Bloom Energy Corp (BE) 2021 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Bloom Energy's Third Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Ed Vallejo, Bloom Energy's Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for joining us for Bloom Energy's Third Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. It is both an honor and a pleasure to now be part of the Bloom team, sharing our results and our compelling investment thesis with you all. I've spoken with many of you already, and I look forward to touching base with the rest of our investors and stakeholders in the weeks to come.

Moving on to the quarter on hand. To supplement this conference call, we furnished our third quarter 2021 earnings press release with the SEC on Form 8-K and have posted it along with supplemental financial information that we will reference throughout this call to our Investor Relations website.

During this conference call, both in our prepared remarks and in answers to your questions, we may make forward-looking statements that represent our expectations regarding future events and our future financial performance. These include statements about the company's business results, products, new markets, strategy, financial position, liquidity, transaction with SK ecoplant and full year outlook for 2021.

These statements are predictions based upon our current expectations, estimates and assumptions. However, since these statements deal with future events, they are subject to numerous known and unknown risks and uncertainties as discussed in detail in our documents filed with the SEC, including our most recently filed Forms 10-K and 10-Q. We assume no obligation to revise any forward-looking statements made on today's call.

During this call and in our third quarter 2021 earnings press release, we refer to GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. The non-GAAP financial measures are not prepared in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles and are in addition to and not a substitute for or superior to measures of financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP. A reconciliation between the GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures is included in our third quarter 2021 earnings press release available on our Investor Relations website.

Joining me on the call today are KR Sridhar, Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Greg Cameron, our Chief Financial Officer. KR will begin with an overview of business highlights from the quarter. Then Greg will review the operating and financial highlights of the quarter. And after the prepared remarks, we will take your questions.

I will now turn the call over to KR.

Good day, everyone. Thank you for joining us on the call. At Bloom Energy, we are deeply saddened by the loss of our long-serving board member, General Colin Powell. At every opportunity, he proudly evangelized our mission and strongly supported our business. These insights helped us to build a strong value-based culture and always gave us courage to do the right thing. Alma, Michael, Annemarie and Linda, our heartfelt gratitude to you for graciously sharing him with us.

Our thoughts and prayers are with you. This friendship and mentorship have made me a better person and his deep engagement with Bloom has made us a better company. If he were here with me today, he would, as he has on innumerable occasions, instantly offer an in-the-moment leadership lesson, "Hey KR good moment, now get on with it and talk about Bloom. How could you General?

Okay, then. What better way for me to start then with our recent announcement on expanding Bloom's partnership with SK ecoplant. KI Park, the CEO of SK ecoplant, and I see this agreement as a transformational event for our 2 companies. We see this partnership as a way for us to establish strong leadership position in the energy sector at a time when it's rapidly decarbonizing and reinventing itself.

Here is a brief recap of our relationship. SK ecoplant has partnered with Bloom for the last 3 years to develop the market and deploy Bloom server in South Korea. Through this collaboration, we have proved that Bloom has the best technology for fuel cell power generation and our products deliver on the promises we make, outstanding availability, output, efficiency and reliability. As a company, we execute and deliver on our commitments and meet goals. We have very mature operational capabilities and scalable processes to grow rapidly. We respect partnerships and create win-wins.

So this firsthand experience is what has given our strategic partner, the confidence to strengthen this relationship and give us a minimum guaranteed order of 500 megawatts of Bloom Energy Servers in the next 3 years.

At Bloom, our focus has been on creating partnerships that have meaningful scale and has a material impact on our business. A firm offtake of this magnitude enables us to plan, invest and operate our business with far greater certainty. But that's not all we did during the 3 years. We also launched innovative products. The first-ever solid oxide fuel cell power tower. The first utility-scale solid oxide combined heat and power project and a demo unit of the first hydrogen-feed solid oxide fuel cell power systems.

Again, based on the chemistry, we established as partners for the last 3 years to launch innovative new features and applications to our core Bloom platform, it truly excites me that we will be doing the same in the hydrogen space by creating hydrogen innovation centers in Korea and the U.S.

In 3 short years, from a standing start, we have become the absolute leaders in the fuel cell power generation market in Korea today. The goal of our partnership is to emulate that success and become the #1 player in the hydrogen market. Given the versatility of our platform, we have multiple pathways to achieve that. Our transacted and deployed fleet of Bloom Servers, totaling over 1 gigawatt globally for the first time, can run on up to 50% hydrogen fuel without needing any hardware modifications. In other words, we can provide hydrogen-based power at scale as soon as the fuel becomes available.

We are successfully demonstrating our 100% hydrogen-fed fuel cell systems in Korea and announced the commercial availability of this product starting FY 2022. And of course, we are very excited about the Bloom Electrolyzer. The most energy-efficient electrolyzer to produce clean hydrogen to date and 15% to 45% more efficient than any other product on the market today.

