Q2 2023 NUBURU Inc Earnings Call
Participants
Mark S. Zediker; Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director; Nuburu, Inc.
Richard Brian Knaley; CFO; Nuburu, Inc.
Ananda Prosad Baruah; MD; Loop Capital Markets LLC, Research Division
Auguste Philip Richard; MD & Senior Research Analyst; Northland Capital Markets, Research Division
Ivan Philip Feinseth; Director of Research; Tigress Financial Partners LLC, Research Division
Ralf Esper
Presentation
Operator
Good afternoon. Thank you for attending NUBURU, Inc.'s Second Quarter 2023 Financial Results Call. (Operator Instructions). I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Ralf Esper, External Director of Investor Relations at Gateway Group. Thank you. You may proceed, Mr. Esper.
Ralf Esper
Thank you, operator, and thanks to everyone for joining us on NUBURU's Second Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. Joining the call today are Mark Zediker, NUBURU's Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder; and Brian Knaley, Chief Financial Officer, to discuss our second quarter results.
During this call, certain statements we make will be forward-looking. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties including those set forth in our safe harbor provision for forward-looking statements that can be found at the end of our earnings press release and also in our Form 10-Q that will be filed today and provide further detail about the risks related to our business. Additionally, except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements.
We will also provide non-GAAP information regarding certain of our historical and targeted results to supplement the results provided in accordance with GAAP. This information should not be considered superior to or as a substitute for the comparable GAAP measures. The reconciliation of historical non-GAAP measures can be found in our second quarter earnings release published this afternoon and posted on the Investor Relations section of our website at ir.nuburu.net.
I will now turn the call over to Mark. Mark?
Mark S. Zediker
Thank you, Ralf, and thanks to everyone for joining us today for our second quarter 2023 earnings call. As some of you might be new to our story, I'd like to kick off today's discussion with a brief introduction to NUBURU, highlighting our core technologies and the comprehensive range of solutions we offer to our customers across various industries. Thereafter, I will proceed with a review of our financial performance during the second quarter and elaborate on significant corporate milestones before I provide a financial outlook for our third quarter and full year 2023 results.
At NUBURU, we pioneered the ever-evolving landscape of manufacturing solutions and positions ourselves to meet the surging market demand for sustainable and energy-efficient cutting-edge production processes. Our transformational core technology, the blue laser, embodies the principles of performance and efficiency. Through our groundbreaking blue laser technology, which is protected with the plethora of patents, we've paved the way for a transformative shift displacing conventional laser metal machining and additive manufacturing methods by delivering unprecedented advancements in speed and quality.
Our products address various market challenges as we leverage the capabilities of the blue laser for welding, 3D printing and a growing list of further applications. At its core, our blue laser technology remains one of the best solutions to generate cost and performance benefits in manufacturing across multiple large, high-growth markets with several serviceable, addressable markets growing to a total of approximately $33 billion in the next 10 years. And on top of that, we enabled countless new applications that previously were thought of as impossible. More on that in a bit.
Our systems give manufacturers the flexibility and performance necessary to produce more sustainable and durable end products. With our current BL-250, that is in production, we continue to target customers using the outgoing AO systems, while also targeting new applications that demand even higher brightness and performance. The AO production line phaseout is the planned evolution of NUBURU's blue laser technology to increase power and performance. But our innovation doesn't stop here. As announced in June, we introduced our latest next-generation BL 1 kilowatt system, enabling even higher speed, deep penetration, spatter-free and repeatable high-quality wells, all of which are critical attributes for the needs of large commercial applications including EV battery welding and 3D printing.
The BL-1000-F's ability to harness the higher absorption of metals to blue light, combined with this compatibility with a scanner, provides crucial benefits that improve the overall manufacturing capabilities for our customers. We look forward to further developing our product portfolio, including the NUBURU single-mode laser, which we are aiming to deploy commercially by 2025. Market opportunities for this technology are countless due to its unmatched product characteristics.
