Ondas Holdings Inc (ONDS) 2023 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Welcome to the Ondas Holding Inc fourth quarter and full year 2023 conference call. (Operator Instructions) Before we begin, the company would like to remind you that this call may contain forward-looking statements. While these forward-looking statements reflect Ondas best current judgment. They are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those implied by these forward-looking statements.

These risk factors are discussed in Ondas periodic SEC filings and in the earnings press release issued today, which are both available on the company's website and Ondas undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements to reflect future events or circumstances, except as required by law.

During this call, Ondas will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP measures are not prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. A reconciliation of the non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is shown in our press release issued earlier today, which is available at the Investors Relations section of our website.

This non-GAAP information is provided as a supplement to not as a substitute for or as superior to measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP. However, management believes these non-GAAP measures provide investors with valuable information on the underlying trends of our business. Please note this event is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the presentation over to Eric Brock, Chairman and CEO, please go ahead.

Well, thank you, operator, and good morning. I want to get started by welcoming everyone to our quarterly conference call. We appreciate the time you're spending with us and for your interest in our company. I'm happy to be joined today by key members of our leadership team, including our CFO, Yishay Curelaru, who return to Ondas in January after being called to duty to serve his countries.

In addition, we will hear from both Meir Kliner, who is President of Ondas Autonomous Systems and the Founder and CEO of Airobotics subsidiary, and Tim Tenne, who's the CEO of American robotics. Meir and Tim will provide updates on the business plan and outlook for our drone businesses.

In addition, we are joined today by Guy Simpson, the President and Chief Operating Officer Ondas Networks. This is the first quarterly investor call Guy is attending and he will help provide the business update for Ondas Networks. He has been the CEO at Ondas Networks for the last 13 years in his instrumental in managing our business by leading much of our direct facing customer development and service activity.

Now let's turn the agenda, we'll start the call with some brief comments, highlighting some recent announcements and I will then provide a high-level review of 2023 and how we are positioned for success in 2024.

I will then hand the call to Yishay for our financial review of our fourth quarter and full year 2023 results. We will then provide a business update for our Ondas Networks in our OAS business units where I will ask Guy, Meir, Tim provide commentary around current business activity. Then we will wrap the call and open the floor for investor questions.

Let's begin today's update by highlighting a few recent announcements we have shared with investors beginning with this morning's news that Joe Popolo, CEO of Charles and Potomac Capital has been appointed to the Ondas Holdings' Board of Directors.

I am very grateful for Joe's willingness to serve on the Board and help advise me in the management team on our growth plan. This, along with Joe significant financial interest in the company is a huge endorsement in the opportunity we have created Ondas that reflects a belief in our ability to drive significant returns for our investors in the years ahead, I will highlight that Joe has a long and successful track record as a business operator and investor.

This includes leading the growth of large profitable businesses as well as exit from such successful ventures as an investor. As the single largest investor in Ondas Joe's incentives are directly aligned with our shareholders, which is exactly what we want at Ondas.

In short, this is great news for Ondas, I welcome Joe to the Board, and we are excited to work even more closely together in the quarters and years ahead. I also want to highlight our announcement on February 26, that we secured $8.6 million of new finance. As we announced, the funding was led by Charles and Potomac and provides additional growth capital to support our business plan.

This is the second investment that [CNPs] lead after originally leading a $15 million investment in Ondas Networks in Q3 last year. We also announced the formation of Ondas Autonomous Holdings known as OAH. OAH is a new drone holding company established to hold our drone operations, which we operate under the Ondas Autonomous Systems business units, bringing American Robotics and Airobotics under the OAH corporate umbrella is a continuation of the integration we embarked on after closing the Airobotics acquisition in January 2023. We believe this structure will provide many operational and financial benefits as we scale the OAS business globally around our world-class technology platform. We'll discuss this in more detail later in the call.

2023 was a breakout year for Ondas, for the full year, we generated record revenues of $15.7 million, which was a 7-fold increase from the prior year. This include $5 million of revenue in Q4, which was above our prior expectations. And Ondas Networks growth was driven by initial orders from Siemens to feed the market with inventory ahead of the expected 900 megahertz adoption curve.

While the order ramp on 900 megahertz was further delayed versus our prior expectations, we have nonetheless made substantial progress in the field with customers. Guy will provide more detail later regarding the complex systems integration process in which we are engaged with customers.

We believe we are in the final stage of the adoption of the new dot16 standard, which will allow the Class I rails to launch the 900 megahertz build-out, driving a commercial order cycle for Ondas. And Ondas Networks we see ATCS deadlines generating more activity and urgency to engage in finnish proving out the scalable integration of ATCS in the migration to the new network.

Despite the sluggish orders with the 900 megahertz network, our confidence in the rail opportunity is only growing, and we foresee demand building in many areas even beyond 900 megahertz.

This stands from an increase in the growing awareness of our 802.16 technology across the global rail sector and with other rail vendors. This is creating visibility around significant new opportunities for network upgrades beyond 900 megahertz in a new rail sectors such as passenger in transit.

Our Ondas autonomous systems business unit having an exceptional year with market adoption kicking in to drive revenues to $9 million for 2023. This was ahead of the $8 million goal we shared at the time of the closing of the Airobotics acquisition. This also represented a massive increase well relative to the less than $1 million revenue base we had in 2022.

