Energous Corp (WATT) 2015 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Good day and welcome to the Energous Corporation first-quarter 2015 corporate update call. This conference is being recorded.

At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Matt Hayden from MZ Group. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Alicia. Good morning. We'd like to thank everyone for joining us today for Energous Corporation's first-quarter 2015 update call. Your host today will be Mr. Stephen Rizzone, President and CEO, who will introduce the rest of the team that is joining him.

The press release detailing the quarterly update crossed the wire this morning and is available at the Company's website, energous.com, where you can also find additional information about the Company. After management's prepared comments today, we will open the floor to questions.

Before we get underway, I would like to ask everyone to take note of the Safe Harbor paragraph in the press release. Any forward-looking statements that are made today, whether in prepared remarks or during the Q&A session, speak to the date thereof and are subject to inherent risks and uncertainties included in all of our public filings with the SEC.

Except as otherwise required by federal securities laws, we disclaim any obligation or undertaking to publicly release updates or revisions to forward-looking statements contained therein or elsewhere to reflect changes in expectations with regards to those events, conditions, and circumstances.

Okay. With that out of the way, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Rizzone. Steve, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Matt, and good morning. I would like to also welcome everyone to our first-quarter 2015 financial results and Company update call. Joining me today are George Holmes, our Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing and our Chief Strategist. Also joining me are Howard Yeaton, our interim CFO.

We have a number of key updates to provide today and before I get into the details, let me mention some of the highlights. Specifically, in the first quarter, we expanded the relationship with our T1 partner to cover both receivers and transmitters. We believe that this expansion paves the way to creating the ubiquitous wire-free charging ecosystem that Energous has envisioned.

We also believe that this expansion derisks our overall execution plan. It provides initial revenues ahead and above expectations and further shortens our expected time to meaningful market penetration.

Further, during the quarter, we achieved a higher level of operating efficiency, resulting in expenses that were well below initial projections and thus solidifying our runway into Q2 2016. George will run through our partnership pipeline and development schedule, and Howard will cover the financials.

As we discussed on our last call, we signed our first joint development and licensing agreement with a Tier 1 consumer electronics company. As you may recall, this agreement called for joint development of WattUp receivers to be incorporated in our strategic partner's consumer products, including mobile devices and their related accessories.

I'm very pleased to announce that after diligently working together for the last three months, our agreement has been expanded to also include the WattUp transmitter technology. After careful consideration by our management team and the Board of Directors, we agreed to expand the agreement and recently completed an addendum formalizing this intent.

It is worth noting that the lack of balance between transmitters and receivers has been a key reason why first-generation magnetic-based [mac] technologies have had limited market success to date.

Shifting to our hitting the required -- excuse me, subject to hitting our acquired milestones, we believe the expansion of our first development and licensing agreement will accelerate the commercialization and adoption of the WattUp technology by having both the WattUp transmitter and receiver technology supported as a system by a T1 consumer electronics company with broad consumer reach.

The expansion of our agreement also further validates our technology and our partner's level of commitment. We believe that proliferation of the WattUp technology into Wi-Fi routers and other devices like TVs, speakers, and smaller bedside units is necessary to proliferate the technology and provide for broader adoption. Those of you who visited us at CES in January had the opportunity to view some of these applications firsthand.

As a result, we believe that the better approach will be for us to also engage with other transmitter companies, some through our own initiatives and other through collaboration with our Tier 1 partner, selectively supporting the goal to make the WattUp technology more widespread and further accelerating the growth of ecosystem. Therefore, unlike the original agreement, which provided for a first-to-market advantage for our receiver technology, this amendment does not include any limited exclusivity term for the transmitter technology.

In addition, we are collaborating with our partners in seeking regulatory approval. We will provide technical and product development support throughout this process.

Obtaining the first regulatory approval for the WattUp technology is critical, as all subsequent approval cycles for the same technology are by reference and will likely be easier to obtain. We believe that the Company's collaboration with its partners will result in a more predictable regulatory process and one in which future customers can leverage and capitalize upon.

