Capstone Green Energy Corp (CGRN) 2017 Q2 法說會逐字稿

And good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Capstone Turbine Corporation earnings conference call for second quarter fiscal year 2017 financial results, ended on September 30th, 2016. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. (Operator instructions)

As a reminder, this conference may be recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to our host of today's call, Ms. Clarice Hovsepian, Vice President Human Resources and Corporate Counsel. You may begin.

Thank you. Good afternoon, and welcome to Capstone Turbine Corporation's conference call for the second quarter of fiscal year 2017, ended September 30th, 2016.

Capstone filed its quarterly report on Form 10-Q with the Securities and Exchange Commission today, November 9th, 2016. If you do not have access to this document and would like one, please contact us by email at IR@capstoneturbine.com, or you can view all of our public filings on the SEC website at www.sec.gov or on our website at www.capstoneturbine.com.

During the course of this conference call, management may make projections or other forward-looking statements regarding future events or financial performance of the Company within the meaning of the Safe Harbor provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

These statements relate to, among other things, a collection of reserved accounts receivable, shipment of finished goods, benefits from our cost reduction initiatives, improved operating leverage and organizational efficiency, strengthened distribution channel, new product development and the success of our signature series product, compliance with government regulations, increased sales in Russia, implementation of the Capstone Energy Finance business, growth of our aftermarket service business, growth and diversification of our end markets, performance in light of macroeconomic headwinds, and attaining profitability.

Forward-looking statements may be identified by words such as believe, expect, objective, intend, targeted, planned, and similar phrases. These forward-looking statements are subject to numerous assumptions, risks and uncertainties described in Capstone's Form 10-K and Form 10-Q, and other recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, that may cause Capstone's actual results to be materially different from any future results expressed or implied in such statements.

Because of the risks and uncertainties, Capstone cautions you not to place undue reliance on these statements, which speak only as of today. We undertake no obligation and specifically disclaim any obligation to release any revision to any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this conference call or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.

I will now turn the call over to Capstone's President and Chief Executive Officer, Darren Jamison.

Thank you, Clarice. And welcome, everyone, to Capstone's second-quarter earnings call. Joining me today besides Clarice, is Jayme Brooks, our Chief Financial Officer and Chief Accounting Officer.

As mentioned, during the call we will continue to use our slide deck, which has been recently put up on our website under Investor Relations.

During the quarter we continued to focus and execute on our three-pronged business profitability plan and progress on many fronts, although the quarter was not without its challenges.

Our three-pronged business plan is outlined on slide three, and consists of, first, reducing our breakeven from approximately $160 million in annual revenue at 25% gross margin, to approximately $100 million in annual revenue at 25% gross margin. The key to doing this is reducing our business expenses by 35%.

Second is developing new products and services to drive renewed revenue growth opportunities.

And last, but not least, is the launch of Capstone Energy Finance joint venture to capture lost orders because of lack of customer capital dollars or project financing.

So let's start with the first initiative of the three-pronged plan, lowering breakeven levels by reducing business expenses 35%.

I'm proud to report we made significant progress again this quarter towards this goal, as we reduced our operating expenses by 33%, to $6.4 million over last year's levels, which improved our net loss over last year's second quarter by 25% to $5.9 million, despite significantly lower product revenue levels and lower gross margins compared to last year.

I cannot overemphasize how critical it is to lower our breakeven level by reducing our overall business expenses. Slide 4 gives you a graphic illustration of our success and reducing our overall business expenses by 29% or $4.3 million since the starting point of the initiative back in Q1 fiscal 2016.

As significant as these cost reductions have been, we will continue to look for new ways to further lower costs, improve business efficiencies, and essentially lean out our business.

The next initiative on our three-pronged business strategy is developing and driving new product and service revenue growth opportunities. Obviously, this is one of the initiatives that we did not show a lot of progress in the second quarter, as product revenue for the quarter was well short of our internal expectations.

However, as disappointing as this may have been during the quarter, it does not mean we are not making progress on this initiative.

The product revenue shortfall was the result of a delay in three customers' CHP projects into our fiscal third quarter from our second quarter.

As you note on slide 5, the energy efficiency, or CHP market, was a record 81% of our product revenue for the quarter and is up to 61% of product revenue for the fiscal year.

This is positive news as it lowers our reliance on the natural resources, the oil and gas market, but negative news in other ways because energy efficiency market growth creates new challenges in our business.

The energy efficiency market is less predictable from a project timing standpoint than larger oil and gas projects, which tend to be more reliable and more predictable.

Really, a more preferred product mix, near term especially, would be 40% energy efficiency, or CHP, 40% natural resources or oil and gas, and 20% renewable projects.

While it's positive that we continue to diversify our business and to be less dependent on oil and gas market, it's going to add increased volatility and complexity to our business, though require additional management in the future.

However, I do want to underscore that even with the increased unpredictability of our quarterly revenue, our pipeline of projects remains very strong. I remain very optimistic about our future growth.

In fact, research in markets recently reported that it expects global microturbine market to grow at a compounded annual growth rate, or CAGR, of 21.3% during the years between 2016 and 2020. And as the leader in that industry, we remain optimistic about our future and our growth strategy.

Really, if you look past the short term product revenue mix for the quarter, you can really see all the other things we're doing to improve our future product and service revenue growth as part of this three-pronged business strategy.

