We'd like to start the FY 2025 second half business update session for Astroscale Holdings. My name is Hideki Maekawa, Head of Finance and Accounting, and I will be your host for today's session. Today's event will be divided into two sessions. First, our management will provide a business overview, followed by a Q&A session. I'd like to introduce today's two speakers, Mr. Nobu Okada, Founder, President, and CEO, and Mr. Nobuhiro Matsuyama, Director and CFO. They will explain our whole exciting story first, then we will take your questions. This session is scheduled for 60 minutes. Now, I hand over to our CEO, Nobu. Please go ahead. Thank you. Hello, everyone. This is Nobu Okada, the Founder and the CEO of Astroscale. Thank you for taking your time to listen to our business updates. 2025 has started off wonderfully with confirming new mission pipelines. On-orbit servicing, or OOS, is booming, and we are steadily making progress. I will talk about the market growth, competitive landscape, how we are building strong business pipelines, and how our finances are on a healthy path to be cash flow positive. This page is the executive summary, and if you have only two minutes, please read this. We will go through the details on the following slides. Our vision and mission remain the same, and let us share our mid and long-term goals. Our team are well aware of these, but we've received multiple interests from investors to share what I have in mind for mid and long term. Our midterm goal is to make OOS as a routine service by 2030, and our long-term goal is to enable a circular space economy for the prosperous development of space by 2035. We will talk about our path to these goals later. Why we are so much focusing on OOS. Fundamental cause of unsustainable space environment is lack of a value chain in the space industry. Unlike the automotive, airline, or infrastructure markets, which have post-sales servicing support, the space industry has been a single use, throwaway culture. That's why rockets and satellites are not reused, recycled, refueled, repaired, nor removed. We established Astroscale to fill the gap in the value chain to create a circular economy. This missing chain is called on-orbit servicing, or OOS. Let me explain what exactly I mean by a circular economy in space. This is the world's first image of real space debris taken by our satellite, ADRAS-J, last year. This debris weighs 3 tons with 11 m length and 4 m width. Made of metal. A double-decker bus in London is roughly the same size, and if you buy a bus and it runs out of fuel or goes flat, do you throw it away? The answer should be no. You refuel, repair, reuse, and eventually remove it, maximizing its return and ensuring a safe operational environment. We want the same circular economy in space as we have on Earth. The next question is, how and when will we achieve this? In the early 2020s, the need for OOS became more recognized, and we, Astroscale, took lead in R&D and proved the technologies. In the late 2020s, we are going to advance the technology and widen the OOS applications. By 2030, OOS will become a routine service with recurrent demand and recurrent supply. By 2035, OOS will become infrastructure with standardized procedures and lifecycle management. We are on track towards this future, and I will talk more about this shortly. A research firm in the U.S. predicts that the cumulative revenue of OOS market would be $18.2 billion over the next 11 years through 2033. In their prior edition, they saw the number would be around $3 billion, so the market is expanding quickly. We aim to remain the market leader just as we are now. This is our latest outlook, how the market grows. Civil government demand, meaning non-defense, yellow area, will continue growing as governments invest in technological advancement in OOS. Defense demand, blue area, has started to grow. Defense agencies are starting to see the OOS services using the RPO, rendezvous and proximity operations technologies, can drastically improve their satellite operations, making them more efficient and effective. A commercial demand, green area, will follow. Life extension service will see demand from the later 2020s, and end of life services will grow around 2030 because regulations in the U.S. and Europe are expected to start taking effect around that timeframe. Let me explain the background of why defense demand emerging. Since 2023, more than half of the government space spending has become defense use. This trend became even clearer in 2024, and major countries plan to use OOS technologies such as space situational awareness and refueling. This trend is emerging globally and our global presence is paying off. To offer OOS, we need rendezvous and proximity operations, or RPO technology, for non-cooperative objects. In simpler terms, this means approach and capture objects. This capability did not exist before us. Once mastering this technology enables you to provide not only debris removal service, but also orbit correction, defueling, inspection, observation, and eventually repair and reuse services. Excuse me. It is important to understand the difference between cooperative objects and non-cooperative objects. Several major space agencies have RPO technology for cooperative objects, meaning objects whose location is known, attitude is controlled, communication is possible, and having docking interfaces or markers. However, we are the only company that has proved RPO technology for non-cooperative objects, like debris in space. This technology is much more complex. I've explained why OOS is essential for space sustainability and how the OOS market is growing and the necessity of RPO technologies. Now let's dive deeper into how Astroscale is leading this new market. We are seen as a global leader because of three factors: technology, business, and global presence and leadership. We first