While we spend a lot of time discussing our achievements with our partners, I want to emphasize the significant progress we have made from an engineering and development perspective, as it relates to automating the design and test of new silicon, antenna structures, and hardware- and system-related software. All of this is aimed at shortening developing timelines, improving predictability, and reducing overall costs.

More importantly, our performance against the engineering expectations of our original joint development and licensing agreement, coupled with the expansion of the agreement to now include transmitters, is expected to substantially accelerate our time to revenue. We have negotiated customer payment in advance of initial expectations, and during the first quarter, recorded $200,000 in revenues and another $300,000 in deferred revenues, two quarters in advance of our original revenue plan.

While Howard will cover this in more detail, I want to make a few points about cash management. The executive team has focused a great deal of attention on optimizing operational efficiencies.

As noted in our last conference call, we consciously ramped expenses in Q4 of 2014 to support the CES show demonstration and complete the core development phase of our enterprise class network management system software that was developed by a third party. Our collective efforts to optimize operational efficiencies enabled us to reduce our cash burn to $5 million in Q1 as compared to a cash used of $8 million during Q4 of 2014.

As future engineering service-related revenues escalate this year and next year from this T1 partner and other pipeline partners, we see the potential to further reduce our cash spend, extend our operational runway, and decrease our dependency on outside financing.

While I hope you'll sense our enthusiasm, as a prudent CEO, I always want to have checks and balances in place. As such, I want to reiterate to our shareholders that while we have made great progress furthering our relationship with this T1 partner and derisking our business, there is still work to be done in engineering and advanced development. With each passing quarter, we expect to make further progress, thus minimizing risk.

Now I would like to turn the call over to George, who will provide additional details on our go-to-market strategy, regulatory, and IP efforts. George?

Thank you, Steve. As Steve described, we've made a lot of progress working with our first licensing and development partner. And as a result, we have dedicated a great deal of our collective resources year to date to ensuring we hit our initial milestones.

Keeping that in mind that our first development and licensing partner has a time-to-market advantage, let's focus on what that means for the rest of the market verticals and our JDA partners.

As discussed last quarter, we are continuing to build and rationalize our JDA pipeline. We have over 100 companies on our roster that are interested, in addition to formal JDA partners. Many of these companies have continued coming to us.

So as we have no shortage of great opportunities, including other Tier 1 players, one of our top priorities in 2015 is converting the right JDA partners into formal development and licensing partners. We are targeting companies who have the resources, customer base, and focus to achieve meaningful market penetration. We expect to announce additional agreements during the balance this year and expect further momentum on this front as we move into 2016.

As we bring on additional licensing partners, development and commercialization schedules will be determined by their development cycles. We are excited about a number of key market opportunities that our partners will target. These include companies focused on both transmitter and receiver technologies for products in the Internet of Things space, toys, gaming, cylindrical, and pack batteries.

While we would like to be fully transparent about all the details of these negotiations and agreements, that may not be possible in some cases. Some licensees may demand complete anonymity as a condition of the agreement, while other licensees may be less stringent.

Regardless of our obligations of confidentiality, however, once products are released with WattUp technology embedded, the market will know it. For example, the recent details shared about components and technologies in the leading smartphone and wearable devices that have had breakdown analysis done on them basically shared with the market the components that were made available into those devices. We see similar information becoming available as WattUp technologies get deployed into the marketplace.

In line with our goal to help partners shorten their development cycles and complete products with excellent functionality, we are on track to deliver solutions to support customer evaluation of the technology in early second half of 2015. We are initially targeting low power transmitter and receiver reference designs, followed by solutions for higher power transmitters and receivers in the first half of 2016.

As we have previously discussed, each of our customers will be responsible for their own FCC approval of their products. Our collaboration with them is meant to shorten the time to the approval process. We believe that the Company's collaboration with its partners will result in a more predictable regulatory process and one in which future customers can leverage and capitalize upon it.