OAS revenue growth is being driven by fleet adoption with a particularly impressive drone infrastructure fleet, build out being supported by our operations in Dubai, where public safety and security are driving the initial use case there for Optimus, we believe our Optimus system is the only truly automated platform, seeing scaled deployment in large-scale operations in urban environments globally. Of course, we are very proud of this, as we move into 2024.

We are seeing broadening opportunities at OAS with marketing efforts in the United States beginning to gain positive traction. We have strengthened the leadership team through the addition of Tim Tenne at CEO. American Robotics, and Tim is growing his customer service team with proven talent in defense, government and commercial sectors.

As Meir and Tim will discuss the Optimus system inventory availability is improving after the delays related to the Gaza conflict. We believe inventory availability will improve in Q2 and beyond. This will enable additional customer activity here in the US in internationally, it will allow us to engage a growing and maturing customer pipeline.

In the United States American Robotics has wrapped up its proof of value in demo work with MassDOT Aeronautics division. We are quite excited about the prospects there. We believe this was a very successful program and we anticipate working with the commonwealth on follow on activities.

We believe that the critical infrastructure, public safety, government and industrial sectors will continue to drive the UAS market and be the central focus for our capabilities and solutions in the last quarter, we have noticed a large increase in [RFPs] and inbound leads from these same sectors to align with our leadership and offerings.

To wrap up the overview, I wanted to highlight that we are very excited about the prospects for the Iron Drone Raider system. As we disclosed in November 2023, we are responding to an urgent need in Israel for the Iron Drone Raider capability. The Raider system meet counter-UAS requirements in other defense use cases by rapidly in autonomously, launching multiple high-speed unmanned aircraft to perform multiple missions to protect from the threat of hostile drone.

This is clearly an incredible opportunity, and we are very excited about our ability to deliver a valuable solution to friendly defense security forces around the world. Meri and Tim will share more on this opportunity this morning.

I am now going to hand the call the Yishay for the financial review, Yishay?

Thanks Eric, as I get started, I want to remind our investors that the figures we're about to discuss and compensate the inclusion of Airobotics financial effective from January 23, 2023, following our successful acquisition. This strategic move has significantly augmented our operational effectiveness and revenue stream, increased our market presence and enhancing shareholder value. Further, despite the added scale from the addition of Airobotics, as you will see, operating expenses are down year-over-year, reflecting an extreme focus on OpEx efficiency that will continue.

Turning to the Q4 2022 result, we had a strong finish to the -- in the fourth quarter of 2023, revenues increased to $5 million compared to $0.5 million in Q4 2023. Although more than 10-fold increase in revenues was primarily a result of higher product sales and development revenue compared to prior year periods.

At Ondas Networks revenue in fourth quarter of 2023 were driven by product sales to Siemens and development projects. Revenues at OAS were primarily driven by a continued buildout of the Optimus fleets by our governmental customers in Dubai.

For Ondas Networks revenues will fluctuate from quarter to quarter, given the uncertainty around the timing of customer activity in front of the targeted commercial rollout for the 900 megahertz rollout networks and the development programs underway with Siemens and MxV.

Similarly, revenues that OAS are expected to vary from quarter-to-quarter and to normalize into a more predictable pattern as we grow our customer base and more of those customers and their fleet programs and recurring services agreements in the United States and internationally.

Gross profit increased to $1.7 million for Q4 '23 compared to $0.3 million for Q4 2022 gross profit as a percentage of revenues remains variable in the near term and decreased to approximately 35% for Q4 2023 compared to 56% for Q4 2022 as a result of lower margin product mix.

Operating expenses decreased to $14.4 million for Q4 2023 as compared to $34.8 million in Q4 2022. The sharp drop in operating expenses was primarily due to recognition of $19.4 million non-cash charge of goodwill impairment in 2022 and decreased R&D activities.

Recurring cash operating expenses, which exclude marketing expenses and non-recurring costs, outlined in the supplemental section of this table were $8.7 million in Q4 2023 of [32%] decline from $12.9 million in Q4 2023.

The sharp decline in recurring cash operating expenses was due to strong cost controls despite the addition of Airobotics in 2023. And the increase in revenues this demonstrates the operating leverage we have across businesses as we drive expected revenue growth in the coming quarters and years, we will discuss the non-cash and non-recurring cost when we review the full year P&L, it is in a very moment.

The company narrowed the operating loss to $12.6 million for Q4 2023, as compared to $34.5 million for Q4 2022 operating loss improvement was driven by expense controls and low and over non-cash charges as mentioned. Adjusted EBITDA loss narrowed to $7 million for Q4 2023 as compared to $4.6 million for Q4 2022.

Turning to the full year results, the fiscal year of 2023 revenues grow $15.7 million, which was a dramatic increase year-over-year versus only $2.1 million recognized in 2022. Revenue growth was strong at both Ondas Networks and Ondas Autonomous Systems. Both business units posted record level of revenues. Gross profit increased by 6-fold for 2023 as compared to 2022.

Gross margins were 41% for 2023 as compared to 52% for 2022, primarily due to a larger proportion of low-margin product sales and services in the revenue mix during 2023. Operating expenses narrowed sharply to approximately $46.1 million for 2023, as compared to $70.5 million for 2022.