As you may recall, we announced the new Signature Series C1000 product back in December, with a major focus on energy efficiency, or CHP, market, with its integrated heat recovery module and several other CHP-focused design features.

As shown on slide 6, the C1000 Signature Series generates one megawatt of electrical output and 1.5 megawatts CHP, or heat recovery, output, all in and 8 foot-by-30 foot power plant in a box, unmatched in the industry.

Next, Capstone announced the launch of the C200 Signature Series product, the all-new Signature Series product, which now includes the C200, the C600, the C800, and the C1000 configurations. All have the option for the integrated heat recovery module and also have other features, including the two-stage air filtration, improved enclosure designs, lower noise levels, 12-year marine-grade paint, a new system control platform that easily integrates into customers building management systems for effective on-site CHP.

Slide 7 outlines what we're doing to produce new sources of revenue. One key element of that initiative is rebuilding our business in Russia.

By rebuilding the business, we're continuing to work with our Russian distributor, BPC Engineering, but also adding some additional distribution resources in the region.

Slide 8 highlights the substantial rebound in BPC's business in both revenue and, more importantly, bad debt recovery, which both are dramatic and positive.

A significant part of the Russian market rebound was driven by several released orders from BPC, and we expect several more to be released in the third quarter.

At this increased rate, I believe that BPC will again be a top-five distribution partner by the end of our fiscal year in March.

Also, it's important to note that we received our first order from one of our new Russian distributors DB Energy, for a C800 Signature Series, and we're developing a very robust pipeline of projects with new partners in the Russian region and the CIS states.

Turning to slide 9, slide 9 highlights the product shipments by both market and vertical. Fueled by this rebound in Russia, almost 70% of our product revenue during the quarter was from Europe and Russia, with the US and Canada at 12% and Asia and Australia also at 12%.

The US market, I have to say was particularly soft as we experience continued volatility in the global oil and gas market. But additionally, we think some of the softness can be attributed to the presidential election and associated uncertainty about the US economy.

Like everyone in the US, we are hopeful for a rebound over the next couple of quarters now that the election is finally behind us.

In addition, as part of this initiative, we continue to diversify our markets and verticals and our geographic presence. As you can see by turning to slide 10, we've recently received orders from California, Mexico, Russia, China, and the Republic of [Pakistan].

Turning to slide 11, you can see the improving geographic diversification of our $923 million rolling 12-month opportunity pipeline from our sales force.

We are commissioning our first products in new territories like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Libya, South Africa, India, Indonesia, and Malaysia.

I believe that once these new markets see our unique products in action and our distributors can point to successful installations, the interest in our microturbines will grow, and these new markets will continue to add to our top-line revenue growth.

Additionally, we are hopeful that new large customer opportunities we've already identified previously in Colombia, Ecuador, and Indonesia, could substantially further accelerate revenue growth above and beyond our traditional markets previously mentioned, as well as the US, Mexico, Europe, Russia, and Australia.

Growing our product revenue is very important. But it's also critical that we continue to grow our aftermarket service business.

If we now turn to slide 12, slide 12 highlights the continued growth and success of our aftermarket service business, which we anticipate will grow more than 5% this year, despite the product drop. The heavy concentration of energy efficiency in CH business is actually good for our FPP service contract business, as we tend to see higher attachment rates in the energy efficiency business compared to oil and gas.

So that drives additional FPP service revenue and contract backlogs, despite the drop in product shipments have reached $72.7 million, almost $73 million at the end of the second quarter.

This trend should continue as we offer new FPP contracts, offer new extended warranty products, and new signature series retrofit kits to old R-serious packages in the field.

The third strategic initiative we have part of our three-pronged profitability plan is a successful launch of the Capstone Energy Finance joint venture to capture lost orders due to lack of customer capital dollars or financing options. As you remember, we formed Capstone Energy Finance joint venture, or CEF, back in December to provide power purchase agreements, or PPAs, exclusively for projects that utilized Capstone's proven microturbine technology to deliver low-cost, clean, reliable energy to customers' facilities with zero upfront capital cost.

This quarter I'm extremely proud to announce a partnership with Sky Capital, a wholly owned subsidiary within Sky Solar Group, for $50 million in project capital, and an option for the additional $100 million to support the second phase and third phase of Capstone Energy Finance joint venture growth.

CEF currently has a pipeline of $40 million in well-qualified projects, and we expect it will grow quickly beyond our ability and seek capital.

Slide 13 and 14 shows the highlights and details of Capstone energy finance joint venture. Next, in order to provide growth capital for our distributors, yesterday we took our financing prong to a further step when we announced that we have partnered with Acresis to put together a product financing program for Capstone distribution partners, to provide much needed working capital and growth capital for our well-qualified distribution partners.

Acresis is in the business of helping small business founders and owners achieve personal and professional goals from strategy deployments to fundraising, from detailed planning to sustainable acceleration growth, from realizing it's successful liquidity event, just over a wealth management.

RSP Systems, Capstone's distributor in the greater New York area and Connecticut, with the support of Acresis, recently qualified for initial $3.5 million credit facility from Bridge Bank, based on current sales of Capstone products to quality end users in the New York area.

RSP Systems was selected by Capstone as the pilot distributor for this new financing program with Acresis, as they are one of the largest and fastest-growing CHP markets in the world, with solid energy efficiency incentives, low cost natural gas that's available, and high electric utility rates.