Now if you look at the timing of our opening the hydrogen innovation centers in Korea and the U.S., it coincides with the initiation of aggressive road maps and policy and financial support by the 2 national governments. South Korea government supported hydrogen economy road map is the most ambitious in the world with the aim of ensuring 15,000 megawatts of hydrogen fuel cell installations, 6.2 million hydrogen vehicles and 1,200 hydrogen charging stations by 2040.

In the United States, both the infrastructure and the reconciliation bill have significant provisions for accelerating the hydrogen economy as well as building resilient microgrids.

Also, after 3 years of closely working with us, SK ecoplant investment in our equity speaks to the confidence they have in our business. They want to participate in the upside of Bloom's value going forward. We welcome their capital and value their partnership. I want to thank the SK ecoplant and Bloom teams that have worked to make this transaction happen. And I also want to thank the people that have been working so hard at the operating level to execute and innovate which has made this partnership so strong.

Speaking of people, we're constantly adding great talent to our team. Ed Vallejo, our new Head of Investor Relations, has long-lasting relationships with many of the analysts and investors in our sector and brings with him an extensive IR expense.

We have seen good traction in our renewable natural gas and waste-to-energy applications. You will be hearing more from us on this topic in the coming days and months.Chuck Kolstad has joined as the VP of Commercial growth in this space. Chuck has extensive experience in water, waste water and environmental markets. And held leadership roles in 2 of the largest investor-owned utility and contract operations company in North America. We will be sharing with you next month, leadership hire on the hydrogen side of the business that we're very excited about as well as some new developments on the hydrogen front.

As you've heard today, we are on our way to building a strong global footprint with our partner, SK ecoplant and also have an excellent international business development team that we have assembled. The work we have done on our marine applications is going really well under the leadership of Tim Schweikert, who has been a senior consultant for Bloom.

Today, I'm happy to announce that Tim has joined us as a full-time Senior Managing Director and Head of our International Business and will continue to head Marine. Tim was the CEO of GE Global Locomotive business and operated in Asia, Europe and Africa, and we are excited for him to take this position at this moment who is transitioning out of the company.

Now let me have Greg walk you through Q3 and how 2021 is shaping as well as give you some insight on the changes we are making at Bloom operationally to be a predictable, high-growth and innovative company. Greg?

Thank you, KR. The team did an amazing job this quarter navigating through the current environment. A couple of items to highlight for the third quarter. We achieved a record number of third quarter acceptances. We made significant progress on our technology road map with product releases of the hydrogen energy server and Bloom Electrolyzer. We are seeing the largest commercial pipeline in our history for our Bloom always on server as we continue to build out our commercial capability in new states and globally.

We are at record levels of manufacturing servers while we're adding to our manufacturing capacity to meet future demand. We, like other global manufacturing businesses, are experiencing supply chain pressures that are temporarily impacting both our revenue as certain installations have been delayed and our ability to drive down cost at the same rates we had previously achieved. I'll spend more time on this point later.

We continue to simplify our business model and are accelerating our shift out of low-margin installation business as we leverage our partnerships. Last month, we signed definitive agreements with SK ecoplant to provide the revenue visibility, technology cooperation, process simplification and investment to position Bloom to accelerate our growth. A lot more to come on this point later in the discussion and into the future.

First, beginning on Page 3 of the supplemental deck, let me go through our financial performance for the third quarter. One item to highlight before we get into the individual metrics. The third quarter of 2020 results included a onetime revenue benefit of $14.2 million that we highlighted at the time related to a 2017 transaction that did not repeat this year. Where appropriate for year-over-year comparisons, we've noted that benefit.

Starting with the top line. We achieved a record third quarter acceptances of $353 million, up 12.4% versus last year. Revenue was $207.2 million, up 11.4% versus last year, excluding the onetime item and was impacted by a delay of an acceptance representing roughly $20 million in revenue. This is an example of a supply chain issue delaying an installation and pushing revenue from 1 quarter to the next. The aluminum trades required for this installation has since been sourced and the project is on track for a fourth quarter acceptance and revenue.

As I've discussed in the past, these types of delays reinforce our stated strategy to simplify our operating environment and becoming more predictable by reducing our installation process of our business. We are accelerating our use of EPC partners that will purchase equipment on Bloom and perform the server installations.

These partners will transact with the end customer for the sale of the equipment and installation work and earn the revenue from the end customer. While this acceleration will negatively impact our revenue dollars as we no longer pay in the installation work, it has the benefit of reducing margin-dilutive portion of our business. This continues to be the right long-term strategy for our business but comes with some near-term revenue headwinds that we will manage.

Moving on to Slide 4 in the deck. In the third quarter, our non-GAAP gross margin was 19.2%. While gross margin improved slightly from the second quarter, global supply chain issues and inflationary pressures are impacting them. This is consistent with what other manufacturing businesses are also experiencing globally and is by no means unique to Bloom.

