Q4 2021 Berkshire Grey Inc Earnings Call

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Berkshire Gray, fourth quarter, 2021 earnings conference.

At this time, all participants are going to listen only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session.

to ask the question during this session, you will need to press star then one on your telephone. Please be advised that today's

If you require any further assistance, please press pub and zero. I would now like to turn the conference over to you.

Speaker Change: Terrific. Thank you. Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining Berkshire Gray's fourth quarter and fiscal year 2021 earnings conference call.

Speaker Change: Earlier today, we issued a press release announcing our financial results. The release is available on our Investor Relations website at ir.berkshiregray.com. Leading today's discussion will be Berkshire Gray's Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Tom Wagner, and our Chief Financial Officer, Mark Fidler. Following management's prepared remarks, we will open up the call to questions. Before we get started, we'd like to inform you that certain statements made during this conference call may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act.

Speaker Change: future operating performance and financial results of the business may differ materially from those expressed or implied in any forward-looking statements provided on this conference call due to various risks and uncertainties.

Speaker Change: That information concerning these uncertainties and risk factors is obtained in our filings with the SEC. Forward-looking statements, including in this call, are based on information currently available to us and represent the company's current view as of the date these statements are made. We do not commit to update these statements.

Speaker Change: As a reminder, we will be referring to some non-GAAP financial measures during today's call. A detailed reconciliation of GAAP and non-GAAP measures can be found in our earnings press release today, which will be furnished to the SEC and is available now on our IR website.

Speaker Change: These non- GAAP measures are an addition and not a substitute for or superior to measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with GAP, and should not be considered an alternative to any performance measure derived in accordance with GAP. With that, I will now turn the call over to Tom Wagner CEO .

Tom Wagar: Good morning, and thank you, Sarah, given this is only our second earnings call as a public company. I'll start off with some context about who we are and where we're going.

Tom Wagar: The virtual grade we make industry-leading AI-enabled robotic systems that fill e-commerce and retail orders and handle e-commerce packages as they make their way to your door. We've developed breakthrough AI-robotic technology that automates difficult and labor-intensive tasks within fulfillment operations.

Tom Wagar: including ticking, sorting, packing, moving, and organizing.

Tom Wagar: These are core functions that are found in almost every logistics operation and lead to a $280 billion addressable market for a product.

Tom Wagar: or technology has proven in production doing work and driving tangible returns for Fortune 100 customers.

Tom Wagar: We secured repeat orders from every one of our anchor customers and are growing our new business pipeline as well.

Tom Wagar: Now let me get into some of the details of 2021, the macro trends driving our growth in 2022 and beyond.

Tom Wagar: 2021 was a strong year for Berkshire Gray, with three main achievements.

Tom Wagar: First, we delivered breakthrough robotic solutions for our customers, generating 51 million in revenue.

Tom Wagar: Second, we secured 85 million in new orders of which 75% were from anchor costs.

Tom Wagar: Customers with repeat orders mean our technology is installed in production, proven, and delivers quantifiable value. We're part of our customer's automation strategy.

Tom Wagar: Third, we doubled our pipeline, bring it to 3.5 billion and double the number of new costs.

Tom Wagar: Many of the new customers have the potential to become strategic long-term relationships, multi-year rollout plans for our products to be installed in facilities across their network.

Tom Wagar: 2021 was a watershed year for us and we took a huge step forward. We've proved our commercial value proposition is evidenced by the substantive follow-on orders by our anchor customers, new orders from new logos and significant pipeline growth. All of this gives us even greater confidence in our long-term outlook than we had even six months ago.

Tom Wagar: Our strong customer momentum is continuing into 2022. We started this year with 105 million in backlog, which for us means signed contract.

Tom Wagar: Our revenue guidance for 2022 approximately 90 million indicates about 80% growth year on year.

Tom Wagar: While the pace of deployment is a bit slower than we in our customers would like, due to factors like customer supply chain delays, the commitment from our anchor customers is strong and our pipeline and new business is growing as anticipated.

