MTEK

Okay, let’s get started. So, hi everyone and thank you for joining Maris-Tech Investor Webinar. I’m Shelly Groisman, the Marketing Manager of Maris-Tech. Today, our CEO Israel Bar and our CFO Nir Bussy will present the latest updates for Maris-Tech’s. So Israel, the stage is yours.

Hello everybody, and thank you for your time. We'll go through a presentation showing the Maris business and technologies and after that, Nir our CFO will continue with the financial information. Please take a few seconds to review the legal disclaimer. So a few words about the company overview. Maris was founded in 2008 and started its operation in 2010. We took the company public in 2022. And we have offices in Israel and the USA. In Israel, of course, we have the headquarters, the R&D, manufacturing, and we employ 16 employees. We can say that we are about 20 people working consistently in the company. We have a few freelancers. So everything I'm going to tell you about and all the achievements and the technology development was created by these 16 up to 20 people. What we are doing in Maris, we are dealing with age computing solutions. We develop hardware and software OEM solutions or final products, which are integrated in remote platforms. And when I'm talking about remote platforms, I'm talking about drones, robots, armored vehicles, any platform, which is carrying sensors, video, audio and telemetry. And the platforms that we are providing are dealing with the capture of the information, the transfer, the stream of the information to the operators and integrating AI capabilities on the platforms, although we are not developing AI algorithms by ourselves, but we are providing, I would call it a miniature low power light computers, either on OEM level or within enclosures, which are serving both pipelines. Everything related to the video is done by our firmware and we provide a platform, which enables our customers to develop their own AI algorithms. Although in certain cases, we're using off the shelf tools as I'm going to describe later on. In terms of markets and applications, we are dealing with a variety of markets. The main market, as discussed later, is the defense market, homeland security, unmanned vehicles, intelligence gathering, aerospace and smart city. Although I'm not going to discuss the aerospace later on, but I can emphasize that we have been involved in some spacecrafts applications, the Israeli Satellite that was launched to the moon. And we have a cooperation with a space company in the U.S. In terms of customers and partners, we have a long list of customers. I can emphasize the customers, which are the Israeli defense industries like Rafael, IAI, Elbit, Elta, which is not listed here, the Ministry of Defense, the IDF and other customers in Israel. We have partners, our main partner when it comes to AI is Hailo, an Israeli company which is providing excellent low power AI accelerators. We have customers worldwide. We are working with [Leonardo] (ph) and other customers. And we have relationship and partnership with Renaissance, a giant Japanese providing video solutions and LightPath a U.S. company providing thermal cameras, which we are going to design mutual products. A few highlights on 2024. First of all, we can say very clearly, Maris became a defense industry, that's clear. It happened during the end of 2023 and during 2024. Our main activities are related to the defense market due to the circumstances here in Israel worldwide and the fact that the world is now trying to get more defense technology, more defense solutions, and Maris is with the right technology on the right time. And we can see a strong revenue generation during 2024 coming from this market. We have created strategic partnership and we have launched new products, which are answering the requirements from the market. And we have a lot of insight information about what the market is looking for. And we are developing our products accordingly. The worldwide age computing market is growing rapidly. The modern battlefield or modern warfare, we clearly see that drones, robots and other technologies are used in the battlefield. And the Maris Solutions is now deeply deployed and used in the battlefield. And the opportunities are just growing and the market is increasing significantly. In terms of our core business strategy, we will discuss later on, but we are moving towards final solutions and we are leveraging our strategic partnerships with other partners worldwide and we are aiming now mainly the U.S. and the Indian market and we continue our activities in order to bring unique edge computer solutions and increase their performance and answer new requirements coming from the market. So I would say that Maris now is becoming a leader, a real leader in regards to when it comes to edge computing solutions. And especially when it comes to miniature low power solutions. Just a few words about the financial results, although Nir will go into details, but we had a revenue growth of 50% this year, and we have decreased our loss in 54%. And let's continue with some other details. When it comes to the worldwide presence, we have increased our presence in the world. Israel although is the main market, we are here, we are answering the market requirements, but we have a lot of activities in Western Europe, in the U.K., based on the relationship we have with a distributor in U.K. We have activities in every location where we have a flag here, but we are going to emphasize during 2025 in markets such as North America for sure, Eastern Europe, India and some other markets where we feel there is a need and clear demand for the technology. We have made a few announcements during this year, I won't go through all of them. I'm sure that you are familiar with the announcements, but