Atomera Incorporated (NASDAQ:ATOM) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Our balance of cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments on September 30, 2023, was $20.4 million, compared to $23.8 million on June 30, 2023. During Q3, we used $3.5 million of cash in operating activities, and we sold approximately 24,000 shares under our ATM facility at an average price of $9.17 per share. As of September 30, 2023, we had 25.8 million shares outstanding. Moving now to our guidance. We still expect that our non-GAAP operating expenses for 2023 will be in the range of $16.25 million to $16.75 million, and it should come in close to the midpoint of that range. On the last call, I cautioned that higher prices and number of wafers run at TSI had caused our outsourced R&D expense to run above our annual plan. However, we now expect that our work at TSI during Q4, as well as in Q1 of next year, will primarily consist of finishing wafer lots that we have in progress or are just starting.

As we discussed on our Q1 call, Bosch announced that they plan to acquire TSI and convert it to silicon carbide production by 2026. The acquisition closed at the end of August, and in October, Bosch informed us and the rest of TSI’s customers that they will cease supporting current customers in February 2024. Atomera is now in the process of finding a replacement. As Scott mentioned, we expect that STMicro will install MST in Q4, so our Q4 revenue should be in the range of $300,000 to $350,000, which would consist mostly of ST’s first milestone payment for the installation of MST. After validation of film quality in ST’s tool, there will be a second and final installation-related milestone payment. As we progress toward that second milestone, and toward a much more substantial upfront fees for moving to commercial production, we will provide updated revenue guidance as appropriate.

With that, I will turn the call back over to Scott for a few summary remarks before we open the call up to questions. Scott?

Scott Bibaud: Thanks, Frank. Once again, this quarter, Atomera has advanced our technology with customers across many different market segments. . We believe the momentum we are carrying right now will help us to assemble a large and diversified set of customers and markets, building a strong and growing royalty stream. That is our goal and I look forward to sharing our journey with you as we seek to build a semiconductor technology licensing powerhouse. Mike, we will now take questions.

A – Mike Bishop: All right. Thank you, Scott. If you wish to ask a question, please click the Q&A button at the bottom of the Zoom window, then feel free to type in your question. I will do my best to aggregate the incoming queries and relay them to management. Alternatively, you can click and raise that — click in the raise hand button, and we may call on you to ask your question live. Okay. As of right now, our first question comes from Richard Shannon of Craig-Hallum.

Richard Shannon: Great. Let’s start with the topic of STMicro here. I guess, just wanted to clarify here. Obviously, we understand some of the delay mechanisms here, but you also believe that there’s going to be no delay in the ultimate 18- to 24-month time frame to get them to, I think, your words are production, correct me if I’m wrong there, Scott. But can you help us understand why you don’t think there’s any delay here?

Scott Bibaud: Well, regardless of when they installed the tool, they were going to have to do a bunch of development work, creating the new PDK, using simulation technology. I think, even if it had been in place, they probably would do quite a bit of that before they went to silicon validation. So by my estimate, I don’t think we’re behind, as long as it gets installed soon, which we do believe it’s going to happen.

Richard Shannon: Okay. Fair enough. Let’s jump over to the topic of your first JDA customer. I think you said, shown some great results. I saw the big problem here targeted one of their largest business units. By my notes here, said you’re focused on it. Business or a solution to work on with that business, maybe you can help us a little bit understand what’s going on there.