Tom Wagar: One of our most important messages for you today is that our customers find our technology and products highly effective and want more. Target featured us in their recent earnings call presentation, showing videos of our robots moving and sorting their goods while they were talking about the need for them to invest in automation.

Tom Wagar: Walmart recently invited us to display our technology at their exclusive annual kickoff meeting where executives showcase key technologies they believe are an important part of their growth strategy.

Tom Wagar: FedEx is publicly talked about how our automated robotic package handling systems deliver value and our potential fit for hundreds of their locations.

Tom Wagar: between increased appetite and visibility with anchor customers. In the addition of new customers, our pipeline has doubled from early 2021 and stands today at $3.5 billion.

Tom Wagar: We are currently in negotiations for large-scale strategic arrangements that, if executed, will add even more energy to the system and help drive economies of scale and efficiency improvement.

Tom Wagar: Our customers appreciate the value of these systems and the underlying technology and appreciate that they simply can't get it anywhere but Berkshire Gray. So let me spend a few minutes.

Tom Wagar: Our robotic products automate order fulfillment processes within a distribution center, warehouse, package handling facility, and even back a store. If you could look into a typical warehouse operation, there are many steps that our systems can automate from when goods enter a warehouse until they depart in the form of filled orders. We pick, sort, pack, move, and organize items.

Tom Wagar: For example, picking items from inventory and packing them into boxes to fill e-commerce orders.

Tom Wagar: We're picking items from inventory to build store resupply boxes, which better enable stores to serve both in-person and e-commerce customers from the store. We're rapidly sorting ordered items preparatory to loading them on trucks.

Tom Wagar: Our products automate entire steps in the warehouse. The repeat orders from anchor customers indicate just how effective we are at automating these steps.

Tom Wagar: Along the lines of automating steps, in 2021 we introduced four new products, one of which is a new configuration of our technologies tuned in size, shape, and function for a step which is ubiquitous in e-commerce operations.

Tom Wagar: Our robotic footwall sorts e-commerce orders and increases throughput over 300% versus conventional solutions.

Tom Wagar: This product is a drop-in replacement for conventional, non-automated equipment, installs in little time, requires little infrastructure on the part of the customer, and works with our other products.

Tom Wagar: Orders have already been received for this product and we expect more.

Tom Wagar: Tick, sort, pack, move and organize is what our robotic systems do today and the put wall follows this model.

Tom Wagar: Our products are unique, highly technical modules that automate whole warehouse functions. This separates us both from component suppliers and systems integrators.

Tom Wagar: Our products can be combined with each other to automate multiple steps in warehouse operations.

Tom Wagar: For instance, chains of operations like picking, sortation, packing, and movement. Or our products can be used to automate a single step in the operation where multiple modules can provide new scale and increase throughput to that step. For instance, installing many robotic induction stations in parallel to provide high induction rate.

Tom Wagar: We will continue to innovate our current products and we'll introduce new ones in areas where we have strength and differentiation.

Tom Wagar: There are areas of warehouse operations today where complementary systems are sometimes used.

Tom Wagar: ASRS or automated storage and retrieval systems are one such example.

Tom Wagar: ASRS systems typically provide dense, long-term storage of inventory. For clarity, we don't need or require an ASRS system to produce value. We have installations today where no such system is present. However, we also have installations today and business in our pipeline where we pick, sort, pack, and move out of multiple brands of ASRS to create new value for our customers.

Tom Wagar: Of course, there are other complementary systems as well, such as warehouse management systems, traditional loop or unit sorters, and so forth, all of which we can interface with.

Tom Wagar: To capitalize on the complementary nature of these systems, we are building strategic partnerships with systems integrators.

Tom Wagar: Last week, we announced a new partnership with SwissLog, the leading integrator of auto store ASRS systems.

Tom Wagar: In this partnership, we provide kicking, sortation, packing, and movement for ASRS installation.

Tom Wagar: More importantly, through the full use of our product suite, the combined offerings of Swiss Log and Berkshire Gray provide differentiated solutions in the market.

Tom Wagar: This partnership also provides us with another channel to market, access to new customers, and it provides us with a strong partner to support the implementation of our system.

