Datavault AI - Q2 2022
August 15, 2022
Transcript
David Truong (Sr. Quality & Reliability Manager)
Welcome to the WiSA Technologies Second Quarter Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief Q&A session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, the conference call is being recorded. With us today are Brett Moyer, CEO and President, and CFO George Oliva. Before turning the call over to Brett, I'd like to remind everyone that today's presentation contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements.
Operator (participant)
Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as a result of risks and uncertainties impacting the company's business, including current macroeconomic uncertainties associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, our inability to predict or measure supply chain disruptions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic and other drivers, our ability to predict the timing of design wins entering production and the potential future revenue associated with design wins, rate of growth, the ability to predict customer demand for existing and future products, and to secure adequate manufacturing capacity, consumer demand conditions affecting customers' end markets, the ability to hire, retain, and motivate employees, the effects of competition, including price competition, technological, regulatory, and legal developments in the economy and financial markets, and other risks detailed from time to time in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including those described in Risk Factors on our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2021, filed with the SEC as revised or updated for any material changes described in any subsequently filed quarterly reports on Form 10-Q.
The information in this presentation is as of the date hereof, and the company undertakes no obligations to update unless required to do so by law. With that, I'll turn the call over to Brett. Go ahead, Brett.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Thank you, David, and thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for joining George and I on this Q2 update. Last year, the company initiated a strategic vision to expand our technology solutions beyond the niche audiophile market that we dominate to solutions that can reach the broad consumer electronics market. The primary investments that were undertaken included expanding our R&D effort and patent filings, hiring the former HDMI executives to build strategic partnerships in the industry, expand WiSA's role to work with retailers and directly with the consumer. Today, in addition to our Q2 results, we will discuss why now for these investments, the size of the market opportunity, the technology roadmap for each market segment, and the anticipated revenue ramp. Why now? When you think about where the industry has evolved, there's enormous work on spatial algorithms.
There's release of codecs that can give you that three-dimensional sound by both Dolby Atmos and DTS, right? Wi-Fi chips have become significantly faster and lower cost, even to the point that some of the IoT chips, like the Espressif chip we have a partnership with, can become useful in multi-channel immersive wireless sound. As we all saw in the last two years, being in our COVID caves, content is prevalent, right? It's streamed everywhere from every device. Yet when we're watching that content, it is not the same as when you're in a theater, when you're in a stadium, when you're at a concert or a symphony. That audio sound is half the experience, not just the video. We got the content. How do we bring the rest of the audio to market?
Then the third leg here is when you look at the TVs, they've gone 1K, 2K, 4K, 8K. They're running out of display technology that's meaningful to the consumer. How do you continue to grow your business as a TV manufacturer? You synchronize audio to your TV and integrate audio solutions to build your P&L. We think those three factors create a great opportunity for spatial audio and for WiSA Technologies. Now, where do we fit in that space? 'Cause we're not the content guys, we're not the Wi-Fi media guys, right? And we're not the codecs. But we are the transport. What our engineering team knows how to do is synchronize a lot of speakers, keep the latency low, make sure we work in a heavily congested Wi-Fi space.
We get audio from the smart device to the speaker, and that's our role, to support the other three legs of the stool. We've been successful with our original technology launch. Most of you have tracked us, so you've seen these brands. These are really the premium brands in the industry. They're the audio guys, some of the highest performing audio speaker companies in the world. We have a great reputation to launch this new endeavor, right? We take, number one, the IP developed originally with WiSA HT. We extended and developed the WiSA Association that moved from a test organization, a certification organization to a broad consumer-reaching organization, which we'll talk about a little bit. We are now launching the first product with our IP called WiSA DS.
That's on a 2.4 GHz high performance. Then following that, we'll take the IPs that we are working with in DS and move it to a 5 GHz solution, which lets us add more features and reduce latency, as well as license IP. Three technologies, one existing, two start and ship this year, third one coming next year, right? WiSA HT, WiSA DS for soundbars and TV integration, WiSA E for IP licensing and smart speakers and all other devices, right? When you look at the whole market, WiSA is the only company that is able to offer a low-cost module for soundbars, a mid-range solution for all smart devices, and a premium solution for those audiophile customers that we have today. That's the only. We're the only company that's being able to span the breadth of solutions and cost points.