Lastly, in order to execute our three-pronged profitability strategy, we successfully completed a $7.5 million capital raise in October that netted us $6.8 million for working capital.

This equity was needed to keep our balance sheet solid as we look to return the Company to high growth and to better position us for some of our larger CHP and oil and gas sales opportunities while mixing down the path to profitability as quickly as possible.

Slide 15 highlights these and some other recent developments of the quarter.

During the quarter, we continued to move ahead with our product development roadmap with new patented multi-stage lean-vaporizing, premixing fuel injector providing ultra low emissions to meet the United States Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, tier four requirements for power generation.

Under this new program, exhaust emissions will be required to decrease by more than 90%.

We developed new partnerships with the US Department of Energy, or DOE, to provide funding in the amount of $335,000 for one year to Argonne National Laboratory, to help Capstone conduct hydrogen and synthetic fuel, or syngas, testing on Capstone's C65 and C200 microturbines, at no out-of-pocket cost to Capstone.

In addition, we continued progress on our flexible fuels program, with recent successful testing on butane at our facility here in California.

With that, I'll now turn the call over to Jayme Brooks, our CFO, to go over the specific financial results for the quarter. Jayme.

Thanks, Darren. Good afternoon, everyone. I will now review in more detail our financial results for the second quarter of fiscal 2017.

As shown on slides 16 and 17, the net loss for the second quarter of fiscal 2017, decreased 25% to $5.9 million, compared with a net loss of $7.9 million for the same quarter last year.

Net loss was $0.19 per share for Q2 of fiscal 2017, compared with a net loss $0.48 per share in Q2 of fiscal 2016, which is a decrease of 60%.

The Q2 fiscal 2016 net loss takes into account the 1-for-20 reverse stock split that was effected in November 2015. The decrease in net loss and net loss per share during the second quarter of fiscal 2017, was primarily because of our cost-reduction initiatives, which resulted in a 33% decrease in operating expenses from the same period last year.

In addition, the net loss during the second quarter of fiscal 2017 included bad debt recovery, primarily from BPC Engineering, one of our Russian distributors, which was previously reserved during fiscal 2015.

Revenue for the second quarter was $15 million, compared with $17.9 million in the year-ago second quarter, which is a decrease of 16%.

Our revenue was again negatively impacted by the volatility of the global oil and gas market, a strong US dollar, and ongoing geopolitical tensions in Russia, North Africa, and the Middle East.

Our product revenue for the second quarter of fiscal 2017, was $8.2 million, compared with $11.6 million in the year-ago period, a decrease of $3.4 million, or 29%.

We shipped 8.2 megawatts during the second quarter of fiscal 2017, compared with 11.6 megawatts in last year's second quarter, a decrease of 3.4 megawatts, or 29%.

As we continue to make progress in diversifying our market verticals, the energy efficiency market grew to 81% of our product revenue for the second quarter of fiscal 2017, with renewable energy at 11% and oil and gas at 8%.

This compares to last year's second quarter, when energy efficiency was 68% of our product revenue, oil and gas was 26%, and renewable energy was 6% of product revenue.

Revenue from accessories and parts increased $0.2 million, or 6%, to $3.3 million from the second quarter of fiscal 2017.

The increase in revenue from accessories and parts was primarily due to an increase in sales from microturbine parts. Accessories and parts were 22% of our revenue this quarter, compared with 17% in last year's second quarter.

Service revenue for the second quarter of fiscal 2017 increased $0.3 million, or 9%, to $3.5 million, from $3.2 million dollars for the same period last year.

This increase in service revenue was primarily a result of our growing installed base and the market's acceptance of our FPP offering.

Service revenue was 23% of this quarter's total revenue, compared to 18% in last year's second quarter.

Gross margin for the second quarter of fiscal 2017, was $0.7 million, or 5% of revenue, compared with gross margin of $1.9 million, or 11% of revenue, in the year-ago quarter.

The decline in gross margin was primarily the result of a shift in product mix, as well as an increase in warranty expense due to accommodations in the period, timing of warranty claims, and benefits in the quarter a year ago.

These reductions in gross margins were partially offset by variable production in service center manufacturing expenses.

We continue to implement initiatives to improve gross margin. To do this, we have been reducing manufacturing overhead and fixed the direct material cost, as we continue to strive to achieve profitability.

We also recently appointed a new VP of Manufacturing, who has been entrusted with creating operational efficiencies and reducing costs. And we look forward to his contributions to our organization.

R&D expenses for the second quarter of fiscal 2017, decreased $1.5 million, or 52%, to $1.4 million from $2.9 million in the year-ago second quarter.

The reduction in R&D expense was the result of decreases in salaries, supplies, and consulting expenses, and was offset by a decrease in cost-sharing benefits.

As part of our initiative to reduce operating expenses and achieve profitability during the second quarter of fiscal 2016, we reduced the number of active research projects, which included the development of the C250 microturbine.

We expect R&D expenses in fiscal 2017 to be lower than fiscal 2016, as a result of our cost-reduction initiatives. We also reduced SG&A expense for the quarter by $1.7 million, or 25%, to $5 million, from $6.7 million in the year-ago quarter.

The decrease in SG&A expenses included decreases in salaries, marketing, business travel, consulting, and professional services.

In addition, we recorded bad debt recovery of $0.5 million from BPC in the second quarter of fiscal 2017. Excluding bad debt recovery, we expect SG&A expenses in fiscal 2017, to be lower than in fiscal 2016, primarily as a result of our initiatives to reduce operating expenses and achieve profitability.

