Hello, everybody. Thank you very much for joining us today. We'd like to start the business briefing session for Astroscale Holdings. My name is Hideyuki Maekawa, Head of Finance and Accounting, and I'll be your host for today's event. Today's event will be divided into two sessions. First, our management will provide a business overview from our company, followed by a Q&A session. If you have any questions, please ask them at the time. I'd like to introduce today's three speakers, Mr. Nobu Okada, President and CEO, Mr. Chris Blackerby, Director and COO, and Mr. Nobuhiro Matsuyama, Director and CFO. They will explain our whole story first, then we will take your questions. This session is scheduled for 60 minutes. Now, I will hand over to our CEO, Nobu. Please go ahead. Hello, everyone. I'm Nobu, Founder and CEO of Astroscale. Thank you very much for your time today, thank you very much for joining Astroscale business briefing today. 11 years ago, when I founded Astroscale, On-Orbit Servicing was just a sci-fi, we have created this market by advancing technology, business, and rule-making discussions. We went public in June, we've been continuously making progress even over the last couple of months. We will explain how urgent space sustainability issue is and how our activities will be translated into financial numbers with Chris, COO, and Matsu, CFO. Can you see this photo? What is this object in the photo? This is the world's first image of real debris. This debris has a diameter of 4 m, a length of 11 m, and weighs 3 tons, like a double-decker bus. It is not stationary. It is flying at a speed of 7-8 km per second, which is about 100 x faster than a bullet train. Our satellite, ADRAS-J, succeeded in approaching the debris for the first time in the world and took this image right behind the debris while maintaining relative stillness. This technology is not only innovative, but also has a substantial impact on On-Orbit Servicing or OOS market, serving as a key enabler for sustainable and circular space economy. Astroscale is at the forefront of this technology and On-Orbit Servicing market. Next slide. There are three reasons why we are seen as a global leader. Firstly, we pioneered rendezvous and proximity operations, or RPO technologies, with the two missions. It is very challenging to approach and dock with unprepared and free-floating object in orbit, but we proved it is possible at a commercially viable price. These technologies put us at the forefront in four key business categories, which we explain later. Secondly, we are now in the midst of a booming On-Orbit Servicing market that is projected to generate $ 18 billion in revenue in the next decade. Over the last couple of years, institutional demand surged, and we are capturing these opportunities globally. Our order backlog was JPY 28.5 billion as of end of April, and we are aiming for operating profit close to break- even in fiscal year 2026 through further growth. Lastly, our global presence is a key differentiator, which we will discuss later. 10 years ago, nobody was talking about space debris issue, but today it's a global agenda at the United Nations, G7, and other international groups. We are informing them, supporting their discussions. Here's a summary of the key message to the investors today, but if you want to read just one page, this is the page. Space sustainability is a global issue, and to drive this market to solve this issue, we need global presence. We are a global company and acting locally in five countries with around 600 diverse, great talents. Our mission is to ensure safe and sustainable use of space. In space, the risk is increasing, and the return is decreasing, and On-Orbit Servicing is essential to reverse this situation. From here, we explain how urgent space environmental issue is and why OOS, On-Orbit Servicing, matters. This is a vivid picture of the space environment back in 2013 when I founded Astroscale, and all the red dots are debris, made of many large pieces of defunct satellites and rocket upper stages. If you can spot white dots, these are active satellites. Most of the objects traveling around the Earth are garbage, space debris. Today, the situation has intensified. The left chart tells the rapid increase in the satellites and debris. By 2030, the space environment is expected to become significantly more congested. If you see the right chart, blue line shows the number of near misses between satellite and debris within 1 km. It was 2,000 times per month up to 2020, which is 66 times per day, but it increased threefold in 2021. The legacy practices of the space operations won't work. The density of objects in space has reached a critical level, and a chain reaction of collision can happen at any near future, and it is real. There is very congested area between 400 km to 2,000 km altitude from the ground, which is called low Earth orbit or LEO. Debris remains there for decades and centuries, and it is very congested. Even this month, August, a big Chinese rocket upper stage broke up right after it deployed satellites at 800 km altitude and created at least 700 more debris. It is a problem now. Right bottom chart explains how much Starlink satellites are conducting collision avoidance maneuvers by burning expensive fuels. In late 2023, they avoided collision with other satellites or debris every 11 minutes. The first half of this year, frequency increased to every five minutes. Again, the risk is increasing, return is diminishing even over the last several months. If we don't take actions, space will become unsustainable by being filled out with small debris generated by breakups, and economics of satellite operators will go really bad. The fundamental cause of this unsustainable space environment is lack of a value chain in space industry. Other industries like