Transitioning now to our recent highlights. A little over a month ago, we announced that we have secured private placement of $9.2 million from existing and new investors. The additional capital will help us execute our product development road map and continue our commercialization. And we have already made significant progress in converting our technology development efforts into contract awards with multiple blue chip customers across welding and additive manufacturing, and we continue to execute against our long-term growth strategy.
As such, we are pleased to report another period of strong financial growth with total sales of $1.1 million, a total top line improvement of over 2,000% on a year-over-year basis. Let me dive a little deeper.
During the second quarter, we continued to deliver units to Essentium as part of a multiyear partnership. This strategic collaboration aims to further enhance NUBURU's product deliveries by integrating our cutting-edge blue laser technology into their high-speed extrusion additive manufacturing platform. The integration of our technology into their platform aims to expand use of additive manufacturing of metal parts for automotive, aerospace and defense applications, unlocking new possibilities in these industries.
Furthermore, we've entered into a joint development agreement with GE Additive to explore commercial opportunities using NUBURU's proprietary blue laser technology and GE Additives machine and system expertise, with the goal of continuing to improve speed and accuracy for laser-based additive manufacturing. This joint development agreement and in addition to our previously announced agreement with GE Additive to support our AFWERX's small business innovative research contract awarded to NUBURU in 2022. I'm pleased to inform you that we delivered the first blue area printing head as part of that contract to GE Additive for testing.
And most recently, we've just this week announced the contract with NASA. We are incredibly excited about this opportunity as it is for an application only enabled for our blue laser technology. Together with NASA, we are seeking to demonstrate the feasibility of power beaming using a blue laser suitable for deployment on the Moon or Mars for upcoming missions. The need for our system is driven by the high cost of lifting wire and the necessary equipment into space and transporting it to the Moon or Mars. A power gaming system provides a unique solution that dramatically reduces the size and weight of the equipment needed.
As the system will be deployed within minutes to bring power to critical areas, we expect other government entities like the DoD or [FEMA] to be interested in this application for blue laser as well. In addition, NUBURU's visible laser would provide visual guidance for the habitant, due to the scatter off the fine regolith powder suspended above the moon's surface or the Rayleigh Scattering off the Martian atmosphere, thus creating a guided highway across these surfaces. Our contract with NASA as well as our selection by the U.S. Department of Defense for the fabrication and delivery of prototype and equipment in support of solid-state high-energy laser weapons, which we announced at the beginning of the quarter, our testimonials to the potential of our blue laser technology and its wide range of applications.
As we look forward to the remainder of the year, we are cognizant of supply chain conditions that present bottlenecks in the procurement process for scanner components, in particular, the scanner and lens-related components, respectively, associated with our BL product line. However, with alternative sourcing initiatives in place, we believe such material constraints will abate towards the end of the second half of this year. As part of our top-down approach to boost gross margins and revenue expansion, our team consistently assesses opportunities for implementing operational efficiencies and cost saving measures where possible. We will provide updates on the success of these initiatives as they are implemented across our operational strategy.
Given this difficult supply chain backdrop, we anticipate third quarter sales to compress but rebound towards the end of the second half of the year, with the majority of revenue recognition pulling through during the fourth quarter of 2023. Our confidence in this cadence is supported by the additional time in the market for our new BL-250 products and additional contract awards we continue to develop as commercial activities across all our charter markets evolve.
In summary, due to our execution of product deliveries to our commercial customers in conjunction with the strong market adoption of our blue laser technology, we remain confident in achieving our full year sales target in excess of $3 million.
I will now turn the call over to Brian to discuss the financial details of the second quarter of 2023.
Richard Brian Knaley
Thanks, Mark. I'm pleased to review our second quarter results. Further details of which can be found in the 10-Q that will be on file with the SEC, as well as [speak] to the private placement in greater detail. Let me begin with our results for the second quarter.
