nLIGHT, Inc. (NASDAQ:LASR) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript November 2, 2023 5:00 PM ET

Company Participants

Joe Corso - Chief Financial Officer

Scott Keeney - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer

Conference Call Participants

Jim Ricchiuti - Needham & Co.

Greg Palm - Craig-Hallum Capital Group

Ruben Roy - Stifel Nicholas

Operator

Good day, and welcome to the nLIGHT Third Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions]. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions]. Please note this event is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Joseph Corso, Chief Financial Officer. Please go ahead.

Joe Corso

Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. I am Joe Corso, nLIGHT's Chief Financial Officer. With me today is Scott Keeney, nLIGHT's Chairman and CEO.

Today's discussion will contain forward-looking statements, including financial projections and plans for our business, some of which are beyond our control, including the risks and uncertainties described from time to time in our SEC filings. Our results may differ materially from those projected on today's call and we undertake no obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statement, except as required by law.

During the call, we will be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures. We have provided reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures in our earnings release, which can be found on the Investor Relations section of our website.

I will now turn the call over to Scott.

Scott Keeney

Thank you, Joe. In the third quarter, revenue of $50.6 million was above the midpoint of the guidance range. Products gross margin of approximately 24% was below the guidance range, but continued operating expense discipline enabled us to report adjusted EBITDA within the guidance range. As we have discussed in prior calls, we continue to prudently manage working capital and capital expenditures, which enabled us to increase our cash and marketable securities spend by approximately $10 million during the quarter.

Our balance sheet remains strong and we ended the quarter with approximately $112 million of cash, cash equivalents, marketable securities with no outstanding debt, which positions us well to execute our long-term growth objectives.

We also made significant progress in several growth areas during the quarter. In Aerospace and Defense, we announced today that we have been awarded additional options on our previously announced HELSI-2 contract, bringing the total value of the award to nLIGHT to $171 million, which we expect to execute over the next three years. In addition, we made excellent progress on one of our laser sensing programs, which offers attractive long-term revenue opportunities. In industrial, we secured design wins with multiple global metal additive manufacturing customers and began shipping lasers to a significant customer in the EV battery industry.