Q4 2022 Atomera Inc Earnings Call
Also please note that during this call we will be discussing non-GAAP financial measures as defined by SEC regulation G.
Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in today's press release, which is posted on our website now I'd like to turn the call over to our President and CEO Scott Vivo go ahead Scott.
Thanks, Mike Good afternoon, and welcome to <unk> fourth quarter 2022 update call I.
I would like to bring you all up to date on our progress in the last three months and summarize our accomplishments for 2022, which I consider to be a very strong year for <unk>.
But first let me give some context to the events happening in our industry.
More so than in most areas semiconductors have gone through a quite predictable business cycle ever since manufacturing started in the early 19 sixties with consistent sequences are very sharp growth followed by an equally sharp decline happening roughly every four or five years.
The last few years have been very high growth ones with the associated capacity crunches and ASP inflation that you would expect in that environment.
Now we are experiencing the downside with leading forecasters predicting greater than a 20% contraction in the industry for 2023.
Semiconductor veterans understand this cycle and know how to react to it.
So what we're starting to see is a reduction in last year's aggressive capex forecast and foundry prices moderating along with some announcements of layoffs and doesn't budget restrictions.
But what is also in the standard playbook for this part of the cycle is to move to invest counter cyclically to get first mover advantage when the inevitable rebound happens in other words to double down on R&D and invent your way out of the problem.
This part of the semiconductor economic cycles, where Adam earthrise due to fab over utilization our customers have postponed their normal development efforts for the last few years. So this is now pent up demand for improvements that must be executed.
Particularly in the application areas, which experienced the greatest constraints and that is exactly where at American provide readily available solutions that are otherwise difficult for our customers to achieve.
Our customers have the fab capacity to run wafers, and we have the technology to help them invent their way to long term competitive advantage.
Our business activity has absolutely accelerated to reflect the growth in new opportunities you would expect in such an environment.
New engagements do take time to work through the pipeline. So this chart on slide four Unfortunately does not do a great job showing our progress.
And searching for a metric that can illustrate our activity level better I found that traveled with customers for new projects is up between 450% to 500% over the last three months.
Versus the same period last year.
This rate of close customer engagement is not letting up and I am confident it will result in more licensing opportunities over the next few quarters.
As a first indicator one of our customers in the pipeline.
More tests in phase II than its typical has now very enthusiastically moved on to phase III based on the test results. Since this is another large customer we expect it will lead to good things.
We continue to work very closely with our <unk> customers and collaborated with them to achieve fresh results in Q4, which we believe will start us on a path towards production with one or more.
This unit's likewise, we continue to work closely with our licensees and are optimistic that the work. We're doing together result in further licensing stages and a near term path to production.
Progress through our pipeline, especially over the last couple of years has been frustratingly slow, but I will reiterate it is only a matter of time before improvements come to market and our degree of confidence has increased over the past quarter.
Cycles of learning are starting to speed up again now that fabs have the capacity to run wafers on shorter lead times.
We do expect to see a growing customer pipeline and to announce additional licensees in the months ahead.
During the last quarter, we have seen unprecedented interest in activity in the leading digital nodes, where our technology provides a number of benefits for <unk> technologies as discussed on our last call and shown on this slide.
We put out preliminary information on this topic in August gave an important paper in Tripoli conference in November and had many discussions with potential customers and ecosystem partners at the <unk> show in December .
Finally in January we put together all of our ideas on the topic and released a comprehensive white paper called <unk>.
<unk> benefits for gate all around.
A document that is media enough for a semiconductor device engineer, but it's also comprehensible to a technology savvy investor I really encourage you to look at over for customers under NDA. We can go into much greater depth on both the physics and the measured silicon results that backup our findings.
Development of these next generation transistors is incredibly costly and difficult.
It is widely held an industry wide cooperative approach is the only way forward in other words it would take an ecosystem of innovators composed of more than just the leading semiconductor players to bring the newest nodes to market.
Advanced semiconductor equipment materials metrology and development partners are all required.
The U S government has invested in the ecosystem through the chips Act and creation of the National Semiconductor Technology Center, which will serve as the focal point for research and engineering here in the United States.
This past quarter, <unk> announced a collaboration with Arizona State University, which we believe will become a regional hub of the Dod Microaire Electronics Commons lab to fab efforts.