An area that comes up frequently is the competitive landscape. Based on the information we received from our partners and the general market knowledge, we believe Energous has a significant lead over the competitors who play in the N coupled space.

This leads comes from our development progress on both hardware and software as well as our business development and regulatory efforts. All of this collectively creates meaningful barriers to entry.

One final item I would like to cover is an update on our intellectual property, which creates a key competitive advantage and is one of our key assets. We continued to build and refine our patent portfolio and IP strategy during the first quarter of this year, including more filings in the key areas of directed power transmission, energy harvesting, and network management.

We continue to receive numerous favorable USPTO office actions with regard to our original findings, and are beginning to nationalize our intellectual property in line with our strategic business opportunities. Our portfolio continues to grow and currently, we have over 125 US patent applications and foreign equivalents.

Now I would like to turn the call over to our interim CFO, Howard Yeaton, to provide some additional details on the financial results for the recently completed quarter. Howard?

Thank you, George. As you saw at the close of the market today, we issued a press release announcing our operating and financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2015.

We achieved our first revenue in quarter one of 2015 in the amount of $200,000, in addition to ending the quarter with $300,000 in deferred revenue. Our expenses were $7.1 million and we generated a net loss for the first quarter 2015 of $6.9 million.

Adjusted EBITDA was $5.1 million negative in the first quarter of 2015, which excludes approximately $200,000 in depreciation and amortization and $1.7 million in stock-based compensation. We believe adjusted EBITDA provides useful information to investors by providing a more focused measure of operating results.

During the first quarter, over $4 million of our expenses, including approximately $1 million in stock-based compensation expenses, were related to research and development. As Steve mentioned, we have worked diligently on our operational efficiencies, including a focus on eliminating costly consultants and replacing them with full-time employees.

We have now spent the bulk of what was necessary to create the enterprise management and control system. We plan to spend less on marketing and business and development this year as we shift resources to engineering and commercialization. In line with this, we expect CES 2016 to be much more focused and cost us considerably less than in 2015, but still serve its purpose effectively.

Turning now to the balance sheet, we ended March 31, 2015, with $26.5 million in cash and cash equivalents, with no debt outstanding. We intend to use our cash principally for research and development, product certifications, and sales and marketing efforts.

We believe that our cash on hand will be sufficient to fund our operations into the second quarter of 2016. As Steve indicated, however, we may receive additional revenue from our Tier 1 and other potential partners that would serve to extend our ability to fund operations beyond that time.

Steve, let me turn it back over to you now for closing remarks.

Thanks, Howard. As we previously stated, accelerating time to revenue is a primary objective for the Company. Going into this year, our expectation was to generate nominal revenues by the end of the year.

I am pleased report that we were able to substantially accelerate this goal. Going forward, we anticipate revenues increasing in calendar 2015, significantly increasing in 2016, to provide a path toward reaching cash flow breakeven in 2017.

As an early stage company, we recognize that tracking the execution progress of the Company is an important validation point for our investors. This being said, here are some areas we are focused on for the balance of the year.

We will continue to execute on the development elements of the agreement with our Tier 1 partner to now include transmitters. In addition, we are pleased to have them actively collaborating with us to obtain FCC and other regulatory approvals.

We expect to sign additional development and licensing agreements this year, consistent with our objective to reach key verticals not covered by our Tier 1 partners' first-to-market stipulations.

Our engineering team will work diligently this year on completing reference designs to help expedite future customer product development and regulatory approval. More specifically, during this quarter, we expect to complete a fully integrated 5.8 gigahertz T-cell, which incorporates our hardware, building block, and system software incorporating our second-generation transmitter and receiver chips as well as our first-generation power amplifier.

We will actively manage our SG&A, getting the most out of our team and ensuring the dollars spent will deliver a return to the Company and extend our operational runway. We will also expect to continue to ramp revenue.

Finally, as you know, we recently filed a universal shelf registration in accordance with standard business practices. Given the immense potential of our technology, it is impossible to predict what opportunities will be presented in the future, but having this shelf in place gives us flexibility to act accordingly.