automotive, airplanes, or ships, or infrastructure, they all have post-sale service and support. The space industry has been throw-away culture. Most of the spacecrafts are not recycled, reused, refueled, repaired, relocated, refueled, nor removed. Astroscale was born to complete the full value chain, which enables a circular economy in space. Let me explain about our core competence and start with technology first. People have talked about OOS opportunities, but the technology did not exist. A safe and reliable capability to find, approach, and dock with non-cooperative objects are a game changer. We developed this technology in-house with owning our own IP. We have two satellites up there. ELSA-d, this world's first debris removal technology demonstration mission, which we launched three years ago. We brought up capturing satellite and dummy debris together, and we separated out, captured, separated again, and then removed far, spread out far away, and start finding approach and successfully approach the debris again. We also proved autonomous tracking of the debris. We successfully completed the missions and lowered down its orbit so that it can naturally burn up in the atmosphere in the next couple of years in line with the regulations. Bottom one, we launched ADRAS-J, the world first LEO debris inspection mission in February. This extremely complex mission, that's why I was invited by United Nations to deliver two speeches in June in front of the member states. This is game-changer project. Next slide, please. Here's a concept of operation or original plan of ADRAS-J. After launch and initial checkout, ADRAS-J approaches the client using absolute navigation. Upon spotting the client as a dot, it transitions to relative navigation. Utilizing multiple onboard sensors, ADRAS-J conducts a proximity approach following a safe rendezvous procedure. It then arrives at a distance of 50 m behind the client for fixed observations, followed by 360-degree fly around the maneuvers. Super complicated. Here's a real success story. After a successful launch from New Zealand, ADRAS-J used absolute navigation to spot the client debris as a dot. It did. It then switched to relative navigation and followed a safe trajectory. Upon getting closer, ADRAS-J identified the client with a multi-pixel image, as you can see from the bottom left, and then got the rear image from a few hundred meters away, as you can see bottom center. It conducted 360-degree fly around maneuvers for three times. This showcases very advanced RPO technologies. Let's see the more details. Left image shows a fixed- point observation at a location 50 m behind the debris. We were able to gain knowledge about the motion of the debris and effects on materials by such as aging and ultraviolet rays. The right side video, this is fly around. As you can see, this is acrobatic and super difficult technology which allows us to observe the entire appearance of the debris and acquiring technology necessary for capture in future removal missions that are separately contracted today. Matsu will talk about this later. We are just widening the gap against the competitors. Let me turn it over to Chris, COO to talk about business and how we're making the advancing. Thank you, Nobu. Hello, everyone. As Nobu said, the space economy is projected to be valued at about $1.8 trillion by the middle of next decade. Truly, On-Orbit Servicing is going to be the key to assuring that this ecosystem can thrive. On-Orbit Servicing is going to help to make sure that this growing space economy can remain sustainable and supported as it grows. Astroscale is in the middle of how this is going to work. As you see in the graphic below, we work with our suppliers around the world to build out our capabilities. That includes working with launch providers, which then help us launch the mission. If you look at the right side of that graphic, we're serving customers, we're serving satellite operators, we're serving government space agencies. At Astroscale, we are right in the middle of that with the design, the development, the manufacturing, and the servicing operations provision for these customers. We're central to how this new economy of On-Orbit Servicing is working. Clients right now are primarily government customers, but this is just the baseline, as we're going to talk more about, into a commercially viable service going forward. The customer demand for that service is only growing. This is evidenced by the many new competitors that are out there trying to offer the same service we are. The fact is they haven't done what Nobu just explained that we've already done. They also don't have the amount of expansive contracts that we have across many different countries. We talked a little about these four different service lines that we offer that are meeting customer demand right now. Let me go over them very briefly here. The first is that end-of-life service. This is what we proved out with ELSA-d, our first mission in orbit. Nobu mentioned that we were able to prove the capture of an object with a magnetic docking system. That's what end-of-life service is. We work with commercial satellite operators to prepare their satellites with a magnetic docking plate on their satellite before launch. We can go up and remove those debris when they're needed in the future. This is preventing future debris. Our second mission line, active debris removal, is removing large, unprepared debris that's currently in orbit. All of those pieces that are up there right now, upper stage rocket bodies, defunct satellites, don't have that magnetic docking plate. We're working primarily with governments. We already have missions to do this, to go up and remove these big upper stage rocket bodies. The next mission line, life extension. We're actually not removing debris with life extension. We're