Due to its advanced macro technology works facility, which is where <unk> state of the art that'd be deposition tool currently resides.
Likewise intend to become active in other U S regional initiatives and with our University partners in areas related to Chip's Act funding.
These are not just domestic efforts. We're also in discussions to engage with ecosystem partners overseas.
Overall, we're very excited about the prospects for <unk> and the most advanced semiconductor architectures. It's a perfect showcase for our technology. There are plenty of R&D dollars being devoted to it and it will establish <unk> MST technology on the bleeding edge of transistor development.
In 2022, we've made great advances on both our technologies focused on the mature process nodes. In particular, we are very excited by the benefits MSP can bring to RF soi devices, which are critical to <unk> cellular phones and beyond our simulations in semiconductor test devices show great <unk>.
Although results have been taking longer than was expected.
But.
We have learned things in our customers' real world test environments that will make MST, even more successful in the upcoming testing sessions. We are confident that these new techniques will be considered a critical enabling step in development of optimized RFA soi devices, leading to licenses and royalty revenue.
From all the players in the industry.
We continue to get traction with our MST SP product offerings due to the strong benefits, we bring to five volt transistors customers also want to use MSP for higher voltage transistors used in a wide set of applications requiring greater power.
Over a year ago at <unk> started experiments to enhance these very hard to design devices.
Although we have not rolled out the technology, yet or early test data shows very encouraging results that may open up a larger slice of the power market for us and one where we know there's widespread customer interest we call. This new technology, MST SP X and I want to tell you more about it in the near future.
2022 was an extremely productive year for Adam era, we announced new license and joint development agreements, we made very strong progress in each of our product focus areas to the point, where we are involved in major conversations about how to enable the next generation of semiconductor transistor.
We have deepened our relationships with many critical players and positioned ourselves to take advantage of this innovation cycle within the industry.
Another thing we've been quietly doing has been strengthening our patent strategy.
As you can see from this chart. We are now at 339 patents granted and pending which is triple the patents we had at our IPO.
Our efforts reflect the fact that <unk> is not just the materials technology and venter. We're also an expert in using this valuable material to make transistors work better in many applications.
That is where our recent new patents have been focused.
As some of our earliest fundamental patents start to sunset, we have built a portfolio of new patents that cover the device designs that can only be enabled by MST and that are growing use today.
Nobody understands better than at Amira, how MFC can make products better. So we continue to.
Create.
Our portfolio of these competitive ideas well into the future.
Not only does it strengthen our licensing potential it also helps customers to understand the potential of MST.
I know it can be frustrating for investors to gauge our progress, but big customer development activities, often don't happen on a predictable schedule. Even when you have proven your technology is a winner.
But our customers are seeing the advantages that they get from using MST and they will eventually get their programs on a path to production I am confident we will be able to make exciting customer announcements like that during the course of this year.
In the meantime, morale inside at Americas, running very high we're so busy with customer projects and new developments were straining to keep up there is no doubt that at this pace, we will need to add resources to handle all of our new opportunities. We continue to believe strongly in our future. We're licensing activity followed by commercialization.
Make Adam era are recognized as innovation leader in the semiconductor industry.
Now, let's have Frank review of our financials.
Thank you Scott.
At the close of the market today, we issued a press release announcing our fourth quarter and full year two.
2022 results.
This slide shows our summary financials.
Our GAAP net loss for the year ended December 31, 2022 was $17 4 million for <unk> 75 per share compared to a net loss of $15 7 million or <unk> 70 per share in 2021.
Revenue in 2022 was $382000 and consisted of the success fee on completion of the tactical objectives, and the J NDA with our first J D and customer and.
An integration license fee from our foundry licensee.
MSG cab revenue.
GAAP operating expenses were $17 $8 million in 2022, which was an increase of $1 9 million from $15 9 million in 2021.
This increase was mainly due to a $1 $3 million increase in R&D expenses, primarily reflecting lease payments for our ERP tool as our payments commenced in August of 2021, and 2022 reflects a full year of the tools.
Sales and marketing expenses increased by approximately $362000 and general and administrative expenses increased by approximately $277000.
non-GAAP net loss for 2022 was $14 1 million and reflected $14 4 million of non-GAAP operating expenses.