When you look at the market size, this dramatically increases our market size. We showed you this slide last time, but just for the refresher, we're going from a 40 million, 50 million, 60 million TAM to several hundred million with WiSA DS to over 1 billion with WiSA E. The price parallels are, you know, HT is the most expensive. WiSA DS is probably 65%, 70% less than HT, and WiSA E is right in the middle. That chart of feature cost goes from the lower left-hand all the way up to the right. No matter what your objective is, whether you need IP licensing or a complete module, we're able to handle the whole market. The role of WiSA, which has expanded dramatically in the last 12 months.
I think it was this time last year that we talked about WiSA stores, and the first one was at Amazon.com/WiSA, and we expected to get 5 or 6 last year. Today, we did announce that we expect to expand that and buy another 3-5. Materially, we now have inbound requests from retailers asking how do they become a WiSA-certified retailer, how do they set up a WiSA store, and what are the requirements. That's a big swing in terms of momentum for WiSA when you can take WiSA-certified TVs or speakers and have the retailers aggregating them so that WiSA looks like one complete solution to the consumer. With the consumer marketing, you saw us grow web traffic from relatively nothing to 2 million consumers last year. This year, we'll increase that to 3 million, between 2 and 3 million.
That's lower than our previous guidance, and that's as a result of consumer patterns changing and what they're buying. Now that people are leaving the COVID cave, we saw a change in demand, both through our customers as well as our marketing with WiSA. We shifted more of the marketing dollars out of Q2 and Q3 into the fall selling season, when people come back from their vacations, come back from their first trips, come back from eating restaurants, and they're back in their house thinking about what to do for the fall and winter. Finally, for WiSA, critical to that was we did invest and then launch the SoundSend.
As you can see below, the SoundSend actually provides to the industry the safety of knowing they can design speakers, and there will be a WiSA HT SoundSend, there will be a WiSA E SoundSend for our interoperable standards. The industry has responded with some great awards, including the 2022 winner for smart home excellence. We'll continue to support that product so that the consumer and the retailer and the speaker guys know there's a product that'll connect WiSA speakers to any smart TV. Okay, there's new information on this slide, but for the new people joining this call, WiSA DS has one primary competitor that dominates the wireless speakers in the soundbar, and the soundbar transmits either subwoofer or rear speakers. WiSA DS, comparing to that, can offer more channels, so that we can do up-firing as well as rear speakers and a subwoofer.
It has a stronger performance in a congested wireless space, and it's substantially cheaper. We think all three of that positions us strongly. Now, we launched this particular feature of 5.1.4 capability in March. COVID has hampered our ability to go to Asia, but our Asian team has already generated 12 companies that are going through the test and evaluation cycle, and they break out between 8 companies focused on soundbars, 3 companies focused on integrating, testing and for the possible integration into TVs, and 1 company that's launching a product for the auto after-market. We expect at least 2 of these will go into production in Q4 this year. How does all this technology evolve over time?
If you start at 2023, you have WiSA HT, the Gen 1 modules, you have the speaker systems, you have WiSA DS, and WiSA E modules all in market next year. Now, WiSA E will just be getting there late in the year, and we will launch Platin speakers into the market with WiSA E, with a WiSA E SoundSend. Again, what's the purpose of that? Not to be a speaker company, but to prove to potential customers that we perform well in the retail and perform well in the consumer home, and we're a safe technology to adopt, right? WiSA E will start in 2023 and build as the blue color. WiSA DS modules will start in Q4 this year in terms of revenue and continue to build. We think it's a strong product, and it builds continuously through 2024.
Speakers will grow as a result of our effort to prove WiSA E a viable technology and performing well with consumers. The G1 WiSA HT modules will have new design starts throughout next year and then slowly ramp down over the next 3 or 4 years. From an IP position, from our investment in the last 12 months and the next 6, fundamentally changed our position in terms of the patent holdings. We've now got 12 issued or in the process of review or filings. That's from the benefit of the 12 years we've been working at it. This is all about, do you have an engineering team that knows how to handle sync, latency, congested Wi-Fi space, and audio repair? The engineering team has done fabulous at developing WiSA DS and WiSA E.
We're really excited at that performance as it measures against competition. Now I'd like to turn the slides, the presentation over to George, our CFO.
George Oliva (CFO)
Thank you, Brett. The Q2 revenues were $946,000. It's down 40% from the same quarter in the previous year, but up 67% sequentially from Q1. The gross margin was 20 points, down from 29% in the previous year, but up from 11% sequentially from Q1. Operating expenses were $4.3 million, including half a million of non-cash expenses, primarily stock comp expense, compared to $3.3 million in the previous year, with $400K of non-cash expenses. The increase in OpEx was due in large part to our engineering efforts, as Brett has discussed. The loss for the quarter was $4.1 million, compared to $4.6 million in the prior year.
