AMPG - NASDAQ

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to AmpliTech Group's Quarterly Investor Update Call, where the company will discuss its FY 2025 Financial Results. Present in this call, we have the executive team of AmpliTech Group, Fawad Maqbool, CEO, CTO and Board Chair; Jorge Flores, COO; and Louisa Sanfratello, CFO. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to AmpliTech's COO, Jorge Flores.

Thank you, operator, and thank you, everyone, for joining today's call to review the progress of AmpliTech's growth initiatives and to answer investors' questions. Following initial management comments, we will open the call to investors' questions as well. An archived replay of today's call will be posted to the Investor Relationship section of AmpliTech's corporate website. This call is taking place on Thursday, April 9, 2026. Remarks that follow and answers to questions may include statements that the company believes to be forward-looking within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements generally include words such as anticipate, believe, expect or words of similar importance. Likewise, statements that describe future plans, objectives or goals are also forward-looking. These forward-looking statements are subject to various risks that could cause actual results to be materially different than expected. Such risks include, among others, matters that the company has described in its press releases and in its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Except as described in these filings, the company disclaims any obligation to update forward-looking statements, which are made as of today's date. With that, let me turn the call over to our CEO and CTO, Mr. Fawad Maqbool.

Thank you, operator and Jorge, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. Fiscal year 2025 was a transformative year for AmpliTech Group. We delivered company record top line growth, expanded our presence in the 5G infrastructure market and continue to build the foundation for long-term growth across both our legacy RF business and our emerging ORAN 5G platform. For the full year 2025, revenue increased to $25.2 million compared to $9.5 million in 2024, representing approximately 165% year-over-year growth. This increase was driven by higher sales of our low noise amplifier and low noise block products, expansion of our 5G product lines, recovery in Asian markets within the Spectrum division and increased demand from telecommunications and satellite communications customers. We're very encouraged by this performance because it reflects growth from multiple parts of the business, while also showing that our strategic investments in 5G are beginning to translate into commercial traction. At the same time, 2025 was also a year of deliberate investment. As we entered the carrier-grade ORAN radio market and ramped early deployments, we experienced near-term margin pressure. Gross profit increased to $6 million from $3.5 million in the prior year, but gross margin declined to 23.9% from 36.7%. That decline reflects our strategic ramp-up of 5G product deployments, initial market penetration efforts and our focus on winning long-term opportunities with larger mobile network operator customers. The company expects these margins to improve over the next few quarters. We view this as an investment phase. Our priority has been to establish market presence, support customer adoption and position the company for larger scale deployments over time. As volume, scale and execution matures, we believe margin performance has the potential to improve. From a technology and strategy standpoint, we've made meaningful progress in 2025. We continued advancing our ORAN compliant radio systems, including our Massive MIMO 64T64R ORAN CAT B platform while integrating proprietary RF and MMIC capabilities that we believe help differentiate our solution set in the market. We also continue to build our commercial pipeline. As previously announced, the company has a nonbinding letter of intent for $78 million in ORAN radio systems, representing a potential multiyear growth opportunity, subject to definitive purchase orders. The company believes this LOI itself will surpass the $100 million mark supported by production forecast that we have received. As of March 2026, we had received approximately $5 million in funded purchase orders, of which we had a small number of initial shipments from December to early this quarter. The bulk of the shipments will resume and culminate during our second quarter this year. Also, as previously announced, we have a second LOI with the North American MNO valued at over $40 million, of which we already have received half of this amount in funded purchase orders. This means these LOIs are real and dynamic. From this amount, we still have to ship about $8 million with shipments resuming in early Q2 of 2026. We believe an increase in this LOI amount is also possible. In addition, during 2025, we continue expanding our MMIC Design Center, advanced our AmpliTech 5G division focused on 5G system deployment and integration. These steps are part of our broader strategy to evolve from a component supplier into a more complete systems provider, serving high-growth and growth markets. Overall, we believe fiscal 2025 marked meaningful progress in scaling the business, expanding our market reach and positioning AmpliTech for the next stage of growth. With that, I'll turn the call over to our CFO, Louisa Sanfratello, to review our financial results in more detail.

