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

Scott Bibaud: Yes. I mean just definitely, it’s through technical conferences that we’re getting invited to these different organizations like the Southwest Regional Development Hub that we’re being — we actually are kind of a founding member of, plus just the tool manufacturers and the customers themselves. They know about our technology, they ask us about it. And so we can definitely see from where we were a few years ago that we were working on this technology, but we didn’t have as deep engagements with either the customers or with the ecosystem partners. Now we really see that whole thing coming together. And I did talk about how important we think it is for ecosystems to be used because the big semiconductor guys, they don’t directly cooperate with each other, but they all use the ecosystem to come up with ways that they can make their next-generation products more successful.

Richard Shannon: Okay. Fair enough. One last question for me and I will jump out of line. Obviously, the macro is looking not very good as we’ve seen through a number of reports in the industry and broader over the last couple of weeks here. Are you seeing any sense of this from your customers, whether in later stages or the latest stages of the phase that you talked about, or even at the end of the cycle? Are you seeing any of that slowdown? Or alternatively, with utilization is much lower than they have been in quite some time to just open up new opportunities that make it even more exciting and could even accelerate in this environment?

Scott Bibaud: Yes. So our view on the market right now, we think the market has — this year has been a very rough year in terms of growth, going negative and a lot of capacity being available out there. We always talk about a period when there’s low capacity utilization is great for us because our customers can just quickly throw some wafers into the line and they’re not disrupting anything. And that’s definitely true. We’re starting to see signs that for next year, things will start to come back and maybe growth will pick up, but we’re not seeing signs that we’re going to get anywhere near the type of really strong growth and high capacity utilization that we had back in 2020 and 2021. And so I think generally, I would say we think that we’re going back to kind of a normal level of activity in the industry, and that should give us an ability to really do good development with people without being impeded by it.

Richard Shannon: Okay. Fair enough. Thanks for that characterization. I will jump on the line, Scott.

Mike Bishop: Our next question comes from Cody Acree of Benchmark.

Cody Acree: Let me ask questions. Maybe, Scott, if you can just talk about ST a bit. And I know that there’s only so much you can share. But if you can talk about where you’re seeing your MST applied within STMicro to the extent that you can, to give us some level of interaction or in the market targeting?

Scott Bibaud: Yes. So I think — of course, we can’t say too much, but I can tell you that this technology has been adopted by their smart power products team. And so the new PDK that I spoke about would be one that would be designed at analog and power type of semiconductors. Now, analog and power, we believe spans multiple divisions with us, within ST. Their AMS division one that would be using it quite a bit. They also have a division called automotive that would use it quite a bit. And — but it’s very hard for us to say at this point the size of the penetration that they have into those different areas. But we do know that their smart power product line is extremely successful, used throughout the industry. And one of the areas that ST has been investing in over the past few years, including building a new fab to support it.

Cody Acree: And Scott, is that lack of visibility? Is that a lack of information you could share with us, as to your engagement with ST? Or is that a lack of really full clarity to you as to where your technology is going to be applied?