In 2021, our non-GAAP net loss was $12 $5 million, reflecting $12 9 million of non-GAAP operating expenses.
The differences between GAAP and non-GAAP operating expense in both years and accordingly between GAAP and non-GAAP net loss are almost entirely due to noncash stock compensation expenses, which were $3 $4 million in 2022 and $3 million in 2021.
Turning now to our quarterly results. Our Q4 2022, GAAP net loss was $4 3 million.
Or <unk> 18 per share.
Compared to a net loss of 42.
$4 2 million in Q4 of 2021, which was also <unk> 18 per share.
In Q3 of 2021, our GAAP net loss was $4 6 million for.
Or <unk> 20 per share.
Our cash balance on December 31, 2022 with.
$21 2 million.
Compared to $28 7 million at the end of 2021.
Cash at the end of Q3, 2022 was $23 3 million.
During 2022, we used $12 $5 million of cash in operating activities.
$2 9 million of which was in Q4.
On May 31, 2022, we established an aftermarket or ATM equity financing facility.
From the time, we set up the ATM through the end of 2022.
We sold a total of 527093 shares at an average price of $11 68.
Most of the cash from financing in 2022.
Came from ATM sales executed during Q3.
During Q4, we sold 109026 shares at an average price of $9 47.
We have not sold any shares under the ATM since November .
In fact.
We have only use the ATM on four trading days in the past six months.
Evidenced that we are using this tool judiciously.
As of December 31, 2022, we had 24 million shares outstanding.
As usual, we have a good handle on our spending plans for the year.
But it is still difficult to predict the timing of revenue.
So we will not give revenue guidance beyond the current quarter and our Q1 revenue guide is zero.
Turning to expenses, our non-GAAP Opex in 2022 was $14 $4 million.
Our 2023 guidance is a range of $16 two five to $16 $75 million.
I want to stop and add some further color to our Opex plan.
Back in 2020, the first year of the pandemic or.
Our non-GAAP Opex was $11 $7 million.
This increased to $12 $9 million in 2021 has some COVID-19 related restrictions eased off and we brought our new IP to fully online in the second half of the year.
Coming into 2022, I had given a range of around $15 $5 million of non-GAAP opex for the year.
But we hired and spent below our plan due to capacity shortages and a tight labor market.
Looking forward to 2023.
Our plan to ramp up spending reflects the positive outlook.
We're actively working on programs across the spectrum of power and analog.
Soi and advanced logic and.
Doing this requires more human resources more wafer processing and more metrology to support a variety of opportunities we see in this in this environment.
As Scott said in his remarks, we're confident that we will be able to make exciting customer announcements during the course of this year.
And we're making the investments needed to support them.
With that I will turn the call back over to Scott for a few summary remarks before we open the call up for questions.
Scott.
Thanks Frank.
<unk> is preparing now for growth driven by an industry wide innovation cycle that we are perfectly positioned to take advantage of due to our strong R&D efforts in the last few years, our offerings and legacy technologies have already been explored with a variety of customers, which we believe will soon lead to a path.
Production and I work at the leading edge is now well recognized and is gaining traction.
Our team is executing well building new product offerings and tools to help our customers get to production faster, our IP portfolio and knowhow have become a powerful asset for us to leverage across multiple segments and applications.
This combination of attributes mix, Adam are ideally positioned to partner with the industry's most successful semiconductor companies to innovate their way out of this downturn and benefit both themselves and Adam era in the future.
With that Mike we will now take questions. Thank.
Thank you Scott if you wish to ask a question. Please click the Q&A button at the bottom of the zoom window, then feel free to type in a question I will do my best to aggregate the income inquiries and relay them to management.
Alternatively, you can click on the raise hand button and we may call on you to ask your question lives.
And right now our first question comes from Richard Shannon of.
Craig Hallum, Richard if you're <unk>.
Can hear you go ahead.
Okay.
We will.
Move on to Cody Acree.
Benchmark Coty go ahead, yes.
Thanks, Mike.
Frank and Scott good to see you all.
Maybe if you can just talk a little more Scott on the.
The optimism that you're portraying here obviously your you are not.
Optimistic enough to give us revenue guidance, yet so that's that would be nice.