The loss from operations for the second quarter of fiscal 2017, improved to $5.7 million from $7.6 million in the year-ago second quarter.

Turning to slide 18, I will provide some comments on our balance sheet, cash flow, and backlog. Cash used in operating activities for the first six months of fiscal 2016 was $10 million as compared to cash used of $18.4 million for the first six months of fiscal 2016.

Cash and cash equivalents were $16.1 million as of September 30th, 2016, compared to cash and cash equivalents of $16.7 million as of March 31st, 2016, and $15.6 million as of March 30th 2015.

Each of these balances includes $5 million of restricted cash related to our Wells Fargo credit facility.

Subsequent to the end of the quarter, on October 21st, 2016, we've closed an offering for a combination of common stock and warrants for gross proceeds of $7.5 million and net proceeds of $6.8 million.

Our accounts receivable balance as of September 30th, 2016 net of allowances was $12.8 million, compared to $13.6 million at March 31st, 2016 and $16.2 million at September 30th, 2015.

Inventories were $19.2 million as of September 30th, 2016, compared with $18.2 million as of March 31st, 2016, and $31 million as of September 30th, 2015.

The increase in inventories from March to September resulted from increases in finished goods of $3.7 million, offset by a reduction in raw materials.

Accounts payable and accrued expenses were $12.1 million as of September 30th, 2016, compared to $13.2 million as of March 31st, 2016 and $25 million as of September 30th, 2015.

As you can see, despite the lower revenue level, in a year's time, we have made significant improvements in our balance sheet and net loss.

Now turning to backlog, our total product backlog as of September 30th, 2016 was $109.1 million compared to $104.8 million as of September 30th, 2015. Backlog as of September 2016, includes the removal of a portion of the TA100 microturbine backlog of approximately $2.4 million for 17 units, or 1.7 megawatts.

This impairment, which occurred during the three months ended March 31st, 2016, aligns our TA100 backlog with Management's decision to limit the production of TA100 systems on a case-by-case basis for key customers.

Our book-to-bill ratio for the quarter improved to 1.1 to 1, compared to 0.7 to 1 in the year-ago second quarter.

Our FPP service contract backlog as of September 30th, 2016, was $72.7 million compared to $66.5 million at March 31st, 2016, and $65.3 million at September 30th, 2015.

This continuing increase reflects a growing installed base of microturbine, as well as the ongoing efforts of our distributors to sell our FPP service contracts, which enables the end user to achieve a lower total cost of ownership.

At this point, I will turn the call back to Darren to talk about the upcoming third quarter and the balance of the fiscal year.

Thank you, Jayme. As Jayme highlighted, you can see that despite the lower product shipments for the quarter, the Company made significant progress in almost every other area of the business, and our focus remains clearly set on executing our three-pronged profitability plan.

Obviously revenue push outs and projects delays are temporary, but cost reductions, strategic relationships, new product offerings, are all long-term benefits to our business.

In summary, during the second quarter, we take further steps to successfully diversify our customer base, our geographic presence, while increasing our business in the CHP energy efficiency market to record levels.

We substantially reduced our operating expenses, instituted cost reductions, took further steps toward profitability, and made solid balance sheet improvements.

We took steps to support our sales growth initiatives with new products and new services. We developed new strategic relationships to provide financing options for our distributors and our end use customers.

We continued to grow our profitable aftermarket parts and service business, and look forward to generating new revenue from our developing Capstone Energy Finance business.

Overall, if not for the temporary push outs of six megawatts, which I don't want to diminish, the product shipments, the quarter was very successful.

Looking ahead, we believe we are well positioned to take advantage of the market opportunities. We also have to realize we still have macroeconomic challenges that we face in ongoing oil and gas market struggles and the strength of the US dollar.

We need to continue to reduce our costs and position our business for [anewed] revenue growth with a lower underlying cost structure.

In looking at the third quarter today, shipments for the quarter have thus far been strong, which is obviously very encouraging. In fact, we've shipped nearly as many C1000, our Signature Series units since October 1, the beginning of third quarter, than we did in all of Q2.

Our geographic diversification is expected to continue to be in our favor. It's excellent that the Russian market is finally growing again, and we are receiving payments on our terms and continue to recover that reserve receivable.

More importantly, we expect BPC to take several more C1000s in the third quarter, and we are highly optimistic they will again be a top-five distributor by the end of our fiscal year in March.

We are shipping our first products to the Middle East and Africa. We believe that these new markets, once they see our products in action that our distributors can actually point to well, successful installed applications, that the interest in our microturbines will only grow in these new markets.

We are hopeful the new large potential customers in Colombia, Ecuador, Indonesia, will help to even further accelerate revenue growth in these key regions. And we expect Mexico to pick up again, as highlighted with our recent C800 Signature Series order.

Lastly, we expect the US business to strengthen after the election and into the New Year.

As oil prices globally slowly continue to recover, we expect several stalled or delayed projects to restart late this fiscal year or more likely early next fiscal year.

We also expect continued growth in our aftermarket service business, as we expect to realize the first of our Capstone Energy Finance projects by the end of the fiscal year, with revenue to be realized in fiscal 2018.

Make no mistake, our entire company remains focused on our three-pronged path to profitability, by working hard to lower our operating expenses, diversify our business globally, launch exciting new products, forge new strategic relationships, strengthen our balance sheet, and increase our revenue with exciting new products and new services.