going to active satellites and making sure that they can remain active. These are satellites that still are communicative, but maybe they've run out of fuel, or maybe their inclination has tilted a little bit if they're providing communications capability. We can go up and we want to refuel them. We want to shift their inclination back to a serviceable attitude so they can maintain a customer base and maintain revenue. In this case, we have both government and commercial customers that we're focused on. Our last mission line, ISSA, we're not capturing anything, we're just taking pictures. We're getting an understanding of the orbital environment, and that is ADRAS-J that Nobu showed earlier that's currently being demonstrated. We can get up, we can take pictures, we can understand a specific object or a larger orbital environment. We are seeing interest for all four of these mission lines right now around the world. We're seeing government support for this. Government support is going to be essential in an early-stage business like this. It's going to be essential in terms of policies that governments put in place and regulations in which governments make sure that they mandate that we maintain sustainable orbits. Now we're seeing this from a civil side when you look at some examples in that first column. When you see there, you see that across the board in the countries where we're represented, you see that there's regulations being put in place. One in particular to call out is that one in the top left. In the U.S., the FCC, Federal Communications Commission, a couple of years ago put in place a mandate that says any satellite that gets a license to be launched in the U.S. needs to be removed within five years of the end of its life. This is significant because prior to the FCC doing that, the rule was it had to be removed within 25 years. The FCC noted that that's way too long to be 25 years before you bring down your debris. They reduced that to five years. They gave people who wanted to get licenses a two-year grace period. That two-year grace period is coming due this September. We see that there's going to be change that is actually being put in place by regulatory agencies around the world in governments where we're operating that's going to impact business. We see this in defense agencies as well. I won't go through these, but you can see examples of areas where we are located, where defense agencies are prioritizing On-Orbit Servicing capabilities, and defense investment is going to help drive this technology. We see this in global groups, if you look at the third column. Groups that are getting together, multinational organizations and non-profit groups and industry groups, they're getting together to drive this activity as well. One to call out is the third one down, the G7. They met in Italy this year, and for the second year in a row, they highlighted the importance of sustainable orbits, calling out for national efforts to make sure that they remove debris. People are paying attention. People are recognizing that this means a larger market. One of the assessment groups that is focused on the space economy, Northern Sky Research, back in February of 2020, assessed that the On-Orbit Servicing economy would be worth about $3 billion in the 10-year period from 2019 to 2029. In their most recent addition, their most recent assessment of the space economy, they see that from 2023 to 2033, the On-Orbit Servicing market is going to be about $18.2 billion. That's almost a 6x growth that they're anticipating over the last several years. Because of the technology that we're proving, because of the governments that are getting involved, the analysts are seeing that this market is real. This is not just a long-term market. As you can see by the CAGR numbers, even in the near term, we're going to see significant growth. At Astroscale, we're looking at a target market share of over 50%. Now, what makes us confident we can reach that target? That's an ambitious one. What makes us confident is our global reach. From the beginning, our strategy as a company has been to embed ourselves in countries around the world that are driving this market, and that's what we've done. We've put in place experienced, knowledgeable, and connected teams in all of the countries where we're located that can take advantage of working together with government agencies, with suppliers, with other customers, and take advantage of these significant government budgets that you see on the top line, a lot of which is going toward On-Orbit Servicing. Because we have that, we are confident that we are able to win out on some of these markets. Next slide. We're continuing to lean in in this way. We're building out facilities that can manufacture satellites. We're building out offices that people want to come and work in. We're building a culture and a team globally that is exciting, and this is just a representation of some of our offices around the world that we've recently opened up in the last couple of years that is helping to attract all of this talent. This strategy is working. This is just a representation of several of the services that we're providing from each of our entities around the world, some of which Nobu already reviewed. I'm going to turn it over to Matsu, our CFO now, to talk through the financial details of how this strategy is playing out. Matsu? Thanks, Chris. The On-Orbit Servicing industry is expected to grow in phases, similar to other space-related sectors. We are already capturing robust demand from institutional customers. These are not just small studies, but actual space missions. These institutional projects will help to stimulate future commercial missions, which we expect will drive further expansion of the On-Orbit Servicing market. Our backlog is strong. On the back