Tom Wagar: With this addition, our alliance program now includes more than 11 partners. This means more channels and strong support for the implementation of our systems, which is becoming increasingly important as we scale.

Tom Wagar: Partnerships are enabled by our proven products and the underlying technology. We're a leader on the technology front with protected competitive advantage. During 2021, our patent portfolio grew from 71 about a year ago to 120 today.

Tom Wagar: These filings cover everything from picking systems to gripping systems to scanning systems. They cover mobile robots and even cover AI and machine learning, among others.

Tom Wagar: We also have process patents to protect how our intelligent robots perform their function.

Tom Wagar: We've been developing technology since 2013 and we will continue to lead on this front.

Tom Wagar: The most important part of technology, of course, is that customers see its value and understand its efficacy.

Tom Wagar: We meet or exceed the performance characteristics that our customers need. The most clear endorsement of our technology is the repeat orders from our customers and the pipeline growth.

Tom Wagar: The strong adoption of our technology is driven by the need of the industry to transform and automate. Strong macro trends and tailwinds are behind this transformation and align with our business. The acceleration of the shift to the digital economy is clear. Consumers want precisely what they want, and they want it delivered as soon as possible. This puts tremendous pressure on retailers, e-commerce providers, logistics organizations, and package handling companies.

Tom Wagar: Other macro trends include labor scarcity, which means warehouse and logistics operations are often short-staffed.

Tom Wagar: Adding to this is the current climate of wage inflation, which has driven up costs at the same time that retailers are working to be more competitive with each other and with Amazon. And, of course, Amazon is highly automated.

Tom Wagar: At Berkshire Gray, these trends reinforce the need for new automation that picks, sorts, packs, moves, and organizes goods and packages.

Tom Wagar: Overall, we at Berkshire Gray are well positioned for continued growth. Our technology and team are industry leading.

Tom Wagar: We have strong macro tailwinds driven by the shift in consumer behavior and labor scarcity.

Tom Wagar: We have unique and differentiated products that are proven and in operation with Fortune 100 customers who love our technology and want more.

Tom Wagar: We doubled our pipeline with our anchor customers and new accounts and are in negotiations for large scale strategic arrangements that could add even more energy to the system.

Tom Wagar: We continue to forge strategic partnerships with some of the most respected companies in our industry. We're at the early stages of our growth and are building a business for the long term.

Tom Wagar: Because of continued insight from our customers and material pipeline activity, we have even more conviction now about the growth opportunity we have in front of us today as we build a profitable billion dollar company.

Tom Wagar: Mark will now go into some of the detail regarding our 2021 results and our outlook for 2022.

Mark Fiddler: Thanks, Tom, and good morning, everyone. I'd like to start off by providing some more detail around the substantial commercial progress we made in 2021. From there, I'll provide some context on our priorities for this year, as well as some perspective on 2022. First, I'd like to talk about

Mark Fiddler: As of the end of 2021, our total orders to date were $200 million and we had backlog of 105 million, which we define as signed contracts with systems yet to be delivered and installed. These are impressive numbers, considering we didn't expand our commercial efforts until 2020.

Mark Fiddler: In 2021, we added about $85 million in orders, of which 75% were from our anchor customers, and all of which represented follow-on orders, which is proof that our customers truly value our technology and want more. As Tom indicated,

Mark Fiddler: Our pipeline of opportunities has grown significantly and provides us with even more confidence in our growth process.

Mark Fiddler: Pipeline now sits at about $3.5 billion, double what we had a year ago, driven by expansion of our anchor accounts due to the successes we've had to date and new customers that we've started to engage with.

Mark Fiddler: Our definition of pipeline has two components. First, the total opportunity we and our anchor customers envision our technology being rolled out throughout their networks over the long term, and specific project opportunities with non-anchor customers with whom we've had active dialogue.

Mark Fiddler: With 105 million in backlog and significant pipeline, we're entering 2022 in a great position as we continue our growth journey.

Mark Fiddler: We had consistently communicated that both orders and revenue would be back unloaded in 2021 and that's exactly what happened.