But can you talk about what it is that's giving you. This this optimistic level of engagements.
That you believe are filling a pipeline of activity.
Is anything tangible to those to those comments.
Added to that will be helpful. Yes, Let me just let me just talk about that a little further Cody.
You know.
Our guys are all out on the road today and it seems like last several months we've constantly been.
Reacting to customer interest in our technology and our and what we have is stuff that last few years, we've been telling people about it they've been interested but they haven't really been able to do much work on the R&D side, because they've been all trying to figure out how to move more wafers through their fabs, but now.
They suddenly have the interest and the capacity being able to go and do some of that work one of the things I've talked about in the past, but I'd like to really reiterate now as you know a lot of times you worked with a big customer.
You get the results that look really good but they don't immediately move forward with it because they just arent funded to do an R&D path or make a new process technology come out that year. So it sits on the bench, but at some point they take it off the bench and they say okay. Now we are ready to go and so we with what we're seeing in the <unk>.
History, and the interest we're seeing from new customers and existing customers. We're hopeful that some of those things will come off the bench and we will start to see things moving.
Moving towards production now.
Driving a lot of the optimism.
And I guess, if you had to handicap.
The layer guests to the.
Right.
The discussions do you feel like you.
You're getting more towards fruition.
Or I guess is do you have a funnel that you feel like youre filling in.
How is that different today than it was 90 days ago.
Yes definitely.
The wide mouth of the funnel is much more full.
And so we're having a lot of.
A lot of conversations with new customers as well as renewing.
Discussions about fresh experiments and path forward with.
With existing customers and so all.
All of those are our.
Our positives.
I would say is.
We've kind of opened some new fronts to talk to people on so I spoke a lot on this call about the kind of the bleeding edge and gate all around devices and I would say across the whole range of what we consider.
Customers at the most advanced nodes, which are not just the.
The obvious big three but also include memory manufacturers, who are doing very advanced things were.
We're seeing a lot of interest in the technology that we've been writing these white papers on them, giving presentations on it at conferences and so there's a lot of back and forth of those type of customers too that we hope will lead towards.
Big things in the future.
And any color that you can provide on your existing customers your existing licensees what their progress has been.
I mean as I mentioned in my.
In my remarks, we continue to be engaged with all of our existing licensees, where we've been working on.
Experiments with some with others, where we're planning for new things.
I think the only one that is still one of our licensees that we're not really actively making new products for his AKM, which had the fab fire a couple of years ago, Thats really kind of solve for them, but we are also in discussions with them about.
Doing some innovative new things as well so all of our licensees and all of our JV partners still quite active with us.
Maybe last for you Scott and then I'll get Frank is the.
Your China positioning.
Where do you fall in your engagements with China and what are your thoughts about the U S trade tensions and the limitations that does that.
The governments are putting on technology transfers.
Yeah, right now we have no exposure to China.
We have a lot of interest around the world and I think there is too much uncertainty about.
How far will be able to take our technology within China for us to make that move.
Move it up into the priority chain for us on our business development activities.
The United States, and China kind of reached a constant.
Become a little more cooperative in semiconductor.
<unk> in the near future then, we'll we'll revisit that but for now we have we have very little activity in China.
Okay, great. Thank you Scott.
And then Frank just.
Back to the year.
Quiddity question.
<unk> been very.
As far as engaging.
Engaging in your ATM, which is good.
But what is the minimum level of cash that you are comfortable running the operations.
Right.
Well I think.
It's pretty well understood that.
Public companies.
Keith.
Well over a year's worth of cash on their balance sheet at all times and Thats sort of a fundamental.
Audit issue.
As a public company and so I think that you can draw your own conclusions about that but also.
Because we I think always been.
Our conscious and forward looking about maintaining that liquidity.
The fact that we've been very sparing and what we've done.
Like I said, it's only active in the month of November .
Over the last six months.
<unk>.
We're obviously optimistic not only in terms of our planning to spend more money and hire people this year, but also.
And feeling that we didn't need to.
Load up on additional cash well when the stock and overall.
<unk>.
The equity markets and particularly the.
The growth stocks in tech stocks were particularly doing poorly in the last six months.
I think if we felt more concerned.
Needed to have.