I would like to mention some of them, which are key announcements. During January and April, we made two announcements related to intelligence gathering, I can tell you in general that we have been selected by intelligence agencies to develop unique and very powerful intelligence gathering solutions. We have been dealing a lot with situation awareness during February 21, June 10, and August -- 1 of August, and we have received big orders for situation awareness platforms, which are deployed in the battlefield during the last 12-months successfully and saving lives on a daily basis. We have developed a unique solution and we have announced in June a new order, which is related to a [Indiscernible] solution for a drone video payload with unique capabilities and an important order coming from the U.S., a $1 million order based on what we call the Amethyst 5G, it’s a platform which is supporting video streaming over 5G in a narrowband in narrowband -- not narrowband 5G is not narrow, but the streams are in a narrowband. And this is a real penetration in the U.S. market. So let's discuss typical applications. What we can see here, I would say the four typical applications that we are involved with. One of them is the drone scenario. Maris is already mounted on 1,000s of drones worldwide in Israel, in Europe, in India, and some other locations. And on the drone, we are providing everything necessary to serve surveillance applications, target striking, loitering munitions, and we are becoming the main computing platform on the drone, which communicates with the sensors, with the autopilot, with the radio communication and many other capabilities. Another important application is the situation awareness. When we are talking about situation awareness, it can be a solution for a site, although during this year, we have provided solutions mainly for armored vehicles. I can say that we have equipped technology on more than 1,000 tanks. I believe this is one of the biggest deployments of a situation awareness platform coming from a single company. And what we are doing, we enable threat detection based on cameras mounted on the armored vehicle, detecting the threats coming close to the tank, either 360 or three-dimensional. And we are alerting about these threats and saving lives, I would say, this very moment. Intelligence gathering, I've already mentioned, in intelligence gathering, we enable from remote platforms to collect information and send it over narrowband communication based on AI capabilities, so we can detect important information and send it whenever necessary. And we are also providing tactical devices for special operation forces here in Israel and worldwide. What is our strategy for 2025 and for the near future? First of all, we intend and as a matter of fact, we already started to provide final products. When we're talking about final products, we're talking about a platform within enclosure, which is serving certain applications. As of today, we have solutions for armored vehicles, missile launchers, but we intend to provide some other solutions, which will be described later on. And of course, this will have an influence on margins and the opportunities in the market. We see a clear demand for miniature low-power solutions for miniature drones. You cannot imagine how big the drones market is becoming. For example, in Ukraine, they are producing yearly hundreds of thousands of miniature drones, which will need video capabilities, streaming capabilities, and maybe other age computing capabilities. And we have created solutions. For example, if you will see on the right side corner, the MARS RF, this is a platform that we have designed which is consuming very low power and serving a miniature drone as applications. And I can tell you that we have a specific customer, which is using this technology and collecting information for intelligence gathering. Tactical devices, we are developing some wearable and miniature and lightweight solutions, which will be used by special operation forces. And we are also providing, and we will also provide products through strategic partnership worldwide, which will promote our solutions, either OEM solutions or final products. We have, I would say 100s of different platforms, but they can be divided into certain groups, which are based on the main processor that we are using. I won't go into technology details, but I can tell you that we have four family products, the Jupiter, the Mars, the Uranus and the Venus. The Uranus is serving the situation awareness. The Jupiter is serving intelligence gathering and drones applications, the Mars as well. And the Venus is more related, FPGA based serving some other applications, which are more heavy in terms of video functionality. Our roadmap will focus this year on final products. First of all, integration of the Maris Solution with thermal cameras, together with our partner in the U.S., the Topaz will be a unique, small, miniature low-power solution, which will integrate the thermal camera, the Maris video solution together with the Hailo AI capabilities. And we will create a product which doesn't exist, which will be a thermal IP AI-based camera. The Diamond Ultra is based on the final product that we have designed for armored vehicles, and we will integrate also drones detections, UAV detection on the platform. And the last one, the Peridot is going to be a unique passive radar combining a few cameras and creating a sort of a AI-based detection solution, which will be passive, not active as a regular radar. And this will include the cameras and the enclosure and a solution, which can be used for border control and some other areas protection. So this is our roadmap for next year. And now I will give the stage to Nir to continue with the financial information.