The largest component of the decrease in operation expenses was due to a one-time non-cash goodwill impairment charge of $19.4 million, which was recognized in 2022. Included in operating expenses are non-cash expenses, including depreciation, amortization, stock-based compensation, as well as charges of certain impairment of assets.

As outlined here, impairment of right of use of assets and leasehold improvement of $2.5 million was recognized in 2023. This impairment was connected to the American Robotics and Airobotics integration and office space reduction and subleases in order to create additional cash savings.

An additional non-cash charge is an impairment of long-term equity investment of $1.5 million related to our investment in Dynam A.I. in 2023.

As mentioned earlier, a goodwill impairment charge of $19.5 million was recognized in 2022. In total, non-cash expenses and impairment charges totaled $10 million in 2023 and $29.3 million in 2022. Recurring cash operating expenses, which exclude non-cash expenses and non-recurring costs, totaled $36.1 million in 2023, a 13% reduction versus $41.2 million in 2022.

The bulk of the decline in recurring cash operating expenses was in R&D spending, which was offset by increased sales and marketing costs. This shift in OpEx reflects our focus in driving platform adoption and revenue growth across the business. The company realized an operating loss of $39.7 million in 2023 as compared to a loss of $69.4 million in 2022.

Operating loss decreased primarily as a result of the aforementioned decrease in operating expenses, including the $9.4 million goodwill impairment charge. Net loss was approximately $44.8 million for 2023 as compared to a net loss of $73.2 million for 2022.

Excluding non-cash and non-recurring costs, the company's adjusted EBITDA loss narrowed to approximately $29.7 million for 2023 as compared to $40.1 million for 2022.

Now let's turn to the cash flow statement. We held cash of $15 million as of December 31, 2023 as compared to $29.8 million as of December 31, 2022. The decline in cash is primarily a result of operating expenses include and $5.5 million of cash used to repay debt in the first half of 2023 this use of cash was supported by $24 million in net proceeds raised from the previously announced financing at Ondas Networks and Ondas Holdings early in the third quarter of 2023.

Cash used in operation during 2023 reflect ongoing investment in the business as we drive platform adoption across our Ondas Networks and OAS. We expect cash utilization to improve significantly as we move through 2024. Improved cash efficiency comes from operating expenses leverage at both companies as we focus spending on driving customer adoption and growth in revenues and -- gross profit. As noted, we ended the year with $15 million in cash.

In February, we announced an $8.6 million capital raise through the sale of Ondas Holdings common stock and Ondas Networks preferred stock in a financing led by Charles and Potomac Capital. Pro forma of these financing and net transaction expenses, the company would have had $23.4 million of cash as of December 31, 2023.

As of December 31, 2023, we had $28.5 million in convertible notes outstanding. I want to highlight that the convertible notes have maturities in April 25 and July 25 which means we have some time to manage the amortization and create condition to equitize the notes under more favorable conditions. It is our objective to equitize these notes as soon as we can by using shares to retire the notes either via monthly amortization. So to say, these notes convert entirely into equity prior to maturity.

I will now hand over the call back to Eric.

Well, thank you, Yishay. Now we will transition to a review of our business units and as Guy Simpson and Meir Kliner to share updates on recent activity in the field with customers and industry partners. We also have Tim Tenne to share comments regarding American Robotics and drill down a bit into the outlook for OAS in the United States.

Before I hand the floor to Guy, I want to provide a couple of important updates Ondas Networks. Firstly, we have made a leadership change, at Ondas Networks, Stewart Kantor is no longer with the company. In addition, Guy Simpson has been appointed as a new President at Ondas Networks.

As I mentioned at the beginning of the call, Guy has had a long tenure as COO of Ondas Networks. I relied on him to manage our growing team from an internal operation standpoint. And in parallel, his leadership has spanned from spearheading our production capacity ramp to leading technical field solutions engineering teams, while also being out in front on the most critical customer related activity.

We rely on Guy extensively and I have I'm happy to have him assume the added responsibilities as President as we move forward to scale the company.

The purpose and benefit of the management change is to align the company to be super focused on driving the order ramp in revenue growth we are targeting while charting a path to profitability. We have done exceptional work Ondas developing innovative, world-class wireless technology for mission critical networks.

Now it's time to intensively focus our energies towards delivering these solutions in the field to customers at scale. We believe our business is at an inflection point. We believe commercial deployments, 900 megahertz will begin soon and that the opportunity in 900 megahertz in the other private networks for the Class I rails in addition to global rail markets remains substantial. Guy I am now handing the call over to you.

Thank you, Eric. It's a pleasure to be here and to have the opportunity to work with our investors. At Ondas Networks we generated $6.7 million in revenues during 2023, led by product shipments for customers. This represented a 250% increase in revenues compared with 2022.

2023 was also marked by Ondas Networks, making investments to significantly increase its production capacity, which supported record production and shipment volumes for the year. We continue to be fully engaged with Siemens the Class I rails and our transit customers to further prepare for large-scale commercial deployments at 900 megahertz. Furthermore, we continue our work with the AAR and our rail customers on a development roadmap for dot16 networks, including a number of future products and additional networks beyond 900 megahertz.