Proactively sell off our balance sheet than we probably would have been more active in the past few months and so I think.
Our hiring plans and also the financing activity that we've done.
Reflect our optimism about 2023.
Very good Frank and I'm, sorry, one last thing.
Did I Miss in your prepared remarks, a cash burn target for 'twenty three.
Yeah, our target for 'twenty, three and we always give it in.
non-GAAP operating expense, which is effectively our cash outflow.
I don't give.
Our net burn because we don't give annual revenue guidance, but the target was $16 two five to $16 $75 million for the year.
Alright, great. Thank you guys.
Much appreciate it.
Alright, Thank you Jody.
Okay.
Okay. So some questions have been coming in through the chat and I will just go ahead and.
Some of those.
First is why do some phase III customers pay for an integration license and others do not.
Yeah. So let me, let me take that too.
Yeah. So.
Our.
Yes.
There's no there's no hard set of rules on this if.
If we have a customer that we think has incredibly high potential and they pushed back very hard on that.
The concept of an integration license, then we're probably going to be.
We're probably going to be flexible for that because it's more important to us to get those very high potential customers going using our technology.
And.
Then to get the money from them for others, especially ones, where we've done multiple runs.
At some point, we can we can talk them into the integration license, it's not a matter of paying it or not paying and it's only a matter of when you pay it because with all customers. They understand if they avoid paying it at the beginning when they finally get to a manufacturing license and they will have to pay the integration licenses those pieces all add up.
To each other.
Okay.
Yeah.
And another one is does the.
<unk> the first GTA licenses allowed for limited sampling to their customers.
And let me follow up because there's other questions about whether the JP ASR sampling in general to their customers.
Yes, So let me first of all I'll just talk about.
R J D a.
Licenses in general because we can't talk about specifics for the individual customers, but typically when a customer gets to <unk>.
Manufacturing license level with us.
At least for our first JV a customer. It did include a manufacturing license. We do include the right for them to do limited sampling now remember these guys are not typically making devices and selling them.
They are working on a process technology, so it's more likely that they would be sampling.
They'd be sampling wafers with.
With devices people could measure or even PDK that have models that have the characteristics of the new transistors, but yes that is it right that we give people.
<unk>.
Once they reach a manufacturing license level as the sample now.
I can't really comment on whether people have sampled.
<unk>.
Under those.
Except to say, maybe only the first J D. A customer would have had the right to do that so far.
Okay.
And then we had a question around MSG tag revenue.
Can we elaborate on it and if there's any metrics to measure it.
Yeah.
You want to take that Frank Yes, sure. So.
We.
We offer MST CAD to customers under.
A free trial for 90 days, a lot of our customers take us up on that.
After that they may either.
<unk>.
Not to continue doing.
S T cab themselves or they convert to a paying customer and so.
I think I saw the question come in saying that it was the first time, we've disclosed it we actually had a small amount of MST CAD revenue in Q3, which we disclosed in our 10-Q for that quarter.
So, but let me also just add that just because of the customer isn't paying for MSG cap doesn't mean that they're not.
Taking advantage of our tea CAD capabilities, sometimes a customer will do the <unk> work themselves because we've delivered the MST cab scripts to them in which case it would be under that 90 day trial and then our paid license thereafter, but in other cases, they sent us process detail.
And we run the tea CAD for them, there's a very big gamut of approaches that customers have some rely in.
Much more heavily on <unk> and have internal <unk> resources, others have very little but they are willing to look at results.
On what we do.
But as you can see from the scale of the numbers, we don't plan to rely on <unk> as a major revenue source is really an enabler for getting us to the right solution for our customer and more quickly and targeting the development.
Although I do.
Expect that we're going to see more.
Customers, who take advantage of the capability.
Okay.
And Richard Shannon joined US Richard If you want to go ahead and ask ask a question.
Can you hear me now Mike, Yes, yes, Okay, alright, excellent apologies upfront here I'm travelling in shell coverage is a great show.
Hopefully that won't be a noises too bad here, but that said Scott I think my first question here is.
To paraphrase your language in your prepared remarks here, but you talked about more licensees in the months ahead.
It sounds like a modestly more certain than maybe I could use the word aggressive statement that you've used in the past. So what exactly do you mean by this can you help us understand what activities or actions you can publicly talk about that will happen in these months ahead.
