Rocket Lab USA, Inc. (NASDAQ:RKLB) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Adam Spice: Yes, I’ll take first half of this because there’s a bunch of different initiatives ongoing. Certainly, we believe that that 30% gross margin is the right target for that business. I will say that we’re still going through the process of burning through the legacy backlog that was there that came at pretty compromised gross margins. But if you look at the new business that we’re booking and we’ve been booking quite a bit of new business, all of that is at or above our target margin. So, we feel very good about how kind of we’re replenishing the backlog with new business as we burn off the old business. But there are also some longer term opportunities for that legacy backlog for that to become better gross margin over time, but that’s kind of just the traditional blocking and tackling, getting the efficiencies out of the operation, investing more in systems and processes and people and equipment.

So, I think that we’ve got the right things kind of in focus and we’re actually in the right things to get the margin up. But I would say that it’s definitely — it’s a longer initiative to get the margins to where we thought we would. I think it’s aggressive at this point to think that we are going to be at that 30-point target in the early part of 2024. I think it’s going to take us a little bit longer. And again, that’s just a function of how quickly we kind of burn through that backlog and get some other efficiencies in the business. But longer term, we absolutely feel like that’s the right number to be had. And we say longer term we’re not talking like three, four, five years. It’s a shorter time horizon than that, but it’s probably not the next 12 months.

Pete do you have any further color on other margin enhancement opportunities for the SolAero business?

Peter Beck: Yes. So, I think it’s a good point. I mean one of — good set of points. One of the reasons why we’re attracted to that acquisition was the new IMM beta cell technology, which is the highest performing cell technology in the world. So, as we kind of take that from relatively small production volumes and almost R&D into volume production that really changed some of those margin opportunities as well. And as Adam pointed out I mean we’re just going to burn off some of those long legacy stuff, but even the team has been booking and is looking exactly where we need it to be. It’s just we’re going to have this drive a little bit.

Eric Yan: Okay. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Andre Madrid of Bank of America. Please proceed.

Andre Madrid: Hi, guys. How are you? Kind of wanted to touch base on the comment you made regarding ocean recovery versus mid-air recovery. I mean is there a big difference in between how much you might be able to recover for it to be received in mid-air versus ocean? Is there like an amount of the Electron that you might not be able to recover in the event that it splashes down?

Peter Beck: Yes. Hi, Andre. No, not really at all. The reason why we didn’t want to get it wet is there is some remedial work that’s required when you get it wet, purging and slightly more intense, kind of, recertification activities rather than have been dry. But as kind of with placed whole bunch down now and retrieve them back that’s become really well understood for us. So when you trade the extra kind of work that you need to do to, kind of, replenish them and recertify vehicle for launch against the cost of operating the helicopter it’s pretty much neutral. So at that point what the water landing does enable us to do is recover more vehicles because we don’t have the constraints of the operations of the helicopter. So it’s, kind of, financially it’s kind of the same, but we get to actually use more vehicles.