Internationally, we have ongoing activity with Siemens for Indian Railways as well as the development of a new locomotive radio for the European market, a program that will be completed in 2024.

And lastly, we have several ongoing business development activities with the passenger and transit rails in North America and international markets. We anticipate sharing new activity in these markets, particularly around the passenger rail side soon.

As our investors know, we have engaged in a long-term program with Siemens and the Class 1 railroads to pursue an upgrade of the 900 megahertz networks. I wanted to take some time and provide a factual update related to our work on that 900 megahertz network, while sharing some context on the opportunity and the path ahead.

First, the Class 1 railroads have agreed with the FCC to vacate the legacy 900 megahertz channel, in return the FCC has provided new greenfield spectrum known as the A block for the railroads to build new modern network to build a new modern network for operational and safety use cases, under first engage the AAR in development work on 900 megahertz in 2019. In April 2020, the FCC issued a formal order for the rails to vacate the legacy 900 megahertz spectrum.

Also in April 2020, we signed a partnership with Siemens to address this 900 megahertz migration opportunity and to upgrade the ATCS application from the legacy 900 megahertz network. So Ondas and Siemens have been deeply engaged on this project for more than four years. And let's be clear, we have accomplished a lot. After extensive lab and field testing of our full max based platform and significant joint product development efforts with Siemens, the AAR announced the selection of dot16 as the technology for the new 900 megahertz network.

This selection was announced by the AARs wireless communications committee, WCC in March 2023. Since then, we have worked in the field on end-to-end systems integration with multiple railroads. This work is with the railroads train operating groups, principally the communications and signaling or [CNF] team. Systems integration, often encompassing many disparate legacy elements is complex. The good news is the handling complexity is a huge strength of Ondas and a significant reason why just customers value our expertise. But of course, it takes work. And in the railroad business, developing scalable processes is rarely a straight line as you have seen.

So let's take a closer look and describe precisely where we are and the outlook ahead. We believe we are in the final stages of the complex systems integration process connected to upgrading the 900 megahertz network.

If you've been listening closely, you'll have heard me repeat the term systems integration many times, this is an important concept to understand. The work that Ondas and Siemens and the railroads train operations group is focused on the integration of new modern systems with legacy technologies.

The first what do we mean by a system? The 900 megahertz network upgrade isn't just a communications event. The first application on the new 900 megahertz network, Siemens advanced train control system or ATCS is the same application that has been running for at least two decades.

This means that Ondas and Siemens are upgrading the ATCS application and introducing a new communications technology simultaneously. The system integration of ATCS and the dot16 network requires backwards compatibility with many other complementary technologies within rail operations starting at the railway side and all the way to the back office applications.

Some of this technology is more than 20 years old. And as we move forward, we and the customers are learning that other tangential technology needs to be upgraded as well. Understandably, this integration effort must be done carefully. Even minor issues can impact time lines more than we would like.

The good news is that both Siemens and Ondas as well as the customers are committed to doing the hard work. And we believe we are close to validating the systems integration efforts, upon final acceptance from our leading cloud foreign customer. We believe initial commercial orders will come from this railroad as well as two smaller rail systems with whom we are also currently engaged.

Importantly, the other Class 1 railroads are tracking this activity closely, and we expect them to advance their own field work with Ondas and Siemens and then signal their 900 megahertz network objectives, planning and time lines once our systems integration process has been validated. Of course, while we are reluctant to publicly discuss FCC deadlines after all, they are the rails deadlines, not ours.

We do believe that these deadlines are motivating increased engagement. We believe the hard work on systems integration is nearly behind us and the order and deployment cycle we have been waiting for is becoming increasingly visible. We look to build the order book and backlog with more railroads planning, ATCS upgrades and wider 900 megahertz network build-out. 2024 will be a good year of success in the field, and we will build on the increased production capability established in 2023 and further expand our service delivery model with training and marketing programs designed to drive expanded use of the dot16 technology.

So let me try to succinctly summarize the outlook at Ondas Networks, we will drive orders, backlog, delivery and deployment of systems this year to start the 900 megahertz network upgrade cycle for the railroads. We feel like we are close the customer feedback on the hard task of systems integration has been universally positive we are very close. As we have stated previously we continue to move forward aggressively on securing new orders and now have the capabilities to meet our customers production needs.

In parallel, Siemens and Ondas are advancing our services capability to support wide-scale adoption and deployment of our dot16 wireless technology. As we advance, we are seeing a broadening and also a deepening of the engagement across the industry.

This includes the Class 1 rail customers we have been working with since 2019. And now transit and passenger rail operators, more generally, there is an increasing demand for new networks and new products and a new geographic markets and also to develop new rail ecosystem, flash vendor relationships. We have outlined some of this here and expect more announcements soon on this front.

As we grow, we will pay close attention to spending levels on operating costs as we drive towards profitability, we are increasingly focusing our OpEx dollars on driving revenue and supporting a path to profitability.

I'll now hand the call back to Eric. Eric?

Thank you, guys. I will now ask Meir Kliner to take the floor and update us on the progress with customers that Ondas Autonomous Systems, and provide insight into recent developments at OAS and the outlook from here. Meir?

Thank you, Eric, 2023 was a pivotal year for Ondas Autonomous Systems. We have been able to achieve our goals outlined in our roadmap to enable our vision for expanding our fully autonomous drones and the transformative solutions they offer for critical operations.

