Kraken Robotics Inc

Kraken Robotics Inc

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Q2 FY2026 · Earnings Call TranscriptAugust 27, 2026

Operator

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Kraken Robotics Second Quarter 2024 Results Conference Call. As a reminder, all participants are in a listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded.

My name is Jamie, and I will be your operator today. Following prepared remarks, there will be an opportunity for analysts to ask questions.

To join the question queue, you may press star and then one on your telephone keypads. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, they may reach an operator by pressing star and zero.

I would now like to turn the floor over to Shaunt Mardiyan, Director of Capital Markets.

Shant Madian

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining Kraken Robotics earnings call for the three and six months ended June 30th, 2024. Before we begin, I would remind everyone that certain statements in this call may be forward-looking in nature.

Matters discussed, including management estimates, statements involving known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in our forward-looking statements, which reflect the company's judgment based on information available at the time of this call. I'd also like to refer you to the forward-looking statements, risk factors, and additional detail on non-IFRS financial measures we have provided in our AIF, press release, MD&A, and presentation, which are either available on SEDAR+ or our website.

Unless otherwise stated, all dollar amounts mentioned during this call are denominated in Canadian dollars. Joining today's call from Kraken Robotics is Greg Reid, Chief Executive Officer, and Joe MacKay, Chief Financial Officer.

I'll now pass the call over to Greg for his opening remarks. Greg?

Greg Reid

Thanks, Shaunt, and good morning, everyone. During today's call, we'll start off with some key highlights during the year, a quick review of our second quarter results, followed by an update of our business post the closing of our transformative acquisition of Covelya Group, which we closed on July 2nd this year, just after the quarter ended.

Some recent highlights, looking back at our results during the second quarter and the first half of 2024, we continue to focus on building the business for long-term growth. In addition to closing our Covelya acquisition, these growth initiatives were supported by five key points: first, our enhanced organizational structure, which includes several new additions to our senior leadership team; $355 million of product orders to date in 2024 for both Kraken and Covelya, including over $27 million of incremental product orders since our last corporate update in July; an expanding customer base with new customer relationships, including a recent long-term master supply agreement with an international manufacturer of extra-large UUVs or what's known as XLUUVs; and increased manufacturing capacity, including our new facility in Nova Scotia, Canada, alongside our new building at our campus in the UK, which we take possession of in Q3; and lastly, our ongoing discipline to maintain a strong balance sheet.

Through our Covelya acquisition, we have significantly increased our technological capabilities, total addressable market in the overall ocean economy, and our ability to provide both products and services to a range of customers with our dual-use technologies. We are in the early stages of what we believe will be a significant growth cycle.

This growth is expected to be driven by the defense industry due to geopolitical drivers, an industry upgrade cycle, and the changing nature of warfare towards autonomous and hybrid fleets. For commercial sectors such as offshore energy, companies are continuing to transition to automation and robotics to deliver long-term reliable energy in a safe and cost-effective manner.

This upgrade cycle is already occurring with applications of our technology already in various end markets, such as mine countermeasures, intruder detection, critical underwater infrastructure inspection, anti-submarine warfare, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, among others. On a similar note, our commercial applications include [clears throat] projects relating to asset integrity for key infrastructure, marine construction, offshore oil and gas, offshore wind, cable installations, subsea mining, carbon capture and storage, and maritime shipping, in addition to ocean science and environmental research.

As a trusted engineering group to the challenging maritime industry, we continue to work with our customers on such projects and help to develop new solutions that will require our systems and technology. Before I pass things over to Joe to review our Q2 results, I want to expand on our new organizational structure, which we've created as part of the integration plan with Covelya, alongside some of the key appointments we have made to the team.

Our new structure consists of Kraken Group, led by myself as CEO, and several executives focused on the financial, governance, corporate development, legal, enterprise systems and security, and human resources-related aspects of the overall business. Reporting into the Kraken Group is a clearly delineated Kraken Robotics operating business that is led by Bernard Mills, who was recently promoted to President from his previous role as Executive Vice President of Kraken's defense business.