We are executing. We have made great progress on retiring risk while shortening the timeline to broad scale commercial adoption. We intend to fully capitalize on this great opportunity with the end goal of having WattUp become as ubiquitous as Wi-Fi is today.

I will now turn the conference over to the operator for any questions. Operator?

(Operator Instructions) David Williams, Ascendiant.

Thanks for taking my question. I guess my first one is on the NREs and just kind of thinking about how those layer in through the rest of the year. I know there's not a lot of information you can give us, but kind of directionally, can you kind of talk about the ramp in those NREs, how those go through the rest of this year.

And then secondly, it looks like the margins on those NREs are running about 100%. Is that where you would expect those to continue to run as we continue to layer those NREs in?

This is George. Let me address that and then I'll hand it back to Steve and Howard for final comments on the question. The process by which we're going through integration with our partners, we are -- some partners give us the opportunity to actually charge engineering services revenues, which are actually above and beyond typical NRE payments, because we are doing collaborative design and engineering work to help them integrate the technology into their products.

Not all customers will do that. Some customers will have just straight NRE; some customers won't have any at all if they want to take on the challenge completely on their own. So each agreement is different depending on the scale and scope.

Clearly, when you have a Tier 1 partner that has a multifaceted product portfolio, there tends to be a broader engineering services agreement, which is what we experienced with this first agreement with our Tier 1 customer.

So I hope that answers your question, but it's no agreement is the same. Some agreements provide for broader reach; some are more dedicated on a single product and each agreement will stand on its own. Steve?

Yes, also, certainly, since we're delivering these services and they're completed with the time specified, the margins on them are very, very high. I think it is important to note that when we went into this year, our expectation was that we would generate maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars in revenue by the end of the year, and that was really more to prove the viability of the technology.

We have obviously accelerated that path and we will be generating significantly more revenues than we originally anticipated. We will be into the low seven figures revenue range this year. We will be increasing that to the mid-sevens next year, and then substantially increasing it in 2017. So again, we see the revenues starting to really accelerate in 2016, royalties starting to kick in late 2016, and then going into 2017.

It is a very, very efficient model. I would make one comment on that. This does not have to be a 150-, 200-person Company. As we complete our reference designs, our shift will be to support our additional strategic partners and then to incorporate the technology into more and more applications and verticals.

And again, we can do this very, very efficiently. So we see very good economic growth going into 2017, like I said. Hope that answers your question.

It certainly did. Thanks for the color there. And then secondly, if I could ask maybe about the OpEx levels going forward. It looks like your stock-based comp was up about nearly double, I guess, this quarter.

Just kind of wondering where those levels you expect those to be. And then kind of an OpEx linearity -- excuse me, linearly, how you expect it to trend maybe through the rest of the year, just kind of thinking about your headcount expansion and your move to increase the R&D and maybe reduce some of the other expenses.

Well, for us, it's all about cash and management cash. As I mentioned in my remarks, we were very, very focused this quarter. We had an initial budget in the $7 million range and we came over -- we came in under that at $5 million.

We are doing that by aggressively moving from consultants and hiring FTEs. We are also bringing all of the development inside the Company and reducing the expenses.

And so I see our cash burn ramping through the year, but not to a very significant degree. And I'm very comfortable now, given what we see in terms of our expenses through the year, that we have sufficient cash to carry us, as we said, into the second quarter of 2016.

Great. And then thinking about the Tier 1 lead dance -- congratulations on expanding that agreement there. But just kind of thinking about their lead in the certification process they already had in place, now that's expanded to the transmitter, what kind of visibility do you get into when those products could be available to the market? You'd mentioned earlier about -- you had given a little bit of timing. But what is your visibility like into what your OEMs are expected to be putting out into the market?

Well, as you can imagine, with a Tier 1 consumer-electronic company with great scope, we have very, very limited visibility into their specific plans. And that is just the nature of the game.