Our team has worked out over the past two years to bring Ondas to this point, we are concluding 2023 with record high revenues a strong validate market feed for the Optimus system and a very promising position in the market with the Iron Drone Raider system.

We believe that Ondas currently holds two of the most promising drone technologies in the market and a very strong and capable team to implementing them as a critical drone infrastructure in civil and military operations. During 2023, the Optimus system has proven its value for ongoing surveillance and emergency response operations in Dubai, UAE, demonstrating the disruptive potential of our trusted technology in current security operations worldwide.

In the US, we have made significant progress demonstrating the capabilities of the Optimus system to the Massachusetts Department of Transportation and its stakeholders. Our Optimus drone, as received an [1EX] type certification by the FAA, make it in the first one in a box and data capturing one to achieve such certification. This milestone not only allows our team to continue working with the FAA on events, completely autonomous operation in complex environments such as cities and metropolitan areas, but also signifies that our technology has reached a very mature stage.

Our global potential market in security, critical infrastructure protection and remote monitoring services is vast. We will continue executing our plan, focusing on market penetration of the public safety and transportation departments serving port and terminal operations, emergency response and large construction projects, as our drone and data as a service business models have proven to be scalable.

We are receiving strong indications of the value of shared drone infrastructure demonstrated with our customers. The impact of our full-scale world's first Urban Drone network is reflected in our 2023 revenues and growth as we have delivered an additional systems to our customer in Dubai. This is a continuation of our governmental customer stating its intention to deploy a city wide network. During 2023 and recently, major public safety and security groups from the US and international markets received demonstration of the Optimus system network capabilities it's dramatic impact on response time it's probably highlighted with our customer, reducing it from 4 minutes to 70 seconds in the Optimus network coverage areas creating a network effect and synergy of Optimus drone fleets deployed as a smart network of drones.

We will keep working and targeting our expansion in the UAE to additional civil and industrial infrastructure customers and use cases, focusing on shared infrastructure deployment models with multiple customers and leveraging our operational footprint for local and export opportunities from the UAE.

2023 was a significant year for Iron Drone Raider counted one system. We have acquired and enhance the system to become one of the most prominent solutions for some of the most challenging problems posed by hosted once, we have received a grant from the Israeli Innovation Authority to help support this enhancement.

As conflict in Ukraine and Israel escalate, we are witnessing the growing impact of small autonomous drone the damage they cause and the difficulty in detecting and effectively neutralizing them in a timely manner with minimal collateral damage. We have responded to the urgent requirements of defense and security forces in Israel and worldwide.

We are rapidly integrating and enhancing this promising technology to address all aspects and become a significant player in this domain. After initially entering the market in Israel, and we are planning to develop a global marketing plan. We are already in conversation with the US defense and security entities as we explore partnerships for distribution and system integration worldwide to capture market position in this large market, that also includes the protection of political, industrial and civil infrastructure and sensitive public locations.

Ondas has also made significant progress in the US market during 2023, our reorganization program aiming to leverage the core advantage of integrating American Robotics and Airobotics has been fruitful.

I will now end the call to Tim Tenne, CEO of American Robotics to provide an update on the business advances we are making, at American Robotics.

Thank you, Meir 2023 was a significant year for American Robotics since quarter four and throughout quarter one, we have continued to consolidate, build and mature our customer pipeline, focusing on fleet opportunities and shared infrastructure models for the defense, government, and commercial sectors within the United States.

During this period, we have successfully conducted a proof of concept with the e Mass Department of Transportation division of Aeronautics, which included demonstrations of the Optimus systems wide array of capabilities at multiple locations and in wide ranging environment, we are planning to advance our marketing efforts with additional governmental customers as part of our go to market penetration plan and to launch more programs during 2024.

Our pipeline includes Departments of Transportations, ports and terminals, public safety, rail, utilities and oil and gas offering them our unique trusted solutions to some of the most challenging problems of remote monitoring and infrastructure missions.

We are advancing our business and operational capabilities with a lean and effective team of proven experts and expecting Optimus inventory arrivals during quarter two, with the new inventory, we will be able to support increased installations of Optimus systems for more programs and new sites with the arrival of these new systems, we are building a world-class customer service and experience center at our new Maryland location that allows for unfettered demonstrations of products and is in close proximity to defense, government and commercial customers.

Together with the FAA type certification of the Optimus drone and our ability to operate consistently beyond visual line of sight. These demonstrations will make a huge impact.

Our team's ingenuity and professionalism were proven this quarter, working in coordination with the FAA to receive an important beyond visual line of sight waiver based upon a solution that will enable autonomy and adoption of our systems for customers, which I'll discuss shortly in more detail.

I would like to highlight our achievements in the proof of concept program accomplished with the Mass Department of Transportation. During this program, American Robotics demonstrated a multitude of use cases, including inspection of rail and other critical assets, surveillance and emergency response applications, automated mapping and survey by our autonomous Optimus system.

We have continued to build and integrate an ecosystem of technological partners and together with the unique features of the Optimus system, enable our access to complex airspace, which is critical for delivering continuous effective drone missions without limitations.