Bernard brings a wealth of experience from running large global organizations and previously served as CEO and Managing Director of a subsidiary of the Airbus Group. Prior to that, he was President of Ultra Sonar Systems, a division of Ultra Maritime, who are a leader in anti-submarine warfare solutions that's being acquired by Lockheed Martin.

As illustrated on slide eight, the operating side of the business will include teams led by various members from Covelya and Kraken alongside a new recruit, Joanne Roberts. Based in the UK, Joanne starts in October and brings relevant experience from defense companies such as Drumgrange, Ultra, and Thales.

This structure allows us to integrate Covelya alongside its various subsidiaries in an efficient manner with clear leadership and accountability, a structured go-to-market, and ensuring we develop the connective tissue between our previously independent organizations. Within this new organizational structure, our integration efforts are well underway, including identified revenue enhancement opportunities and execution against our targeted cost synergies.

With that, I'll now pass the call over to Joe to review our Q2 results. Joe?

Joe MacKay

Thanks, Greg. As a reminder, our second quarter results do not include any contribution from the Covelya acquisition, which closed subsequent to the quarter.

Q3 ended September 30th will be the first quarter of the combined financial results, and we expect to report our Q3 results on November 24th. Consolidated revenue for Q2 totaled $27 million, including product revenue of approximately $17 million and service revenue of over $10 million.

Product revenue during the quarter continued to reflect strong demand for Kraken's SAS and subsea battery products, and included the delivery of a spare KATFISH towbody that will be used by a European Navy customer for its mine hunting program. Product revenue during the second quarter was negatively impacted by $1.5 million due to a change in scope associated with an integration project that is nearing completion.

Excluding this impact, consolidated revenue during the quarter increased approximately 10%. On a product revenue basis, year-over-year growth would have equated to 11% during the quarter and 25% for the first half of the year.

Service revenue grew 6% in the quarter on a year-over-year basis or 9% for the first half of the year. Quarterly revenues and year-over-year comparisons in this segment of the business can fluctuate significantly due to the timing of projects and seasonality in the offshore energy business.

Gross profit during Q2 increased to over $16 million, while gross profit margin remained strong at 59%, up slightly over the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA in the quarter increased slightly to $5 million, resulting in adjusted EBITDA margin of 18%, in line with the prior period.

Excluding the impact from the change in scope mentioned earlier on the integration project, adjusted EBITDA margins in the quarter would have equated to 20% with adjusted EBITDA growth of 26%. Capital expenditures and tangible assets purchased during the quarter totaled just over $9 million, compared to $6 million in the prior year.

These expenditures were for new marine assets to support revenue growth and additional tools and equipment related to Kraken's new subsea power manufacturing facility in Halifax. Our balance sheet remains strong at the quarter's end with cash position of just over $91 million and working capital of $152 million.

Long-term debt and obligations and lease liabilities were approximately $40 million, and Kraken continues to maintain a strong balance sheet subsequent to the closing of the Covelya transaction with minimal net debt, I should add. On July 2nd, upon the closing of the Covelya transaction, we issued a 2024 guidance to reflect approximately six months of contribution from Covelya.

This guidance remains unchanged. For 2024, we expect annual revenues of $290 million to $320 million, adjusted EBITDA between $65 and $75 million, and capital expenditures in the range of $27 million to $33 million.

In terms of revenues, over 75% is expected to be comprised of product revenue with the balance coming from our service business. I'll now pass the call back to Greg to discuss further updates on our outlook on our business.

Greg Reid

Thanks, Joe. As we focus on the new Kraken moving forward, including Covelya, we're very excited about the opportunities ahead of us in both defense and commercial markets.

We're now a global organization with a highly specialized workforce of approximately 1,200 employees, over 450,000 square feet of production capacity, and a strong portfolio of dual-use technologies covered by more than 110 active or pending patents. Our combined technology is integrated across a large number of major OEMs from crewed systems such as ships and submarines alongside various uncrewed systems, including AUVs, unmanned surface vessels, and ROVs.