Mark Fiddler: The majority of our orders and 85% of our revenue occurred in the second half of 2021. We expect a similar pattern to occur in 22.

Mark Fiddler: We will continue to update you on our progress with respect to orders and backlog periodically throughout.

Mark Fiddler: On to revenues, revenues for the fourth quarter and for the full year of 21 were $23.6 million and $50.9 million respectively, slightly above the guidance provided on the last call. Revenue in the fourth quarter of 21 represents a 556 percent increase over the same period in 2020 and revenue for all of 21 represents an increase of 46 percent over 2020.

Mark Fiddler: Turning to other operational metrics, gross margin for the year was negative 16%, which is somewhat below our expectations.

Mark Fiddler: We understand the drivers of the margin issue and it's temporary, isolated, and fixed.

Mark Fiddler: Though the corrections apply to new contracts and not those already signed. This means that 2022 gross margin will be impacted as well. And margins will be slightly negative for the year, which is disappointing.

Mark Fiddler: The margin issue is caused by cost overruns that importantly are not related to our core technology but rather pertain to installation costs and other ancillary equipment and are associated with one of our product families which is new and being used in several large scale projects.

Mark Fiddler: We have identified the sources of the margin issue and have subsequently fixed the issue for future orders, which include price increases and specific cost reductions.

Mark Fiddler: These changes will result in substantially improved margins for these systems to be deployed in 2023 and beyond.

Mark Fiddler: Most importantly, we remain confident in our ability to achieve our run rate operating metrics of approximately 50% gross margins in the long term. This will be achieved through increased scale and execution on our cost reduction roadmap.

Mark Fiddler: Moving to operating expenses, 2021 was a year of significant investment. In particular, we made investments in our go-to-market and engineering teams to best position us to capitalize on our massive $280 billion addressable market.

Mark Fiddler: Total operating expenses were about $37 million in the fourth quarter and $156 million for the year on a gap.

Mark Fiddler: Stock-based compensation included in operating expenses were $6.4 million and $49.8 million for the fourth quarter and a full year of 21 respectively.

Mark Fiddler: Our operating expenses increased substantially over 2020, driven primarily by increases in headcount and engineering program spend.

Mark Fiddler: For perspective, we increased our headcount by over 50% during 2021 to gear up for our growth, including senior leaders in sales, engineering, and operations.

Mark Fiddler: We believe we have a good organizational base to support the growth of our business, and for 2022, we expect to moderate our spending as we continue to improve our internal process.

Mark Fiddler: execute our specific deployment plans, leverage our partnerships, and focus our engineering

Mark Fiddler: We expect operating expenses, excluding stock-based compensation, to be about $25 to $30 million per quarter, and stock-based compensation expense will be approximately $6 to $8 million

Mark Fiddler: Adjusted EBITDA, which is defined as loss from operations adjusted primarily for depreciation, stock-based compensation expense, and changes in fair value warrants.

Mark Fiddler: was negative $33.8 million for the fourth quarter of 21 and negative $111.8 million for the year. A reconciliation of our net loss to adjusted EBITDA is included in our press release.

Mark Fiddler: Moving to the balance sheet, we ended the year in solid cash position with over $171 million. Capital spending for the year was

Mark Fiddler: Looking ahead on the strength of our $105 million backlog, we expect full year 2022 revenue to be approximately $90 million.

Mark Fiddler: We expect that our anchor customers will drive a large part of our revenue growth over the next few years and believe the opportunity with them can be measured in the billions of dollars over time.

Mark Fiddler: While most of our 2022 full-year revenue is in backlog, the timing of converting backlog into revenue is being impacted by delays in customer schedules and their lingering global supply chain.

Mark Fiddler: We expect our 2022 revenues to be heavily weighted towards the second half, similar to how it was realized in 2021. First quarter revenue is expected.

Mark Fiddler: Finally, to reiterate reiterate some of the key points we've talked about 2021 was a great year for us and we entered 2022 and very strong position.

Mark Fiddler: Tailwinds driving the need for automation are as prevalent as ever. Our customers love our technology, proven by the follow-on orders we've received, particularly from our anchor customers, and they want more. And we have a strong backlog. We've doubled our pipeline, providing us with even greater conviction about our long-term growth prospects. And now, operator, we're ready to turn it over to you.