Like others, we've been impacted by inflationary cost pressures in our logistics, source components and direct labor. That said, while we were unable to bring our costs down for our annual target of 10% to 15%, our strong supply chain and manufacturing model has been successful in keeping our product costs from rising over the past 4 quarters.

As we focus on execution, we have prioritized meeting our customer needs even that comes with some temporary increases in cost compared to our prior projections. We are continuing to take actions that will offset cost increases in logistics, components and manufacturing, but these increases have mostly offset the material deflation that we planned for the year.

While we continue to believe this is a temporary issue that will clear up in the coming year, we are taking actions to increase our automation, drive efficiencies in our freight management and secure additional suppliers. As these cost pressures subside in the months ahead, these actions will continue to drive down the cost of making, shipping and installing our product.

For the year, we expect the net impact to our margins is about 5% versus our total year expectations.

For the third quarter, these impacts to gross margin translate into a non-GAAP operating loss of $22.9 million and a negative adjusted EBITDA of $9.8 million.

With respect to our cash flow and debt analysis on Slide 5. For the third quarter, cash flow from operating activities equal to usage of $72.6 million as we built up the working capital to support our fourth quarter acceptances. Our total cash balances were $319.9 million, versus the second quarter 2021 of $400.5 million, while our recourse debt balances of $300 million remained flat with the second quarter of 2021. Versus the third quarter last year, our recourse debt has been reduced to $175.5 million, reflecting last year's deleveraging accomplishments.

In the fourth quarter, cash balances are expected to improve with the anticipated completion of the first tranche of the SK ecoplant equity investment for $255 million.

As I noted on Slide 6, we continue to invest in our technology, originations and control environment. We are building out our commercial capability, both in the U.S. and internationally. Our originations teams have been highly focused on providing potential customers with the benefits of resiliency, sustainability and predictability of our always-on Energy Server.

As I mentioned at the opening, our commercial pipeline has never been stronger and reflects the efforts we've made to secure larger installations, in terms of both contracted bookings as well as megawatts per site and in new geographies. The team is highly focused on closing the pipeline of transactions to ensure we have the adequate backlog to support our growth targets. I look forward to sharing the progress on our next earnings call.

We continue to make progress on operationalizing our staff manufacturing facility in Fremont, California. Our longer-term strategy remains to shift our revenue production to Bloom 7.5, utilizing the 1 gigawatt of stack manufacturing we are building in Fremont.

In the near term, to meet our customer demand, we are utilizing additional 5.0 capacity. It's important to remember any investment in Bloom 5.0 tooling can be later repurposed for Bloom 7.5 and for electrolyzers. Whether we are utilizing the Bloom 5.0 or 7.5 platform, we are incredibly focused on product cost reductions. Supply chain benefits, manufacturing improvements and design changes can be leveraged across platforms.

We continue to focus on innovation in our technology road map and are prioritizing our investments in areas that we see the most robust near-term opportunities while balancing longer development prospects. We are bringing our integrated electrolyzer to deployment, continuing to focus on product cost down and then ensuring we have the manufacturing capacity to meet our customer needs. As we engage with potential customers and partners, we are receiving positive feedback on our Electrolyzer.

Since we launched the product a few months ago, we've been able to show potential customers our efficiency superiority. To meet our customers' timing needs, we've accelerated our investments in engineering, product management and commercial leadership to deliver an integrated product that will supply the produced hydrogen ready for the customer use.

Beyond our hydrogen initiatives, we've made progress on biogas, carbon capture and our marine initiatives and continue to seek additional partners to accelerate our technology, development and product deployment.

As we look forward for the remainder of the year and beyond, there are a couple of items to adjust to our 2021 framework detailed on Slide 7. We have successfully accelerated our initiative to leverage EPC partners to finance customer projects, purchase our equipment and perform server installations. While this will be accretive to margins, it reduces our installation revenue and for 2021 takes roughly $35 million from our total year projections.

We are still on track for our customers accepting 170 to 180 megawatts we plan for the year, but I would now expect our current year revenue to be closer to $935 million to $965 million. For future guidance, we will incorporate a smaller percentage of installations being performed by Bloom.

We've quantified the net supply chain pressure being roughly 5 points of non-GAAP gross margin. For the year, I would now expect our non-GAAP gross margin to be closer to 21% as the supply chain pressures should be slightly offset by the margin improvement from reduced installation. This lower gross margin should translate into roughly a 3% non-GAAP operating loss for 2021 and push our CFO expectations out a year. At the midpoint of the range, our revenue would be up over 20% versus 2020, and our non-GAAP gross margins would be roughly flat to last year.