The larger loss in the prior year, despite lower OpEx, was due to a non-cash charge we took in relation to converting the preferred last year to common. The ending cash for the quarter was approximately $4.8 million. In terms of guidance for the rest of the year, we expect revenue to continue to increase sequentially in Q3 compared to Q2 and increase additionally in Q4 compared to Q3. As module volumes increase, the margin should continue to improve into the mid-20s%. With the cash on hand, in combination with increasing revenue, decreasing inventories, and the $3 million in financing that we announced this morning should be sufficient to fund our execution into 2023. As we mentioned, we closed...
We signed a definitive agreement with our largest shareholder for $3 million of net funding on convertible notes, and that includes warrants that are priced at $1, approximately 2 million warrants at $1. That's it. I'll turn that over to Brett.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Thank you, George. In summary, before we go to Q&A, which will be open to all investors that have questions, you know, the team has a high competency of technical skills that has been proven out with some premium audio brands. We're rapidly launching the IP that we put onto the Espressif module, and that'll start generating in Q4. WiSA has expanded its role and starting to bring inbound contacts from retailers, which is a significant shift in this performance. We got a very strong IP position that we think sets up for continued growth in the next four years. With that, David, I'd like to open it up for questions.
Operator (participant)
Great. Thanks, Brett. Now we'll be conducting the Q&A session. In this format, you can raise your hand if you're joining via the Internet, or if you've dialed in, you can raise your hand by dialing star nine and unmute your line by dialing star six. If you are called upon, we ask that you announce your name and company affiliation before starting your question. We'll take a moment here to assemble the queue.
Let's see. We'll take our first question here, and proceed.
George Oliva (CFO)
Do they know they were selected?
David Truong (Sr. Quality & Reliability Manager)
I have several questions. I see Jack in here, and I see your hand is raised. I'm trying to call on you.
Operator (participant)
Hi, David, this is the operator. What phone number are you trying to allow to talk?
David Truong (Sr. Quality & Reliability Manager)
It ends in 0884.
Operator (participant)
Okay, go ahead, and you can ask your question now.
Jack Vander Aarde (SVP, Equity Research TMT, Gaming & Entertainment)
Great. Can you hear me, guys? Okay?
George Oliva (CFO)
Yeah.
Jack Vander Aarde (SVP, Equity Research TMT, Gaming & Entertainment)
Yep. Okay, great. Jack Vander Aarde here, analyst from Maxim Group. How are you doing today? Appreciate the update. I'll throw the question for Brett.
George Oliva (CFO)
Yep.
Jack Vander Aarde (SVP, Equity Research TMT, Gaming & Entertainment)
I got a quick housekeeping question. Just a quick one. When do you guys expect to release the full financial statements and the 10-Q?
George Oliva (CFO)
You know, probably very soon, within an hour, I guess.
Jack Vander Aarde (SVP, Equity Research TMT, Gaming & Entertainment)
Okay.
George Oliva (CFO)
I-
Jack Vander Aarde (SVP, Equity Research TMT, Gaming & Entertainment)
Okay.
George Oliva (CFO)
We might have to wait. We might be required to wait till the close of the market. I'll
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Today regardless.
George Oliva (CFO)
Today regardless, yeah.
Jack Vander Aarde (SVP, Equity Research TMT, Gaming & Entertainment)
Yep. No, no worries there. Appreciate the update there. Okay. Then Brett, maybe as far as the revenue guide, looks like you're now expecting sequential growth in the third quarter and then sequential growth in the fourth quarter. Just any additional color you can provide there on the top line? Maybe any initial thoughts on overall revenue potential for 2023?
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Okay. You know what we see, and I think probably you've seen it reported out in other earnings calls since it's the last data report out in other earnings calls. We saw in our own internal tracking through the WiSA Association that consumers shifted, demand shifted at the end of April. Right? We see and we think that's been followed up in orders coming in from our partners as well as reported out in Sonos' case. We're just being more conservative until we see that demand come back. We get the consumer desire, being consumers ourselves, to get the hell out of the house, but we think that turns around back in the fall. We see sequentially growing revenue. We're just not forecasting yet how that impacts the full year. For 2023-
Jack Vander Aarde (SVP, Equity Research TMT, Gaming & Entertainment)
Understood there.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
What's that?