We are working diligently with them. I think the fact that the agreement has been expanded to include transmitters is a very significant validation of the technology. I think it further represents their commitment to drive the WattUp technology into their consumer-facing products.

But as far as timing and their product plans, as with any Tier 1, we really have very limited visibility. We know that there is a need for it and certainly there is an opportunity, but exactly when it would be released is not something that we have visibility into.

Great. Thanks for the information. Best of luck to you all in the quarter.

Bill Gibson, ROTH Capital Partners.

I have got a question regarding other top-tier consumer companies. With the exclusivity of your partner, how does that affect your negotiations with them? And at what speed can they move?

Do they have to wait until the product is totally developed and then of course they could implement it? Or how do you try to move that into their product planning as quick as possible?

Great question. Let me see if I can tackle that, and Steve can add some color if need be. As it relates to the time-to-market advantage, the nice thing about the way this agreement is crafted is it isn't an exclusivity. We do have the ability to engage actively other Tier 1 partners. We are very focused in those engagements to ensure that we do not get out over our skis, as it were, to kind of rub up against this time-to-market advantage we have.

But we do have the ability to engage. There are specific areas that we are even more focused on, which we've talked about. And the ability to go and engage other Tier 1 partners or even large Tier 2s is really not hindered by the agreement that we have that's in place.

Yes, I mean the -- couple points. The first-to-market advantage is just that. As soon as our Tier 1 consumer-electronics company releases their first product into the marketplace, all of the first-to-market advantage dissipates. And while this covers the areas that we discussed, we are free to engage with other Tier 1, Tier 2 partners in areas that are not covered.

As an example, there is no stipulation for televisions. There is an area where we would certainly look to engage with strategic partners that may be competitors in one arena, but there's no overlap into the areas that are not covered by the first-to-market advantage.

So I think it's a very good agreement, and the good thing about -- one of the good things; there are many things. But one of the good things about this technology is that there are so many markets that we can penetrate. There are so many opportunities that require this technology that our plan, as George said, is really to pick and choose the best opportunities that get us into markets that get us into verticals as quickly as possible.

One other final point here -- and I just want to make sure that we emphasize it. There is no first-to-market advantage for the transmitters. And this is a very, very, very key point. I think the big failure of the first-generation technologies, the mass technologies, is there are so few takes on the transmitter side, and that really constrained the growth of that technology.

Our focus is to balance that and to release the WattUp technology in a more systematic approach, where you've got transmitters and receivers, and the ecosystem is built off out across a broad range of transmitters.

So we are very, very focused on transmitters and the proliferation of transmitters, especially in the areas of combining a wire-free power routers and Wi-Fi routers. And also providing other types of transmitters, like in the doors of a refrigerator, in the bezels of a television, in a bedside unit. Any number of applications.

So again, this is a great agreement for the Company, and it really, I think, if we execute on it, is going to drive the broad adoption of the WattUp technology.

Good. Thank you. And then one little follow-up question. I assume on the revenue guidance that assumes you are reaching your invention and technology milestones at year end and getting payment for that?

Absolutely. Again, we have to caution that there are very significant milestones that require both a level of development and advanced development. In order for our revenues to be realized, we will have to achieve those milestones. So there is an element of risk there, but we continue to diligently move forward and that is how we're seeing it play out currently in terms of our visibility to revenues.

Good. Thank you.

Lou Basenese, Disruptive Tech Research

Congrats on the quarter, guys. Just a couple quick questions for you. Expanding the Tier 1 relationship to include the transmit side, did that include any additional invention and development milestone payments -- the potential for them?

The potential for them, yes.

Okay. So and then also, you talked about other pipeline partners in verticals that would not necessarily be in smartphones and accessories. Can you give us any color on what you think might be upfront payments from them? Is it reasonable to expect it to be in line with the first $500,000 payment that you received, or would it be less than that? Or just any color on that?

Lou, at this point, we really don't have a lot of visibility that we can share on that front. Each of these agreements will be completely different to the level of work that we are going to have to provide.