As we look forward, we see many tailwinds that will accelerate our growth. Climate change is reinforcing the need for power resiliency and sustainability, decarbonization and a continuous source of power has become a standing agenda item for boards and management teams across the world.

Also, as currently drafted, the infrastructure and reconciliation bills is signed into law would provide an extension of the investment tax credit, a hydrogen production tax credit and refundability of both tax credits as well as funding for hydrogen hubs and carbon sequestration. While these programs are currently under discussion, they represented increased interest by policymakers in resiliency and sustainability and reinforce the Bloom value to our customers.

Moving on to Slide 8 in the deck. Let me now take a few moments addressing the SK ecoplant transaction. I want to build off what KR shared in his comments and offer some additional perspective. Over my 1.5 years of Bloom, I've spoken many times about our special relationship with SK ecoplant. Our 2 companies share many goals and have built an amazing partnership over the past 3 years. The recent agreements we've made with SK ecoplant create a foundation to build additional value for both companies.

For Bloom, we've contracted for a minimum of 500 megawatts of the energy server acceptances over the next 3 years. These acceptances are in line with our expectations for growth in the South Korean market. We have an agreement to work more closely together with EPC and financing partnerships in the U.S. market, greatly simplifying our business model while leveraging their construction expertise. We also plan to leverage their capability as we enter new international markets, which we anticipate will accelerate our growth by enabling us to scale more quickly.

Their equity investment is intended to provide the additional capital required to aggressively deploy our hydrogen Energy Server and Bloom Electrolyzer, which have a higher efficiency than any other products being advertised. Our goal is to leverage our production scale, large project expertise an ability to create green hydrogen at less kilowatts per kilogram.

While we could have funded this over time through operations, having the additional capital provides the opportunity to invest quicker and more aggressively and bring our products to our customers sooner.

Over the next few weeks, as we work closely with SK ecoplant on our hydrogen innovation centers and market expansion, we will be updating our growth expectations and will include this updated guidance in our fourth quarter earnings and 2022 outlook in February.

While I anticipate that our 2022 projections will be in line with prior growth guidance, for the years beyond 2022, we will update assumptions to reflect our product leadership in a world accelerating towards decarbonization.

We continue to invest in our technology, manufacturing and front-end origination teams to build and expand our product platform and meet our customers' needs. Furthermore, we have a strong operating performance in meeting the demands of the current supply chain. Our strong supply chain and manufacturing framework will help us manage the demands of the current supply chain.

Our expansion of the SK ecoplant strategic partnership provides revenue transparency in the near term while providing the collaboration and capital to develop our leadership position in the hydrogen economy.

In summary, we believe there is no other company in our sector with the platforms like products that offer the benefits of resiliency and decarbonization that is driving a robust pipeline of opportunities and real revenue. And as always, we continue to run this company with a disciplined focus on operational excellence, which creates value for our shareholders.

With that, operator, let's open up the line for questions.

(Operator Instructions) For our first question, we have Stephen Byrd from Morgan Stanley.

Thanks for the thorough update on supply chain and the growth outlook. I was curious, how are you looking at the cost reduction potential going into 2022 for both your Electrolyzer and fuel cell product. I know the -- you highlighted a number of supply chain headwinds. I'm asking in the context mostly of the Electrolyzer in terms of just there are quite a few companies that are looking to scale up and reduce per unit cost.

And I'm just curious sort of what sort of trajectory you see on the Electrolyzer, but certainly also just on the fuel cell side as well. On the positive side, we see your volumes going way up in terms of additional sales and the SK agreement was a great affirmation of that growth. On the other hand, thinking about the selling price continuing to drop and just thinking about sort of that, what your cost -- can your costs drop as well on a commensurate basis? So just sort of broadly trying to get a better read for your sort of cost position in '22.

Thanks, Stephen. That's a great question. So look, we see the externalities, the cost pressures in terms of duty, freight, tariffs, and just supply shortages has been temporary. How long that lasts, it's hard to quantify. But those things are not going to last forever in the economy because it's a cycle. So you take that away.

Here's what I think, Stephen, you know from knowing this company for a long time. Cost reduction is in our DNA, okay? We have done teens cost reduction year-over-year even without the benefit of volume. That DNA is going to continue even without the volume. But now we have an added tailwind to us in that we have the volume. And volume learning and bringing costs down and getting absorption is something every company knows how to do. So shame on us if we don't do that, given that we knew how to do cost reductions even without the volume.

So without a question, we will be doing those things. The fact that all these external pressures have put cost pressures and put it upwards. We are still flat all that we're not doing is we're not bringing the cost down as much as we need to, but most people are raising cost. We are not because our cost reductions are getting eaten away by some of these temporary things. When these pressures go away, those cost reductions we brought along this year as well as whatever we bring with volume next year will all accrete to our business.

