable growth.

Finally, we exited the third quarter with a cash balance of $181.8 million on plan and well positioned to execute on our long-term goals.

Now on to guidance. We are updating our 2022 financial guidance to reflect our updated fiscal year outlook, which considers the current market conditions. We anticipate revenues for the fourth quarter to be in the range of $28 million to $32 million which, at the midpoint, would result in 2022 full-year revenue near the lower end of the range we previously provided.

We expect gross margin in the fourth quarter to be in the range of 48% to 50%, which would equate to full-year 2022 gross margin within the range of 50% to 52%.

We anticipate our operating loss for the fourth quarter to be in the range of $13.2 million to $14.7 million, which would equate to full-year 2022 operating loss in the range of $61 million to $62.5 million for the year. Our operating loss improved sequentially from Q2 2022 to Q3 2022, and we anticipate a further improvement in Q4.

EPS results for the fourth quarter are expected to be a loss in the range of $0.06 to $0.07 per share, which would equate to EPS results for the full year to be a loss in the range of $0.31 to $0.32 per share.

Our long-term goal of 30% annual revenue growth was met with macroeconomic headwinds in 2022. We expect these headwinds to continue into 2023, but our long-term goal has not changed. And we believe our ambition is achievable given the strength of our innovation road map, product portfolio, and disciplined expense controls.

That concludes our prepared remarks for today. Operator, please open up the call for questions.

Thank you. (Operator Instructions)

Troy Jensen, Lake Street Capital.

Hey, gentlemen. Thanks for taking my questions. Sorry, I jumped on late here, so I apologize if I'm asking something that was addressed but could you just give me an update here on FX20 and maybe shipments or thoughts on when we get a real and a more material contribution from that big platform.

Yeah. Troy, happy to take that, and thanks for joining us. Shai may add in some color here. So FX20 -- what we've been saying this year is as we began to ship, we would reach commercial run rate in production by the end of this year. That's now getting pushed out a quarter, maybe a little bit longer. And the reasons for that are ramping of our contract manufacturer and particularly on the supply chain side.

Okay. On the --

(multiple speakers) Troy, we shared it on the comments. But on the demand side, it's very, very strong, continue to build up. And it's not -- we don't see any slowdown there on the other way. You see, getting stronger and bigger and [after allotment] with more customers, multiple industries, so the FX20 on the demand side continue to grow.

So good backlog for the product is just kind of ramping production to get the kind of reason running.

Exactly. It's all about getting the part. It's just a very tough supply chain environment.

(multiple speakers) Before, you understand, I think this component of our business, we typically build to order. And then -- sorry, we build the forecast and then ship it on orders. So if you were to purchase an X7 today, we ship it tomorrow. That's part of how we've chosen to run our business model.

With the FX20, we're not there yet. And we left revenue dollars on the table last quarter because we couldn't get our production up to speed.

I completely understand. We're not the only ones.

So then how about the quick on Digital Metal, I guess I've done some of my own kind of work on the product, and it sounds like the technology is awesome. And just curious on also kind of timeline for fully integration. What do you think your sales force is trained to kind of sell it and also when you expect to get more of a ramp in revenue contribution from that product?

Yes, that's a great question, and we are very excited around Digital Metal. So we completed the transaction only in August 31. So we had one month officially with it. I was fortunate enough to go to see some customers and prospects, and there is a real demand building up.

Very excited to [see things], some industries that we did not play before, like medical, luxury goods, and others. And it's even more interesting to see -- when automotive, when it's really been adopted to participated into the car. So very, very exciting.

I think the first quarter that we're going to have digital methods are probably not material impact this year, but we do expect to wrap it up next year as we continue to progress with it. The way that we are working with this is probably a little bit different than our say, day-to-day business with our channel partners. It's a more direct approach here, but we're definitely leveraging the global coverage that we have to get to the right customers.

Perfect. Okay. Thank you for taking my question. Good luck in Germany next week.

Thanks Troy.

Greg Palm, Craig-Hallum Capital Group.

Yes. Thank you for taking the questions. I guess I wanted to follow up on some of the macro end market commentary. I guess I'm a bit confused still because you're talking about pressures, but you're also talking about basically robust and growing demand for FX20. So is it -- is the pressure outside of the FX20? And just to confirm, the FX20 has not been impacted at all by lengthening sales cycles, purchasing decisions, and whatnot?

I'll take the first half Greg, and thanks for your question.

So it's actually difficult for us to say whether there's been an impact to the FX20 or not. It would sort of stand the reason that the FX20 like every other product is being impacted by lengthening sales cycles, but it's such a new product for us and has such excitement around it. We're not seeing that, and there's no way for us to quantify that. The excitement could be even greater, and the demand could be even greater.

What we're seeing is a growing pipeline, one of the biggest pipelines we've ever had in the history of the company. And the time it's taking to close on that pipeline is lengthening. So demand is great, but we are certainly feeling the impact from the current macroeconomic uncertainties.