Okay.
Yeah. Thanks for the question Richard You know of course, this is a little bit dicey because I.
I'm not trying to announce something that doesn't hasn't happened, yet, but I definitely would say.
I think there's no doubt if you look at our customer pipeline over the last couple of years, we've had good traction with customers who have been working with customers, but everything has been slowed down by this capacity crunch the industry was in the.
I think we talked about a JV a customer taking nine months to get a sample I think we talked about that early last year and in fact is it was taking more than 12 months just because the fabs are so slow now that's all changing right we're seeing.
We're seeing much faster throughput times on our internal R&D lots, where suddenly see a dramatic improvement in the throughput, we're getting and we're seeing customers who are much more interested in starting to meet with us and talk about potential programs because they can get into those fabs. That's one of the things thats driving our optimism we are.
So we've got very good relationships with most of our licensees in GDA partners and.
And we can see the progress, they're making and we're hopeful that they'll get to.
I mean, I'm more optimistic than ever that they'll get to license announcements this year.
<unk>.
Yes.
Yeah, it's always tricky.
Because the reason, we don't pre announce as that.
Any decision by them that they wanted to do one more wafer run can take nine to 12 months more but.
We've got a lot of.
A lot of shots on net here with all the customers in our pipeline and we're hopeful that some of them come out with licenses in the near future.
Okay Fair enough I know you don't want to get essentially a negotiating against yourself by declaring something overly strong, but I just wanted to get a sense of the.
Level of improvement of confidence and I think you've portrayed that so thanks for that.
Scott you and one of your early parts of your prepared remarks, you talked about.
Travel activity up 450% to 500% at quarter on quarter, how should we think about what this really means I mean is this.
A sign of activity in earlier stages or kind of like one of my follow up questions here will be I think one of the key things for your story and impact on your stock will be getting somebody over the finish line getting them to production that seems like a critical thing is this travel activity is this more early stage or potentially late stage stuff that could help you get over that finish line.
Yeah.
I'm sure you won't be surprised that I say, it's a mix of both Richard.
No I will not Scott.
And by the way I, just want to be clear I'm comparing the three months from kind of the beginning of November until until now from last year to this year and last.
Last year, it wasn't really that impacted by Covid. So its pretty fair comparison. This is normally a time of year with the holidays and everything but you don't see a ton of <unk>.
Travel happening but.
But we are I mean, we're just we have lots of irons in the fire and it's.
It's a fun kind of exciting atmosphere, where we're constantly preparing for the next customer meeting and for the next set of data that we have to do that.
<unk>.
Get them to move in the application area that we'd like them to move in so.
Yes, so that's what we're all of that comes from.
Okay.
Okay fair enough and let's see here.
I guess, you announced a customer moving into phase III and Youre guiding to no revenues for the quarter. So obviously not a revenue generating event or at least not immediately what.
Do you expect that at some point to happen with this relationship while in phase III or we're not doing any acute kidney characterize any sort of work technology product area et cetera that youre working with them on it yeah.
Sure.
Yes, I don't think I can talk about the specific work area, but I can say, it's a quite a large customer we have been.
In phase III most of our customers go through phase III in a month or two this customer wanted to run some very extensive tests in phase III because it helps them to understand what our technology can do so they've been in it for a few quarters.
Got the final results in December and then.
We're very excited by them and move very quickly into phase III, usually when we start phase III. It means a customer has to start running some new wafers on their side.
Build them up to a certain point and send them to us and that can take a while for them to do in this case the customer. It was was so excited they react extremely quickly.
Since the wafers quite rapidly so it feels like this is something thats going to have a high priority and hopefully we will we'll move quickly through the development pipeline and get to a point, we will have something announced at all.
Okay fair enough.
Let's see here on the fourth quarter revenues, you recognize obviously, a small amounts here, which you guided for zero, there's something there.
Any can you describe the activities that are triggered that and did I understand correctly. This customer came from North America is just one of the licensees that you've announced in the past.
Well, what I can say about it is that its MFC cab revenue, which we.
Disclose so.
Domestic revenue from.
From North America.
Okay.
But you can't say, whether its been announced licensee.