As I described earlier, when you have a company that has a multifaceted product portfolio that puts hundreds of millions of units into the market, their application sense and depth of their agreement is going to be a little bit different than even the largest Wi-Fi router companies that are just -- that market is only a couple hundred million units in total.

So it just depends on the range and the scope of the opportunity and what we're taking; how much of the engineering effort we're taking on. But as Steve described, we believe the engineering services component of our business is going to be a good one as people look to integrate this technology and integrate it quickly.

A couple points on that. Hi, Lou; this is Steve. A couple other points also. I think that from a strategy standpoint, it is important to note that we want to be licensee-friendly. We want to develop reference designs that have broad applicability. We do not want to get into a situation where we have custom one-offs, one-offs for each of our strategic partners, although we will engage in services and certainly we will modify as necessary, given the opportunity.

We are looking for our broad-based adoption here. So we want to be friendly to licensees. I don't think that we'll -- the fast majority of our agreements will have significant upfront payments. We will be more focused on performance and receiving royalties once the technology is incorporated into the consumer-facing devices and those devices hit the market.

That makes sense. Thanks. One last question. I think it was on the last call, you talked about having about a two-year head start on other technologies that are in the space. And for whatever reason, it seems like a lot of other technologies are getting press, and I know that press doesn't translate into their development progress.

Can you just give us some color on why you think you have that significant of a time-to-market advantage as other solutions that are out there, whether it's on the tech side, on the business development side. Can you just articulate what that is so that there is a clear understanding?

Well, I can just speak to it from my perspective. And as I look at this, and we've spent a lot of time out in the marketplace talking to customers. And the things that we see at our customers is not other uncoupled solutions. It's really -- they are looking at a loosely coupled versus uncoupled and looking at the application space.

So when it comes to loosely coupled, clearly the WiTricity data ports, WP solutions, there is, as we have said historically, there is a great segmentation of the market between portable and mobile, where those devices make a lot of sense. And then when they are talking about a fully uncoupled solution, usually you get, you spend a lot of time trying to justify your technology versus something else if there is something that is close.

We just don't see those competitors in the marketplace. That does not see -- I think the thing that keeps me up at night is that they're going to show up someday at one of our big customers. It is just not happened yet.

And when we did see them -- which literally is before they got all the press -- when we did see them, the technologies were dismissed, for the most part, because they didn't meet the fundamental application requirement.

So I think there is -- clearly we got to keep our eye on the ball. Clearly, there's some companies out there getting some very good press. We think it is good for the category. It is good for the awareness. It will be good for the consumer in the end.

For us, we're heads down getting products developed and engaging with what I think are some of the best OEMs that we could be engage with, and we just do not see it yet.

Yes, I think -- a couple points here also. We understand very, very clearly what the steps are to adoption. And we have been working diligently in the last 18 months and I think made rapid, rapid progress until we understand all of the complexities to take any of these technologies or any of these applications to the level where they are viable for commercialization. And again, we understand -- given this understanding, we are quite comfortable that we have a first-to-market lead here.

Having said this, these are huge, huge markets. If you take a look at the total TAM, it relates to trillions of dollars. And so there's room for multiple players in the business, and, again, we will just look to aggressively keep our head down and move forward along the path that we have taken to concentrate on the verticals that we focused on, to maintain our focus on 10 watts or less with a level of mobility, to increase the synergy with the tightly coupled and loosely coupled.

Again, with our work in PMA, we see a natural bifurcation of the market and think that there's a great deal of synergy between the storage heads, the portable and the mobile elements of the markets. And so, again, we are very confident. We execute and we are going to have a meaningful market share of the opportunity and a very, very significant business.

Thanks, guys. Best of luck.

(Operator Instructions) Jay Srivatsa, Chardan Capital Markets.

Thanks for taking my question. Steve, as you have worked with your partners with your first generation of silicon, what has been the feedback? Are there areas for improvement that might cause you to respin your silicon, or is there feedback that you've got that helps for your next generation of product? Help us understand what the feedback has been thus far from all the partners you have been talking to.