Speaker Change: Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder to ask the question, you will need to press star then one on your telephone. To withdraw the question, press the pound key. Again, that's star one to ask the question.

Speaker Change: Our first question comes from the line of Greg Palm with Craig Hollum.

Gray Palm: Yeah, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions and congrats on the progression to date here.

Gray Palm: I want to start with pipeline. That's a pretty healthy increase. Can you say how much of that was driven by anchor versus non-anchor?

Gray Palm: Sure, Greg. Actually, Mark, I'm going to give the numbers in front of you. Greg, normally, Steve Johnson, whom you've met, would respond to this as our go-to-market person. He is busy staffing the Modex trade show, which is a fantastic opportunity for us, and we have lots going on there. Mark, I'm going to ask you to put on that hat today.

Mark Fiddler: Sure. So, you know, we've doubled our pipeline really based on the amount of successes that we've had to date, particularly with Anchor customers, but also on the new customer front. You know, about a year ago when we were talking about pipeline,

Mark Fiddler: We were talking about a $1.7 billion pipeline, $1.3 billion of that was from anchor customers.

Mark Fiddler: You know, the rest was from new customers and it's really been across the board, right? So now it's, you know, about $2.5 billion with our anchors and this is, again, really based on.

Mark Fiddler: how we're collectively viewing how our technology could be rolled out throughout their networks.

Mark Fiddler: more experience with them, we've got deep...

Mark Fiddler: tie-ins with the organizations from the top C-suite down to sort of the operational level. We're just seeing more and more opportunity where we can deploy our technology, both of us combined, throughout the network. So a tremendous amount of engagement there. And then likewise on the new customer front, again,

Mark Fiddler: Our go-to-market teams have been working very hard. They've gained more experience under their belt. Most of our staff now has been here for at least a year, and these are long sales cycles. So gaining a lot of traction with the new customers as well. We're in active dialogues with almost 200 unique prospects. So just a tremendous amount of engagement across.

Speaker Change: Got it, that's helpful. And that increase specifically from the Anchor customers, would you still characterize that as a five-year timeline? I think that's how you express things before, but I guess more importantly, is the increase driven by maybe an expansion of the current solutions, or is there maybe more adoption from some of the new offerings that you've talked about? And again, this is specific to the Anchor.

Speaker Change: Um, yeah, so it is, you know, a, you know, five, five ish, um, sort of year timeline. That's, that's still, that's still the case. Um.

Speaker Change: And it's a combination of the existing products that we've had, and as Tom talked about, we introduced four new products during the second part of last year. You know, we're seeing broad interest across the verticals, right? So some of our systems that are going in one vertical can also be used in other verticals as well, and our Anchor customers are seeing that. So those are kind of the things that we're seeing, you know, with the Anchor.

Speaker Change: And last question as it relates to this, any anecdotal commentary from those anchor customers in terms of timeline adoption, whether they're seeing, you know, an ROI validation that's either outperforming or underperforming relative expectations, just kind of curious what you're hearing from them.

Speaker Change: Yeah, ROI is clear that leads to the repeat orders and we have repeat orders. And so that is a.

Speaker Change: part of the equation that is all positive is the ROI. Greg, there were two facets to your question. What was the other facet? Well, I'm just trying to get a sense for.

Speaker Change: Relative to your or your customer's expectations from a year ago, do you get the sense that any are maybe shifting some of that adoption up for whatever reason? And I guess it was specifically pertaining to maybe validation of an ROI use case.

Speaker Change: Well, I wouldn't I wouldn't say necessarily they're shifting anything, but rather, I think they're looking broader, right? And, and really looking at, look, okay, they validated the, the, the ROIs, they can see where this can go throughout their networks. They're thinking big, right? They're, they're, they're not thinking sort of just chipping away at automation strategies, particularly when, you know, and we're a big part of that.

