We provide supplemental, non-GAAP financial information that our management regularly evaluates to provide additional insight to investors as supplemental information to our results reported using U.S. generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). We provide non-GAAP gross profit, non-GAAP gross margin, non-GAAP net loss to shareholders, and non-GAAP net loss to shareholders per share. Our management uses these non-GAAP financial measures to make informed operating decisions, complete strategic planning, prepare annual budgets, and evaluate Company and management performance. We believe these non-GAAP financial measures are useful performance measures to our investors because they provide a baseline for analyzing trends in our business and exclude certain items that may not be indicative of our core operating results. The non-GAAP financial measures disclosed in this earnings press release should not be viewed as an alternative to, or more meaningful than, the reported results prepared in accordance with GAAP. In addition, because these non-GAAP financial measures are not determined in accordance with GAAP, other companies, including our peers, may calculate their non-GAAP financial measures differently than we do. As a result, the non-GAAP financial measures presented in this earnings press release may not be directly comparable to similarly titled measures presented by other companies.

We also provide adjusted earnings before interest, income taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) and adjusted EBITDA margin as supplemental non-GAAP measures. We define adjusted EBITDA as net (loss) income before net interest expense, income tax (benefit) expense, depreciation and amortization, equity-based compensation and certain other items that we do not view as indicative of our ongoing performance, including net income attributable to noncontrolling interests, certain management consulting fees, CHIPS Act specialist fees, management transition expense, and SkyWater Florida start-up costs. Our management uses adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin to make informed operating decisions, complete strategic planning, prepare annual budgets, and evaluate Company and management performance. We believe adjusted EBITDA is a useful performance measure to our investors because it allows for an effective evaluation of our operating performance when compared to other companies, including our peers, without regard to financing methods or capital structures. We exclude the items listed above from net income or loss in arriving at adjusted EBITDA because the amounts of these items can vary substantially within our industry depending on the accounting methods and policies used, book values of assets, capital structures, and the methods by which assets were acquired. Adjusted EBITDA should not be considered as an alternative to, or more meaningful than, net (loss) income determined in accordance with GAAP. Certain items excluded from adjusted EBITDA are significant components in understanding and assessing a company’s financial performance, such as a company’s cost of capital and tax structure, as well as the historic cost bases of depreciable assets, none of which are reflected in adjusted EBITDA. Our presentation of adjusted EBITDA should not be construed as an indication that our results will be unaffected by the items excluded from adjusted EBITDA. In future fiscal periods, we may exclude such items and may incur income and expenses similar to these excluded items. Accordingly, the exclusion of these items and other similar items in our non-GAAP financial measures should not be interpreted as implying that these items are non-recurring, infrequent or unusual, unless otherwise expressly indicated.

We continuously evaluate the non-GAAP financial measures we use, the manner in which non-GAAP financial measures are calculated, and the adjustments we make to GAAP results to derive our non-GAAP financial measures. In the third quarter of 2023, we made the following changes to our non-GAAP financial measures and revised prior period non-GAAP financial measures to conform the calculation of non-GAAP financial measures across all periods and provide comparability:

• Tool sales have historically been infrequent and viewed by management as secondary to ATS development programs. Accordingly, we previously excluded the margin on tool sales when calculating non-GAAP gross profit, non-GAAP gross margin, non-GAAP earnings to shareholders and non-GAAP earnings to shareholders per basic share. Recently, our ATS customers have increasingly sought us to purchase tools on their behalf and we expect this trend to continue going forward. Accordingly, we no longer believe tool sales are infrequent and therefore do not exclude the impact of tool revenue and tool cost of revenue in the calculation of our non-GAAP financial measures.
• Since the second quarter of 2023, we have incurred project-based, management consulting fees related to long-term transformation activities focused on improvement in automation and operational efficiency. Similarly, we have also incurred project-based specialist fees associated with our CHIPS Act application. Neither of these types of fees are required to run our business and, therefore, are incremental to our ongoing operations and are not a normal operating expense. Beginning in the third quarter of 2023, we began excluding these fees in the calculation of non-GAAP earnings, non-GAAP earnings to shareholders per share, and adjusted EBITDA.

The following tables present a reconciliation of the most directly comparable financial measures, calculated and presented in accordance with GAAP, to our non-GAAP financial measures.