So I'm extremely bullish about this. Remember, in our mission statement, it's about affordable. We are going to be the most affordable way to produce hydrogen and to produce electricity in the long run. And that's our goal. That's our mission. We're heads down on it. That's our DNA.

Understood. And a fair point, you've had a long history of pretty significant name on cost reduction. So that's a very fair point. And shifting gears to legislation, Greg gave a good overview of all the components of support that's in the draft legislation. I was just curious if this legislation passes and certainly that it does, in particular, the support for green hydrogen is quite significant.

Do you see the potential for that legislation could start significant growth in Electrolyzer sales and adoption of green hydrogen? Maybe put more broadly, if legislation were to pass, what do you see as kind of the most significant impacts to your business, both kind of near and long term?

So that, again, is a great question. Both Greg and I will answer this question, Steve, and I'll get started, and then I'll pass it on to Greg. So you know this from the time we started selling our products. As I sit here, right? We have had this dagger of uncertainty hanging on our heads about investment tax credit, the policy, how long will it last? In terms of policies like that, 1 year plus 1 year, plus 1 year, 1 plus 1 plus 1 does not add up to 3, right?

Having that 5-year certainty, 10-year certainty that is coming out is going to be phenomenal. That's number one. Number 2 is going to be that there is refundability on both this investment tax edit and production tax credit as it's written. And what that does is it eliminates the uncertainty as well as the complications that tax equity finding enough capacity, all that goes away.

To put that in the context of the entire world of investing who wants to invest in ESG, we see this as an amazing tailwind for being able to finance our projects going forward, right? So that's a tremendous tailwind for our core business as well as for Electrolyzer business.

On the Electrolyzer side, as it is written, the 3-kilogram hydrogen credit will enable us to sell hydrogen at parity in cost to gray hydrogen. So that should obviously open up huge markets and should accelerate adoption in the marketplace because if as an end customer, you have to pay the same price and you have the choice between picking green hydrogen and gray hydrogen, you're obviously got a big green hydrogen.

Yes. No, I think that's exactly right, KR. Having the availability of the funding, the predictability on the ITC for an extended period of time as well as, if you remember back to our second quarter on our ability to do our PPA financings then was driven by a tightness in the market around tax equity. The refundability will take that off the table in future years and provide money for that.

I think the other 2 points I'd make is around demonstration dollars -- of money for demonstration dollars in the infrastructure bill, both around the hydrogen hubs as well as around carbon capture. We think both of those will create opportunities for us to work with folks that we're talking with today about putting our servers in motion and having a place for people to go see those and would be important for us. So I think it's a nice tailwind as we think about the business going forward.

It's a great overview and a good point on the last there on just carbon capture. I've forgotten that element that could be beneficial as well.

For our next question, we have Michael Blum from Wells Fargo.

I wanted to ask another question on the SK partnership here.

In terms of those the hydrogen innovation centers, what are the milestones we should be looking for there? Are there certain product milestones, efficiencies, product sales? Just trying to put some tangible outcomes around those 2 centers.

Michael, it's Greg. And this is something as we negotiated with SK and talked about expanding this partnership. This was something both teams were really excited to make sure that was part of the overall agreement. So if you think about the hydrogen innovation centers, and it's true for our electrolyzers, the same is true for our fuel cell.

What we're really looking for is a place where we can collaborate together where our core IP is protected, but at the same time, we can invite other folks in together and work on product integration. And what I mean by that, if you think about our Electrolyzer and the work that we're doing within our labs, and how we are optimizing our product within there.

If you think about what exists in the balance of plan on the left and the right of that from the electricity through to what the use -- customer use of the hydrogen is going to be, having partners available that can come and see our product, whether it's here or in South Korea and work to develop an end-to-end integrated product that can be delivered to the customer.

So the milestones are really going to be around how do you take the Electrolyzer and build out that ecosystem around it that provides a use to the customer, whether they're looking for compressed hydrogen or they're looking for an ammonia application. Or it needs to go into a truck or it needs to be produced on site and put right into a manufacturing process, all that innovation should be happening in those centers. So we're really excited to have that as part of the deal.

Great. I appreciate it. Second question, I just wanted to ask about the cash burn rate and how you're planning to finance the build-out of the factory and the other capital obligations. In light of the fact that you've now -- you're now forecasting to be cash flow positive in '22 instead of '21. And just to clarify, is that the beginning of '22, the end of '22. So have a lot in that question, so...

So Michael, I think what we -- yes, what we talked about for this year, where our hope was to be CFOA positive, and we've been approaching it all along when we reforecast out given where we are on margins, and you trickle that through, it obviously postponed. So as we think about next year, the expectation would be that we'd move forward to -- for the entire year of 2022, we would be -- with the same guidance we had this year is our expectation is will be approaching CFOA positives we think.