Our second quarter sales were $1.1 million, which is a 2,125% increase compared to the second quarter of 2022, primarily attributable to an increase in the number of laser system sales and the product and customer mix of laser systems sales during the period. Our gross profit was a negative $1.4 million compared to a loss of $1.2 million in the second quarter of 2022, primarily attributable to a onetime write-off of approximately $600,000 related to the excess and obsolete AO product line inventory. Our gross margin was a negative 136% compared to a gross margin of a negative 2,574% in the second quarter of 2022, primarily driven by increasing revenue, partially offset by the onetime impact of the AO product line inventory write-off.
Total operating expenses in the second quarter of 2023 were $5 million, compared to $2.7 million in the second quarter of 2022. The increase is primarily attributable to onetime professional fees associated with legal, compliance and accounting matters, following the business combination and the transitioning to being a public company. Further contributors to the increase was regular general and administrative costs associated with the company status as a public company and increased costs of research and development of tooling and supplies related to the development of the BL product line. We expect part of the OpEx spending to normalize and as such, decreased during the second part of the year.
Our net operating loss in the second quarter of 2023 was $6.4 million compared to an operating loss of $3.9 million in the second quarter of 2022. Our net loss was $6.1 million or $0.18 per share compared to a net loss of $3.9 million or $0.71 per share in the second quarter of 2022. This is primarily related to the mentioned onetime expenses detailed previously.
Our EBITDA was a negative $6 million, compared to a negative $3.8 million in the second quarter of 2022. In the quarter, we had a free cash flow usage of $5.1 million compared to a free cash flow usage of $2.9 million in 2022, primarily attributable to the increase in total operating expenses.
I'll now turn to the private placement and its effect on our balance sheet. As Mark mentioned, we are extremely appreciative of the capital commitment and the support shown by both existing as well as new investors in the initial round as well as the subsequent placement. Both rounds consists of an offering of convertible promissory notes and warrants to purchase shares of the company's common stock. The shares underlying the convertible notes and the warrants are subject to a 1-year lockup and the total amount of the cash confusion raised from these 2 purchase agreements prior to deducting transaction issuance costs is approximately $9.2 million. As a result, and as of June 30, 2023, the company had cash and cash equivalents of $6.6 million. We intend to deploy this capital in a careful and efficient manner with the aim of accruing long-term benefits for all for our stockholders.
Finally, based on our strong sales performance and product deliveries in the second quarter of 2023, we are reiterating our full year 2023 outlook of total revenue in excess of $3 million. EBITDA in the range of negative $21 million and negative $23 million. And free cash flow to be in the range of negative $24 million and negative $26 million.
This concludes my summary. I'll now turn the call back over to Mark.
Mark S. Zediker
Thanks, Brian. In closing, we are more than ever excited about the growth opportunity ahead of us with growing commercial interest for our technology-driven solutions. Our market outlook remains robust with momentum and revenue generation accelerating towards 2024 and beyond as we roll out our BL and SML systems.
Finally, we would like to thank our employees and our customers for their continued efforts and dedication to the company, which ultimately has driven our success as an organization. Together, we focused on driving innovation, supporting the global transition to sustainable solutions and delivering strong profitable growth for our shareholders.
I will now turn the call back over to the operator, who will assist us in taking your questions.
Question and Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Ananda Baruah with Loop Capital.
Ananda Prosad Baruah
Yes, I appreciate it, Mark and Brian. Yes, good to see it during the quarter as well out of your plate. I guess, just a few for me, if I could. You noted in the press release, increased interest in products by blue chip customers, and you mentioned such as NASA. But I also wanted to see if there's any other additional context that would be useful with regard to additional groups of customers. And I have a couple of follow-ups.
Mark S. Zediker
Yes, a great question. This is Mark. We have been talking to a range of government customers and a range of commercial customers, and there is tremendous interest in this technology, and we've been enjoying developing those relationships. In particular, we take a lot of the work into our application center to validate the performance, and we've been getting great results with the latest BL-250 and BL-1000 products. So we're very excited by what we're seeing there.