Speaker Change: So if these guys are thinking big, it takes some time to plan, so the time horizons are still the same, five-ish years. But to the extent that we see opportunity to accelerate with them, of course, we're gonna accommodate.

Speaker Change: Go ahead, Greg. Nope, that makes sense. I was just going to say, last one, for me, I think, Tom, you had mentioned something along the lines of large-scale commercial arrangements. What does that exactly mean? What is sort of that change versus how you're currently selling things today?

Tom: Yeah, that's great. So Greg, first, very exciting, right? Very exciting. The second, the concept behind that, just to add a few words on the concept, is

Tom: So what you've seen to date, and you have seen it in our already announcements of orders, you've seen folks put systems in and then rapidly order tens of millions more, sometimes across multiple orders, and when we say long-term strategic agreement.

Tom: What we're referring to is a rollout plan over spans of years as a goal, so that we can say with more determinism, this is what 2024 might look like, or 2023, and so forth. And so those are things that we're actively working on. Understood.

Speaker Change: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of John Walsh with Credit Suisse. Your line is open.

John Wash: Hi, good morning everyone and congrats on finishing the year well.

John Wash: Appreciate all the color around the pipeline as well

John Wash: thought maybe we could start with a discussion around kind of the gross profit margin expectations and as you're going to see more revenue in the model next year if we should be thinking you know gross profit.

John Wash: Margin positive and kind of maybe what order of magnitude as you get more revenue and you get past

Speaker Change: Sure, so yeah, so as we mentioned on the call, we do expect that overall gross margins for the year will be slightly negative because of the issues that we mostly talked about. We do expect that we will be overall positive gross margins in 2023 and beyond.

Speaker Change: And, you know, the good news is that we've identified all the issues that were causing those, you know, the margin issues, and, you know, we believe we fixed them so that we're much better poised now for substantially improved margins for 2020.

Speaker Change: No, that's super helpful. Thank you. And then I guess, you know, a question we've we've gotten some folks and I'm from folks and I'm sure we'll we'll see more disclosure once filings.

Speaker Change: him yet but just can you talk to the sequential change in the share count and how we should think about the share count going forward?

Speaker Change: you know what kind of already in there and and what you know with would not be you know yet hitting the deliver

Speaker Change: So when you look at Q3 in the P&L, the weighted average share, that's going to be.

Speaker Change: What impacted that was, if you recall, we closed our merger in late July , right? So in late July , which is in Q3, all of the pipe shares came on. So on a weighted average basis, you didn't have all those shares outstanding for the whole quarter, but for Q4, you did.

Speaker Change: So if you just looked at the total number of common shares that were outstanding as of the end of Q3 versus the end of Q4, there was only a 1% difference.

Speaker Change: So going forward, the numbers that you saw at the end of Q4 are more representative of the number of shares that will be outstanding for 2022, save for whatever equity awards we issue to investors.

Speaker Change: Great, super helpful, and then maybe just one more around cash.

Speaker Change: uh... you know how how should we think about

Speaker Change: in 2022 and then I guess I mean incredible pipeline 3.5 billion thought that was really bullish

Speaker Change: Do you have enough kind of cash on hand to go after that, you know, even if it is over a five-year opportunity, maybe how much of that?

Speaker Change: you know, CapEx for that as kind of customer, you know, buying this as a piece of capital equipment versus, you know, you using your own cash to fund the project at all. We'd just love to get more color.

Speaker Change: Sure, so again, we entered this year with $171 million in cash. So pretty strong position. We expect our burn this year will be $10 to $11 million per month. That's all in. And we do expect that we'll be raising funds in the next 12 months in order to fully fund our complete growth plan. And we're confident that we'll be able to do so when that time comes.

Speaker Change: And you know to break down that that cash burn

Speaker Change: You know, most of it is really to fund operations. We're really only anticipating about $5 million worth of CapEx for 2020.

Speaker Change: Great. Hey, appreciate you taking the questions and look forward to seeing the announcements as you execute on that pipeline. Thanks again for the time today.

Speaker Change: Thank you. As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, that's SAR 1 to ask the question.

Speaker Change: Our next question comes from a line of Andrew Orban with Bank of America. Your line is open.