Thank you, Fawad. As Fawad mentioned, fiscal year 2025 reflected substantial growth in revenue along with continued investment in the business. For the year ended December 31, 2025, revenue was $25.2 million, up from $9.5 million in 2024. Gross profit increased to $6 million compared to $3.5 million in the prior year. Gross margin was 23.9% in 2025 compared to 36.7% in 2024. The year-over-year decrease in gross margin was primarily due to the strategic ramp-up of 5G deployments, early-stage customer acquisition efforts and in the initial market penetration costs associated with carrier-grade ORAN radio systems. Selling, general and administrative expenses increased to $10.7 million from $7.9 million in 2024. This increase was driven primarily by the higher headcount and payroll costs, increased professional and compliance expenses and expanded commercial and marketing activities as we supported the growth of the organization. Research and development expense was $2.7 million compared to $3.6 million in 2024. The decline reflects the completion of certain key development initiatives, including work related to our Massive MIMO 64T64R ORAN CAT B Radio System and advanced beam-forming and 5G infrastructure technologies. Net loss for fiscal 2025 was $7 million compared to $11.2 million in 2024. Operating loss improved to $7.3 million compared to $8.4 million in the prior year. This improvement was driven by the strong revenue growth as well as the absence of certain onetime charges recorded in 2024. Turning to the balance sheet. As of December 31, 2025, working capital was $10.2 million. Cash and cash equivalents were $11.6 million, which included subscription proceeds held in escrow. Our accounts receivable was approximately $3.4 million. The company also strengthened its capital position through approximately $8.1 million in net proceeds from a rights offering and an additional $8.3 million in net proceeds from a registered direct offering, of which both were completed in January of 2026. Based on our current operating plan, management believes we have existing liquidity to fund operations for at least the next 12 months. In summary, we are pleased with the top line momentum in the business while remaining disciplined in managing investments to support long-term valuation creation. I'll now turn the call back to Fawad for closing remarks.

Thank you, Louisa. To close, fiscal 2025 was an important year for AmpliTech Group. We generated substantial revenue growth, improved operating performance, continued investing in our 5G platform and strengthened our balance sheet. While we remain in an investment phase, we believe the progress made across our commercial pipeline, technology portfolio and strategic initiatives positions us well for long-term growth. We appreciate the continued support of our shareholders, customers, employees and partners. Before we open the line for callers in the call for questions, I would like to have our COO, Jorge Flores, go over the questions previously received via e-mail.