Ananda Prosad Baruah
Yes. No, that's great. I guess, what I was going to actually ask, do you have any notable technical milestones, I guess, in -- it gets the BL-1000 out, do you have any technical milestones that we can keep an eye out for that you feel are sort of important one to you guys to achieve?
Mark S. Zediker
Again, this is Mark. We are currently validating in our application center the BL-1000's capabilities, while we had a large amount of pretest with the earlier AO series, we're trying to verify that those tests are still accurate and meet the needs of the battery manufacturer. And to date, it's looking very, very good. There will most likely be some papers released in the future, talking about the technical results that we've achieved there.
Furthermore, with the BL-250, again, we had AO-150 product that we used in the past in the application center, and we're validating that, that laser can work well with the scanner and [at lens], which is a common mode of manufacturing, a lot of different things such as soldering and welding PC board components and connector assemblies for 3C type markets. And we're seeing a great correlation with our previous results as well.
And the other area that we believe we will be able to work closely with is medical manufacturing where [ROAs] compliance is very important, and they like to see welding versus soldering in many of their products.
Operator
Your next question comes from Ivan Feinseth with Tigress Financial.
Ivan Philip Feinseth
Congratulations on the great results and progress. Can you go into a little more detail about some of the drivers of the year-over-year revenue growth?
Mark S. Zediker
Ivan, this is Mark again. Great question. So the real driver here is the release of the new products. We had been anticipating that the AO product which got released last June would drive revenue growth because last June, it was just being opened up and offered. And in particular, we were able to secure a contract with Essentium, and we've been delivering against that contract. In addition to that, we've been doing a fair amount of work in the 3D printing area with our partner GE Additive and the AFWERX contract. And so that also added to the revenue growth.
Ivan Philip Feinseth
And then any more detail on some of the product engagements and some of the functionality that is driving the interest and how you were being picked because of this?
Mark S. Zediker
Great question. And again, this is Mark. So as we test these lasers in the application centers for our blue chip customers, we're able to prove and validate prior results of our AO product line. However, AO product line was limited to be in use with the gantry style system, so that was a very slow-moving motion system. And now we're proving that we can use the scanners, which is what's really driving the interest in this new product series. And it's what we had targeted when we had planned to releasing this product this year. It's also what we had experienced as we were in the markets, talking to people, and they're like this blue laser is great, but you really need to bury it with a scanner in order for this to be -- work for in our manufacturing operation. And so we're really seeing the market pull because of that capability.
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your next question comes from Gus Richard with Northland.
Auguste Philip Richard
Yes. Can you give us a little color on the revenue mix in the quarter? How much were BL-250, BL-1000-F and any other components of revenue?
Mark S. Zediker
Sure, Gus. Great to see you earlier in the quarter, and thanks for the question. Predominantly, this was, again, a 650 quarter -- we had 3 sales of the BL-250 in the quarter, but predominantly a (inaudible) sales quarter. Obviously, as we move forward, that's going to change. The mix will change substantially to the BL-250 and the BL-1000-F.
Auguste Philip Richard
Got it. And then you talked a little bit about some supply constraints. Can you just hit that again and then talk about your ability to produce the [lasers] and how that's coming along?
Mark S. Zediker
Great question, Gus, this is Mark again. So the supply constraints that we're referring to was delivery of scanners. So it does not really affect the production of the lasers themselves. But because of the long lead time on scanners, it does affect some of our customers' planned purchase schedules. So they can buy the lasers and buy the scanner separately, but they also provide scanners to customers as well in the event that they can't get their scheduled in. So that's the main supply constraint we're talking about.
Auguste Philip Richard
Got it. And then in terms of the [excel] production, how is that sort of progressing, how you're doing on the capacity?
Mark S. Zediker
Yes. The ramp-up is going according to plan. We anticipate being able to produce up to a module a day by the end of the year. And I believe the last set of equipment will arrive in the next month or so. And once we get that online, we'll have the capacity we need going forward into 2024.
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines.