As mentioned earlier, the unrivaled aviation, safety and regulatory experience was proven in concert of having an FAA certified UAS and the patented seen [avoid] system that enabled the rapid approval of a beyond visual line of sight waiver from which allows for truly remote operations.

This remarkable achievement was loaded by MassDOT, further solidifying our leadership in the UAS industry. This program further validates our assumptions with respect to the size of opportunities with the Department of Transportation in the United States and worldwide, and establishing a scalable framework end-to-end automated data solution that supports customer requirements.

We are continuing to explore and validate additional deployment locations throughout the United States supporting our expansion efforts. As mentioned previously, we are excited to introduce the Raider system to defense and government clients and believe the Raider is an important capability and solution for the US market, especially given the refocus of UAS into defense and security budgets.

Finally, we continue to evaluate and add partnerships that enable our autonomous network strategy and framework. Both sense, hive and resilience, which were announced this quarter are central to this framework.

I will now hand back the call to Meir.

Thank you, Tim. We are pleased with the growth in 2023. And looking forward to continuing this momentum in 2024, we will continue to grow our revenue and orders for our fleet deployments in the UAE, secure additional customer engagement in the US and expand into other international markets. We are planning to start initial operations in Europe where our marketing teams have already begun some business development activities.

We are optimistic for our ability to accelerate business development in the US, leveraging American Robotics footprint to penetrate DOTs public safety and critical industrial markets. We will continue with ecosystem development, working with partners to provide full spectrum drone platforms, services and data integration. We focused on scaling our production capability in 2024.

We are building and delivering inventory expanding to 15 new Optimus system on order and preparing new production orders for H2 2024, to satisfy expected demand. We believe Iron Drone Raider will launched this year and we look forward to sharing more news and now the Iron Drone Raider. We are establishing production capabilities in parallel as we work with customers and partners to formulate orders. As I mentioned before, we believe we are well positioned to maintain momentum and generate significant growth in 2024.

As we have announced, we have decided to create Ondas Autonomous Holdings to scale up our drone business. Eric will talk about this great initiative, and I look forward to sharing that outlook with you the next time we meet.

This completes my formal remarks, Eric, I'm going to hand the call back to you now.

Thank you, Meri, Tim. Before we wrap up the call, I want to take a moment and discuss the recently announced establishment of Ondas Autonomous Holdings or OAH as an intermediate drone holding company, bringing American Robotics and Airobotics under the OAH corporate umbrella is essentially a continuation of the integration, we embarked on after closing the Airobotics acquisition in January 2023.

This will provide many operational and financial benefits as we scale the OAS business globally around our world-class technology platform as we illustrate here, OAH is a wholly owned and controlled subsidiary and controlled by the public company Ondas Holding from a consolidated basis, nothing has changed the benefits of this new corporate structure are multi-fold. Firstly, we expect to realize significant operational flexibility with a corporate structure entirely focused on the global development and delivery of best-in-class autonomous aerial security and data solutions.

The markets we service our large dynamic and rapidly growing a pure play drilling solutions company is the appropriate corporate structure. The financial benefits are also significant. We measure our back market valuation opportunities with OAH in the many billions of dollars. We have an exceptional opportunity to grow a large profitable business and in doing so stake out a dominant position in a massive fast-growing market.

Having a clean independent balance sheet will lower our cost of capital dramatically. We are in a difficult financial climate for drone companies. We have many competitive advantages that matter to our customers and partners. These advantages are chiefly our best-in-class proven technology platforms and roadmap, our regulatory capabilities, and of course, our incredibly talented team that advantage will be amplified by a strong balance sheet. Just watch, we plan to have an Investor Day focused on OAH during Q2, then we will lay out an expanded business plan, which we think will be well received.

Let's wrap the call now and summarize the outlook. We aren't giving formal guidance today. We have a lot of confidence in the full year outlook. However, right now, we want to be conservative, given we still need to secure that initial 900 megahertz volume order. At Ondas Networks, we will complete the systems integration effort, as Guy discussed, it is closed from their visibility on pipeline in abilities this gear orders improves quite a bit.

The opportunity, to the Ondas Networks remains as big as ever, we continue to see the TAM on 900 megahertz at $400 million. You will see us increase our serviceable addressable market or TAM this year with new customers and network opportunities beyond 900.

Remember dot16 is poised to be the private wireless network technology for all the private rail networks so stay tuned. At OAS we will see continued growth with existing customers importantly, we see the prospect of adding multiple new customers this year that have significant potential to drive fleet adoption and accelerate our growth curve.

In addition, we believe the Iron Drone Raider is hitting a sweet spot in a drone market segment. See explosive growth will be a major catalyst for -- valuation in short, we do expect 2024 to be a very good year when it's all said and done.

With that, let's see if there are any questions, operator?

(Operator Instructions) Glenn Mattson, Ladenburg Thalmann.

Yeah, hi thanks for taking the questions. The -- so a couple of times you guys mentioned inventory as a -- I don't know, perhaps a gating factor in the drone space in terms of growth can you just talk about that availability of inventory now and perhaps I guess the time line as to when you think that inventory problem alleviated itself versus what backlog you have now and how you expect that backlog to kind of ship throughout the year that would be helpful. Thanks.