Thank you, Fawad. I would like to immediately start with the first question received, which was revenue growth was very strong. What were the main drivers? Our 165% revenue growth in 2025 was driven by a combination of a stronger demand for our core LNA and LNB products, expansion of our 5G product lines, recovering Asian markets within the Spectrum division and increased demand from telecom and satellite communications customers. But out of this, without a doubt, our major revenue growth came from our AmpliTech 5G division and shipment done on our $40 million LOI with a North American MNO. Question number two, why did gross margin decline despite the higher revenue? The margin decline was largely due to the strategic ramp-up of our 5G deployments. If you reflect back on our Q2 2025 results, that's the quarter in which we invested heavily to become a major player in the ORAN markets. We were in the early stages of customer acquisition and market penetration for carrier-grade ORAN radio systems, and that put pressure on our gross margins in the near term, driving our gross margin down into the single digits. Our focus has been on establishing long-term customer relationships and scaling the business. We also provided guidance that our gross margins will recover into double-digit gross margins, which we accomplished over Q3 and Q4 of 2025, going from about 7% gross margins in Q2 of 2025 into the final fiscal year 2025 gross margins of 23.9%. Question number three, how should investors think about the $78 million letter of intent? This letter of intent represents and it is actually more than a multiyear opportunity. While it is not binding and subject to definitive purchase orders, it's the second sizable deployment we have in our hands. So investors must see not just this LOI, but both LOIs as tremendous validations that we have the technology. In addition to this, we also have the supply chain. And on top of that, we are also able to handle the logistics of shipping our radios directly into installer warehouses where these are kitted and sent out to deployment at cell tower sites. As for purchase order amounts and shipment status, what we can share is that as of March 2026, we have already received a little over $5 million in funded purchase orders against this LOI. Initial shipments began in December 2025. To date, we have shipped less than $0.5 million of these orders as we must follow the initial cadence of the end users' installation crews. As they acquire speed in their deployment, we will acquire speed in our shipments. This leaves us with projections to ship the balance of the order, if not during Q2, very early Q3. As such and based on forecast received, we estimate receiving additional orders before the end of the current quarter. Based on the magnitude of the project at hand and the number of sites that need to be deployed, the company believes this LOI will grow north of the $100 million mark over the next 2 years. Question number four, what gives you confidence in liquidity? As of year-end, we had $10.2 million in working capital. Cash and cash equivalents were $11.6 million, and we also added capital through the rights offering and the January 2026 registered direct offerings. Based on our current plan, management believes this is more than sufficient to fund the operations for the next 12 months. Question number five, what are the most important strategic priorities going forward? Our priorities include scaling our 5G and ORAN product opportunities, executing on funded orders, continuing development and commercialization of our Massive MIMO and ORAN solutions, turning to orders additional projects currently being discussed with other major players, also expanding our MMIC and systems capabilities by continuing development on 5G front-end modules. Gross margin improvement is not just a strategic goal, but a critical day-to-day operation goal for us. For any business really, it goes without saying that we fully understand that we must do whatever is within our power to maximize cost efficiency, price competitively, push our supply chains, keep on working using forecast to optimize material order placements and receipts. While we do have our own manufacturing capabilities in the U.S., these are largely related to our AmpliTech Inc. core division. For large volume of ORAN 5G radio manufacturing, we will continue our strategy to use CMs or contract manufacturers, either local or abroad that are specifically in business. These are the CMs are specifically in business to handle the type of production we require. Our strategy does not include hiring hundreds of people to support manufacturing. It is just not cost efficient for our organization. That is why CMs are there. That's why contract manufacturers are there to scale up when we need them to scale up and scale down when delivery time frames require us to do so. Last question is, what you can say about your $40 million LOI with the North American MNO? What is the current level of orders received, orders shipped, balance of funded POs and program visibility? We already received 50%, about 50% of funded purchase orders for this program. We have shipped about $12 million worth of ORAN 5G radios to this MNO, with shipments slated to resume early in Q2 of 2026. Same as with the $78 million LOI, we believe this project will exceed the initial LOI value of $40 million. We are certainly very excited when we hear our end customers speak about future cell tower site deployments and their plans for expansions. This concludes the questions previously received to our e-mail. Operator, please open the line for other questions.

[Operator Instructions] The first question will come from Jack Vander Aarde with Maxim Group.

Good results and good outlook. It's good to see things are still on track. Fawad, can you maybe just touch on the nature of this agreement, this larger LOI and just the cadence of the orders you're expecting? I believe it's going to be a little bit different than the agreement you had where you've already received most of the LOIs. Is it going to be bigger chunks?

Yes. Yes. So this LOI is basically for overseas, right? It's an Asian customer. And in that one there, there are lots of -- in the countries that these are deployed, the pace is very slow as far as deployment is concerned. So they have a whole crew of people working to do the entire nation. And what happens, they have to get all the legalities and they have to have all these permits and everything in place. So it's a slow process that's initially slowing this down. Our proof-of-concept has been done. We have delivered already radios that have been put into the first deployments, and they're working very well. So what we're working on right now is just basically the logistics of getting the radios deployed and then installed. And that's just taking a little bit of time initially. But as that ramps up, then our shipments will also continue to ramp up later this quarter and towards the end of the year.

Okay. Great. And then because if I look at last year, like especially the second quarter in 2025, that's when you received the largest amount of orders. It sounds like this year with this other customer, you're expecting something similar maybe between the second quarter and the third quarter. How about other agreements that you -- potential opportunities with other 5G players? Can you just touch on those discussions? Are you -- do you feel like there's an opportunity to announce a new partner in the next 6, 12 months on top of these?