Okay. That makes sense. In terms of the reorganization of the go-to-market, can you just expand upon a little bit what you're doing in just some of the potential cost savings behind that?

Shai, do you want to take that?

Sure. So I would say that we adjusted a little bit the cost side to the growth that we are seeing in the near term with the macro challenges. So we're trying to make sure that we have our go-to-market as efficient as possible.

It has impact and you will see the operational leverage improving this quarter and the one after. But we think it's the right prudent thing to do as we currently adjust to what we see in the moment.

And somewhat related to that, but the path to breakeven exiting 2024, I'm just curious if there's a level of revenue that's associated with that or if there's additional levers that can be pulled internally that helps you achieve that goal?

We have some internal targets that we're passing around. But you can imagine with the current environment, it's difficult for us to pinpoint that. And we're certainly not going to make those numbers public today as we think through it.

Having said that, we are prepared to make whatever adjustments we need to make in our business in order to achieve that goal. And we'll let you know if that ever becomes something otherwise.

Okay. But I guess it sounds like even under a very different macro environment now relative to, let's say, a year ago, there's still a lot of levers that can be pulled to help you achieve that goal?

That matter is correct. And on the revenue side, there's lots of excitement. And between software and our core hardware and hardware from digital metals that will be commercialized next year, we have every reason to continue to be excited about '23 and '24.

Okay. Good. I'll hop back in queue. Good luck. Thanks.

Thanks, Greg.

(Operator Instructions) James Suva, Citigroup.

Thank you. When we think about the challenges of securing components for FX20, which is not unique to your company or the product, I'm just curious, has it worsened in the past month or two, or alleviated a little bit?

The reason why I ask is there are certain parts of technology that are actually hitting oversupply like PCs and other things. I'm wondering if that's starting to help alleviate some of the pressures or constraints of securing your components.

Not that we're seeing entirely, Jim. Like building really any piece of hardware, one item that is unavailable or on a limited supply impacts your ability to produce any full item. So the challenges change day-to-day or week-to-week.

But I wouldn't say that it's improving. There's always something that is moving to the top of the priority list in order to find parts to be able to build the machines.

Okay. And then as a follow-up, your supply chain, are they telling you that maybe mid next year, it gets into a much better equilibrium state? Or do you have to like proactively start to say, hey, if we don't have the visibility, maybe it's worth putting in proactive a lot more orders or maybe you've already done so.

Yeah. It's a combination of those things. The supply chain, our vendors, our partners are certainly not telling us today that they're seeing an end to this insight. We hope that sometime next year, it does begin to improve.

We've sort of said all along this year, as you may recall, that we didn't -- we thought that these supply chain issues were going to challenge us the entire year and hope we were wrong. But it does appear that, that is the case. And at this point, it does appear it's going to leak into next year.

Okay. And then in your press release, I believe you made the statement about profitability in 2024. Just curious, is that like exiting, or run rate, or full year? And is it contingent upon the supply chain situation being more -- are completely resolved or --? Just kind of curious because that's a good goal, and I think investors will like to hear any assumptions that are based upon that to make sure we are calibrated correctly.

Yeah. We're certainly not today indicating that it would be for the full year. We think by the end of 2024, we will reach that point. And there's lots of levers that need to be pulled James, as you can imagine, from the supply side as well as our new product introduction and continuing to generate demand with our sales and marketing teams.

So lots of things that need to happen. We feel great about those that are in our control. The supply chain is one that isn't, and it's something that we continue to monitor as you can imagine.

Thank you.

Kieran McCabe, Stifel.

Thanks for taking my questions. Outside the FX20 kind of the base business, I wonder if you could provide any kind of color on your key verticals where you're seeing exceptional strength or softness? Or just kind of just a general color on kind of your key verticals and what kind of trends you're seeing in the sort of the base business outside FX20?

Right. Thank you. I think it continues to be on the same industry vertical before. I think aerospace is very, very strong for us and automotive and industrial automation. We are going deeper and deeper into the manufacturing floor with [digital tool] features and to help build products.

But what I see more and more recently with customers that are using our solution, not just for tools to build their products, but also for parts that go into the product itself. I was fortunate enough to be in (inaudible) weeks ago. And only there, I saw electric matic cycles that have printed parts with Markforged.

So drones used by the military that have parts with Markforged [and its bureau]. Machines, medical equipment to do rapid testing for COVID-19 that is a more crucial part in them.

So we see more and more adoption in these industries into the finance product itself as well.

Okay.

Kieran (multiple speakers) yeah, I'm sorry to interrupt I wanted to add a little color there for you. I think it's also important to highlight, and I think we've mentioned this on a previous call, we're seeing first-time buys from large multinational organizations that have never bought anything from us before. And their first buy from Markforged being an FX20.

We think that's -- it's a powerful statement about the excitement that this product is generating in the industry.