Jack Vander Aarde (SVP, Equity Research TMT, Gaming & Entertainment)
Yep, understood there. I was gonna move on to 2023 then.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Yeah. 2023, we're expecting a strong year between DS coming in, WiSA E coming in. You know, WiSA E rolled into speakers probably knocks $100 off of MSRP. In a world of inflation, consumer buying, $100 is everything. Every $100 is higher conversions and sell through. We think 2023 is up against this year, up against last year, whatever reference point you wanna use. We think the feedback we've gotten out of those first 12 companies, and a couple of them are really grinding WiSA DS, has been extremely positive. In their words, shockingly strong performance for a 2.4 GHz solution. We think as that rolls into next year and 2024, that's a strong revenue driver.
Jack Vander Aarde (SVP, Equity Research TMT, Gaming & Entertainment)
Great. Actually, just for clarity. WiSA DS is shipping this year. When exactly? WiSA E, is there a specific timeline for that during 2023 when that's gonna ship? Is it the end of the year? Is there a particular quarter?
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Well, actually.
Jack Vander Aarde (SVP, Equity Research TMT, Gaming & Entertainment)
There would be helpful.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Yes.
Jack Vander Aarde (SVP, Equity Research TMT, Gaming & Entertainment)
Yep.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
I misspoke on the WiSA E in my presentation. We will actually start sampling WiSA E in Q4 this year. Right? There's four or five beta customers that we're talking to, and we'll select four or five of them, depending on our bandwidth, to work with them to test, evaluate, and just like we did with DS. That won't generate revenue. Just in terms of technology and shippable maturity, we expect to have those four or five beta customers with modules, with WiSA E to test and bang up in Q4. Right? WiSA DS, that'll. We'll have two companies that are planning to go into production, which means we're shipping during Q4.
Jack Vander Aarde (SVP, Equity Research TMT, Gaming & Entertainment)
That would be an official launch. That'd be a commercially ready product in the fourth quarter with those two customers for WiSA-DS?
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Yes.
Jack Vander Aarde (SVP, Equity Research TMT, Gaming & Entertainment)
Okay. Great. Let's see. Because I'm waiting for the balance sheet, I'm not sure, maybe I missed it, but can you provide an update on your inventory levels currently? You know, how you expect your inventory levels to move going into 2H, the back half of this year? Just anything you've heard or any updates with your customers, their end inventory situation.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Yes. George, do you wanna take the inventory question?
George Oliva (CFO)
Our second quarter inventory was relatively flat from Q1, but Q1 we saw an increase. You know, as our customers have rescheduled orders out, we are also having to reschedule our vendors out. To the extent that we can defer the excess purchases to next year, we should start to see our inventory come down in the second half of the year. We don't really have a lot of visibility of our customers' inventory. I know, Brett, you can talk to that.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
We do not. We are in the channel. I will say the feedback coming from the retailer side of the channel is that there's gonna be healthy promotions and discounting in the fall around consumer electronics. That leads us to believe that as demand shifts, that our customers have been chasing product 'cause of all the part shortages and logistics challenge. We still see part shortage issues are impacting our customers. Logistic challenges of getting stuff out of manufactured in Asia into North America or Europe seem to have abated largely. You now have customers that are putting out large POs to try to circumvent part shortages. Now as consumer demand has shifted somewhat, at least temporarily for these four or five months, we think that builds a promotional opportunity for good discounts for consumers in the fall.
Jack Vander Aarde (SVP, Equity Research TMT, Gaming & Entertainment)
Helpful comment there. Well,
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Okay.
Jack Vander Aarde (SVP, Equity Research TMT, Gaming & Entertainment)
Guys, I appreciate the update. Thank you, George. Thank you, Brett.
George Oliva (CFO)
Just to confirm your question about the Q will be filed at the close of market.
Jack Vander Aarde (SVP, Equity Research TMT, Gaming & Entertainment)
Excellent. Thank you very much, George.
David Truong (Sr. Quality & Reliability Manager)
Okay, moving on. Let's go to caller number ending in 3186. I think that's Kevin. Do you wanna unmute your line? Dial star six.
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Hi, Brett. Hi, George. Can you hear me okay? Kevin Dede here, H.C. Wainwright.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Yeah. Good morning, Kevin.