had to prove RPO technologies for non-cooperative objects, and we have done this with two missions in space. APOLLO-1 LCD was the world's first debris removal mission, which was launched four years ago and successfully completed its mission of approach capture of dummy debris and autonomous tracking. ADRAS-J was the world's first real debris inspection mission. We launched this extremely complex mission a year ago, and the achievement made headlines around the world. This slide shows the achievements of ADRAS-J. After a successful launch, ADRAS-J used absolute navigation until spotting the client debris as a dot. It then switched to relative navigation and used multiple sensors to get closer, following a safe and a unique trajectory. Upon getting closer, ADRAS-J identified the client with a multi-pixel image, the image in the bottom left. Then, and finally, safely arrived at the large rocket upper stage debris. Bottom center image shows a fixed point observation at the location of a 50-meter behind the debris, and the bottom right video is flying around. This was acrobatic and super difficult technologies. Please remember, the debris is not sitting still. It is traveling around the Earth at 7-8 km/s, which is 100 times faster than the bullet train. We proved our satellite can approach any free floating object in space from the ground. Business-wise, we are on the right track to our midterm goal. In the early 2020s, we successfully demonstrated two advanced RPO technologies as discussed. In the late 2020s, we will carry out various OOS missions like debris removal, life extension and inspection, and then further advance our technology and provide economic values to customers. In fact, we are confirming these near-term projects. Our CFO will explain details of our pipeline in a minute. We are shaping the OOS market to become a routine service with a recurrent supply and demand by 2030. Our global presence has developed competitive moat. We have facilities in five countries with 640 diverse members. We have selected entity locations strategically. The top row shows countries ranked by space-related government's expenditures. We can conduct business in the colored countries and regions, and we have a local leadership and a team who are strongly connected to each community, and we are recognized as a local company, allowing us to capture local and regional government contracts. We have clean rooms and produce satellites in multiple countries simultaneously to meet a growing demand globally. This is a clear competitive moat. These all activities are driven by global leadership team. The diversity in nationality, gender, age, and expertise strengthens our strategic thinking and execution. Finally, let me briefly talk about deteriorating space environment and international reactions to it. As discussed multiple times, the risk is increasing and return is decreasing in space. The number of satellites and debris are increasing dramatically, and the satellites are moving out of the way of debris more frequently than ever. There have been major fragmentation events since last June, almost every month, to our knowledge, adding tens of hundreds of pieces of trackable large debris and numerous untrackable small debris. In response, member states of the United Nations unanimously adopted developing new framework for debris and space traffic management last September. Space sustainability is now a global agenda. At the G7 in Italy last year, leaders' communique confirmed that we must prevent new debris and reduce existing debris, and they're promoting to create regulations standards. The International Telecommunication Union, or ITU, also decided to promote OOS, including debris removal. We are actively contributing to many international groups, shaping our insights and opinions. Let me turn over to our CFO, Nobu, to explain how these trend and our activities translate into financials. Thanks, Nobu. Hello, everyone. I am Nobuhiro Matsuyama, the CFO of Astroscale Holdings. I would now like to explain our business pipeline and financials. Our financial performance is driven by backlog. The current backlog stands at JPY 39.8 billion, which represents a significant increase even from October end. Accumulating profitable backlog is key in further driving our business and profitability. This is achieved through increasing fully funded projects in our backlog, which you can see the steady progress on the bottom of the slide. The strong growth and backlog is driven by a robust pipeline development in all mission lines. In EOL, we contracted ELSA-M phase IV in July, which funds the project up to launch and operations. This is a critical mission that will become the foundation for future EOL commercial services. In ADR, we are the undisputed market leader in Japan and U.K. In Japan, we contracted ADRAS-J2 as a follow-on mission to ADRAS-J to remove the debris we observed directly on orbit. In the U.K., we contracted COSMIC p hase II and another new mission called Cat IOD. Cat IOD phase A is an initial study phase of a mission that aims to capture an existing satellite on orbit with a novel docking mechanism. This will allow us to demonstrate that our RPO technology is agnostic to the docking apparatus. In LEX, to our knowledge, we have won or have been awarded all major refueling missions available globally, the most recent being the K Program. K P rogram is the first Japanese refueling program with an aim to demonstrate chemical propellant refueling in low Earth orbit. In addition to refueling, we continue to aim revenue recognition of LEX-CP to begin within this fiscal year. In ISSA, our success of ADRAS-J will drive significant future business. The next mission, ISSA-J, aims to demonstrate multiple rendezvous and observation in a single mission, further enhancing our capabilities. We have also contracted a new ISSA project in the U.K. as well. You can also see that the recent bookings are fully funded missions, shown here in the dark colored boxes, which again helps to drive our profitability. This is the most updated civil and commercial pipeline status. We are pleased that we have delivered all potential pipeline missions we had identified at the timing of our IPO, except for LEXI-P. In addition, we are also excited to contract CAT IOD phase A, which is the first step in securing the actual mission that may be valued upwards of EUR 50 million-EUR 60 million. This growing and globally diverse pipeline is a testament to the trust the customers place in our technology, brand, and global presence. As Nobu mentioned in the first section, we are very bullish on the prospects for defense-related business. We expect to be able to announce updates on the Defense A pipeline shortly, as well as Defense B through Defense C projects not too far away. We expect Defense A to be around JPY 1 billion, and Defense B through D to be billions of JPY each. The backlog and pipelines we discussed will drive future project income. We are forecasting a second year of 2.6x growth in project income this fiscal year. Out of the JPY 12 billion forecast, we are expecting approximately JPY 6 billion to come from projects currently under contract. This is in line with the Q2 year-to-date run rate, which includes some projects starting in the first half. We anticipate continued strong growth in the next fiscal year on the back of a robust pipeline. We believe we are on track to achieve gross profit breakeven for the full fiscal year in 2025. We anticipate this growth trend to continue in fiscal year 2026. As explained in the past, we believe R&D expenses will be a record high this fiscal year, driven by pre-contract development expenses for LEXI-P. However, since this expense will no longer be recorded once LEXI-P is under contract, we anticipate R&D expenses will be closer to half of FY 2025 in the next fiscal year. As a result, we are expecting a bottoming out of operating losses in fiscal year 2025. While we may not quite make it to operating profit breakeven in FY 2026, we anticipate making significant progress to get closer to that milestone. As explained in our Q2 earnings call, we are now taking a conservative approach to earnings forecasts, which is reflected into the figures explained just now. Going forward, we plan to issue forecasts that are ambitious but also realistic, and hopefully announce upward revisions when new significant projects are awarded. Obviously, we need to become profitable to sustain our business. We are focusing on three key areas to achieve this. The first point is to increase project income through backlog growth, which we discussed earlier. The second point is to enhance margin. Backlog must produce margin to cover our costs. We are now focused on winning fully funded margin-producing projects, which now consists 88% of our backlog. As a result, we expect to achieve further improvement in gross margin this year. The third point is reducing SG&A growth rate. We must achieve an SG&A growth rate that is significantly below project income to become profitable. Therefore, we are currently employing rigorous discipline in SG&A management, as shown in the quarterly trend on the bottom right. While we will likely see some uptick in the SG&A trend over time, we will continue to aim for lower year-on-year growth. By continuing these efforts, we hope to achieve not just profitability, but long-term gross margin target of mid-30% range and operating margin target of mid-20% range. This will be driven by the factors discussed previously, as well as cost reductions through maturing technology and economies of scale. There are no significant updates on cash flow since we last presented. We continue to target close to free cash flow breakeven in FY 2027 and anticipate current cash balance to be sufficient to get there. However, we are open to raising additional funds when we require capital, such as when attractive investment opportunities arise. This slide shows our debt maturity profile, which is well-diversified in terms of both amount and timing. We are actively discussing with our financial partners on refinancing for the upcoming JPY 5 billion maturity this September. We currently do not foresee any significant issues with securing such financing. Lastly, about the INCJ disposition. We announced the complete exit of INCJ on January 17th, which eliminated overhang concerns from their significant stake in Astroscale, a very positive progress for us. INCJ had been a strong supporter of Astroscale since 2016, acting as lead investor in Series B, C, and D, accumulating a 14.6% stake in the process. However, due to legal requirements, they were required to fully divest all investment assets by March 2025, which had led to market rumors on potential oversupply of shares in the secondary market due to such divestment. Therefore, we understand INCJ had structured the sale as an overnight block trade to minimize impact by marketing the shares to sophisticated institutional investors and corporates between market close on January 16th and market open on January 17th. Brokers were able to raise sufficient demand to cover the sale, which led to the successful conclusion of sale overnight. As a result, there will be no further sales of our stock from INCJ, which fully eliminates any overhang concerns from them. Our understanding is that this sale was driven purely by INCJ's need to satisfy legal requirements to divest all investments by March, not any negative perception of our strategy or financials. We are currently not aware of any other large shareholder aiming to dispose shares in the short term that may present a significant disruption to our trading. This concludes our presentation. Thank you for your time and interest.
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