No.
Okay.
Okay Fair enough and then let's see here just scanning my question list here make sure I didn't Miss anything.
Scott, maybe I'll, just kind of finish up with a with a question here on on leading edge.
Just wondering if you can kind of help us understand the.
The importance of what Youre doing to gate, all around and other sorts of initiatives and leading edge.
And then just any way that you would characterize the probability of success and timeframe I think most people on this call are expecting a fairly long period of time.
Any way you characterize that would probably be helpful. In that I think that's all for me. Thank you yeah, yeah, it's a very interesting situation.
<unk>.
We do a lot of work in the legacy nodes.
And in theory, the legacy nodes could they're relatively simpler to work on they are in volume production. So you would think they would change over pretty quickly, but there is but what we do run into there is that.
Even if we show a customer a great benefit on the legacy nodes, sometimes they're not planning to make a change to the legacy node for some time and we have to wait for that time to come around.
But on the leading edge on the gate all around we know every big semiconductor company.
Is working on it they've got a ton of engineers dedicated to it so when we bring in some ideas.
Big crowd, that's ready to listen and if they if they like what they see they are probably going to want to start running some experiments with us and and they'll have a ton of resources to do those experiments to get results quickly and hopefully move fast.
No.
The.
The gate all around as I mentioned in my remarks is very complicated.
We are taking ideas from a large number of industry players like the equipment Oems and universities and we're also contributing a lot of ideas. So we're hopeful that if were adopted by one or more of these players will become kind of a standard thing that gets added in to everybody's.
Kind of goes onto the industry semiconductor roadmap and that would be kind of a.
Straightforward way for us to continue licensing our technology out to every one of the companies is developing those processes in the future.
The big opportunity, we have done a lot of science on it.
<unk>.
And I think quite an exciting thing for us.
Okay got it appreciate the perspective, that's all from me guys. Thank you.
Alright, Thank you Richard.
And just two more quick questions here before we conclude the call.
First one is has <unk> done any simulation of MST CAD work on three nanometers.
Yeah for those of you who.
Don't know about three nanometer so.
In the semiconductor industry the most advanced.
Transistor, that's being worked on right now is the three nanometer transistor. This already work and thought going on beyond three nanometers, but three nanometers is the most advanced node and that's where they are using.
For the most part the gate all around architecture that we talked about there's a lot of challenges in three nanometers, because everything is just so small.
<unk>.
But our technology, that's one of the things that our technology does is to help people to control dopants when youre trying to deposit them in very small areas and not have them go to other areas and to help people with a number of other things that you have spoken about in the past but.
So I think the question about whether we've done simulation I know you've done MSC cat on that level, yes, we have.
We don't.
Uh huh.
A technicality when we when we run <unk>, we don't run a transistor on tea CAD we run.
The areas that are even smaller than a transition, but we've done a lot of stimulations on how you would use MST and a gate all around three nanometer are smaller device. So that we can go into customers and show them that type of thing so.
We talked frequently about our MSC being a technology that's.
100, angstroms thick, which is one nanometer.
We experimented making it even thinner these type of applications and we've done those experiments on simulations using tea CAD that we can show perspective customers. So yeah.
Alright, and then last question here is is MST being applied to AI artificial intelligence in anyway.
Yes.
<unk>.
I would say.
Hard to make a direct comparison AI for the most part is the software that runs on various kinds of processes, including some very advanced processors that MST could help too.
Optimize make better but.
There is no direct connection between our MSC technology in an AI so far okay.
Thanks, guys.
At this point, we will just.
Move to conclude the call you May proceed with any closing comments.
Okay.
Alright. Thanks.
Thanks, a lot Mike and I want to thank everybody here for attending today's presentation I'm really happy we're able to share with you. Our recent progress and give you a sense of the optimism we're experiencing inside at Amira. Please.
Please continue to look for our news articles and blog posts to keep you up to date on our progress.
Which are available along with investor alerts on our website at <unk> Dot Com, we look forward to seeing some of you during our upcoming scheduled marketing activities.
And should you have any questions in the meantime, please contact Mike Bishop who will be happy to follow up. Thank you again for your support and we look forward to our next update call.
Thank you. This concludes the <unk> fourth quarter 2022 conference call.
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