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Thanks for having me on the call, and thanks for the help with handling the call. All right. You touched on this a little bit, Brett, right? You touched on an abatement in sourcing. I was hoping you could sorta add a little more color on that. I guess a little more curious about the environment in China, given the pretty hefty COVID restrictions. It doesn't seem to me that you're seeing a manufacturing issue. I just wanted to confirm that.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Well, in terms of COVID in China, it's nasty. Where it impacts us most is being able to send, you know, senior executives from here to there to, you know, really show the vision of the product lines. We have to depend on people in-country. We can't get in or out of China. From a parts shortage, we know there's still sporadic part shortages, so that's impacting some of our customers, and there's no question. Logistically, you know, once stuff gets built, it's flowing.
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Right. Yeah, so that's kinda where I was going. I mean, things are getting built, and you see that people are able to meet orders. At least your customers see that trend, I guess, strengthening, which seemed to be an issue earlier in the year.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Yeah. We think now, whether it's because people are pushing. I mean, we've seen customers push out orders, you know, we think it's around consumer demand. Pushed out orders frees up inventory, right? We do know from. We have an ODM in China on our board, so we do know there's still part shortages in the space. I would say the industry's probably gone 75%-80% back to normal.
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Okay. Good to hear. You remarked during your presentation that brands see, I guess, a limited return on increased performance and I guess pixel count on large screen TVs, right? You mentioned that you think they're gonna try to exploit the, you know, the sound experience as an avenue to boost margin.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Correct.
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
I'm just wondering how much real evidence do you have of that?
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Well, there's two brands that have been doing it for a couple of years, right? One is VIZIO and one is Samsung. If you look at their product lines and their merchandising at retail. They are heavily. I don't wanna say integrated as in they work flawlessly, but they are heavily merchandised together, number one. Number two, we've seen through the WiSA Association, a number of retailers that do very well with bundles. Now, you can bundle a soundbar or you can bundle Enclave or Platin, right? Again, if the retailers are seeing it, the brands will see it. If you take one step further back in the cycle, you know, here we are launching WiSA DS. Out of the 12 companies that are actively digging into it, 8 of them are looking at it for soundbars.
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Does that mean the soundbar comes with the television? Like you know, packaged with the TV?
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
No.
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Or is it a-
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
No.
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Okay.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
It's a merchandising at point of sale.
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
The important nuance is that the TV will find it and turn it on with little consumer issue.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Right. That's our play, right? Why would you integrate WiSA DS into your TV? I mean, look, this is what B&O's been doing with us for 10 years, right? There's a WiSA module inside every one of their TVs. It finds every WiSA speaker in that room. Our position, which we think resonates, is that having wireless integration in the TV with an interoperable speaker standard creates an opportunity for the TV brand to link their TV and their audio to one sale.
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Okay, the audio doesn't have to be of their brand.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
It does not.
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Right. That's the beauty of it.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Right.
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Okay.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Right.
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
I-
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
I mean.
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
You, you-
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
That's the beauty of it.
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
You talked about just.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Go ahead.
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Yeah, no, I'm sorry, I interrupted.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
No, I was just gonna say that's the beauty of it, merchandising-wise from pick any brands, Skyworth or LG, right? Merchandising, they're gonna merchandise their surround audio with their TVs, right?
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Right.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Having interoperability lets them sell the TV-
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Give the consumer flexibility.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Exactly. Not everybody wants, you know, a 1,000-dollar audio system around their TV. Some want $20,000 around their TV, like a B&O situation.
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Okay, you mentioned Amazon as your first retail location, and I know there was one other sort of name brand. Can you just talk about, I mean, you did-
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
For stores?
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
more that you'd expect. Yeah, for stores, right. Yeah, you-
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Right now.
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
You mentioned that 3-5 more coming online. I was just kinda hoping you could expand on that and in conjunction, maybe talk about your confidence in the marketing spend, right?
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Yeah.
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Consumers will come back to the home experience.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Right. Right now, the stores are Amazon, Beach, Electronic Express, Walt's. There's one or two that elude me right now.
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
There was one that began with an R, if I remember correctly. I'm sorry, Brett, keep going.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Focus, Beach, Walts, Electronic Express, and Amazon. That would be 6. Yeah.