Yeah, Glenn. I'll answer this and then I'll ask Meri to provide a few more details. So we were building systems as we communicated to investors last year. And of course, some sort of trying to sequence that for deliveries in the second half, the events in Gaza the conflict did through the supply chain and some in the production capability off, it really pushed out the timing of completion of builds and delivery of systems to us, so we're at the point where we're seeing that relieve itself, we've had some units delivered on recently we expect that to pick up and Meri maybe you can give a little bit more detail on that?

Sure thanks, Eric. So as you mentioned, we are in the manufacturing phase. And right now we are in the timeline of every two weeks. We got new system from the supplier. So I think we are in good shape about it.

Okay thanks, and if I could ask another one just on network side, the I guess with the ramp in deployments coming a little slower than expected, perhaps can you just give a sense of the it doesn't appear, I guess perhaps for the Class 1 railroad, if they start to ramp up a little faster as this year goes by, though perhaps be able to meet some of the hard deadlines that the -- has been set by the government, but it doesn't appear that maybe some of the other Class 1 railroads are as far along down the path. Can you guys get a sense of urgency on their side, same thing with urgency in terms of the guidelines and the deadlines and what the plan would be if they were to not meet those and that kind of thing?

Sure yeah. So as we said, I that we gave some context on this, and I'll circle back to that -- regarding deadlines. But I do want to emphasize that these are the real deadlines as we talk to the AAR principally the Wireless Communications Committee they continue to express confidence in being able to meet the deadlines. But again, I'll leave that to them.

In terms of the process Glenn, we are doing this now as Guy I've shared this in great detail, the complex systems integration work, and that's a process that is being done with one rail in particular, we have a couple of other transit rails involved as well. And this is sort of typical, I would say, of how the AAR and WCC work. It doesn't make sense for Ondas and Siemens to be stretched across [6 of rail] systems simultaneously during the same program to demonstrate the scalability of the network in ATCS integration and migration to the new band.

So you're seeing, as we do this work of very regular interaction with the broader WCC on our progress. And our belief is that as we validate this, we do believe we're close that the engagements, the other railroads is going to be we're not starting at ground zero. Essentially they'll go through a process where they start to install themselves, getting comfortable with how that process works.

But the fact that we have gone through and I'd say ironed out the kinks with all the legacy technologies and how they play with our new systems on a modern network. And I think the belief is that the -- other railroads can be engage fairly quickly.

Great that's good color, Eric thanks for that.

Sure thanks Glenn.

(Operator Instructions) Tim Horan, Oppenheimer.

Thanks, guys you think you have enough cash now to make it to free cash flow -- free cash flow positive or introduce more fundraising?

I think we'll see we'll do some more fund raising Tim, and we're trying to position the company so that our access to capital on better terms is possible (multiple speakers)

Yeah, we're not going to we're not going to disclose that amount. Now I think you can look at the current OpEx levels of about something on a cash basis, about $7.5 million per quarter. Is kind of what the OpEx is. And then of course, we need to we will be driving revenue growth, gross profit, and that's going to increase fund the business.

Got it. And so just back to the rails and the 900 megahertz, do you have a best guess one -- initially they have to vacate the spectrum and the second phase at this point, absent the FCC time line? And do you have a best guess this point what that means of revenue for you guys in total?

Yeah, I hesitate to put some numbers on it. We still look at the addressable market and we made this point on the call as the same, we just see things pushed to the right a bit here, but we do believe the order cycle will begin soon as we clear these final hurdles.

And with respect to the timing, the legacy 900 network retirement date remains the September 2025, but we have not seen any change of that. And then build-out requirements in the first that kick in the first half of 2026. So we do believe that there's a urgency here on that as we have success on demonstrating the integration, but we're going to get a lot more visibility on -- plans for the entire sector.

Got it so do you think this year is still primarily year for taking orders or will we actually start, as should we expect shipments more in '25 or should we expect shipments in '24?

I think we're going to get shipments in '24.

Got it and then is it just the one partner that you're working on the systems integration that you don't. How long is this the process taken? And it sounds like we are weeks away or months away from that being finalized. And how long do you think would for others to kind of prove out the system integration?

So I think we're very close what we're doing in the field is sort of real time, I would say, and I hesitate to put a more finer point on that. Because you're not there until you're there, but we have been in the field now for this effort done with this one particular class one for better part of six-months. And as we said on the call, there's there's things that come up right.

And even innocuous integration with -- small piece of the legacy system, sometimes we'll lose to order send you back, you have to wait for an upgrade of the services that they have a component of the system and they get back in and finish.

So we believe we've done the vast bulk. I would say I think we may have done it all, but I don't want to make that point until we're able to say, finished.

So I think it's close. And then from there obviously will be communicating this with -- Siemens in their customer. The forms I've told you about before, like the WCC and what the individual railroads, and I think we -- from there going to be more engagement with people trying to do same sort of process. But again, it doesn't start at ground zero because we've demonstrated the path in the field with how the systems get integrated.

Got it so for the remaining rails, you think it's more of a instead of a 6-month to 8-month process, you think it's more of a 3-month to 4-month process for each of them?

Yeah, it's definitely shorter. And I would hope it's shorter than that. I think the second railroad will go a lot faster. The third railroad will go faster than that. What we're really doing here is demonstrating the systems integration and also the scalable processes to integrate and migrate to the new band.