I'll now turn the call over to our operator for questions from our analysts.

Certainly. (Operator Instructions) Craig Irwin of ROTH Capital Partners.

So, Darren, first question is a number of companies across the industrial space were reporting that the election is something that had customers postponing capital projects, maybe delaying installations that were evaluated and planned, but not yet certain.

Can you comment about whether or not this seems to have been a factor for you and if you're hearing from your distributor base that maybe there's potential reacceleration into the December 31st, end of year third fiscal quarter?

Yes, Craig. Thank you. Good question. Definitely the election has been on everybody's mind. It's been a very distracting and interesting and challenging election for a lot of folks.

It's hard to pin exactly how much of the slowdown we saw in the US and Canada this last quarter on that. But I will say this is the first quarter we did not ship a C1000 to the US market in recent memory.

Bookings have been slow in the US. And so I think it is fair to say that the US election, and, really, the overall angst over the economy, what's the economy in the US going to look like? What speed is it going to grow? Is it going to grow?

I think there's a lot of overhang that was created by the election. So I'm hopeful that as the election gets behind us and people get comfortable what a Trump presidency's going to look like, that we'll see growth in the US market.

And I think if you look at his policies and procedures, there's many things that he is in support of that may actually put wind in our sales and our business, which is also hopeful.

Great. Thank you for that. So just moving on to the Sky Capital partnership, so congratulations on setting that up. Previously you disclosed, I wouldn't say a backlog, but an order book of potential orders that maybe didn't get completed because of financing issues or the ability to finance with third parties.

Can you maybe discuss with us where that potential scope of business stands today? How active you are with Sky Capital and what the outlook is for them to finance projects in this quarter and over the next couple quarters?

Yes. So if you look back, we use salesforce.com. So anytime we lose an order anywhere in the world, our distributors and our customers can tell us why we lost the order.

And if you look at back in FY16, we lost about $42 million because of a lack of acceptable financing. In FY15, that number was over $50 million.

So I think we're losing between $40 million and $50 million a year with good projects that don't have the capital dollars to go forward or the proper financing.

So that was the genesis for launching Capstone Energy Finance JV last December.

If you remember, Craig, we're using a high net worth individual. They've pledged an initial $3 million to do projects with a path to get to $10 million.

But we're up over $40 million of potential well-qualified opportunities. So it became very apparent that we would out sell our internal capability of our high net worth individual, and that's why we looked for other sources of capital.

And Sky Solar is in the space. They understand the type of projects that we have. They do third-party financing and PPAs all over the world. I know some of the folks there have been around the industry for quite awhile. So it was a natural fit for us to bring them onboard.

Obviously, they bring a wealth of experience. More importantly, they bring us more capital that we can build out Capstone Energy Finance.

Timing has been challenging. If you look at our average close, it's still about 11 months. We launched Capstone Energy Finance a year ago December. So I would say definitely by the end of our fiscal year we'll have our first PPAs signed. We've got a couple that are well into contract negotiations and, yet for the legal folks, we'll get those done.

And so I think we'll quickly need to have some of that Sky Solar funding probably by the middle of next year.

Excellent. Excellent. And then after you pass the end of your quarter, we saw a distinct pickup in the announced orders, some decent size chunky orders in there.

Can you may be discuss what the international order tempo looks like right now, whether or not you're seeing that play to a more normalized rate?

And I guess as a part of the question, oil and gas is showing pretty bullish fundamentals. Saudis obviously can't afford to subsidize the world forever. Pretty bullish for the US production and the rest of global production.

Can you say whether or not you're starting to see oil and gas come back as a probable market for you over the next few quarters?

Yes. Let me say a couple things. My prepared remarks, I mentioned that obviously we had some project push outs in Q2. We shipped 61,000 in Q2. We've already shipped four in Q3. We've got two more that are done, one [witness test], and should be out the door shortly.

So we'll quickly surpass, C1000 shipments in Q3 over Q2. So that's very positive.

We're seeing an increased recovery and speed of recovery with BPC. We added a chart in there, obviously, only went back six or seven quarters. But you can see each quarter over the last year, BPC has put a quarter-over-quarter growth, and that's going to happen again in Q3 and Q4.

So very excited to see BPC come back online. Not only does that give us revenue growth, they used to be 20%, 25% of our revenue. I think as we can continue to diversify, they probably won't get back to those levels, but even seeing them at 10% or 15% would be nice.

Obviously, everything they pay for on the old R series it's 15% over. And then starting January 1st, they're paying 20% over. So we're getting 20% on every million dollars as recovery against that receivable. And you see that in slide 8. As you can see, we had fairly significant bad debt recovery during the quarter. So that's additional cash and capital.

Europe is picking up nicely for us. We're expecting the UK, probably Italy and Germany to lead that. But I think we're also seeing Slovenia, Poland, some other parts of Europe pick up. So Russia and Europe look very strong.

We're still very excited about Australia. The US, I think after the election, will start to come back. And Latin America is a bit chunky for us. We've got a couple big projects out there, but we don't have the visibility we'd like to see there.

From and oil and gas standpoint, you hit the nail on the head. As oil prices are getting back in the kind of mid-40s to close to $50, we're starting to see the first signs of oil and gas users start to spend money again.