For those following along in our webcast, slide 12 is just a small subset of some of the various OEM platforms our technologies are integrated on. As each of these verticals expands, we have an opportunity for continued strong growth, including new customer relationships and cross-selling opportunities.

After announcing our acquisition of Covelya, we've received positive feedback from many customers who are looking forward to working with our combined engineering teams, and we've already been discussing integrated subsea technology solutions and new applications with such clients. As defense spending and the adoption of autonomous vehicles continues to accelerate as part of maritime security, Kraken's well-positioned to benefit through increased product and integrated system sales.

This includes subsea batteries, various sonar solutions, navigation and positioning systems, and imaging payloads, amongst other technology within our portfolio. Our dual-use technology also supports offshore energy customers through various phases of their project lifecycle, including discovery, construction, pipe or cable installation, inspection, repair, and maintenance, monitoring, as well as decommissioning.

This exposure throughout the entire value chain places us in a strong position to benefit from our long-established customer base at a time when energy security is becoming increasingly important. Beyond crewed or uncrewed vessel platforms, our acquisition of Covelya expanded our total addressable market into stationary sensors that sit on the ocean floor or are in the water column or on the ocean surface for monitoring and communication purposes.

These sensors, in effect, act as satellites of the sea, providing various end-market applications, such as intruder detection, anti-submarine warfare, offshore oil and gas seismic data, and monitoring carbon capture projects along with monitoring subduction zones for ocean science. These types of monitoring applications provide us with various opportunities for both product sales and long-term service revenue.

For example, our Sentinel intruder detection system automatically detects, classifies, and tracks subsea threats from divers and swimmer delivery vehicles to AUVs at hundreds of critical infrastructure sites worldwide, such as power plants, liquid natural gas facilities, desalination plants, and other waterside properties. This product has been used significantly in recent years in the Baltic region, the Middle East, Asia-Pacific, and other European countries, and continues to be in solid demand today.

Another is our on-demand ocean bottom nodes, or ODOBN. This is a new breakthrough technology for the offshore oil and gas industry that our Sonardyne subsidiary has been working on in Brazil with a major operator in Brazil since 2018.

This technology allows operators to conduct more frequent, on-demand seismic surveys with higher-fidelity data and at a fraction of the cost of conventional seismic survey methods. We expect this product to move into the commercial phase in 2027.

On the defense side, the current situation in the Strait of Hormuz is only one example of various threats that have taken place on strategic choke points throughout the world and highlight the importance of maritime security to the overall economy. We continue to see a strong pipeline of opportunities and growing interest in unmanned underwater vehicle solutions for mine countermeasures and critical underwater infrastructure, which includes recent demand across North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific.

We expect several new and upgrade programs to be awarded to industry starting in 2024 and have been prudently building our teams and inventory in anticipation of these potential awards. Before closing, I think it's worth touching on some recent industry consolidation that's been announced during the past quarter.

The maritime domain is seeing increasing focus across defense and commercial budgets. The oceans are getting more connected and the undersea domain is getting more contested.

Maritime security, whether it's for port and harbor security, the littoral waters, or the deep blue ocean, is increasingly in focus, driven by geopolitics and energy security. As we've highlighted before, we operate in an industry that requires a highly specialized workforce with extensive experience in the subsea domain, given the physics and the harsh operating environment.

This creates a high barrier to entry to establish proven technology. There are also challenges in displacing technology that's already integrated on established platforms.

It's for these reasons that we aren't surprised to see consolidation, including sizable transaction of maritime defense companies, as well as defense companies with expertise in other domains, such as land, air, and space, expanding through acquisition into the maritime domain. We believe this industry consolidation reaffirms our strategic direction to acquire Covelya to create a global supplier of mission-critical subsea intelligence solutions for maritime security and offshore energy.

It also underscores the strategic value of our business and further narrows an already limited competitive landscape of mid-sized players. We retain a strong competitive position in the marketplace with mission-critical dual-use sensor and power technology and the fact that we remain a platform-agnostic, independent supplier to the uncrewed underwater vehicle and the uncrewed surface vehicle market.