The cash reduction in cash balances this quarter, a lot of it had to do with -- we still have a tremendous fourth quarter ahead of us. And if you look at the builds that were in place as we go forward from an inventory standpoint across the operation, we're building the things that are necessary for us in order to meet our customer needs and have the shipments and acceptances that we have for plan for what is still planned to be a really big fourth quarter.

I think with the addition of the SK capital investment that we expect to come within December, any type of pressure, short-term pressure around any of our cash balances is well in hand at this point. And listen, we're going to take that capital and look to be even more aggressive around our investments not only in our technology, with our R&D investment, but we're going to continue to build out on our originations capability.

And we're going to build out our Fremont facility fairly quickly. As we look forward and see the amount of demand that's coming, we need to get ahead of it. Our factories are extremely efficient to build, meaning from start to finish once we want to put a line on it's about 8 to 9 months.

And then given the amount of profit that we make on each individual unit, the payback on those is less than a year. So we're going to take that capital and make sure that we are -- as soon as we get 1 line up and going within the factory, we're moving on to the next 200-megawatt line. And based on our view, we see that we'll need those lines in place over the coming years. So I think we're well positioned given the investment that we received -- we will receive this quarter from SK.

For the next question, we have Vaibhav Vaishnav from Coker & Palmer.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

So we talked about product margins. Is there a way you can help us get comfortable with how you think about margins on services? How can we get to the determined like, I think, like 20% margins? And how does that mechanically happen? How much of that is from scaling up? And how much of that is from product getting better?

Yes. So these listen, I think as we had Glen earlier in the year, do the teach-in, right? And his key points were a few things around it. One is we constantly have the opportunity to provide new power modules into our installed base and each power module we put in is at a lower cost in a longer life, and that gets us the benefit.

The second part is each contract that we're pricing today has at least a 20% product margin built -- service margin built into that contract. So each time we add a new contract into the installed base is coming with that.

And then three, as we go forward, our expectation is if you look at back a year ago where we were losing $20 million on our gross margin line from our service business being to break even a slight profit where we are today. Our expectation from here is to go forward. And we'll achieve that 20% gross margin, not this year, not next year, but in the out years, we'll grow from there.

And we're not limited at 20% either. Even if we price it at 20%, we can continue to do things to operate our fleet, both from a cost as well as from an optimization of running the fleet that we think can improve us above that number. But we think this is a journey as we move forward. And we're very encouraged that we've had 3 quarters, now we're in a row here where we've been at least breakeven to a slight profit.

And this is KR, the one key point that Greg made, I want to reemphasize, is the current products we are shipping today with its performance and how we project out the service to be will enable us to 20% margin. So this is not something in the future with new technology. This is how we are putting it today based on what we're shipping today.

Maybe switching to the SK announcement. And KR you talked -- KR, you talked about 15 gigawatts as per the Korean policy, but my understanding is, I think, 7 gigawatts is for their internal purpose and 8 gigawatt is for exporting to other countries. With -- that was more interesting point for me in this SK announcement that you guys can now target the other countries. Can you help me how that could be done? Would you need to have a manufacturing plant in Korea? And how should we think about you guys targeting those other countries from the SK announcement?

Thank you, V. So look, this 500 megawatts, and we have emphasized it is the minimum guarantee offtake, right? So this is all for U.S. and Korea using our core product. And it's predominantly whatever we are shipping today, very similar kind of products is what you're looking at, and that's the minimum model.

By no means are the 2 companies saying that, that is our total opportunity that's out there, okay? The opportunity is significantly greater is what we believe. That's why we are excited about this partnership. So that's just in Korea. In addition to that, we have agreed that we will be -- SK as a conglomerate. They're a global conglomerate that operates in so many different countries.

They have relationships in so many countries. They do development projects, not just in energy, but in real estate and so many other things, both for their purposes as well as for their clients. So we will evaluate any of those opportunities and enter together and rinse and repeat what we did in Korea in those countries is the goal that we have both collectively agreed upon, and we will evaluate that on a country-by-country basis and decide if that's a country we want to be able to play that rinse and repeat model. So that is what we have said publicly, and we are excited about it.

Yes. The only thing I'd add, KR, is the they are construction business is one of their core businesses. So as we look for additional countries to add as we expand globally, they will be a partner. We expect them to be a partner to us to help us simplify our business model, where they can provide that construction and possibly even financing if it's required. So there -- we won't be repeating an installation business that we've built in the U.S. in those countries.

And there's an added thing which is exciting. They are heavily into wastewater treatment, other kinds of bio gas-related projects to be able to bolt on the most efficient device that can take a renewable natural gas and convert that to electricity and to be working with a partner like that, that's an opportunity that's not in those numbers that you saw that we hope to develop.