Hi everyone, my name is Nir and I am the CFO of the company. In the following slide I will show you some highlights from our financials focusing on what we can disclose as a public company. Our revenues continue to grow increasing from $1 million in 2020 to approximately $6.1 million in 2024, representing a growth of more than 50% in our revenues, compared to 2023. Our backlog as of the end of March this year was approximately $9.9 million, which we expect to recognize as revenue in the coming years. Alongside with the growth of our revenues, our net loss continued to decrease from $3.7 million in 2022 to $2.7 million net loss in 2023 and to $1.2 million in 2024. It's representing a decrease in our net loss of more than 54%, compared to 2023. Our cash and cash equivalent as of the end of December last year was approximately $2.3 million. We believe that our cash flow together with proceeds from our customers and using our line of credit will be sufficient for us for support our growth and operation in the coming 12-months. Thank you.

Okay, thank you, Nir. And just to summarize what has been discussed, we have discussed our leadership in the defense and homeland security market. We have discussed the expanding market opportunity, our core business strategy, our position as a supplier of video and edge computing solutions and the financial highlights described by Nir. And we are now open to any question from the attendees.

Just a second, please. Okay, I'm going to answer a question, which is related to our agreement with the Indian distributor. The question is that there is limited information available about Thrikasa Technology, which probably contribute to the drop in Maris stock yesterday? I can tell you that we have signed an agreement with the distributor, which is dealing a lot with the defense market. We believe that this distributor will open us some opportunities in the market. And we have just started and I don't see any relation between this agreement and the share price.

We have another question regarding the decreasing in revenues between the second-half in 2023, compared to the first-half in 2024? At this stage, we are still a project company with a set of different orders from our customers. Our revenues are not linear through the year. We want it to be linear, but this stage is not linear. And for this reason, there will be sometimes a decrease in revenues between different periods. This is the answer for this. And regarding future expectations, there is another question about it, our forecast. This is not public information that we can share at this stage.