Well, I think there is -- this is a process, an evolution. I think our first generation was really more to take all of the discrete components and to prove that we can integrate them into silicon.

As we go through subsequent generations, we're talking about improving efficiencies. We're talking about miniaturization. We are talking about cost reductions. And so this is a natural process.

I think that our third generation of transmitters and receivers chips will be those that will end up into the consumer markets. So we have one more generation that we've already begun work on that incorporates all of the knowledge and experience that we have had to date. And we believe, as I said, the third generation is the one that will go into consumer-facing devices.

Let me add just one little note there is if you look at our silicon roadmap, the indication from the question sounded like are we seeing things when we deliver those solutions to the customer that they're asking us to change.

That is not the case. What we're doing is we're validating the roadmap that we provided them at the beginning that said gen one, gen two, gen three chip. And what we're using those chips when we deliver them to customers and allow them to evaluate them is to evaluate we met the milestone.

So it is not that we are giving technology to our partners and they are going hey, it's just not quite right. Could you tweak it here; could you tweak it there? That is not the position we're in. We are showing direct validation of the technology and directly showing that we are meeting those milestones on a silicon-drop-to-silicon-drop perspective.

So it is a very programmatic thing. It is one that is very well received by our customers, but it is all things that drive to expansion of agreements; additional opportunities in different products as we continue to evaluate these things. Hope that helps.

Yes. As a follow-on to that, as you look at your next generations of products, is the emphasis on adding more features into that chip? Or is there emphasis on cost reduction through going to a smaller process geometries and stuff like that? What type of emphasis are you placing in the next feature roadmap?

Well, I think it is all of the above, frankly. Because as you look at things that were on our roadmap that take us into this next generation of silicon, it included a much more efficient power amplifier chip, a much more efficient receiver chip, greater efficiencies from an integration between amplifier and transmitter chip.

Those integrations, which ultimately lend themselves to cost reductions, you kind of get a two-fer. You get a cost reduction and you get a performance enhancement, all driven based on what the roadmap had dictated.

And the good news is currently, we're achieving those milestones, and we get continued validation as we get new chips in. And we've literally just brought new chips in and are bringing them up, and it was great validation of the good work that our design team has done.

I think also it is important to note that as we engage with these strategic partners, one area that we are gaining a great deal of understanding is the element of miniaturization and just how much room we have in these respective devices. I think that is a key component here and we feel comfortable that our cycle and the third-generation chips that we are developing will meet the miniaturization requirements for broad adoption of the technology in both transmitters and receivers.

All right. Maybe one last question. Just in terms of the business model, obviously, currently you are a silicon provider. You've talked about getting into the licensing model. Are there customers who you've been talking to who say, you know, would just prefer for you guys to supply the silicon to us versus licensing the IP and getting somebody else to manufacture it them? And how is that going to drive your future strategy in terms of what type of business model you are going to pursue?

Well, if you recall, we have announced two major silicon partners as well, and that is to address companies like the one you just described. I mean, it gives us a couple of levels of efficiency from a sales perspective.

We get hundreds of sales guys on the streets selling our technology into a multitude of different applications, not only ones that were originally driven and determined that needed wireless power, that you end up in a variety of different applications just because you now have a silicon provider that looks at things much more broadly.

But clearly, we have customers that we will be partnering with, silicon manufacturers that we've already partnered with. We have customers that will be integrating the IP directly, and then we have customers that are going to do some combination of both, depending on how broad their portfolio is.

If you are going into a dedicated -- a company that is kind of a one-product company, they would probably go down the path of working with one of our silicon partners to integrate the technology from and through them. Whereas if you're dealing with a large Tier 1 that's got a multifaceted product portfolio, they look at integrations far differently than we do because they have a much broader product set and they have a much greater supply chain. And they can ask foundries to do specific work for them and integrate with other IC manufacturers' devices that they've licensed their technology and come up with a superchip, as it were, that does what they need from a FI perspective.