Kraken's well-positioned in this growing market with long-standing customer relationships in both defense and offshore energy, a strong product portfolio that provide integrated solutions, outstanding R&D capabilities for product innovation, and significant production capacity that's already in place. With that, we'll wrap up our prepared remarks.

I'd also point you to our website, krakenrobotics.com, for more info. We update our website regularly, including our financial filings and other updates, and you can find our financial filings on SEDAR+.

I will now pass the call back to the operator.

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session with analysts.

To join the question queue, you may press star and then one on your telephone keypads. You'll hear a tone acknowledging your request.

If you are using a speakerphone, we do ask that you please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, you may press star and two.

Again, that is star and then one to join the question queue. Our first question today comes from Benoit Poirier from Desjardins Capital Markets.

Please go ahead with your question.

Benoit Poirier

Yes, good morning, Greg. Good morning, Joe, and congrats on the strong execution.

Greg Reid

Thanks, Benoit.

Benoit Poirier

On the battery side, could you talk whether you're seeing any customers move their battery manufacturing process internally?

Greg Reid

I'll talk to that, Ben. We can't talk about specific customers, but our battery customers, they rely on us for rechargeable, pressure-tolerant batteries.

You can appreciate that our customers build products that do that also do not need rechargeable pressure-tolerant batteries for every product. For just to give you an example, these batteries can be for aerial drones, surface drones, shallow-water AUVs that don't need pressure-tolerant batteries.

Some of these shallow-water AUVs are not intended to return to home base, and so they're Thus, they don't require a rechargeable battery. Those are some areas of the battery ecosystem we don't play in.

I think comparison can be seen on the sensor and the sonar side of our business where we've been selling systems into the UUV, AUV space for several decades. Our customers who make these vehicles also have internal sensor and sonar expertise, just like they might have battery expertise, but that doesn't mean they're designing and building their own sensors and sonar.

A similar analogy applies to pressure-tolerant batteries for underwater vehicles. The short answer is no.

We're not seeing our customers manufacture Kraken-equivalent batteries in-house that would take away our demand. In fact, it's quite the opposite, Ben, and, to a narrative that another analyst recently referenced.

A few more comments on that. As a company whose expertise on this dates back more than 15 years on the battery side, subsea batteries, our engineers are leaders in underwater battery expertise, and we work closely with our customers to provide them the best performance and reliability that meets their requirements.

I think finally, to kind of wrap it up, as I mentioned in my prepared remarks earlier, we recently signed a long-term master supply agreement with an additional manufacturer of XLUUVs for our batteries. We've also started to supply batteries to two other XLUUV OEMs, and are obviously fielding inquiries and quoting several other OEMs who are developing or planning to develop both large-diameter and extra-large-diameter UUVs.

Overall, the past call it 12, 18, 20 20 months or so, we've added almost 10 new UUV battery OEMs as customers, and they're located in North America, Europe, and Asia. We expect our subsea battery business has long legs to it and will continue to see strong growth for that in the coming years.

Sorry for the long-winded answer, but yeah.

Benoit Poirier

No, that's very good color, Greg. Maybe specifically for the CAN program, what is the timeline on this, and how Kraken is positioned with the potential contenders?

I think we are up to four contenders right now. I believe there was one addition not too long ago.

Greg Reid

Again, giving too much detail on customers it implies too much detail on some of our customers. There's four so far, and we're on several of those platforms, and the one that we are not on, we've got discussions, and we'll see where that goes if that becomes an opportunity.

It's kind of like both for our batteries and our navigation systems and our sonar and our optical systems. We are the agnostic, independent supplier, and we've got great performance from our technology.

We will continue. As the industry grows, we expect to be on lots of these platforms.

Benoit Poirier

Okay. Last one for me before I pass the line.

You reiterated your guidance for 2024. Could you maybe provide some color about the cadence of revenue growth between Q3 and Q4, and maybe what's missing in terms of order activity in order to reach the bottom end of your guidance?

