IonQ’s Financial Results: Company Beats Full-Year Consensus on Revenue And Bookings

Insider Brief

• IonQ announced they beat the full-year consensus on revenue, bookings and adjusted EBITDA.
• The company’s revenue was set at $6.1 million for the quarter and $22.0 million for the full year
• Among the highlights, Peter Chapman, President and CEO of IonQ said they company sold four systems, unveiled the designs for our upcoming generations and opened our new Seattle manufacturing facility.

PRESS RELEASE — IonQ (NYSE: IONQ), a leader in the quantum computing industry, announced they beat the full-year consensus on revenue, bookings and adjusted EBITDA as part of their financial results for the quarter and full year ended December 31, 2023.

“IonQ had a landmark year in 2023, meeting and exceeding our financial expectations, and accomplishing our technical goals early,” said Peter Chapman, President and CEO of IonQ. “We sold four systems, unveiled the designs for our upcoming generations, and opened our new Seattle manufacturing facility to begin producing more systems to fulfill our growing pipeline. IonQ’s pipeline for 2024 is stronger than ever, and our sale of two systems in Europe last year is accelerating interest in system purchases, especially in Europe.”

“With the rise of generative AI, we are increasingly hearing from customers about the prohibitively expensive and lengthy compute resources–upwards of $1 billion and 3 months–required to train certain large language models. We estimate that to fully simulate 64 algorithmic qubits, you would need 3.6 billion GPUs, and that by shifting AI workloads to our increasingly powerful quantum computers, IonQ can help address the world’s next great computing challenge. We are eager to work with our customers on the next era of computing and networking in 2024 and beyond.”

Financial Highlights

• IonQ recognized revenue of $6.1 million for the quarter and $22.0 million for the full year, putting results at the high end and above the high end of the respective financial outlook range. This represents 98% annual growth compared to $11.1 million in the prior year.
• IonQ achieved $6.7 million in new bookings for the fourth quarter and $65.1 million for the full year, above the high end of the full year financial outlook range. This represents 166% annual growth compared to $24.5 million in the prior year.
• Cash, cash equivalents and investments were $455.9 million as of December 31, 2023.
• Net loss was $41.9 million and Adjusted EBITDA loss was $20.0 million for the fourth quarter. As for the full year 2023, net loss was $157.8 million and Adjusted EBITDA loss was $77.7 million, ahead of IonQ’s full year Adjusted EBITDA financial outlook.* Exclusions from Adjusted EBITDA include a non-cash gain in the fourth quarter of $7.6 million and a full year 2023 loss of $19.2 million related to the change in the fair value of IonQ’s warrant liabilities.

*Adjusted EBITDA is a non-GAAP financial measure defined under “Non-GAAP Financial Measures,” and is reconciled to net loss, its closest comparable GAAP measure, at the end of this release.

Corporate Highlights

• IonQ today announced the appointment of Robert Cardillo, former Director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, to its Board of Directors. In this role, Cardillo will seek to expand upon IonQ’s work with the U.S. government in establishing public-private partnerships that position the U.S. as a global leader in the quantum economy.
• IonQ today announced the appointment of Bill Scannell, President of Global Sales and Customer Operations at Dell Technologies, to its Board of Directors. As a member of the Board of Directors, Scannell will provide input and direction for IonQ’s system sales strategy and help strengthen the company’s leadership position in the quantum economy.

Technical Highlights

• IonQ achieved its 2024 technical milestone of #AQ 35 on IonQ Forte in December 2023, a full year ahead of schedule. At #AQ 35, IonQ expects its systems may be more commercially practical than the world’s most powerful quantum simulators for certain applications. These systems will now be more useful than ever for tackling quantum applications, such as those in quantum machine learning and quantum chemistry.
• IonQ today announced that it has furthered its performance leadership by achieving #AQ 36 in January 2024, also on IonQ Forte. Achieving #AQ 36 roughly doubles the computational space that Forte can now consider, relative to its performance at #AQ 35.
• IonQ announced that it had achieved its first major milestone in implementing photonic interconnects, the core technology that will allow IonQ to scale compute and networking between multiple quantum processing units (QPUs). IonQ can now generate photons entangled with ions repeatedly and reproducibly, creating a quantum state which will allow future quantum systems to communicate and transfer information between each other.
• IonQ today announced that it has demonstrated its forthcoming photonic integrated circuit, or PIC, technology in a lab setting. This technology will allow for the light that controls qubits to be routed directly to QPUs, enabling superior performance and form factors for future generations of IonQ quantum computers.

Commercial Highlights

• IonQ announced the start of construction on its first production-class IonQ Forte Enterprise systems in its Seattle manufacturing facility, with plans to begin delivery to customers by the end of 2024. These #AQ 35 systems will feature modular rack-mounted form factors designed to fit seamlessly into customers’ data centers.
• IonQ announced the availability of IonQ Forte through Amazon Braket Direct, a fully managed, white glove quantum computing service from Amazon Web Services. Customers can use Braket Direct to reserve dedicated capacity on different quantum devices and connect with quantum computing experts for hands-on support.
• IonQ announced a predictive maintenance project with Thompson Machinery, a Caterpillar dealer serving parts of Tennessee and Mississippi, to deploy a quantum machine learning model tasked with detecting potential failures in equipment and compare it directly to a classical model. The quantum model was more likely to detect failures, did so with more precision, and shows promise of being economically significant.
• Earlier this month, IonQ was joined by U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell from the State of Washington to inaugurate the Company’s new Seattle production facility with a ribbon cutting ceremony. Responding to an uptick in customer demand, IonQ has already decided to increase the footprint of this facility by 50%.

2024 Financial Outlook

• For the full year 2024, IonQ expects revenue to be between $37.0 million and $41.0 million, with between $6.5 million and $7.5 million for the first quarter.
• IonQ anticipates full year 2024 bookings of between $70 million and $90 million.
• IonQ anticipates an Adjusted EBITDA** loss of $110.5 million for the full year 2024 at the midpoint of the revenue outlook provided above.

** Adjusted EBITDA is a non-GAAP financial measure defined under “Non-GAAP Financial Measures.” The Company cannot provide a reconciliation between its forecasted Adjusted EBITDA and net loss without unreasonable effort due to the unavailability of estimates for stock-based compensation and change in fair value of assumed warrant liabilities, as these items are not within the Company’s control, may vary greatly between periods and could significantly impact future financial results.