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Okay.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
There's a handful, so we think 3-5 will make it by year-end, that have expressed their desire. Some are selling Platin speakers, or will, and some are just merchandising WiSA. You had Hisense-
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Okay.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
WiSA-certified for being SoundSend compatible. There'll be, we expect other brands to certify that, so that builds a bigger base at retail and more important to have a storefront that aggregates all the WiSA products in one place for consumers. Why do I think consumer demand comes back? I don't think consumer is going back into a COVID cave, hopefully. None of us wanna be there, right? You are under incredible price pressure with inflation. If you just think about the mentality of the consumer, right? You got your trips in, but you're gonna come back and have to figure out how to make the family budget in the fall. I think if you have good promotions trying to align production inventory and demand around this, there'll be a surge of consumer buying.
From an audio side, TVs have done really well up until Q2. There's a lot of TVs without audio around it. The psychology of the consumer, I think, is still get out of the house at the moment, right?
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Can't argue.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
You know, look, do we spend more or less on marketing? It'll depend on the results we see, right? I mean, we literally track it every single day.
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Right. Can you speak to the results that you're seeing on Amazon? I mean, I noticed that your WiSA Wave figures look like they fell off considerably from the March to the June quarter. If it was-
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Well, we're taking them down.
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
I think 220.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Right. We took the spend down.
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
I'm sorry?
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
in Q2. We took the
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Okay.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Marketing expense down in Q2. We saw a drop right after April. When we looked at the May results, the consumer spend pattern changed. Now, that's when we look at consumers coming into WiSA, you know, where do they go afterwards? You know, what's the conversion into a Platin sale? Which is super small, right? That is our metric.
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Right.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
It changed quite a bit.
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Okay.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
It doesn't do us any good to drive consumers into the WiSA ecosystem to buy whatever product, right? Whether it's LG TV or an Enclave, if you know, they're not ready to buy. We dropped the full year guidance. We dropped spending down on our plan in Q2 and Q3, and we have most of the money shifted to September through December.
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Okay.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
After kids go back to school, after summer vacation, with the start of football, fall, the cold, and hopefully no virus.
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Right. Just monkeypox. The other question kinda comes up, Brett, on manufacturing then. Do you see the WiSA connected customers able to meet demand? Again, I apologize, just gonna kinda go back to manufacturing as you see it in China.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Well, that's gonna be SKU specific, you know. Ballparking, but I would say 80% of the SKUs can meet demand now. There's certainly no reason they couldn't meet demand from our side and never have been, right?
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Okay.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Part shortages that are out there, but the complexity of the problem has dropped quite a bit.
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Can you just sort of walk me through the timeline then? In order to meet demand in the September, December timeframe, products gotta be in manufacturing now or soon.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Correct. Has to be in manufacturing latest October. Right? If logistics.
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Latest October.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Right.
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Okay.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
If logistics are running well, which they currently are. In other words, boat time into a harbor and into a port and out of the port, you know?
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Okay.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
You have to be producing Q3 latest October.
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Okay. Thank you for-
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
We have visibility of our POs in Q3, therefore, right?
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Right.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Should they get rescheduled because of demand further down the pipe, right? We don't have that visibility.
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Right.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
We have visibility now to what our customers think they wanna do now.
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Okay.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
'Cause they gotta build now.
Kevin Dede (Managing Director of Equity Research)
Right. Okay. Yeah, no, thanks for taking me through that and answering the other questions, Brett. Really appreciate it.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Yep. Thanks, Kevin.
David Truong (Sr. Quality & Reliability Manager)
Great. We have a couple more questions queued up. Why don't we go to, it's a caller with ending in six two nine one. If you could unmute your line, dialing star six. Could we unmute? There we go. Please go ahead.
Speaker 7
Hello.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Marty?
Speaker 7
Yeah. Hi. Can you hear me?
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
We can.
Speaker 7
Oh, well, good morning to you guys. I have a few questions for you, Brett.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Okay.
Speaker 7
My first question is: Why did you do this type of financing that you announced today? Convertible security, I don't understand that. Can you explain to us why you did that?
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Yeah. In general, we have said our preference through financing is through strategic partnerships or using the ATM. We wanted to make sure our balance sheet was strengthened for the year end, but we didn't want the dilution of, you know, an S-1 at the moment at these prices, right? We wanted to let all this investment we made in the last 12 months, in the next 6 months, roll into the market, assuming that gives us a better opportunity for strategic partnerships and gives us a better opportunity to finance the effort at better stock prices.