Great. Thank you.

Shannon Cross, Credit Suisse.

Thank you very much. I was wondering about usage on the devices, and what you're seeing in terms of -- I realize customers are taking longer to purchase printers. But just in general, have you seen a big pullback or have there been changes and maybe what they're printing? I don't know. I'm just trying to understand sort of the magnitude of what's going on in the industry because clearly, there's some significant pressure and how it might be alleviated over time? Thank you.

Thank you. We don't see a decrease yet. I would say the -- what we call active printers continue to grow quarter-over-quarter, especially year-over-year. So I would say, year-to-date, we don't see any decline.

The customers that have our solution continue to use it and trying to get the best out of it. I can tell you that when we are proving the ROI for the customers, usually, we have the interest to print as much as possible because it's saving them a lot of money.

And sometimes a big follow-up with, okay, I will do it in the next after the one after because when they see that it's working, it's a great cost savings for them. And it's a good driver to build resiliency into their own supply chain, which we are all suffering from.

And you obviously don't have an issue with cash, which is a positive, definitely. But I guess when you think about -- and I know you talked a bit on the cost side. But when you think about cash flow and uses and -- how are you sort of approaching -- obviously, you're careful with your balance sheet. But I'm just curious how things have changed maybe in the last three months in terms of your willingness to fund new areas or thoughts on the best uses of your cash? Thank you.

Thanks, Shannon. I would say -- look, I think you've sort of mentioned that we have what we believe to be strong cost controls across our business. We certainly remain focused on our innovation efforts. But outside of our innovation and our sales and marketing, we are playing very close attention in particular to the balance of our operating expenses. And I think that's enabled us to achieve the results we did in this past quarter, hitting our EPS target, even though we had a miss at the topline and on the gross margin.

So that continues to be a focus. Anecdotally, folks sitting in my chair are making, in my view, the same types of decisions that I'm making, which is pushing out certain spend where we don't necessarily need to have the urgency to make that spend in the current quarter or the next period. And there's a little bit of a vicious cycle that gets created by that, I recognized.

But certainly, it's something that we're doing. Asking questions about spend and if it can be pushed out and we imagine others in the industry are doing the same.

Yeah. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Brian Drab, William Blair.

So one of my questions is just -- I know that you said several times, you couldn't meet the demand for the FX20, and there's a lot of demand. It's not -- this kind of goes back to Greg's question as well, but I'm just trying to determine how the underlying demand is for the non-FX20 equipment is? And I guess one direct question is, did you ship to customers any FX20s in the third quarter? I don't know if that's been clear yet.

Yeah. I'll take that part of the question, Brian, and thank you for asking the question. Yes, we did ship FX20s in the third quarter. We shipped in the first quarter, in the second quarter, and we've shipped in the third quarter.

We are not at what we believe to be our commercial run rate that will eliminate a backlog, but we believe that's coming over the next couple of quarters.

Okay. Great. And then is it safe to say that for the non-FX20s, I mean, given your -- seeing that ramp, you're shipping FX20 this year, you didn't last year. Equipment for hardware revenues is flat year-over-year, but the -- when you talk about the macro pressure, I mean is it -- the FX20 is helping offset the macro pressure, but the macro pressure is showing up much more in the non-FX20 hardware. Is that how we interpret it?

It is. I think the way the question was asked by Greg, it's really difficult for us to determine if the FX20 is impacted by the uncertainties as well because we hadn't sold it before. It's very possible --

No, I understand that.

-- that demand would be even higher, but it's difficult for us to say that. Absolutely, it's impacting our core business outside of the FX20 and particularly in the Americas and EMEA.

Okay. And then just the last question, and it's along the same line. I mean, consumables growth was 14% year-over-year, which is still pretty healthy, and a sign that the utilization of the equipment is still pretty healthy. Is that -- as you went into the fourth quarter, are you seeing any change in the utilization of the equipment in the field? And how do you expect that to play out going forward in the near term? Thanks.

Yeah. I don't think if we change. I think we continue to see increase in the active printers and in the usage. And since we continue to grow the installed base, we believe we're going to see a growth in the utilization and the mature consumption, especially with the FX20.

So if it wasn't clear so far, so we shipped every quarter FX20. Each quarter, we're shipping more FX20 than the quarter before. And the utilization of these systems when it's going to get to normalization, which usually takes a year about on every printer. Supposed to be much higher than any other printer we had before because it's bigger, faster than reproduction systems. So we still believe that we're going to see a significant increase in the recurring revenue in the next few quarters.

Yeah. Perfect. Okay. Thank you very much.

Thanks, Brian.

Thank you.

And we have no further questions in the Q&A queue. I will now turn the call over to Shai Terem for closing remarks.

Thank you very much, everyone, for joining us, and we'll see you next quarter.

That does conclude your conference call for today. We thank you for your participation and ask that you please disconnect your lines.