It's mostly smaller oil and gas companies. At this point, some of the smaller users are actually buying some assets from bigger users, redeploying new technologies and improving efficiencies, operating efficiencies of those sites.

We have seen one Chevron project that's rumored to getting moving again in, I think Malaysia, for an offshore platform.

But I'd say this is really the tip of the spear. There's a lot of recovery that still needs to happen in oil and gas. And the longer oil prices can remain steady and hopefully marginally increasing over the next couple quarters, then that business will come back.

As I said in my prepared remarks, being 80% energy efficiency's not optimal for us. We'd like to see energy efficiency about 40% of our business. We'd like to see oil and gas customers come back to be another 40% and renewables be 20%.

So much like our investors that want diversified portfolios, we want a diversified portfolio of both markets, verticals, as well as geographies.

Okay. And then last question if I may. I know you're keeping very tight reins on the R&D spend right now, really focused on getting into profitability.

But over the last few years, you've been really focused also on increasing the value you deliver to your customers. And one component of that has been the target of increasing the hours, available hours on a turbine.

Can you update us on the possibility of a potential up-rating in the next few quarters? And any other major developments that you think could add significant value for your customers that come out of the R&D program that you might expect this year, or I should say in calendar 2017, would be great, if you could describe that. Thank you.

Yes. No, I think if you look at -- your point is well taken. Our engineering group is functionally half the size it was, both from a spend and personnel standpoint about a year ago. We've taken that spend down north of 50%.

We're very focused on what we work on today. We're working on getting money from third-party sources where we can. But all that's focused on product developments and making a more robust product for our customers.

So if you look at the signature series we launched last December, that was really focused on the CHP market, but it had some 82 other discrete improvements.

So lots of things we did to the product to either reliability improvements, performance improvements, made maintenance easier, quicker, extending maintenance intervals, better controls, lower noise. All that was great work by our engineering team to make that product that much more robust.

We want that signature series product to be second-to-none to anything else out there in the industry. We want the uptime to be over 99%. And we want to make sure that the product doesn't de-rate as much as the old product, is better performing, maintenance intervals are longer, and, frankly, makes more money for our customers, which I love being green, but making green is really the most important thing for our end use customers.

And so very happy those Signature Series and the associated accessories and heat recovery modules and controls and other things that go with it.

That being said, we're really focused on developing new fuels and new applications for our products. There's lots of synthetic fuels in Hawaii. There's a lot of propane and butane down in the Caribbean or parts of Africa or even around Australia, lots of areas where customers want to get off of diesel engines from an environmental standpoint, a cost and reliability standpoint.

And if we can run on alternative fuels, that's that much better.

So in the interim, our R&D focus is really focused on making our product as robust as possible and give the best customer experience, as well as applying it to as many different applications as possible.

So spread that peanut butter across as much of the bread as we can and really get as many people into our technology as we possibly can in as many different geographies.

Great. Thanks again. I'll hop back in the queue.

Great questions, Craig. Thank you.

Eric Stine of Craig-Hallum.

It's Aaron Spychalla on for Eric.

Maybe first on the large orders, you kind of mentioned in Colombia, Ecuador, and Indonesia, can you just give us an update there on maybe when we can see those move forward and see some traction there? Maybe what have been the gating factors? And is that something that the recent financing solutions can help with?

Well, I would venture to say that my prognostication on those orders has been about as good as our US press and folks that called the election.

So trying to figure out timing on these has been very challenging. I've been down in Ecuador multiple times. Been down in Indonesia this last month, in October. Continue to meet with these customers.

Very hopeful we'll get traction on Ecuador in the next, hopefully the next quarter, knock on wood. Financing and government guarantees continue to be the biggest challenge, but we think we have a pathway through. We've got some good partners and good folks we're working with.

In Indonesia, I was just recently there in October. We're commissioning right now our first site. There's another nine megawatts behind the first megawatt with one key customer. Several other customers behind that.

Indonesia, if you don't know, is a huge market from a population standpoint, but very dispersed, multiple islands, lots of remote power, very poor power quality. So it's a huge opportunity for technology like ours.

And so I think Indonesia, Malaysia, is right for our type of technology. And we've got a good distribution partner who's bringing in propane to take care of those customers. So I think that's a nice opportunity for us.

In Colombia, we've got our first site going in, our first five megawatts with an end user who looks to be doing about 20 megawatts a year, or potential 20 megawatts a year, both in Colombia and Panama. And these are district cooling locations off grid. So this is C1000 Signature Series running electrically to electrical chillers and thermally an absorption chiller. So these are chilled water plants for industrial customers.

So those three customers alone could be 50 megawatts in the next 12 months if they all were to hit.

So obviously, we're building roughly one C1000 a week. So that would have a huge impact on our growth rates.

That being said, our balance sheet is a concern with all three of those customers. So it's critical that we manage our expenses and keep our cash levels at reasonable levels. And then, frankly, get as profitable as fast as possible, because I'd hate to lose some big opportunities because of concerns about our viability.

But I think definitely in the next couple quarters, we should see more visibility. Obviously, two of those customers already trying the product, and the third one, we've been working on for quite awhile.

Right. Very good. Thanks for the color. And then maybe of the backlog, looking at that, I mean, how should we think about timing there? Is it kind of the 15- to 18-month perspective?

And just trying to think of how the back half shapes up here. I think you were kind of, a quarter or two ago, you were thinking maybe mid-20s is potential in the back half, and trying to reconcile that with some of the shipments that have gone here in the third quarter now.

Yes. Obviously, we built six megawatts that didn't ship last quarter. So we were anticipating a $20 million, $21 million quarter, and three projects moved out on us. And so that gave us a little bit of a surprise.

So I guess I would mute our expectations a little bit, since things seem to be happening slow. As Craig talked about, I think a lot of people in the US are moving slow because of the election and just the economy in general.

I think ISIS and terrorism and other things aren't helping either. So I think we're seeing a general project slowdown or push out across the board, just a higher sense of cautiousness.

And it's not just the US. It's the rest of the world as well. So I'd probably mute expectations a little bit for the back half of the year. But definitely, we want to get north of $20 million in revenue as fast as possible and obviously get to that kind of new breakeven point around $25 million as quickly as possible.

So I'm very confident we're going to get to our cost-reduction target. We may be able to even get beyond it. We're not going to stop once we get there just because we achieved it. We'll keep looking for areas to reduce cost and lean out manufacturing.

Bringing Paul onboard's going to help that as well, get us into one manufacturing plant and some other things we can do.

But I think in general, we're really focused on what we can control, and that's putting out cutting-edge great products, building our service business, getting our key partners in place, getting Capstone Energy Finance off the ground, making sure that we have the capital and the balance sheet to take care of customers and reduce expenses.

Everything else from an oil and gas price, from the election, strong dollar, all those macroeconomic things, there's not a lot we can control. So we really got to focus on what we can control.

Right. Okay. Sounds good. Thanks for taking the questions.

Sameer Joshi of Rodman and Renshaw.

Can you just briefly describe the [mechanic environment] which Acresis and Bridge Capital are helping you?

Yes. So Acresis came to us awhile back. Again, this is somebody we've been working with on and off in the industry and part of the 25 years I've known the gentleman. And a lot of our strategic relationships really grow out of previous relationships that I have or Jim has had, just it makes it a lot easier to find strategic partners.

And they really help small companies or founding companies turn their businesses into being more than just a sub-S corporation, and really help them mature and get financing.

So what they've done is help RSP structure their business the right way and get their financials in such a sense so they can qualify for a nice product, financing product that's out there.

So essentially what happens when traditionally if they'd get an order, we would have to try to support them with some AR, and the cash flow would be challenging for them and us both. Obviously, their balance sheet's small, but ours isn't much bigger.

What happens now, as long as RSP's got a well-qualified customer like a hospital or a REIT, so if it's Memorial Sloan Kettering or its related properties, that's very solid class A customer, then they can get product financing from Bridge Bank.

So essentially they get the PO. They put the PO on us. We get paid as soon as it gets shipped. And then they pay back the financing once they get paid by their customer.

So it really is a working capital line. It's a growth mechanism. Again, it was an area we saw distributors were struggling. Banking relationships were getting or challenging. And so ways to help them grow their business and, frankly, do more products faster was the goal.

So that's really kind of a front-end solution for our distributors to help them sell product.

Then we've got the Capstone Energy Finance, or our PPA product, for end use customers. If they don't have the capital dollars, that's another solution. Well, we'll put the product in and we'll sell them the thermal energy and electric energy.

So I really think we've got two very nice solutions out there, with Sky Solar backing up Capstone Energy Finance, and then Acresis and, in this case Bridge Bank helping out our distributor.

So not much more work to do there, just some execution. We'll obviously roll it out to the rest of our distributors once we've proved the model with RSP. But for us right now, it's really about execution, really focusing on our distribution channel and getting as many of those $923 million of opportunities turned into Capstone POs.

Great. Thanks for that. You mentioned CEF JV. Have there been any other generation from there? Of the $109 million backlog, is there any amount from that JV?

No, the Capstone Energy Finance has not closed their first power purchase agreement yet. So we'll press release that when it happens.

As you can see in the prepared deck, we've got two power purchase agreements that are in negotiation with customers. They're in legal review. We've kind of agreed on commercial terms. So we're hopeful to get one of those, or if not both, across the goal line soon.

But, no, the current backlog you're seeing is all traditional backlog, as well as the service or factory protection plan backlog, which is broken out separately.

So between the two, we're up to $175 million, $180 million in total backlog, not counting anything from Capstone Energy Finance yet.

Okay. Great. And one last question from me. What is the level of bad debt that is still to be recovered from BPC? And what is the timeline? Like this quarter that you recovered $0.5 mill. Going forward, how much should we expect?

Yes. The original amount was a little over $8 million. They're down to about $6.5 million. So we still have quite a bit to recover. It's really tied to how fast (inaudible - technical difficulty) --

Hello?

-- sure will see that bad debt recovery. But we don't have a specific timeline on when that will be paid back.

Okay. I couldn't hear if there was some disturbance in the middle. But you said $6.5 million is the current outstanding?

$6.6 is the current outstanding, correct. And we recovered approximately a $0.5 million last quarter.

So it's going to take us several quarters. It may even take us a couple years. But we're supporting them as their business comes back. And it's all been fully reserved. So that is found cash for us each quarter and, obviously, bad debt recovery each quarter as that money comes back in.

And one last one again, if I may. Can you just briefly give us an overview of the C1000 Signature Series reception, as well as the complications that it's facing when your sales force tries to sell it?

Yes. No, I think the reception has been very good. The reality is, by the time we started shipping it, we're just now getting them commissioned.

