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Note 1 - General Information
9 Months Ended
Mar. 31, 2023
Notes to Financial Statements  
Business Description and Basis of Presentation [Text Block]

(1) General Information

 

Description of the Company – Astrotech Corporation (Nasdaq: ASTC) (“Astrotech,” the “Company,” “we,” “us,” or “our”), a Delaware corporation organized in 1984, is a mass spectrometry company that launches, manages, and commercializes scalable companies based on its innovative core technology.

 

Basis of Presentation – The accompanying unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements have been prepared in accordance with United States generally accepted accounting principles (“U.S. GAAP”) for interim financial information and the rules and regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”). Accordingly, they do not include all of the information and footnotes required by U.S. GAAP for complete financial statements. In the opinion of management, all adjustments considered necessary for a fair presentation have been included. Operating results for the three and nine months ended March 31, 2023 are not necessarily indicative of the results that may be expected for the year ending June 30, 2023. These unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements should be read in conjunction with the consolidated financial statements and notes included in the Company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended June 30, 2022. Certain prior period amounts have been reclassified to conform to the current year presentation or adjusted due to rounding and have had no impact on net income or stockholders' equity. 

 

Reverse Stock Split – On  December 5, 2022, the Company effectuated a reverse stock split of its shares of common stock, par value $0.001 per share (the “Common Stock”), whereby every thirty (30) pre-split shares of Common Stock were exchanged for one (1) post-split share of the Company's Common Stock (the “Reverse Stock Split”). No fractional shares were issued in connection with the Reverse Stock Split. Stockholders who would otherwise have held a fractional share of the Common Stock received a cash payment in lieu thereof. Numbers presented in these condensed consolidated financial statements have been adjusted to reflect the Reverse Stock Split.

 

Accounting Pronouncements – In June 2016, the FASB issued ASU No. 2016-13, Financial Instruments-Credit Losses (Topic 326). The new standard adjusts the accounting for assets held at amortized costs basis, including marketable securities accounted for as available for sale, and trade receivables. The standard eliminates the probable initial recognition threshold and requires an entity to reflect its current estimate of all expected credit losses. The allowance for credit losses is a valuation account that is deducted from the amortized cost basis of the financial assets to present the net amount expected to be collected. For public entities except smaller reporting companies, the guidance is effective for annual reporting periods beginning after December 15, 2019 and for interim periods within those fiscal years. For non-public entities and smaller reporting companies, the guidance was effective for annual reporting periods beginning after December 15, 2021. In November 2019, the FASB issued ASU No. 2019-10, which deferred the effective date for non-public entities to annual reporting periods beginning after December 15, 2022, including interim periods within those fiscal years.

 

The Company is in process of adopting new accounting guidance regarding the accounting for credit losses. This new accounting guidance requires the Company to move from an incurred loss model to a current expected credit loss (“CECL”) model. The adoption of this standard is not expected to have a material impact on the Company’s condensed consolidated financial statements.

 

Our Business Units

 

Astrotech Technologies, Inc.

 

Astrotech Technologies, Inc. (“ATI”) owns and licenses the Astrotech Mass Spectrometer Technology™ (the “AMS Technology”), the platform mass spectrometry technology originally developed by 1st Detect Corporation (“1st Detect”). The AMS Technology has been designed to be inexpensive, smaller, and easier to use when compared to traditional mass spectrometers. Unlike other technologies, the AMS Technology works under ultra-high vacuum, which eliminates competing molecules, yielding higher resolution and fewer false alarms. The intellectual property includes 21 patents granted along with extensive trade secrets. With a number of diverse market opportunities for the core technology, ATI is structured to license the intellectual property for different fields of use. ATI currently licenses the AMS Technology to three wholly-owned subsidiaries of Astrotech on an exclusive basis, including to 1st Detect for use in the security and detection market, to AgLAB Inc. (“AgLAB”) for use in the agriculture market, and to BreathTech Corporation (“BreathTech”) for use in breath analysis applications.