Andrew: Well, yeah, as I said, everybody echoes. Seems like there's some exciting news coming our way. So can't wait. Should be good.

Andrew: So, question, just as we think about, you know, the forecast that you had in your investor day presentation back in July .

Andrew: in terms of revenue versus where we are guiding right now. I mean, clearly it seems that bottlenecks are an issue, access to customer facilities is an issue. Could you just put it, just in terms of buckets, it seems there's like 30 million of Delta versus you thought you were gonna be in July versus where we are. Could you just sort of put.

Andrew: biggest buckets as to what the delta is and also ability to catch up with sort of the original plan as time goes on.

Speaker Change: Sure. So really what we're dealing with here is really just a timing issue. And we had one hundred and five million dollars of backlog.

Speaker Change: You know, coming into this year, as you said, some of the timing issues, particularly with deployment schedules on our customer side, really didn't have much to do with us.

Speaker Change: You know, for example, if a mezzanine had to be built at the customer's site and the customer is dealing with some supply chain issues or some construction.

Speaker Change: Delays that that impacts our deployment schedule and so we experienced some of that in 21 As well as for this year as well And that's really kind of what's driving some of this but look all that 105 million in backlog is going to be realized

Speaker Change: is the timing that can be impacted by some of the things that are not in control.

Speaker Change: And, you know, based on what we talked about with, with, with our backlog.

Speaker Change: the pipeline. We have an even greater conviction now of our ability to scale to be a billion dollar.

Speaker Change: And so we've got a tremendous amount of conviction in that. And really, what we're dealing in the short term here is really this timing issue with respect to some of the deployments.

Speaker Change: So just a follow-up question on that. You know, when we were doing our channel checks and due diligence, I think one of the commentaries that consistently came back is how quote-unquote commercial you guys are and how customer-focused you are. But also, it seems, you know, the world is changing and, you know, our recent channel checks just indicate that you're hardly unique.

Speaker Change: uh... you know in terms of sort of facing uh... difficulties uh... uh... with logistics and supply chain

Speaker Change: what can you do what in your power you know and what sort of corrective measures have you taken or do you think you can take

Speaker Change: uh... to sort of deal with the fact that you know it's a very volatile world the supply chains are still messed up across the globe you know what are the key bottlenecks that need to be addressed on your side uh... you know and as i say i think everybody appreciates

Speaker Change: uh... the world and right if i catch twenty-two the more screwed up the world and is the more they need you but makes it hard to sort of hit the targets near germ so just if you could just walk us through that thank you

Speaker Change: You know, to date, we have not had any material, you know, direct impact.

Speaker Change: you know, from all these global supply chain issues. We've had adequate lead times, adequate planning times in order for us to procure our components, line up our vendors in order to be able to deliver the solutions when we expected to deliver them.

Speaker Change: Really where the issue has come was on the customer side with respect to, you know, in some cases they've been somewhat disrupted with the supply chain issues.

Speaker Change: The example that I just provided was a perfect example of that, where there was some construction that they had to do. They couldn't get some of the components on time. Some of their construction schedules got pushed off. And we just have to accommodate that, meaning that our schedule gets pushed out with their schedule. Now, to the extent that there may be some things that we can work with them on,

Speaker Change: and try to help pull skeletors in or find components. In fact, one of the key things that we've really started to really take advantage of are the global relationships that we have with these.

Speaker Change: systems integrators like SwissLog, who they themselves have a lot of supply chain cloud as well and planning behind their, and supply chain planning behind their organization. The more that we can leverage those partnerships, I think just helps the overall situation with us, with our partners, and with our customers. And we've been looking, doing a lot of planning from that perspective as well.

Speaker Change: I put myself on mute. Just a last clarification in terms of gross margin. Do you think you would be exiting next year at positive gross margin, or do we need to wait until 23 to see a quarter with a positive gross margin?

Speaker Change: You should probably really expect a 23 just because our, you know, as we mentioned, our revenues are going to be just like 21. They're going to be very heavily weighted in the second half. Fantastic. Thanks so much.

Speaker Change: Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now...

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