In terms of building factories, you just heard what we said, the core product [IP], we can build those copy exact lines and will pay for itself in less than a year. Wherever the market is similar to the JV that we announced at Korea, that's where we will do the final assembly. So it's accretive to jobs here in the U.S. and it will be accretive to jobs in the local economy that's going to absorb the product, it's a win-win.

Okay. And just for clarification, have you just broken out the 500 megawatts into fuel cell versus electrolyzers or is that something that we should expect?

It's all fuel cells. What we've agreed to is the contract today exists around our core product, and that's what we've got that as a minimum for, which is in line with our expectations for the market. And then the electrolyzers, we develop that out would be upside to that number.

For the next question, we have Colin Rusch from Oppenheimer.

You've talked about a different sales process in the U.S. And I'm curious what the returns are. You targeted some of the peer customers and curious how that conversion process is going? What you can tell us? I know you don't provide backlog more than once a year, but would love to get a better sense of about that process.

Yes, Colin, we just give our bookings and backlog once a year. So we'll do that on the next call. And what I promised after last year was I tried to share a little bit more and give a sense of how we're doing in the middle of the year. I would point to our commercial pipelines, right?

And these are real opportunities moving through our -- moving through our process from prospect to contracting. And if I look at it across all of those stages, it's never been higher in the history of Bloom. And we need to complete the contracting and get the booking, and we can share that with you in 90 days. But I would tell you, not only is it higher, but it is in larger projects and installations than we've had traditionally, which has been a strategic stated goal of the company.

So we are, both with existing customers looking for larger opportunities, larger installations, but as well as new customers in new geographies at really exciting sizes and installation. So it's -- we're really -- we really feel good about the commercial pipeline. I'll tell you, Sharelynn Moore as our CMO, has been doing a terrific job. Billy Brooks is coming in as our sales leader is really doing a nice job and we have the whole team aligned and making sure that they're successful as we move into the later part of this year.

And then on 7.5, could you just give us an update on progress there and time frame for implementation and now we can (inaudible) sort see that good impact the COGS?

Yes. So a couple of points on 7.5 and 5.0 because we think about it a lot. As we look back on 5.0, and we look back at where our cost expectations were by the time we got to 7.5, we've already achieved a lot of those cost downs with our current product on 5.0. And we think firmly there's more opportunity to take costs out of that product. It's going to be here as not only for revenue today, but for our service fleet as well as some of our early applications are going to be built on that platform. So we're going to be on 5.0 manufacturing that component.

On 7.5, as we bring that in, our goal is to make that in our Fremont facility. We are seeing the same supply chain issues in tooling and everything else that we're seeing in our components that we're building for our machines. So we're in a process as we operationalize 7.5, we're going to rely heavily on 5.0 as well to make sure we can get to the volume numbers that we need to next year.

Colin, our customers are indifferent to whether it's 7.5 or 5.0, they don't -- they even won't know even what the server is to them. It's a lot about for us. And as we look to leverage our cost down, whether it's 5.0 or 7.5, we see the ability to drive down both of those as we'll share best practices across those. So I think we're pretty comfortable where we are. We're trying to derisk our plan for next year and at the same time, introduce the new technology simultaneously.

For the next question, we have Pearce Hammond from Piper Sandler.

My first is, I was curious with these higher natural gas prices. Is that presented a headwind for any of your existing customers? Or is that a headwind for new sales and installations?

That's a great question. Look, the first thing that we need to understand, for Bloom, we never take the fuel risk on our side or the fuel benefit on our side. So we are -- (inaudible) does not impact us and our PPA pricing and anything we do. That's the first thing to understand.

The second thing is, for our customers, many of them, these are Fortune 100 customers who are very sophisticated. They have their energy strategies. Some of them buy in the spot market and feel like that's the right thing to do. And they will incur some short-term issues, but easily make up for that when things go the other way. Some for other customers ask us to help them figure out options for hedging and things like that, and we make that happen, too.

So for our customer, if they want to hedge and have cost predictability, that's an option for them. The third point to understand about natural gas is there is a natural hedge built into our product. Why? If the costs were to go up, the large base load power and power powers that produce electricity at much lower efficiencies. And then on top of that, have transmission distribution classes, we'll feel the impact of that lot more than the very efficient Bloom servers that operate on site.

If you put the 2 together, since our customer has the choice of buying baseload from the utility or buying baseload from us, they look at the difference and not at absolute numbers, and they should be happier for having the Bloom system because they're more efficient.

That's a very detailed answer. I appreciate that. And then my follow-up question I know it's still pretty new, but I'm just curious if there's any update on the Idaho National Lab. And the reason I'm asking is you can hit those much higher efficiency rates with your Electrolyzer when it's tied in with the nuclear plant. And so just curious if there's any updates there and maybe a quick reminder of why that efficiency gain occurs with that high heat coming from the nuclear facility.