And so we're seeing just our first Signature Series in the US, in Europe, and in Russia being commissioned.

So I think our first one is AOTI (sic - OATI) in Minneapolis. That project's just now coming online. So the performance of the product initially looks very good, customers are very happy. Obviously, the noise levels, the controls, the outputs, just all of the additional features are well received.

We are starting to put some Signature Series components into our aftermarket business through our reman program. So our traditional customers will start seeing the benefit. But unfortunately, because of the size of the megawatt projects, it's about a six-month lag from building the Signature Series and seeing customers actually get that benefit.

So that's another reason we're fairly excited about future revenue growth is the Signature Series, we really have not had a lot of customer experience yet. So as that customer experience starts building in multiple geographies and markets, as well as all the other initiatives we have, that should help give us reason to accelerate the business.

Great. Thanks a lot for taking my questions.

(Operator Instructions) Colin Rusch of Oppenheimer.

As you look at your supply chain and after the adjustments that you've made over the last couple of quarters, are there other opportunities to keep reducing cost as you go forward and see a little bit of improvement on volumes?

Definitely it's all about volume. Our biggest challenge has been, as you know, the last couple years, we've seen a decrease in our volume. So we've been having to kind of hand-to-hand combat with our suppliers to kind of keep and hold our pricing.

Some of the Signature Series design improvements drove some cost in our supply chain. So we've seen a little bit of margin erosion because of that, but we're working feverishly to handle both those things.

As revenue comes back, especially [if we've] got a couple of these larger customers that start taking products, we will be working the supply chain hard with Paul and his team and Jeff and his team and myself personally getting out there.

So as their suppliers see higher revenue, see higher purchases, that gives us, obviously, the ability to go leverage. We've outsourced where we can. We may even do something in-sourcing going forward. We're evaluating that. But, yes, we're always looking at reductions.

But I'd say, unless revenue levels increase 10%, 20%, 30%, you're not going to see a significant reduction in our direct material cost.

Perfect. That's exactly what I needed.

And then I think just about everything else that I'm curious about has been asked. But one question for you guys around CHP and any sort of acceleration in those projects, or deceleration, certainly that seems to be a fantastic market potential, potentially for you guys. But what are you seeing in terms of the customer behavior in that end market?

Yes. I mean, the challenge we had, and I tried to allude to it in my prepared remarks, an oil and gas project, when they decide they're going to develop a field or flow to platform or put in a pipeline, those are fairly sophisticated projects with program managers and their coordinating all sorts of pieces of equipment. And they could have delays, but they tend to be very predictable and you tend to know about the delays ahead of time.

When you're doing combined heat and power projects for an industrial user or a hospital or a hotel or just any kind of small customer who's doing a construction project, it can be very challenging.

And so a push out on the delivery of the chiller or a delay in the electrical interconnect permit or some problem with rain on the site. I mean, you can come up with whole [different] reasons. Or the CFO gets cold feet or they come back with some more questions, or whatever it may be. They hire a consultant that wants to take a look at your designs or wants to see more sites.

So there's many multitude of reasons that can make these CHP projects move around on us. And so I think that's something we're going to have to deal with. I think we've always been challenged with lumpy revenue. But high levels of CHP is going to make it even potentially more lumpy.

So we may have to oversell the airline seats a little more than we did in the past and be a little more creative on our production slots. But we'll take that challenge.

As you say, it's a great market. People went to save money and they went to be more environmentally friendly. So we need to continue to get people to be excited about that.

I think the amount of opportunities we're seeing in New York and California, Hawaii, Alaska, we're seeing projects down into the Southeast and even in Texas, talking about OATI in Minnesota. If you'd have told me a year ago we're doing projects in Minneapolis, I would have told you you're crazy.

So I think state incentives are definitely picking up. I'm not that concerned about federal incentives. We get a 10% investment tax credit. So if Mr. Trump wants to wipe out all green incentives or investment tax credits for wind solar, fuel cells, us, that's great. I'll take the, frankly, the level playing field and we'll stack up very well.

So it's a good market. Its a big market. But it definitely has some challenges. And again, as I said in my prepared remarks, I would like to be a little more diversified and see some rebound in our oil and gas market, just to help us with some of the lumps.

All right. Great. Thanks a lot, guys.

And I'm showing no further questions from the phone lines. I'd now like to turn the conference back over to Darren Jamison for a closing speech.

Thank you, Operator. Great questions. Probably the most robust and interesting set of questions we've had in several quarters. So it's great that the analysts are really paying attention and following the story. I appreciate that very much, as the whole Capstone team does.

Very excited about what we're doing. Very disappointed with the revenue push outs in the quarter. Really just mostly disappointed because I know it'll cloud some people's view of all the progress we're making. Because I really believe we've got the right team. We've got the right technology. We're working on all the right things. And then the entire company is laser focused on getting this thing profitable and building a great company.

So we'll keep working our three-pronged business plan. We'll keep bringing in our operating expenses and leaning out the business and turning over every rock to save money. We'll keep launching new creative products. We'll keep nurturing and fostering these new partnership that we have. And we'll manage our balance sheet like it's our money.

And right now, I think that that's all we can do, and the rest of the macroeconomic environment will be what it'll be. But again, I like where we're positioned. I like our Signature Series product. I like our growing service business. And I like our team.

So very excited to talk to everybody after Q3 and into Q4. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference. Thank you for your participation and have a wonderful day.