Okay. Okay, since I don't see any more questions, and then I would like to thank you all for participating our webinar. And we will be happy to update you more in the future. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Hello. Good morning to the U.S. participants. Good afternoon to the Israeli participants. My name is Israel Bar, I’m Maris-Tech Founder and CEO. Also with me is Mr. Nir Bussy, our CFO. Thank you for joining us for this webinar. This is the first-time we hold such an event, but we intend to continue with similar events in the future. Before we start, please take a few seconds to review the forward-looking statements presented in this slide. On March 21, we published our 2023 financial statements, and we invite you to review them. Mr. Bussy and I will present to you during the next 10 to 20 -- to 15 minutes the company's technology and business activities, as well as the financials key information. During the webinar, you may ask questions in the chat room, which will be addressed right after the presentation. It is important to mention that in accordance with the legal advisor's instructions, we can only refer to information that has been published in the EDGAR system. So who is Maris? What we are doing? What is the technology? So Maris is a company which is dealing with what we call AI-based edge computing, which according to what we see in the market these days, it is one of the most rapidly developing technology. When we are talking about edge computing, we are talking about a technology which enables autonomous decision making at the edge on any remote platform. It can be a drone. It can be a robot. It can be a vehicle, and many other platforms which are equipped with cameras, with video, and needs to take decisions autonomously. Edge computing functionality, as I said, relies on a variety of video sensors, and it can be any sensor available in the market, starting with standard definition, high definition, and any other standard which is mounted on a remote platform. Another important feature, which relates to the edge computing is the possibility for the technology to provide and stream the video, from the remote platform to the operator and do it in low latency. And when we are talking about low latency, we are talking about an important feature which shows the delay in between what the camera sees and what the operator sees, and this is a very important feature when we are trying to control a remote platform, and it should be as low as possible. Maris declares a 100 milliseconds end-to-end latency. Now when it comes to edge computing, most of the edge computing related applications, such as small drones are very sensitive to size, weight, and power consumption. Maris technology, the wide range of Maris hardware and software solutions answer these requirements and provide a technology which is crossing large and fast growing markets and applications. Now it is important to mention that, the announcement we have published yesterday, about the cooperation with Renesas is a strong evidence of the recognition of the Maris technology and the recognition that Maris gets from market leaders, in regards to what we are developing. Let me now take you through the applications in which Maris is involved and deployed. This applications tool will give you much better view of what our technology is capable to do. So let's start with defense. Defense now is one of the most important markets for the Maris technology, and unfortunately, we cannot ignore the fact that these, that defense plays these days an important role all over the world, especially, due to the war in Ukraine and here in Israel. We also cannot ignore the fact that the modern battlefield is significantly changing. AI and instant remote visual information are creating a revolution. And as a result, defense budgets are significantly growing. If you are looking now on the list of application in which Maris is involved in each one of them, we can see the drones market. Drones now are everywhere. They are used in military applications. We are talking about indoors and outdoors drones, which are used for attack, for intelligence gathering, and Mars is providing the video payloads for such drones. I can tell you that we have almost, we already have thousands of drones equipped with the Maris technology here in Israel and in many other locations worldwide. Armored vehicle situational awareness, that's also an important part of AI capabilities where, the people sitting within an armored vehicle get an indication about threats, around surrounding the armored vehicle. Without going into too details, Maris during the last few months, already equipped hundreds of armored vehicles with or situational awareness solutions, and we are now in these days providing and delivering a few hundreds more, and I can tell you that from the feedback that we are getting from the battlefield, our technology is saving lives. Other applications are related to missiles, missile launchers, rotary ammunition, special forces, tactical devices, and another important market that Maris is dealing with is together with intelligence agencies We are developing now, and we won a few tenders for AI-based sophisticated intelligence gathering, and we are going to play an important role in this market. And, of course, many other, unmanned vehicles such as UAVs and unmanned ground vehicles and similar. This slide is an excellent description of where Maris is? Maris is inside each and every application that you miss may see in this slide. It can be in a satellite. It can be on an infantry soldier. It can be in a sniper side, or it can be an aircraft or a military drone. So the Maris technology is good enough to cross a wide range of defense applications, as well as others, and provide everything you need in the modern battlefield, bringing the information to the operator or to the headquarters in order for the headquarters to take decisions during the war. Another important market is the Homeland Security. Maris is providing solutions for law enforcement, border control, and a lot of solution with miniature devices and low power devices for covered applications on a remote platform. Maris is also involved in space applications. I believe that based on the announcements we have made in the past, that we have provided the video for the Israeli’s first satellite that was launched to the moon, the Beresheet 1, which was providing video until the last moment before the satellite crashed on the moon. We have been awarded with the new project the Beresheet 2. We have a project with a U.S. company for a situational awareness in space, where we provide high quality visual data acquisition, collision avoidance, docking and proximity, and many other space related applications, and this project is in process. Smart City and Safe City are also important applications where we are using our technology, together with partners in the area of AI applications, and our technologies are now serving crowd control, traffic monitoring, and other smart city applications. We can even use the technology, in commercial applications, drones delivery, smart retail, when we can detect behavior of customers in malls and similar sites, site infrastructure, precision agriculture, and machine vision. Now, this market of the edge computing is expanding and exploding. Now every, every new research shows bigger and bigger numbers. As of today, based on some of the research, we're talking about a market of $50 billion during 2023, which may grow up to more than $100 billion in 2028, and I have the feeling that within a year, we have a research which shows much more than that. Maris also expanding its market presence, except of Israel, which is our main market as of now, but we have a lot of activities worldwide. We are now in the Far East. Even the announcement of yesterday will add a flag in Japan, which we didn't have the opportunity to add into the presentation. We have a strong position in India. We have a lot of drone customers in India. We are working in a lot of projects in Europe together with our U.K. distributor, and now we are doing a lot of efforts to access the U.S. market. We intend to be, at exhibitions, and we are using local partners and the agents, which will help us to have similar activities like we have here in Israel with the defense industries, we have something similar in the U.S. And now, Nir, our CFO will continue with the presentation.

Hi, everyone. My name is Nir Bussy, and I am the CFO of the company. As Israel said, I will share with you some highlights from our financials.

Open your camera, please.