Got it and -- so sounds like we might be in a situation where we need to ship like $100 million worth of equipment with like a, I mean to meet the timeframe within like a 6-month to 9-month period, do you have the manufacturing capability to do that?

So we need to add capacity to hit those numbers. You mentioned right. So that's the short answer I do believe as we're moving through the second half and in 2025 that we're going with increased visibility we can do that along with obviously working closely with our manufacturing partners.

Thank you.

(Operator Instructions) Carter Mansbach, Forte Capital Group.

Good morning, guys. First of all, congratulations on all the progress that you guys have made. So couple of questions. So Eric, I think I heard you say early in the call about other vendors, are there other vendors that you're talking to or working with besides Siemens for the rails?

So the short answer is yes, we have and I'll remind you that when we deploy this network, there's multiple technologies that need to be integrated. So that's one thing that I like.

Secondly, this is a global rail market, and we have a outstanding relationship with Siemens, that's only getting stronger, but there's just more opportunity out there when we think about global rail. So that's what I can share with you today.

Fair enough, all right second question, maybe a little more complicated. So you said that you're going to have a call Investor Call regarding this possible spin off the drone business. So can you give us any insight of what it looks like? Are we talking about two separate stocks? I mean, I just have a lot of questions coming in from investors, we have no clarity. So are we looking two separate entities with or two separate stock symbols? Can you give us anything until we actually have a call about?

Yeah, I think the short answer to that is it may -- it might be what we do. So where -- we have established as OAH as a intermediate holding company and that can be a funding vehicle where we raise capital specific to the drone businesses.

And that could be as similar to the way we've done. We've raised capital Ondas Networks and or it could be a connection with a public market transaction, let's say, a spin out or subsidiary [IPO], but there's a range of and options that we'll be evaluating and we'll probably share more of that when we have our investor call.

It sounds good. Yeah it sounds like the drone side will be a lot leaner and it'll be great to have them separate entities.

I will thanks for your time congratulations on all the accomplishments I look forward to see what happens in 2024.

Thank you, Carter.

Next question comes from Aditya with Northland Capital. Please go ahead.

Hi this is Aditya on behalf of Mike Latimore, could you give some color on how much of the expected drone revenue should come from international customers versus domestic?

Yeah, this is a good question. I think you could expect us to drive probably more than half of our revenue this year from international markets. But I do think you'll see us get traction with some very important customers here in the US and that over time, the US market is very likely to be the biggest one for us, a little more context on that.

As you think about building expectations and building financial models is when we're working with our initial customers, wherever they are in the world. Typically what you'll see is one or small handful of systems be deployed. And of course, we're focused on customers that can scale multiple systems fleet. So as we demonstrated in Dubai and the public safety market there, I start with a couple and of course, now we're into a wide fleet deployment.

So we saw more of it last year and a bigger amount in terms of number systems and we do expect this year we'll see more. So hopefully that gives you enough a color now we've seen on growth regionally.

Got it could you also give some color on the gross margin range you would expect from drone revenue for this year?

I'm not going to give that guidance just yet, that depends on a lot of factors, including -- what the mix is, either the outright sales of the system or on the as-a-service model. So I think we're going to hold back and share more details on. I will say that we believe we are the big market is the data as a service market and we'll be able to share some a lot of color on the unit economics we see there -- Investor Day.

Thank you.

Thank you.

(Operator Instructions) Matthew Galinko, Maxim Group.

Hey, thank thanks for taking my questions. Maybe firstly, I just wanted to focus a little bit on maybe your thoughts of timing for US fleet deployments in drones is that something that following the past DOT work could be 2025 event or just sort of frame for us what the path is to starting to get some sort of fleet deployments in the US?

I don't want to I'm going to speak more broadly about when I answer that question, Matt, not specific to mass DOT. So with 2025, we do believe that we're going to have customers who are in a fleet expansion mode. And I think you'll see this year, we're going to be engaging multiple customers who can do just that, so that's what the work we're doing with customers is really trying to qualify them to ensure that they have the capability and the intent to scale -- these technology.

Okay, thanks. And then can you also maybe frame where Iron Drone stands against kind of the traditional fleet deployments that you've looked at, is that something that can kind of looking into 2025 be a bigger contributor for a period of time? Just given where your focus is currently and where budgets are?

Sure. I'll ask Meri to expand. But I think what you'll see in the near term is, as we've communicated, we're really focused on the initial customer in Israel. And we're excited about that we think come we're seeing. We do believe we're seeing success and look to hope to be able to share more specifics on that soon.

And we also highlighted some of the work we're doing to bring this to the US market. But Meri, maybe you can provide some context as to on what the engagement looks like, production capability is things like that to the rest of '24 to '25?

Yeah, right now we are in the final stage of the deployment and the system with what's happening in Israel. And as you mentioned, Eric, we're going to expand into United States, I think soon a couple of months, and we really believe that we have the best solution for this kind of threats, and I hope that we will show the world very soon about that.

Okay thank you.

Thanks, Matt.

This concludes our question and answer session, I would like to turn the conference back over to Eric Brock for any closing remarks.

Okay thank you, operator. I'm going to close the call by simply just thanking you again for attending. As always, we have a lot of work ahead and we will get right back at it. And I look forward to keeping you informed on our progress, I hope you all have a great day.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation you may now disconnect.