 

1st Detect Corporation

 

1st Detect, a licensee of ATI for the security and detection market, has developed the TRACER 1000™, the world’s first mass spectrometry (“MS”) based explosives trace detector (“ETD”) certified by the European Civil Aviation Conference (“ECAC”). The TRACER 1000 was designed to outperform the ETDs currently used at airports, cargo and other secured facilities, and borders worldwide. The Company believes that ETD customers are unsatisfied with the currently deployed ETD technology, which is driven by ion mobility spectrometry (“IMS”). The Company further believes that some IMS-based ETDs have issues with false positives, as they often misidentify personal care products and other common household chemicals as explosives, causing facility shutdowns, unnecessary delays, frustration, and significant wasted security resources. In addition, there are hundreds of different types of explosives, but IMS-based ETDs have a very limited threat detection library reserved only for those few explosives of largest concern. Adding additional compounds to the detection library of an IMS-based ETD fundamentally reduces the instrument’s performance, further increasing the likelihood of false alarms. In contrast, adding additional compounds to the TRACER 1000’s detection library does not degrade its detection capabilities, as it has a virtually unlimited and easily expandable threat library.

 

In order to sell the TRACER 1000 to airport and cargo security customers in the European Union and certain other countries, we obtained ECAC certification. The Company is currently selling the TRACER 1000 to customers who accept ECAC certification.  As of March 31, 2023, the Company has deployed the TRACER 1000 in approximately 21 locations in 14 countries throughout Europe and Asia.

 

In the United States, the Company is working with the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (“TSA”) towards air cargo certification. On March 27, 2018, the Company announced that the TRACER 1000 was accepted into TSA’s Air Cargo Screening Technology Qualification Test (“ACSQT”) and, on April 4, 2018, the Company announced that the TRACER 1000 entered into testing with the TSA for passenger screening at airports. On November 14, 2019, the Company announced that the TRACER 1000 had been selected by the TSA’s Innovation Task Force to conduct live checkpoint screening at Miami International Airport. With similar protocols as ECAC testing, the Company has received valuable feedback from all programs. Following ECAC certification and the Company’s early traction within the cargo market, testing for cargo security continued with the TSA. With the COVID-19 pandemic, all testing within the TSA was put on hold; however, cargo testing resumed during the summer of 2020, and the Company subsequently announced on September 9, 2020 that the TRACER 1000 passed the non-detection testing portion of the TSA’s ACSQT. Due to delays caused by COVID-19, TSA cargo detection testing is ongoing, but has proceeded much more slowly than originally anticipated. As a result, efforts are primarily focused on our other opportunities. TSA cargo detection testing is the final step to be listed on the Air Cargo Screening Technology List as an “approved” device. If approved, the TRACER 1000 will be approved for cargo sales in the United States. 

 

AgLAB Inc.

 

AgLAB, an exclusive licensee of ATI for the agriculture market, has developed the AgLAB 1000™ series of mass spectrometers for use in the hemp and cannabis markets with initial focus on optimizing yields in the distillation process. The AgLAB product line is a derivative of the Company’s core AMS Technology. AgLAB has continued to conduct field trials to demonstrate that the AgLAB 1000-D2™ can be used in the distillation process to significantly improve the processing yields of tetrahydrocannabinol (“THC”) and cannabidiol (“CBD”) oil during distillation. The AgLAB 1000-D2 uses the Maximum Value Process solution (“MVP”) to analyze samples in real-time and assist the equipment operator determining the ideal settings required to maximize yields.  As part of our growth plan, we also plan to launch a family of “process control” methods and solutions that we believe could be valuable additions to many nutraceutical distillation laboratories.

 

During the first quarter of fiscal year 2023, we began our first production run of the AgLAB 1000-D2 and sales efforts are currently underway.  On April [   ], 2023, we announced the results from ongoing field trials of the AgLAB MVP solution, which we believe demonstrate that it can be a valuable tool for cannabis and hemp oil processors worldwide. During our field trials, we were able to improve ending-weight yields by an average of 30%.

 

BreathTech Corporation

 

BreathTech, an exclusive licensee of ATI for use in breath analysis applications, is developing the BreathTest-1000™, a breath analysis tool to screen for volatile organic compound (“VOC”) metabolites found in a person’s breath that could indicate they may have a bacterial or viral infection. The Company believes that new tools to aid in the battle against COVID-19 and other diseases remain of the utmost importance to help more quickly identify that an infection may be present.

 

In June 2022, the Company expanded its existing study that initially focused on COVID-19 with Cleveland Clinic to use the BreathTest-1000 to screen for a variety of diseases spanning the entire body. The project will focus on detecting bloodstream infections, respiratory infections such as influenza types A and B and respiratory syncytial virus (“RSV”), carriage of Staphylococcus aureus, and Clostridioides difficile (“C. diff”) infections.