Speaker 7
Okay.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
This structure allowed us to secure strength in the balance sheet for the year-end and pay it off with future money if we need to, or pay it off monthly using an ATM next year. I mean, we have six months to start making payments. You know, when you look at it's with our largest shareholder. We think it's a supportive transaction to the strategy.
Speaker 7
Okay. My next question is, listen, I think your share price seems to be suffering. It's been suffering for a while. I can't understand. I'm a buyer of the stock. I think it's very cheap. I can't understand, and we've spoken about this before, why haven't officers and directors purchased stock at this price? I don't get it.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
That's a good question. The simple answer is, officers and directors are right now in a quiet period, and they have been for an extended period of time, and that will extend beyond the release of these financials. They're not allowed to buy or sell at the moment. They're locked down.
Speaker 7
Can we expect some support once you release these numbers?
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
No, that's what I'm saying, Marty. The directors and the board is in an extended quiet period right now.
Speaker 7
Okay. I respect that.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Yeah, as much as they want to or may want to, they cannot sell or buy.
Speaker 7
Okay, great. That's great. My last question to you guys, Brett, can you explain to me, I'm a little confused about the announcement about the Nvidia association. Can you go into some detail as to what that's all about and what's, you know, what's the future look like for the company with Nvidia, if at all?
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Nvidia joined WiSA, which is always a great sign when a technology leader joins WiSA. It strengthens the overall organization. Like, there is a number of members in WiSA that have not launched products. We don't pre-announce anybody's product. It could be they are tracking us because for some reason that we may not even know. It could be they're working on us or they're working on a product, right? But we can't discuss anybody's product, just like we can't discuss who the three TV brands are that are digging into DS, WiSA DS, to possibly integrate into the TVs, right? Some of them are members of WiSA, and some of them are not.
What we talk about is WiSA organization and memberships, retail consumer tracking, but we never talk about somebody else's product or product plans before they're announced by the company.
Speaker 7
I think it's great. It seems like you're working on a lot of exciting things, and the future looks very bright for your company.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Look, I can't say enough about the talent of the engineering team and how well we've seen DS perform under some really rigorous testing in Asia. You know, we're chomping at the bit to get the WiSA E modules out and get a full product line out there to cover the whole industry.
Speaker 7
Sounds great to me.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Thanks, Marty. Thanks. Appreciate it.
David Truong (Sr. Quality & Reliability Manager)
Great. We've got, I think we've got one more question, time for one more question. It's the caller with ending in 6030. If you could unmute your lines by dialing star six.
Edward Wu (Director of Research and Senior Analyst)
Yeah. Thanks for taking my question. Has inflation impacted your margins at all, or the stronger dollar?
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Yeah. Who's this?
Edward Wu (Director of Research and Senior Analyst)
This is Edward Wu at Ascendiant Capital.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Oh, okay, Ed. The voice sounded familiar, and I couldn't place it. Can you repeat the question?
Edward Wu (Director of Research and Senior Analyst)
Yeah. Has inflation or the strong dollar impacted your gross margins?
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Inflation has impacted gross margin. Every production run we've run for nine months has some component premium on it or assembly premium, whether we're running modules or speakers, right? Inflation is partly driven by part shortages and partly driven by overall labor costs in the industry. That's, you know, in terms of our P&L, Ed, it's not the most material. It doesn't rank as the top five things on the business, right?
Edward Wu (Director of Research and Senior Analyst)
Great. It looks like you have a great, you know, product strategy in the U.S. and heading into the holidays. Can you talk a little bit about your European and international marketing strategy for WiSA?
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
That's actually very observant. WiSA as an association has predominantly focused on the U.S. There are plans in the works to expand that to Europe. We have not launched that effort yet until it's more likely that effort gets launched too and around WiSA E, right, where you have the new product coming in. Most of our European customers are really high-end audiophile brands that are sold through, you know, custom install home theater shops, whereas when you start going out to try to talk to consumers in the millions, you need some mass retail. The place we have it is in North America right now, and I think we get mass retail in Europe when we have WiSA E built into other brand speakers.
Edward Wu (Director of Research and Senior Analyst)
Great. Thanks for answering my questions. I wish you guys good luck. Thank you.
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
Thanks, Ed.
David Truong (Sr. Quality & Reliability Manager)
We're showing no further questions. Brett, do you wanna have some closing remarks?
Brett Moyer (CEO and President)
I'd like to thank everybody for joining us. The team's pretty excited about the accomplishments we've made and looking forward to talking with you in 90 days. Thank you.