of increasing institutional demand, our confirmed backlog has increased 18x over the last two years to JPY 28.5 billion. A significant portion of that amount will now be secured under contract with the recent signing of major projects such as ELSA-M Phase 4 and ADRAS-J2. In addition, the ratio of fully funded missions has increased significantly, which helps to bolster our profitability. We are steadily executing on our institutional pipeline strategy. We recently signed a contract for number three, ELSA-M Phase 4. Will contract number seven, ADRAS-J2, tomorrow. The ADRAS-J2 contract amount is JPY 12 billion, which was significantly higher than our expectation of JPY 11.4 billion. We were also able to secure an increase in contract amount for number six, APS-R, of $1.4 million. These are all significant achievements in our plans communicated to the market. For the remainder of the year, we will focus on securing number four, COSMIC Phase C, number eight, LEXI-P, and number nine, K-Program missions. These missions will help to significantly boost our project income and profitability. Institutional missions will help to stimulate commercial demand, as I mentioned before. For EOL services, for example, the ELSA-M mission will lead into future EOL service seeded by those 568 docking plates on orbit today. The line chart on the top shows the number of docking plates on orbit. For example, for the initial 102 customer satellites with docking plates launched in FY 2021, these will begin de-orbiting around FY 2026 or FY 2027, since their lifespan is about five to seven years. We conservatively estimate that 7%-8% of those 102 satellites would malfunction and be unable to de-orbit by themselves. Our plan is to charge $ 8 million-$13 million per removal, which will be a significant revenue opportunity for us. For LEX services, the LEXI-P mission will lead into future LEX services. As we anticipate anywhere between 20 to 30 retirements per year to happen in GEO, we are targeting one or two LEX contracts per year after LEXI-P. This will be a significant business opportunity for us with a revenue potential of anywhere between $121 million-$215 million per mission. Our projects are awarded and contracted through a competitive bidding process and entails various activities during the project phase, ranging from mission and satellite design to launch, operation, and provision of services. Our institutional projects take the form of milestone payments with predetermined pay points during the contract, and we usually recognize revenue close to a straight line during each milestone phase. For certain projects, we might elect to recognize income as government grant income under other income rather than revenue due to IFRS requirements. However, this is only an accounting technicality, not a difference in the nature of the projects. Therefore, we track project income as the primary indicator of project-related income, which includes both revenue and government grant income. Now, project income for FY 2024 was JPY 4.6 billion, which represents a CAGR of 126.4% over the last two years. On the back of our robust pipeline that I just described, we are forecasting a 3.7x increase this year to JPY 18 billion. Through robust top-line growth that I just talked about, we are aiming to achieve close to gross profit break-even in this fiscal year. For R&D expenses, we are anticipating a historical high this year, but expect significant decrease next year. There's three components to R&D expenses. The first one on the bottom, pure R&D cost. It is not large. It is not very large. The second one from the bottom is the project development costs for grant projects. These costs are effectively similar to COGS, and they are covered by the government grant income. These costs will cease once a grant project such as SBIR and APS-R conclude. The third one is pre-contract development cost. From time to time, we may elect to start development work on a project before contracting to meet the customer schedule. While we currently record costs in relation to the LEXI-P project, these costs would cease once the contract is signed. We expect R&D costs to decrease significantly next year due to the decrease in the pre-contract development cost. As a result, we are anticipating a bottoming out of operating losses this year and targeting to achieve close to break- even in FY 2026. This slide summarizes our path to break even based on what I explained in the last four slides. With robust pipeline growth, increase in fully funded missions, and reduction in R&D, along with lower SG&A expense growth, we are targeting close to break- even for gross profit this year and similar for operating profit next year. For long-term margin targets, we are aiming a mid-30% range for gross margin and mid-20% range for operating margin. We currently maintain a healthy cash balance and believe we have enough to get us to free cash flow break- even. We do not anticipate equity raises in the future unless we observe unexpected surge in pipeline or attractive investment opportunities. Lastly, let me turn it back over to Nobu, who will talk about the management team that'll make this happen. Nobu? Thank you. Our leadership team has a great mix of different expertise in ages, genders, and nationalities, and this diversity is the backbone of our strengths. We believe this leadership team can navigate sharp growth stage, which continues over the next decade at least. This business is very dynamic, exciting, and in creating new business and market with unprecedented technologies, but our leadership team can navigate this. That's all for our business briefing today, and I appreciate you taking the time to listen and connect with us today. Your support is invariable, so thank you very much. Thank you.
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