Excellent question. Again, because it's our customer and they have not released anything. What I can tell you is that's on progress. That is progressing well. We are very bullish about where those results will turn out for a very simple reason, right?

The question you asked, and I'm going to explain it for everybody. When you make hydrogen, you require a certain amount of energy. That energy can be provided only as electricity, if you have a low temperature electrolyzer. However, with the Bloom Electrolyzer that operates at higher temperature, you can give part of that as heat and part of it is electricity.

Heat will cost you 1/5, what it will cost electricity even in heat renewable source. So when you bring in high temperature's team, and use that for some of that energy and use electricity only for the rest, given that 80% of the hydrogen production cost will be energy input costs in large scale, we stand to win. We stand to win in terms of lower hydrogen cost. So this project is essential, and it will be a great showcase. Number one.

Number 2 is all the nuclear power plants love to operate on base load. As we bring in more renewables during the day, that base load goes down, and they have to curtail that power. So it is next to free. Being able to produce hydrogen with that excess with their electricity as well as the heat, that's a triple win, right? So we're excited about the project. It is on track. We are hoping that our customers will report that -- report the results of the test very soon.

And for our next question, we have Pavel Molchanov now from Raymond James.

You talked a lot about built that better and the new green hydrogen credit. I wanted to ask about what you're seeing on the other side of the Atlantic as demand for electrolyzers given the EU targets, the fact that the new German coalition is increasingly pushing forward. It seems like the addressable market for electrolyzers in Europe is materializing a lot faster than it is here even with the new subsidy.

Thank you for that question. Look, you are right, but I would add, not only are we seeing this interest for electrolyzers but also for our core fuel cell product within (inaudible). We are clearly identifying opportunities. I think it was 2 calls ago that we reported building an amazing team, and we put out a press release not too long ago of some very good, well-known names in the field joining the Bloom team in Germany, France, U.K., Italy, all those places.

We are seeing very strong interest for their -- for our core product, given the sustainability and resiliency, but we are also seeing tremendous interest on the electrolyzer front coming from countries. We are evaluating it. And the subsidies there in certain countries are even better than the $3 a kilogram that we are seeing here in the bill, in like U.S. So I think globally, it is going to be a competition of the various countries trying to be the first to try and adapt this, and we don't see this just as an U.S. opportunity.

Right. Okay. Also on the Samsung marine shipping front, any updated timetable on when commercialization of that product is expected?

So let me say the following. Stay tuned before we get on the call with you next time, you will see some exciting releases coming from us.

Fair enough. We'll hold you to that.

For our last question, we have Alex Kania from Wolfe Research.

One just on the SK announcement. I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit about the split between the $4.5 billion, the split between, let's say, the equipment costs of installation over the next -- through 2025 and what the service cash flow stream looks like?

Yes. Alex, it's simple. It's about 1/3 of it comes upfront in the equipment sale, and we earn about 2/3 of it over the service life.

Great. And then just as a follow-up from the previous questions just on electrolyzers. I mean obviously, it's getting pretty interesting right now, at least in the U.S. and abroad, just on these potential supports. Maybe even beyond just nuclear units, what type of other customers are you talking to right now that were the solid oxide electrolyzer would really work for them?

So I'm glad you post that question that I want to be very clear. Nuclear is just one application. So here is the beauty of the Bloom Electrolyzer. If it is all electricity similar to how alkaline electrolyzers or PEM electrolyzers work, our efficiency is still better. So any application that you can use a PEM electrolyzer or alkaline electrolyzer, we will offer better efficiency. So we apply across the board.

We are especially better if we can generate some amount of steam coming as heat, either from industrial applications, nuclear applications or solar concentration, okay? So we are talking not just to nuclear side of the story, we are talking to all the applications. We're looking at everything. And that is the reason -- Greg was saying how excited we are about the hydrogen innovation centers.

At the end of the day, for transition to happen, it is not a gizmo. It's not an electrolyzer that an end customer is going to buy. They're going to need a solution. We are going to validate that entire solution, optimize that entire solution for cost predictability, reliability, very similar to what we did at a core product, and that's what we want to offer to the customer.

Okay. So let me thank all of you for these great questions, and they were very thoughtful. I would like to close with the following points for you. At Bloom, we have always been deliberate at every step, thinking through how to build a great company. If you just look at our core business, in terms of resiliency, cost predictability, sustainability. Look at where the world is heading. It is heading in the direction that we told you 10 years ago, the world would be heading. And we built the company for this moment, okay?

And then finally, corporations have the ability to see that energy is getting democratized and through their procurement practice, they have control on their energy future. We are giving them an opportunity to hasten the energy transition, enhance their operational capability and build brand value. That's the promise we are making to our customers. This is the commitment we are making to the world. We are in a fabulous place. We really thank you for being part of this journey. And for those of you sitting on the sidelines, we'd say what are you waiting for? Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect.