Thank you, and good morning. Good afternoon. Let's go to the second page, please. My name is Peter Wells. I'm the CEO of Smart Wires. I'm joined today by Julie Andrews, our new CFO. As you just heard, Financial Hearings will be moderating the call on our behalf. You can submit questions actually during the call online. There is a mail icon under the player if you joined through the webcast. And you can also ask questions at the end with the operator. I would like to make a comment regarding the forward-looking statement. Please note that any forward-looking information is inherently subject to risk, both known and unknown, and does not constitute a guarantee of future results. There is a forward-looking statement provided for reference at the last slide of the presentation. Let's go to page three. I'm gonna provide an update for you next on what we're seeing in the market. We'll also talk about some exciting developments in our pipeline and our backlog. I'll also cover some Q3 highlights for you. Julie will walk through the financial performance, then I'll provide a quick summary at the end, and then we'll take your questions. Let's go to page four. Modernizing grids is something that's becoming a clear global theme. What we're seeing are three critical elements at the moment that we note on the page. I was actually able to travel during Q3, first time for a while actually, but I met a number of customers across Europe and in the U.S. We actually hosted a customer event in the U.K., where we highlighted the recent installs we did for National Grid. It was a great event. We had about a dozen different TSOs from Europe come over and spend the day with us. Very successful, a lot of questions, a lot of sort of proof points, I would say, taken away from the installation. I also had a chance to meet with multiple regulators across the region, and that gave me some pretty fascinating insights. It was time very well spent. What I'm hearing is very consistent. It's very consistent message around common topics and goals. I will tell you, everybody wants to move faster. There is a global theme around modernizing the grid. This is clear, and there's a focus on three things when it comes to transmission. How we create effective corridors or super highways. We know how critical that is and how much, the need for those are changing. Ensuring we are digitalizing the grid to provide future-proof flexibility and enhanced controllability, and moving towards market designs that enable and reward innovation, growth, and address climate change. It's clear that modernizing grids means creating a flexible system, holistically, a flexible system that can unleash renewable generation, stimulate design side, sorry, demand-side innovation, deliver a green economy that addresses climate change, but also creates jobs and empowers consumers. Personally, I've never felt more aligned on goals. The right impact now is good for the world. It's good for our business, our investors, employees, and customers, and Smart Wires is delivering on all these fronts. Let's go to page five. When we look at the regional dynamics, we're seeing now clear momentum, and it's building globally. In North America, significant progress is building, also in Canada. When I look at the U.S., the recent approval of the new infrastructure bill, with $65 billion for transmission investment, as well as the upcoming Build Back Better Act, which has actually over $500 billion or $555 billion, earmarked for climate and clean energy investments. Also progressive measures by FERC and the DOE, especially related to grid-enhancing technology, provide a very clear pathway for grid modernization in the U.S. Look, there's work to do, but we feel highly energized by these signals and actions. They're real. They provide real impact, and they generate near-term opportunities for our business. Similarly, in Canada, we are seeing a rapidly advancing pipeline driven by ISOs, their demand, their action that will lead to new backlog in the coming quarters. In Europe, strong policy support and regulatory frameworks like the RIIO in the U.K. or Projects of Common Interest or PCIs in the EU, these are key priorities for interconnecting Europe's energy system. The 70% rule on borders requiring European transmission system operators to keep at least 70% of cross-border network capacities free for electricity trading within the EU. These are perfect vehicles for Smart Wires technology. In fact, we are already demonstrating this with our project on the Greek-Bulgarian border for the EU FARCROSS project already up and running and making, I would say, some significant proof points for us. You can visit farcross.eu, the website, for more details on that project. In South America, competition there drives progressive use of grid-enhancing technology, and we're seeing very strong traction on pipeline and backlog. It's a really good market for us. We have a very strong team in place and region, and we expect to see strong progress here. In Australia, we have very promising market for Smart Wires. We have active business with several customers, a strong pipeline with repeat customers, and ongoing project extensions, and an ideal launch point for the broader Asia-Pacific region, where we do have some targeted plans in development for next year. Let's go to page six. When we look at the pipeline evolution, there has been very significant change here since we presented our Q2 earnings. More or less, we have doubled our pipeline over a 3- to 4-month period. This is real change. Detail, bottoms-up, country customer project analysis, and it comes down to three factors. The increasing global pressure to modernize the grid, which I just covered. Also investment that we're making in business development in our resources and our activities across the world. A deep dive that we've undertaken over the last quarter on key markets, customer segmentation, targeting, and project identification. This work has added $2.4 billion in identified opportunities. These are projects with a known need where we believe we can compete. In addition, we have moved $300 million into prospects, where we have commenced engagement with the customer. We have over $2 billion in qualified status, meaning we have a validated project, it's in a tendering process, we have a strong position for our technology and high potential to secure the project award. Leaving over $200 million that we have moved into advanced status, a customer-confirmed lead position for Smart Wires. These are projects that are active in final negotiations or contracting or approvals. Now, when we look at the overall pipeline, 75% would convert to revenue over the coming five to six years if secured and if the timing remains the same as currently projected. Regionally, we are seeing really good distribution between the Americas and Europe, 59% in the Americas, 38% in Europe, where we see obviously then huge potential to build out more in the Asia-Pacific region. This is, of course, subject to change, but it is a strong position and continues to evolve positively. We're focused on ensuring we continue to invest in and drive business development and therefore backlog, while also ensuring that we have operational setups to support scaling and the quality of what we deliver. Let's go to page seven. Turning to the Q3 2021 highlights. I wanted to highlight the following things. Despite ongoing supply chain challenges on material and part availability, as well as logistics, shipping lanes, freight forwarding, our team continued to perform very well and we are positioned to deliver a top-line revenue of around $38 million-$42 million in 2021. This is 2-3 times up versus 2020. It's also worth noting when we came into this year, we had targeted $50 million in 2021, but we moved one project worth over $10 million into 2022, and we see up to half of the planned deliveries in Q4 possibly moving to Q1 2022, which we've already allowed for in our projections. Despite all of this movement and what could have resulted in revenues below $35 million, we have rallied to a strong outcome in 2021 and positioned for a strong start in Q1 2022. Our backlog has increased to over $70 million, with new orders coming in Q3 in the $36 million-$42 million range. We continue to enhance our IP position. Five new patents in Q3 that increased our total position on patents to over 59, with a lot more in the pipeline. We have also strengthened our workforce. 30 new hires in Q3, bringing us to almost 70 talent adds year to date, focusing on product development, supply chain, production, business development, and delivery. In addition to the process and system deployments we are making, these resources mean we're industrializing our business and our product, enhancing our technology stack, and really positioning well for scale. I'll hand over to Julie. Let's turn to page 8. Thank you, Peter. Good morning and good afternoon, everyone. I'm moving to slide eight. Total revenue in the quarter was $5.9 million, an increase of 68% compared to Q3 2020. Revenue growth was driven by increased deliveries and commissioning of our SmartValve power control devices. Year- to- date revenue through Q3 was $28.3 million, a 4x increase over the same period last year. From a last twelve-month view, revenue was $36.6 million compared to $15.4 million for the full year 2020 and $8 million for the full year 2019. We've completed the delivery and commissioning of SmartValve projects across nine customer sites as of Q3 2021. Third quarter gross profit was $700,000 or 12% of revenue compared to a gross loss of $2. 5 millio n in the third quarter of 2020. This represented an 83 percentage point improvement in gross margin over the same period last year. This was driven by both revenue mix as Q3 2020 revenue was from product delivery, deliveries versus Q3 2020 revenue, where most of the revenue was from lower margin construction projects. In addition, there were favorable comps in the quarter due to one-time manufacturing line startup costs that were incurred in the third quarter of 2020. I'm now moving to slide 9. Looking at the summary financials, operating expenses were $16.2 million for the quarter, an increase of $5 million from Q3 2020. On a year-to-date basis, operating expenses were $44.9 million for 2021 compared to $33.3 million in 2020. The increased level of expenses for both the quarter and the year were for key investments in talent acquisition, business development and analytic projects, patent expansion, and our products pipeline. These are critical investments as we scale the company for growth. The net loss in Q3 2021 was $15.5 million compared to $15.1 million in Q3 2020. This was attributable to the previously mentioned key investments that were made to scale the business. These were largely offset by the favorable impact of the elimination of debt and the related interest expense in Q2. The year-to-date net loss was $48.7 million versus a $46.2 million loss for the same period in 2020. The net loss was driven by our key investments as well as interest expense and debt extinguishment costs, and were offset by improved levels of growth profit on both higher and more profitable revenue. Net loss per share for the quarter was $0.14 compared to $0.31 in Q3 2020. The year-to-date net loss per share was $0.45 compared to $0.95 in 2020. Moving on to the key balance sheet and cash flow item. We finished the quarter with $89.5 million in cash and cash equivalents. I do wanna point out that we reclassified $6.4 million from inventory to prepaid and other current assets for deposits made to suppliers for inventory that we have not yet received. We have not restated prior quarters, but the comparable amounts were $4.4 million for Q3 2020 and $3.5 million at December 2020. Cash used in operations was $50 million through September 30, 2021, compared to $43 million for the same period in 2020. The increase in cash usage was driven by the key investments that we have made in headcount additions, product pipeline expansion, and intellectual property. As Peter previously discussed, we are providing full year 2021 revenue guidance in the range of $38 million-$42 million. Our revenue is driven by the delivery and commissioning of our confirmed order backlog. Supply chain and logistics challenges can have a short-term timing impact, but the key metric of our business health order backlog is strong and growing. Revenue that is not captured in Q4 will be recognized in Q1. Now I'll turn it back to Peter for closing remarks. Thanks, Julie. Moving to page 10. In summary, we have a strong pipeline of backlog position, $5 billion of pipeline of global opportunities. As I mentioned earlier, we have a backlog building to greater than $70 million. Technology adoption for us is gaining traction with widescale adoption of patented transformational Smart Wires technology. Industrialization efforts are progressing well with operations being scaled and developed for growth from product development all the way through to delivery and service. We're on track for growth in 2021 at 2-3 times top line revenue versus 2020, despite global supply chain challenges and positioning very well for 2022. With that, we'll take any questions if we have them. We do have one question that's come in, via the email. Okay. It is from Grant at Pareto. His question is, "Does the current activity suggest additional orders to give 2020 revenue, or do you expect the current backlogs to be the sole driver for 2022 revenue? i.e., should we expect $60 million in revenues for 2022?" He has a second question that we'll follow up with in just a moment. Yeah. Grant, thanks for the question. The position is as follows. We obviously are still very active in building our backlog, for sure, as I mentioned, and we absolutely expect more orders to be coming through, between, I would say, let's call it between now and the end of first quarter because there is some variability on timing that we don't control in terms of customer contracting and approvals process. We're well advanced a number of orders that if successfully secured, could well convert to revenues in 2022. We're still chasing. I'm not gonna give you a precise number on, in terms of, guidance for next year yet. We will come back to that early next year. For sure, we're still chasing backlog, Grant, that we think will convert to revenues in 2022. His follow-on question is, "Could you comment on the usual timeline from a purchase order is received until revenue is recognized? Yeah, Grant. A rough rule of thumb, and obviously there can be variance around this, but roughly speaking, we typically go at 12 months. We've seen situations where it's moved faster, and we've seen situations where it's taken longer. 12 months is a pretty good guide from order to when it's gonna be delivered at the site. Are there any questions through the moderator? There are no audio questions at this point. But if you do wish to ask a question, please press zero one on your telephone keypad now. Okay. Well, while we're waiting for questions, Peter, I know that you've been traveling this quarter, and you've met with several investors and customers recently. What's been on top of mind for them? I think for the most part there's frustration almost wherever you go, and I think you saw that reflected in COP26 as well. I think everybody, whether you're a regulator or a transmission system operator or consumer, you know, a pretty broad range, I think this awareness of climate change is just so strong now. The desire to do something about it is really strong as well. I think there's a very common theme that everybody wants to move faster, everybody wants to be doing things, and they're really focused on the barriers, if you will. Like what's holding us back? We know what to do, so what's holding us back? I think I feel at least we're at this sort of inflection point, or pivot, if you will, globally, where people are tired of the rhetoric and they wanna get to action. That's the That was very strongly apparent to me. Really detailed discussions around the challenges on the grid, horizontally across transmission, but then also vertically into distribution. It's very exciting and interesting in terms of where we're going to go. I think most people have a pretty strong leadership level, I'd say, have pretty strong visions of where they want to go, and they're pretty active now in sort of pursuing that. It felt for me that the space we're in terms of grid-enhancing technology, looking how we've modernized the grid, future-proof it, and really enable renewable generation to come online at a faster pace, but also enable this flexibility of where distribution meets transmission and all of this innovation on the demand side. It's really fascinating and exciting. We honestly have the perfect product for so many use cases. So very strong interest, and I think customers have spent a day or two days with us in the UK and left that event. It could not have gone better for us. They left that event with such a strong impression of the technology because they saw it in the field, and they were to speak to a customer that's using it. Like, "Why did you use it? Why did you pick this solution? How is it going? How was the install? How was the commissioning? Is it doing what you wanted it to do?" The answers were very strong, and not only it's doing what we wanted it to do, but they were also talking a lot about, "Oh, and by the way, here's the other 10 things we want to use it for in the future." I think frustration and desire to move forward with action and a recognition that the technology we have is gonna help. It's great when your customers are selling your product for you. It was wonderful. Yeah. We do have another question that's come in. It's from Rahul at Paradigm Capital. His question is: When would you expect to be cash breakeven based on the current backlog conversion? Yeah. In our modeling to date, we've really looked, I would say, a couple of years out. We're really working ourselves towards. There's some variability, right? In terms of where the market takes us on price and how much the scaling will drive down costs. We know we'll have a big impact, but there's some variability in terms of exactly, I would say, what that impact looks like. On the modeling we've done today, we think of it about $200 million revenue. We're a cash flow positive business. Timeline-wise, that's probably sort of a couple of years out. Again, we'll see how the market evolves. Julie, did you want to add anything on that or? Yeah, I mean, as we've done kind of our high-level modeling, I think, you know, in the $200 million range is where we start to feel comfortable that that's our break-even point. Definitely more work to do on that, as we look at all the factors, with pricing and our costing ability. Thank you for that question. We do have some more questions that have come in. Another question from Charles, and his question is: Why almost doubling from $2.6 billion- $5 billion in qualified pipeline over the past 90 days? Details. Please provide details on this tremendous change. Yeah. I try to speak to it, Charles, as in the presentation because it is quite dramatic, obviously. The first thing I would say, in terms of qualified pipeline, that's actually in terms of the flow that we've had. We already had about $2.5 billion-$2.6 billion in the pipeline already. That was evolving, I would say, as sort of expected in a pretty normal approach. What we did and what I asked the team to do, going back about four months now, right towards the sort of, I would say, mid- to end of second quarter, actually, was to start to look a lot more at the market, customer segmentation, and really going country by country, customer by customer, and digging deeper into their capital plans, many of which are published, and to look for those opportunities. Because it felt to me that there was a disconnect between what we knew was our addressable market versus what we were seeing in our pipeline. What we've done actually is we've added this category called identified opportunities. That's where the sort of the doublings come in. It's about there's about $2.4 billion that's dropped into there. That's the big shift. The rest of the pipeline is evolving. As I said earlier, $300 million has dropped into prospects. The $200 million have gone into advantage, which means we're the leading solution. We're towards the back end of the tendering process, and we could be in contracting or approval phases. Things are moving, I would say, as expected and very well. This $2.4 billion of identified opportunities is, just to be clear, it's not a top-down, you know, "Oh, I think maybe these guys will spend this." This is, as I said, customer and therefore country specific and project specific. These are known projects, typically with known, approximate published values. We know what they're spending, what the project is for, and we therefore know how the application of Smart Wires SmartValve technology can solve that problem, if you will, or address that need. They're real opportunities early on in the process for us, because then we go through what we call our strategic board reviews, where we look much more deeply, I would say, into our proposal strategy, our bid strategy, but real opportunities. It's a combination of, I think, the surge of demand to modernize the grid, the ability for the team to spend a good three to four months analyzing in detail to, let's say, build up the pipeline more aggressively, and then that's the outcome. We've got a lot more, I would say, to work on. We've invested in the team, we've added more resources as well, and that helps. Hopefully that gives you a sense. Let me know. Come back with another question or follow up if you want some more information. That's great. We do have another question. This is from Florent at Octogone. Can you please develop how your partnership with National Grid and the potential for upselling? And then the second follow-up question, any thoughts on FERC policy momentum? Yeah. With National Grid, I don't know if I would call it officially a partnership. They are a customer. What we have with them is a multi-year framework agreement. That agreement is good in that it basically defines a lot of the technical commercial aspects and contracting aspects that come with the deployment of the SmartValve in a project. That's good because that saves us obviously time. We're not going through a lot of back and forth and T's and C's and things like this. What we've done, though, with them is worked through with a dedicated team analysis of the grid in the U.K. We know where the congestion points are. National Grid know where they are, and so these are known. We also therefore know, to a large degree, where the application of SmartValve will add value to National Grid by releasing capacity. What National Grid will do, like pretty much all transmission system operators globally, is on an annual basis, they refresh their forward-looking plans. Those forward-looking plans are reviewed and approved. Within those, often there'll be projects that will be tagged. If the tag is saying something like Modular Power Flow Control, then we know that's exactly where we play. We can look forward, and we can see projects over the next 2-3 years, where the SmartValve is, I would say, a known solution and probably a preferred solution. Yes, there is the long-term prospects with National Grid of ongoing projects with them. The order we took from them in Q3 was an extension of the project we did earlier this year. We're in discussions with them already about projects going out over the next two to three years. We expect that to be a long-term relationship. We obviously hope that will take us to looking at projects with them in other countries where they're active, like the U.S. as well. I think the other question was about FERC? Yes. Yeah. Um- Did I miss something on National Grid or? No, I think you. Okay. You covered National Grid. So- The second question was thoughts on FERC policy momentum. Yeah, it's good. Well, look, it's good. I mean, I think that what you see within FERC and the work they're doing is they're pushing really hard on grid-enhancing technology. To be clear, like, that we are one of the types of technologies that fit within that category. I think FERC have been doing a very good job. We're actively sort of engaged within the industry groups, let's say, to discuss what needs to happen on the grid. I think it's exciting for us. I think FERC are really digging in. They have been for a while, to be honest with you, and they're really pushing. There's already language out there that talks about grid-enhancing technology and modernizing the grid and really pushing for that. I think FERC are now moving towards, let's say, some more teeth around that with some real incentives to encourage system operators to invest on grid-enhancing technology. We're very happy with the work that's being done there. Great. We have another question from Carsten at Tagora, and his question is again about the pipeline, so a lot of interest in the pipeline. Can you give me some more color on the new projects added to the pipeline, region, customer type, new or repeat customers, and why added to the pipeline? I can tell you that the pipeline is enhanced predominantly in the Americas and in Europe. We see very strong traction in Canada. We also see very strong traction in South America in general. I would say there's a healthy mix in there. There are repeat customers, but there are also a lot of new projects identified and new customers. We have you know hundreds of customers, I would say, if we put it in that way. I think as I tried to explain earlier, this is a really detailed analysis by country, by customer. We've published capital plans and looking for where the SmartValve technology applies. That's really the analysis that's been done. The next steps, of course, are to move into more aggressive engagement on those projects and those opportunities. That's why we've put so much time and effort into, number one, identifying where they are, but number two, investing in the teams in the regions to pursue that. Repeat the question to me, if you do want to make sure I'm not missing anything. More color on new projects added to the pipeline, region, customer type. Yeah. New or repeat customers. Yeah. Why they were added. Yeah, that's it. I mean, what I would say, it's quite apparent, like, if you look at the data, what's interesting for me as well is if you look at the Asia Pacific region, we know that's a big region. I mean, we've got countries in like China, India, and all, really all across the Asia Pacific region. The only area that we've really been pushing and active in is Australia. It's been a great market for us and will continue to be, and there's some neighboring countries that I think will be good for us. Clearly, it, you know, if you look at that pipeline, if 95%-96% of it is Americas and Europe, very little of it is Asia Pacific. Asia Pacific is also just a highlight for you guys. That's a region where we obviously need to do more work and where we have expansion plans for next year as well. Carsten had a follow-on question on the pipeline, and specifically on the advantage in the pipeline. What's the normal rule of thumb to convert those discussions to firm orders? Why would there be reasons they do not convert? Yeah. If we're advantaged, it means we haven't won, right? We basically have gotten good feedback that says we're in a very strong position, if not the preferred solution. Why might that not convert at that point? Well, there's still opportunities for bids in the final offers, and you're still in competition. That doesn't rule out somebody coming in with a much more aggressive bid. Obviously we have to stay very vigilant on that and make sure that we're not, I would say, losing out in the sort of last stretch. There is, of course, final approvals that transmission system operators will go through. Depending on where they are, sometimes that might even require government or regulatory approval, and that's another hurdle. That hurdle, you know, more often than not, it's okay. That's obviously another step that you can't take that for granted. That has to be a step that's taken, and that's then what will trigger the ability to close out the contract. Normally at this point when we've got now from advantage into approvals, normally at this point we've done quite a lot of work on terms and conditions. We're quite, I would say, well advanced there normally, and there shouldn't be any surprises. I would say if at that point something came up on terms that was difficult for us or something we didn't want to do, in terms of some cap on liability or who knows, right, what might be a request, or bonds or something like this, that could be another thing towards the end that might mean you sort of get to a point where you don't move forward. Typically speaking, once we're in that last step, we have a very high probability of conversion to backlog. That's. We're in a pretty good spot at this point. Yeah. Great. Thank you. We have another question that's come in, and the question is: how high a growth margin do you think is reachable or feasible in the future, say 3-5 years? Yeah. In 3-5 years, we'd like to be at the +50% mark, honestly. We think there's a very clear path to get there, really driven. I mean, obviously volume helps a lot because at the moment we're really underutilizing the capacity we have, and so there's some drag there. We also know as the product evolves and our ability to manage supply chain evolves, clearly there's some benefits that will come on a reduced bill of materials and then just better sourcing and better capabilities there. We'll see some gains, I think, on direct material costs. You know, as we get the volume, as I mentioned, overhead on production goes down. We think we've got opportunities to improve logistics as well. Those costs have been pretty tough this year, and I think most people are seeing that. We'll see improvements there as well. Then I think we understand that there's ways that we can improve our, let's say, our construction and commissioning and make that a much more fluid, smooth process, and there'll be some savings for us there. When we do the analysis, at this point, we don't see any reason to not be moving towards a +50% in that 3- to 5-year range. The other variable of course is price. That's something that typically speaking we try to be relatively conservative on that when we model, and we tend to sort of keep that fairly consistent. Really looking more at the things that we control more, on the cost side of the equation. As the market evolves, depending on the demand there as well, price of course will become another lever for us. I think at this point of our journey, I don't know that we have massive price setting ability. Obviously we're competing and we want to win, and we wanna get the technology out there. This is key for us in driving the volume. I think as that situation evolves, and the value equation becomes clearer and clearer, we do think there's also an opportunity maybe on price as well. Did I miss anything there, Julie? No. I mean, I would just reiterate. I think, you know, I see this as a, you know, business with margins in the 50%, on a 3-5-year horizon. You know, more probably in the 50%, more towards a 5-year horizon. We're working through that, and I think there's a lot of opportunity as we move forward to improve margin. Well, I don't have any more questions that have come in through the email. I don't know if there's any questions on the audio call. We can open that back up. We don't have any audio questions at this point. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Well, then I think we'll wrap. I believe the session was recorded and will be available, so if you wanna go back to it. Obviously, the earnings release is out there. If you do want to connect for any follow-up, reach out to us through our website, please. Thank you very much for your interest and your time today. Take care. Thank you.
Loading workspace