Carol Craig: Thank you, Bill. The launch of LS-1 marks the beginning of a new era for Sidus. Our 3D printed AI enhanced LizzieSats are at the core of our high margin data as a service business model with the capability to integrate multiple technologies into a single satellite. Our satellites facilitate simultaneous data collection to support agriculture, maritime, oil and gas, and other industries, and we intend to expand into these industries to generate additional revenue for our shareholders. We have big plans for 2024 as we are quickly building our constellation of satellites with two more LizzieSat manifested for launch with SpaceX on their Bandwagon mission before the end of the year. With LS-1 in orbit and LS-2 and 3 in projection, we’re focusing attracting new data customers to expand our data as a service business.
Additionally, we’re looking at expanding our other lines of business as we focus on more than just lower earth orbit. We expect the next 24 months to demonstrate our focus on remaining lean as we grow revenue and capabilities with a plan for rapid response development of space solutions for all areas of the space ecosystem. Successfully designing, building, launching and deploying an operational 100 kilogram 3D printed satellite is not an easy feat and there are very few companies who get to this level. I could not be more proud of our team and all we have accomplished. We have methodically executed on our strategy of building a leading space and space data as a service company with an experienced team, innovative and advanced technologies, a vertically integrated manufacturing facility and a robust spacecraft supply chain.
It’s exciting to show proof of this capability for both our customers and our shareholders. We have much to do and we’re looking forward to the future as we continue to execute on our vision and bring value to our shareholders, our customers and the world. I want to thank all of our shareholders for your continued support of Sidus. And we will now move to the Q&A portion of the call. We’ve received some submitted questions from investors that we’d like to address. Bill, I’ll let you start.
A – Bill White: Thank you, Carol. The first question was with respect to revenue and growth. What were the key drivers behind the revenue decline this year? The primary drivers was the function of our milestone contract billings and the timing of those billings for manufacturing and satellite revenue. Second question, how do you anticipate revenue trends evolving in the next quarter or fiscal year? While revenue will evolve as we continue to have more satellites in orbit, we’ve talked about our three revenue streams, manufacturing, payload and data. While we’ve had manufacturing and payload revenue in 2022 and 2023, we anticipate to start seeing some satellite data revenue in 2024 as we continue our planned launch cadence. Payload and data are higher margin and are expected to favorably impact our overall results.
Carol Craig: Thanks, Bill. So the next question is what strategies are you employing to acquire and retain customers in an increasingly competitive market? So our number one strategy was demonstrating that we could successfully launch, deploy and operate a 100 kilogram commercial satellite. The significance being the complexity of the satellite, because of the size and the fact that it’s commercial endeavor, and therefore, we control the revenue generation in addition to all the operations at the upcoming constellation. Also as Bill mentioned, we hired VP of Business Development with an increased focus on government opportunities now that we’ve flown. We expect more government opportunities over the next year due to the timing of existing contracting vehicles that are out there and also because of the successful execution of our satellite manufacturing and operating capability.
And this also means an increased pipeline for data as well as the manufacturing with additional focus on engineering services. And then of course, we’re attending the industry event, Satellite 2024 was attended in March and an upcoming ESA Space Symposium in April. And all of these combined are helping us to increase our pipeline and work toward acquiring more and retaining those customers. Next question is, are there any notable customer wins or expansions during the reporting period? So we did announce that we are one of the teams that was selected by the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, NGA, to provide research and development services to their research and development directorate. And the NGA’s primary mission is collecting, analyzing and distributing geospatial intelligence in support of national security.
And that contract is expected to start to gain some momentum and we will be bidding on task orders as a part of that team upcoming in the — in 2024. We also signed a commercial IDIQ contract for lunar support and we’ll be pursuing government contract task orders on that contract as well. And that shows our commitment to not only LEO, but the Moon and Mars and beyond. And we’re also booking customers for subsequent launches up to two years out from now. So a lot of times the customers don’t allow us to have public announcements but that doesn’t mean that we aren’t doing something. So we are looking at our cadence and ensuring that we are booking those customers for those subsequent satellites. Next question is, how has operational efficiency improved or impacted during the quarter?
So we now completed design, development, testing and successful flight of our LizzieSat-1 satellite. We’ve passed all the SpaceX and the regulatory requirements. Our LS-2 and LS-3 are really build to print from that LS-1 design. So the — what they call the nonrecurring engineering costs or NRE are reduced as compared to LS-1. So we will see efficiencies there including cost reduction. We have our Sidus Mission Control Center now up fully operational, which has worked flawlessly since we launched on March 4th. And this is the same mission control center that’s going to be utilized for LS-2 and LS-3 and beyond all the other missions. So again, that NRE, that nonrecurring engineering and those costs are not repeated. So it’s near zero since we use the same mission control center for all those missions.