Thank you.

Joe MacKay

I think obviously the second half of the year, the majority of the growth is obviously going to come from the Covelya transaction. We do also expect an uptick in service revenue just based on timing of certain oil and gas projects.

Then obviously we have to probably win a certain KATFISH contract that we're expecting. In terms of the second half, I would kind of guide you to weigh it a bit more to Q4 over Q3.

Benoit Poirier

Okay. That's great color.

Thank you. Congrats.

Joe MacKay

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Kevin Krishnaratne from Scotiabank. Please go ahead with your question.

Kevin Krishnaratne

Hey there, gentlemen. Good morning.

Just following up on the guidance question Benoit asked, on the seasonality Q3 Q4 stronger than Q3, do we also expect that on the services side? Is it both on the services and the product side that we would expect Q4 to be stronger than Q3?

Joe MacKay

Definitely be equivalent to both products and service. Q4 will be stronger.

Kevin Krishnaratne

Okay. I just also on the KATFISH, did I hear you correctly that in this quarter it was you won an order, but was that a spare unit?

Was that within your expectations to land in Q2?

Joe MacKay

We had a spare towbody that we shipped to a European Navy, just the towbody, no no ALARS, just both the yellow towbody. That was within our expectations, yes.

Kevin Krishnaratne

Gotcha. Then maybe for Greg, it's been some time since you gave us an update on the pipeline.

I think it was maybe $2 billion, over $2 billion, last April. I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on where you stand today.

You certainly had a lot of wins. You talked about this new long-term MSA, you've got the 10 XLUUV vendors in there.

I'm just wondering, and Covelya as well, any way you can give us sort of where you stand today in terms of the pipeline?

Greg Reid

I think, overall, Kevin, what we've reported in the past as an independent company and now combined with Covelya, I think as we get later in the year, and then when we start to give '25 guidance and then medium-term guidance several years out, you'll get a lot more color on that. I'm not going to state a specific pipeline number right now, except to say directionally, it's obviously significantly higher than it would have been a year ago, both for Kraken and for Covelya as independent businesses.

Kevin Krishnaratne

Okay. Maybe just the last one then just to Joe, just on the revenue recognition reversal, $1.5 million in the quarter, do you expect any more of that into Q3 and Q4 that we need to be aware of?

Then I'll pass the line.

Joe MacKay

No, there won't be, that's now completed.

Kevin Krishnaratne

Thanks very much.

Greg Reid

Thanks, Kevin.

Operator

Our next question comes from Aravinda Galappatthige from Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead with your question.

Aravinda Galappatthige

Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions.

I just wanted to follow up a little bit on the stationary sensors, the opportunity there. I know you've been highlighting it in recent times.

Can you just speak to what the trends have been? How material the sales have been in the past and how we can probably try and size up the opportunity there?

Then connected to that, from the competitive standpoint, are the dynamics generally similar with respect to the rest of your products as well?

Greg Reid

I'll start. Again, I'll divide it into commercial market, offshore energy, ocean science type applications versus defense.

I would say on the defense side, that is really newer business. Kraken itself wasn't in that business.

Covelya, that's newer business for them, with very strong technology with some important OEM partners for that. Sizing the opportunity for that, well, we'll have to come back and provide you some more detail.

I don't have my fingertips now, but they are significant contracts opportunities. It's not like a million or $2 million a year.

It's, this can be a tens of millions of dollars a year type business or larger in the future. It really depends on what the scope is.

Sometimes you might be just providing a sensor that sits on the seafloor, other times you might be providing some other equipment that's on the surface as well. Generally if you look at Kraken's business historically, we were predominantly in mine countermeasure activity, either with our KATFISH or with our customers that use our sensors and batteries on their AUVs.

Now, if the ASW market, or the anti-submarine warfare market, is a very large market, and we've got some good capability, and our customers are very interested in working with us on that. That's defense.