Just a second.

We can see him.

Okay. As Israel has said before, I will share with you some highlights from our financial, focusing on what we can disclose as a public company. Our revenues has increased since 2020 from $1 million to $4 million in 2023. As you can see at this stage, we are a project company and our revenues are not linear. So, for this reason, our revenues for the second half of 2023 was approximately $3.6 million. Our projections for the current year for 2024 is, our revenues of approximately $7 million, it’s based on our backlog as we announced during January this year. Our backlog continues to increase from backlog of $600,000 to backlog of approximately $10.8 million, as of March 20, 2024. The backlog define -- we define backlog as accumulation of all pending orders with the later fulfillment date for which revenues has not been recognized and we consider valid. Our backlog consists of executed purchase order from new customer and existing customers, which we have had long standing relationship and from governmental agencies. Some highlights from our financials. Our revenue totaled to $4 million, as of the year ended December 31, 2023 compared to $2.5 million in the previous year. Our net loss for the year ended December 31, 2023 was approximately $2.7 million compared to $3.7 million in 2022. As I said before, our total revenue for the six months ended December 31, 2023 was approximately $3.6 million, and the net loss for the [indiscernible] was approximately $500,000. The balance of the trade receivable in our balance sheet, as of December 31, 2023 was approximately $3 million, and our cash, cash equivalent, and bank deposit, as of December 31, 2023 were approximately $5.2 million, as of March 21, 2024, our cash, cash equivalent, and bank deposit are approximately $4.75 million. Thank you very much.

Okay. We are -- okay. This was the end of our presentation, and now we are open to answer your questions. And as I said, we will answer whatever we are possible to answer, based on the information available in the EDGAR system. And you may take, the next minute or 2 to add more questions if necessary.

[indiscernible]

Okay. We will start answering the questions. We have a question from Brian Landfill (ph), and I will read the question. Could you talk a little more about the importance of real-time edge AI video analysis for your customers, and the challenges of doing that analysis with other technologies of video processing, which means on the cloud? This is an excellent question because the main reason for edge computing and implementing AI at the edge is due to the fact that the remote platforms are communicating via wireless communications, and you don't have always the possibility to provide the high quality raw video via this communication in order to be manipulated or a process at the cloud. And, therefore, you must have the capabilities on the remote platform to do the AI functionalities, and that's the only way to enable the platform to take decisions automatic autonomously. For example, if we'd like from a drone to detect objects to classify them, to attack them, and to do some other functionalities. So that's the reason we need everything at the edge. Another question, which made by Brian as well, do you think that edge AI devices will be complement to other AI video processing solutions or an alternative to those systems? I believe that the answer is quite similar. You need whatever is the technology either Maris, either other platforms, you need a platform at the edge to provide the computing capabilities, and there is no -- there is no any other alternative except of having the right sensors, having the variety of sensors day and night, and the possibilities to process them with AI acceleration capabilities.

It's fine. Let me confirm.

Okay. Another question, from Jacob Greenblatt (ph). How big a role does AI – sorry, I lost the question. Okay. Sorry. A question from Jacob Greenblatt. Can you discuss the use of AI in use case markets? Yes. I can definitely discuss, and that's what we are doing now, with our U.S. partner. We are developing based on our Uranus platforms. We are developing AI capabilities in space for situational awareness, and the idea is that surrounding cameras, surrounding a nanosatellite will be able to detect threats in space and to avoid collisions and use for proximity and accurate landing whenever necessary. We have a question related to the situation in Gaza, and the question is, if we are able to announce all the major deals given sensitive political situation about Gaza War. Now we can announce deals and we are announcing deals without going into much details, and not always it can be related to a specific war, no matter where it is. But if there is an a significant announcement, then we will announce.

There is another question about our gross margin. I'm happy to see your gross margin above 25% -- 50% now in the second half. Do you have end gross margin guidance now? We are a project company with a set of different products. Therefore, the gross profit is determined according to the mix of product that the company sells each year and of course, as any manufacturer company. Since, we has a fixed overhead, then an increase in the amount of sales may have positive effect on the gross profit profitability.

Okay. So we don't have any further questions. And if there is no other question now, then thank you very much, and we hope to see you in our one of next webinars. Thank you all.