Yes. Definitely, there's a chance of that happening. We have been in discussions for a while. And obviously, the success of our previous deployments is also key. And in these various different areas, there are different bands that we have to adjust the radios for, and we've been doing that. And in those adjustments, those radios, they have to go through a proof-of-concept phase as well. But all of these are part of expanding our traction. So we believe that these will be successful just like these first LOIs, and we may be going into directly the PO phase even before an LOI phase from other leading MNOs that are going to follow suit in this ORAN deployment. Everyone is not as strongly focused into this ORAN but as time progresses, the ORAN deployments will replace the older RAN deployments. And the larger MNOs are very slow to adopt the new structure. It involves a lot of expense for them, but they will eventually have to adopt that because the technology for expanding the capacity and the speeds of various networks in larger dense populated areas as well as rural areas is increasing. The demand is increasing for that. So it's inevitable that this growth will happen, and we are in the right spot. So we do feel that we will have some positive engagements this year.

Okay. Great. And then just one more for me. You guys kind of touched on the expenses and the gross margin. But the fourth quarter, I think it's just kind of a trend where the fourth quarter operating expenses are higher than any other quarter. Is this just a onetime thing at the end of the year? Maybe for Louisa, if you could help understand, I think it's the SG&A expense line.

Yes. Those expenses were basically -- we had -- we reviewed employment contracts and so forth with our management. We had accounting expenses that increased because of the rights offering as well as legal and things like that.

Okay. Got you. And then I guess, going forward, on a normalized basis, I mean, do you expect gross margins and operating expenses to be somewhat more linear and smooth out? Is this a good read-through for the go-forward run rate, maybe north of 40% gross margin? Just help me understand what the kind of normalized cadence is? And that's it for me.

Yes. So it will increase. It's anywhere between 30% and 50% is the number in this telecom business, depending on what type of products we're offering. And obviously, we're offering products that are not me-too products. Our products are always -- they have value added because we're putting our own MMICS in there that other companies cannot do to improve the performance. And we have other enhancements that we're working on to differentiate our product from the rest of the competitors. So right now, in ORAN, we are the leading company deploying the largest ORAN radios out there. And we are making them even better so that if there are competition that comes in, then they would not be able to compete with the performance because of our inherent legacy business that designs our own LNAs and our designs our PAs. Those are all going to wind up going into our radios and all the other components. So we're just talking about radios right now, but there's a whole slew of products that come out of this. We're not doing just the radios. We're also doing the private 5G enhanced CPE devices. There -- if they're like advanced routers, so to speak. But those are special products that are also all kinds of IoT-related products that we're doing that we haven't really called out specifically, but it's an entire industry base that supports this whole radio rollout.

The next question will come from Anthony Bates with [ Despoer Ventures ].

Can you give us any updates on progress in the cryogenic tech area? Anything that you're working on there?

Yes. So we originally were introduced our cryogenic LNAs for the quantum computing applications. We have gone through successful iterations and many different iterations from initial concept based on our customers' feedback. So we're working on a final version, which is basically a very standard module for [ 4 Kelvin ] operation for a quantum computing production environment. What we have done initially was to provide proof-of-concept units customized for every single different, let's say, manufacturer of the quantum computers like Google and IBM and many others. But every one of them has a different type of flavor to their quantum computers, and none of them are going to very large production levels right now. So we have worked on our fourth version, and we are about to deliver the fourth version of the quantum computing LNAs, which are very high performance. And they're more of a standardized product to fit into many different quantum computing platforms. So we haven't introduced that yet, but we are working on that, and that's going to come up. It will become more important when the larger production starts to ramp up for all these quantum computing companies. They're not in high production mode right now.

Well, can you guesstimate when you might have an order?

I don't know. I mean everything is just right now, we can't say anything when they would be in order. We have provided all these samples, and it could be later this year, it could be early next quarter. But it's all based on the demand of the companies in building these quantum computers. They're not reaching production.

Right, right. Actually, I guess I'm asking is they're not in production yet. Do you have any idea when they may be in production?

I couldn't tell you every single one of them is different. I think that's also being driven by other parts of the industry. It's not just the quantum computing is one example for us. The quantum computer demand comes from the large data, right? So large data is part of the large data is the 5G deployments. Every single MNO has to have a high-speed infrastructure so that all that data can go into a quantum cloud and then the supercomputers will have -- quantum computers will have a lot more data to crunch on, right? So as this builds out, the other industry is going to build up. It's connected. It's all connected in the ecosphere of high-speed connectivity as well as computing because you can't have the metaverse and all these other things, fully automated vehicles, all these things that require high-speed capacity and then crunching all these numbers into a quantum cloud unless everything is in place.