On the commercial side, one of the big potential opportunities for us is the on-demand ocean bottom nodes. To put it in context, just some prototype activity for Covelya last year was north of $20-$25 million for one opportunity, one field.

Really, there's multiple fields around the world where this technology can be applicable. This year, going from last year was prototype, this year is a bunch of testing with it on the ocean floor, and we expect that that will move into commercial production in 2027.

I'm going to kick it over to Shaunt here for one second just to discuss ODOBN.

Shant Madian

Yeah. I can jump in here.

Thanks, Greg. Traditionally, when you're doing these types of seismic work for offshore oil and gas, you're using permanent-type cables, which are very, very expensive, hundreds of millions of dollars.

When you think about that, those cables can be damaged. You have to worry about the sort of infrastructure on the ground as well where they're being laid.

From a from a on-demand ocean bottom node solution, you're putting these sort of nodes, multiple nodes on the ground, that could be hundreds or up to a 1,000 that will be sitting there on a full commercial phase of a field. Then you're having a remotely operated vehicle go over and collect that data.

You're able to get the seismic data before you're drilling, while you're drilling, if you're doing a a secondary-type of flood or tertiary-type of flood, you can see how that's performing as well. It's quite useful to get that on-demand type type data, which is again, that's the breakthrough technology around it.

It's useful and much more cost-efficient than that traditional permanent cable system that I referred to.

Greg Reid

I just add two points to that. One, if it's public knowledge, there's been industry articles written about it.

Sonardyne has been working on that with I believe Petrobras and Shell in Brazil, going back to six years now. The second point about that is we're one of the only companies, competitive landscape, there's no one else with this type of technology.

It is still early days on that, and we'll come back and educate the market more on that, but we're hopeful this could be a very meaningful business starting to kick back in in 2027 when it goes into commercial production.

Aravinda Galappatthige

Thanks, Greg. Everyone, it's quite helpful.

Just last one from me. Can you drill in a little bit more now that you've closed the transaction the cross-selling opportunities here?

I know that obviously you deal with a lot of customers that can use the the navigation and positioning systems of Covelya, and then that opens the door on the other hand for you into Europe. How quickly do you think sort of those opportunities can be sort of extracted?

Which ones are sort of the more low-hanging fruit in your opinion? Thank you.

Greg Reid

Thanks, Aravinda. There's many ways we could discuss, certain customers of ours that do underwater vehicles today, they buy some of the equipment that goes in their underwater vehicles from their vehicle competitors.

Covelya provides that technology. We're agnostic, independent provider.

If they have the capability to work with us instead of one of their competitors on the vehicle side, then we've got a good opportunity there. With greater combined capabilities, more customers are looking to us to help solve some of their challenging problems.

The other thing I think as we educate the market about our business, customers use a variety of platforms, right? Everything from USVs to sometimes they're using ROV, sometimes they're using battery-operated AUVs.

Depending on the mission, they are using a variety of different sensors. System integration and calibration's often not easy.

By working with us and our solutions, customers will have fewer vendors to coordinate with, less engineering effort, optimized size, weight, and power, and all that adds to faster, reliable deployment. We continue to add new customers to the list of that 30-plus or so UUV platforms that we're on today.

I think the final thing I would say is there are cases where we might initially have just sold a product or Covelya Group sold a product where there's now some discussions about, well, don't just sell a product, maybe provide it as a service to us over a period of time, maybe monitoring solutions for us underwater for a period of time, it could be a data sale. We're exploring a bunch of those different things.

I not really sure there's too much more detail we could get into right now.

Aravinda Galappatthige

Thank you very much.

Operator

Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and then one. To withdraw your questions, you may press star and two.

Our next question comes from Mike Stevens from National Bank Markets. Please go ahead with your question.

Michael Stevens

Good morning, guys, and appreciate you taking the time to answer a couple questions here. I just wanted to circle back.

Appreciate the commentary on the guidance. Just wanted to kind of dig into maybe the visibility side.

I think historically with Kraken, on a standalone basis, it may have been easier to piece together the awarded-to-date and your services revenue. With Covelya, and I understand some of this awards-to-date are kind of more backlog future years.