So there's a lot of different opportunities here from integration standpoint, all on the roadmap of our go-to-market model that provides for early silicon all the way through licensing, whether it be to an OEM, ODM, or to a silicon manufacturer.

Thank you. Good luck.

Dallas Salazar, Atlas Consulting.

Thanks for hanging on just for this last question here. I guess I am more interested in the regulatory process partner and just sort of how, if it all, that changes timelines, resources tethered to the process, the go-to-market strategy.

For instance, if the partner wanted to start from the outside in and try and get some international regulatory process ahead of what they -- before coming domestic. Anything along those lines that you guys can elaborate on.

Well, there is -- just from a 30,000 foot level, everything that we do on the regulatory front is part of our secret sauce competitive advantage that we try to deliver to our partners so that they can get through the process.

The things that we have done with our Tier 1 partner that we are engaged with now, the work that we do together is really to ensure that their roadmap gets products into the market quickly and efficiently. That has been our overall overarching goal.

Now the advantage we have, instead of it being an anchor point based on a regulatory approval under our name, it will be the first regulatory approval will be under another partner's name, which will, I think, lend great credibility into the marketplace on driving these things through to the proper conclusion of regulatory approval in the different areas that it's required.

All right. Thank you.

Did that answer your question, Dallas? Or is that --?

Yes. No, I mean it did. I know at CES, we had some of those international players there. And so I was just -- I am kind of trying to independently kind of sort of think about -- the list isn't that long of guys that this could potentially be.

And I'm just sort of sorting out international revenues for the other guys and sort of where they're going. So I guess it's less for you guys. I was just seeing if I could get any type of additional color on that. But you guys -- I am looking forward to it. And I wish you guys good luck. So thank you for answering that.

No worries, Dallas. It is one of our key strategic advantages, the fact we have great knowledge base in this area. And now you couple that with Tier 1 partners, whether it be our first Tier 1 partner or others, it really just -- everything builds on itself. And we have a real opportunity to do some very exciting things here from a regulatory perspective that we think will put us way out in front of everyone else.

So when we make the decisions that we do, it is in large part still focused on our fundamental underlying message and theme, which was anything that we do as it relates to getting products developed, getting regulatory approvals is to shorten the time to revenue for our OEM and ODM partners. We believe that our current strategy has the greatest chances of success to mitigate the issues that you might find going through the regulatory process, because now we are partnered with somebody that does hundreds of regulatory approvals a year. And this is just one of them. And it really provides a lot of overall end-to-end credibility, we believe.

It is a bit of a catch-22. We understand clearly that regulatory is a major milestone and of very significant interest to our investors. Unfortunately, we cannot add a lot of color to it, because it is a very proprietary -- it is a clear advantage for us.

I think one thing to note is that we have been working together with this Tier 1 partner actively and aggressively for the last three months, and we have been engaged with them since February of last year. This T1 partner, along with other Tier 1 partners that we are working with, they have a very clear understanding of our technology and our path to regulatory approval.

And I think the fact that the agreement is expanded is a very, very significant, although not direct, but a significant validation of the regulatory process. And the fact that we believe that the technology is safe, that it will obtain regulatory approval, and that ultimately, it will be incorporated into a number of consumer-facing devices.

No, that makes sense. Thank you guys so much. Appreciate it.

At this time, I would like to turn the call back over to Mr. Rizzone for any additional or closing comments.

Again, we want to thank you for your continued support. As I mentioned earlier, the Company is executing. We are firing on all cylinders. We are meeting our targets. We are going to have additional progress to report in the coming quarters.

We gave you some ideas as to the milestones that we are working on in this quarter, and in our next conference call, we will report on our progress for those specific milestones so that you can get a better perspective on our quarter-to-quarter operational performance.

We continue to be very, very excited. This is a very unique opportunity, and we feel very, very fortunate that we have the opportunity to be a part of it. We believe that we can truly change the way the consumer charges their devices, and we are effectively on the path to make that happen. So thank you very much, and we will look forward to talking to you again in another three months.

That does conclude today's conference. We thank you for your participation.