And my last question is, can you give us any kind of updates on -- is it the Texoma Semiconductor Tech Hub? Anything coming out of that?

Yes. That's our MMIC Division. And our MMIC Division is basically expanding its product line. They're also building LNBs now, low noise block converters are used in satellite communication technologies. So the LEO satellites will need ground station terminals to communicate with and the LNBs that are in these ground station terminals, rebuild because we have the lowest noise figures in the world. So those are increasing in number every day, every year, actually. And so our LNBs product line is increasing as well. That's why you saw some increase in the revenues from our LNB division. But this is part of our Texoma Division in Texas in Allen, Texas. But they're also ramping up production of our ICs that are going into these radios. So that's growing, and that division will be growing more as our production increases.

Okay. And that will be growing this year?

Yes.

The next question will come from Andrew DeAngelis with Venture Visionary Partners.

Just a lot of helpful detail on this call, but just wanted to make an explicit question of it. The $50 million revenue guidance that you have out there for this year, what gives you confidence in your ability to achieve that?

Right now, it's a combination of 2 factors. One is the current backlog that we already have in funded orders on both of the LOIs. And the second though is that we are actively seeing forecasts provided by the end users directly into us, and that's how we're managing the supply chain as well. So that's a big definitely on why we are projecting that.

That's helpful. And then just relative to the funds that you guys received in the recent rights offering, where will you be utilizing those funds? And can you talk maybe through the cadence of how those funds will be deployed?

So most of those funds are used for our -- the growth of this 5G business, right? So as I mentioned before, we're building new MMICS and new chips to go into these radios, and we're building different types of radios. So most of our expense is going to be working capital for building out the infrastructure for our 5G groups. But as well, we're building the other groups as well. So it's a scaling effect. Every single group, the idea is to drive growth from our 5G division, which will require increased amount of MMICS, custom MMICS and PAs and low noise amplifiers, which will go down to the MMIC group and increase their revenue because they will be supplying the 5G radio requirements. And then the other packaging group, which is Spectrum division, which is in California, that's a stocking and distribution group. They'll be providing the packages for all these MMICS that go into these radios. So each of these divisions are structured such that there's a synergetic synergy and growth. As we scale up the 5G, we will scale all the other divisions as well. But our sales force is increasing as well. So we're putting in key personnel this year to grow the specific telecom business. So we recognize the need for having specific sales force for this particular application because connectivity to these large MNOs is very, very important in growing the business. And we found that these are giants, right, telecom giants, and we're a smaller company, penetrating these giants. But what will help is a good technical force as well as sales force that is connected to all of these companies. So we're going to be focusing on increasing sales personnel as well as technical personnel in these areas.

Very helpful. And I guess this just kind of layers -- this question layers on to what you just mentioned. But I just, again, want to make it explicit. In terms of your execution priorities, the 1 or 2 things that you're focused on here in the first half of the year, what would those be?

Well, I mean, R&D, we're still -- we're basically growing the company, right? So the R&D phase mostly is done. What we're trying to do now is to take our production line and our assembly lines and make them such that we can make repeatable products. So many of our products are standardized now. It took about a year or 2 so that we can actually make our assembly line standardized and have our supply chain standardized as well. And this increases our 5G exposure. So the idea is to build consistent and cost-effective assembly lines and product lines and procure all the materials at good prices so that we can have a higher gross margin as we grow the business.

And you think that inflection point is going to really, I guess, happen here in the first half?

Yes. It's more likely in the second half. It will start in late Q2, but in the second half of the year.

That concludes the question-and-answer session. I will now turn the call back to Fawad Maqbool for closing remarks.

Thank you, operator, and thanks to everyone who joined today's call to hear the progress we've made and the plan we have to further our company's mission of providing the communication systems of tomorrow today. We look forward to updating you further on our first quarter financial results call next month. Until then, please contact us directly should you have any questions or wish to schedule a call with management. Our Investor Relations team can be reached at the contact information listed at the bottom of our press releases. Thank you, and be well.