Can you give any color on the on the visibility into the '24 guide? I know you mentioned the expectations for KATFISH still in to come.

Is that is it fair to kind of characterize that as one of the key sort of risks, execution risks on the guide?

Greg Reid

I'll start, and Joe will chime in here in a sec as well. I would say the nature of Covelya's business is they are generally a wider customer base, less lumpy than the traditional Kraken would be, and generally have really good visibility for 2024.

It again comes back down to the Kraken side, and we've got a lot of SAS and a lot of battery orders in-house, and we know how the services will do. There's a couple things we're working on to get over the line on the KATFISH side.

Do you want to?

Joe MacKay

I think Greg summed it up pretty well. I think we have strong visibility, and we obviously have one, we have to target one KATFISH that we have good visibility on that contract, but obviously it always comes down to the procurement cycle and the devil in the details on that.

We have visibility on the actual contract, it's I think Greg has summed it up pretty well, but yeah, that would be it in a nutshell.

Michael Stevens

No, that's great to hear. Appreciate that.

Then just double-clicking on the KATFISH, outside of that kind of expectation that you highlighted, Greg obviously mentioned in the prepared remarks about awards starting in 2024. Obviously, there's a comment earlier about the CAN program.

Just wondering would any of that be kind of for towfish awards, is that still expected to maybe come through as far as the decision on various awards in the back half of this year, or any clarity on timing for that business?

Greg Reid

We've mentioned some country names in the past, and I'm not going to rhyme them all off now, but on the towfish side, there are specific programs that are if you look back of what's happened over the last five years, you've probably got triple the amount of activity that's going to happen over the next four years here based on those programs. Yes, some of them will get start to get awarded this year and into the first half of next year.

I think it'll be a steady drumbeat of award opportunities for the industry over the next couple of years.

Michael Stevens

That's helpful. Thank you.

Maybe just the last one for me on the battery success. It's great to hear the the new battery customer wins and and just the overall diversification of that business.

Just on timing, how these relationships typically progress from, say, an initial order to kind of more meaningful production? I'm not sure if you'd have, at this point, any lens into when you think we could expect to see some more meaningful contributions from those customers.

Any any color there would be helpful.

Greg Reid

I think the best color we could say right now is that, for some of our customers, we've been having good volume sales for five, six years, with some of these new players and these new players aren't startups. They are existing defense customers that might do they might do crewed ships or submarines and now they're smaller AUVs, and they're starting to do bigger AUVs.

It's really the way it works is, often times, they do a prototype. Let's say that vehicle could have 1,000 kilowatt hours on it, they're not out to prove the endurance of the vehicle, but really to show the vehicle in the water, the software works, they're able to prove the capability of the vehicle.

What I mean there is, on those prototypes, you might have, they might put 200 kilowatt hours or 300 kilowatt hours of batteries instead of a megawatt hour plus that they could put in. We're in that phase with a few players.

There's a few others that are just starting to they've gone from prototype already, and now they're starting to produce a few vehicles. I think as you start to look into a year out, 18 months, you can see some of these become fairly meaningful players.

Again, they are all competing with each other. So [chuckles] yeah, the good thing is we're on a bunch of these platforms, and there's some countries or there's some really dominant players, but there's some countries where the navies or the governments are going to go with their domestic champion because they're building up their domestic defense industry.

I think that's about the only color we could give on that right now.

Michael Stevens

Yeah. No, it sounds like you guys are obviously very well positioned for these tailwinds.

Appreciate all the insights, guys. Cheers.

Greg Reid

Thanks, Mike. Thanks, Mike.

Operator

With no further questions, I would like to turn the floor back over to management for any closing remarks.

Greg Reid

That is it. Thanks, everybody.

Look forward to talking with you again soon, and we report in the second half of November on our Q3 results, and quite excited to be able to expose you to what the full business looks like. Talk soon in the future.

Thank you.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that will conclude today's conference call. We thank you for your participation.

You may now disconnect your lines.