Fluence Corporation Ltd

ASX:FLC

Welcome, and good day, everyone. Welcome to the Q4 2024 Fluence Quarterly Results report. As the moderator indicated, my name is Tom Pokorsky. I am the CEO and MD of Fluence. And with me today on the call is Ben Fash, our CFO. I'll give just a short commentary on the year, and then I'll turn it over to Ben to give a few -- to give all the details on the numbers and our guidance for next year. Then we will take what questions we can and try to answer them. Needless to say, based on our financials, 2024 was a disappointing year, but we presented that information to you at the end of Q3 when we revised our guidance. We did, however, meet the revised guidance for the year as we had a pretty strong fourth quarter. The one thing this does show like it did at the end of 2023 is that our company infrastructure is set up to produce $20 million to $30 million a year with a positive EBITDA once we get clearance to proceed on the orders.

The main issues that affected the financial performance are already known to you, but we will reiterate them. There were 2 main issues: one, the delay in the Ivory Coast Addendum and the very weak performance from China and Southeast Asia business unit. As you may recall, last year at this time, when we gave our first of the year report, we had been expecting the notice to proceed for Ivory Coast to come in any day. And the notice proceed just tells us we can start work and start obtaining revenue on the project. That notice proceed for a number of bureaucratic reasons by the Iivoryian government did not come in until late in the fourth quarter of 2024, which, in essence, prohibited us from taking any revenue on the biggest single order we had last year.

We are now working on that project and obtaining revenue. And in fact, today, I just approved a major purchase order for the pipe to be put in on that, one of the biggest expenses on the job. The other area that was bad for us this year was Southeast Asia and China. China is not doing well right now as a country and economics, and we did not have a good year there. But we also did a scouring and a review of the business and the structure there. And we restructured and we have changed the general manager. We have obtained -- and the general manager we have in there now is a seasoned experienced Engineering Chief from Fluence, who originally spent time in China when we opened the operations up there. We also have a brand-new, very experienced finance manager, and we brought back an operations manager who was with us to build the factory and left a few years back.

So we now have a solid, strong management team there. We do have some orders coming in, and we are expecting a better year in China, but it's still not ready to take off like we originally anticipated. So we do expect significant improvement in both of these areas for 2025, as Ben will give you a little more detail on when he gets on. Beyond these two areas, we did make positive strides in the business. All the other business units showed significant organic growth. The Muni numbers are about flat, but that's only because in late 2023, we had a large catch-up on the New Mansoura project, which swayed the numbers for 2023. Taking that out, Muni grew by a significant amount as well as did industrial wastewater and industrial water.

So our growth initiatives are still working. Our restructures are basically complete. There may be a few little issues. Our SG&A is at a low point. We have continued to trim and I'll let Ben detail that. The shippable backlog in-house as of January 1 will make up about 2/3 of our planned revenue for the year. And unlike last year, every one of those projects has already received a notice proceed and permits are issued. So we do not expect delays on the bulk of that work. We did miss our order forecast for the second half of 2024, which was quite aggressive. The biggest single miss is a $38 million Bimini BOO Expansion. That is still being negotiated. But I can remind you that, that has little effect on the revenue for 2025 and even every single year because it's an extension of 15 years and at a higher margin.

So we are still working on that. There's still negotiating going on. It took a stall. But even though we missed a big chunk of orders, that will not have a dramatic effect on the revenue for 2025. The rest of the orders we missed are still coming in. There were a couple we lost. But for example, just in January alone, I believe we've added at least $5 million of those orders that we missed in late November and December. They just came in late, including one significant recurring revenue order in South America. Those are not included in what we're reporting as end of the year backlog, but a good deal of that will ship and be shippable in 2025, which raises the available work for '25. We believe we finally have the company in a decent position to move forward positively.

We have fixed a lot of things. We have -- Ben will detail that we got rid of our Upwell loan this year. We had some cash flow issues this year, which we now believe have been fixed, and we're in much better shape cash flow. So we are looking forward to a very positive 2025. And I'll just turn it over to Ben and let him go through the detailed numbers for you, and then we'll answer your questions. Ben?

Yes. Thank you, Tom. Good morning, everyone. Thank you to everyone who has dialed in and appreciate the opportunity to present the Q4 and fiscal 2024 financial and operations update on behalf of the company. As Tom noted, while our fiscal 2024 financial performance was disappointing and the results did not meet our expectations, we did finish the year strong with a solid Q4, and there are promising areas of growth in our core businesses that we are encouraged about, which I will discuss.

Ultimately, delays related to the Ivory Coast Addendum project and weakness in China derailed the overall financial and operating performance of the company in fiscal 2024. The company was nevertheless able to meet its revised revenue and EBITDA guidance of $50 million to $60 million and negative $3.5 million to $4.5 million, respectively. More specifically, the company finished fiscal 2024 with $51.5 million in revenue and an EBITDA loss of $1 million.

Q4 2024, revenue was $21.2 million, more than double any other quarter in fiscal 2024, and EBITDA was $1 million. And as Tom mentioned before, it illustrates the profitability the business can generate with quarterly revenue that exceeds $20 million. Revenue for the -- as mentioned, revenue for the full year was up over $50 million, which was 26.5% lower than the same period in 2023. However, when you exclude the impact of the Ivory Coast Addendum and our Southeast Asia and China business units, revenue in our core businesses grew by $6.5 million or 18.8%. Additionally, our recurring revenue continued to grow, it increased by $2.9 million or over 30% compared to fiscal 2023.

The shift in focus toward our SPS and recurring revenue product and service lines is having the desired effect of improving gross margins, which have seen increases. And in 2024, we were up over 30%, an increase of 2% over fiscal 2023. We saw continued strong growth in 2024 across the core businesses other than in Southeast Asia and China, with our industrial water and reuse and our industrial wastewater and biogas groups, in particular, standing out. Industrial water and reuse grew revenue by $3.2 million or 21%, while industrial wastewater and biogas grew by $1.9 million or 27%.

And equally as important, both businesses showed strong EBITDA growth of $1.6 million for industrial water and reuse and $0.5 million for industrial wastewater and biogas. In our Municipal business, revenue was flat, but as Tom noted, when you remove the impact of the completion of the $20 million New Mansoura project 2023 results, Municipal water and wastewater grew revenue by approximately $1.8 million or 20%. For context, this project had minimal costs left against it for the final $2 million in revenue recognition. Therefore, the margins were significantly higher than you would normally see.

And when you remove the impact of that this project had on the 2023 results, EBITDA in 2024 would have grown by approximately $0.6 million in the Municipal group. These core businesses also successfully increased backlog throughout 2024. And together, they are starting 2025 with over $30 million in contracted backlog, an increase of approximately 30% with most of that revenue to be recognized in fiscal 2025. In terms of orders, in 2024, Fluent signed $50 million in new orders, which was an increase of $2.8 million or 5.8%, excluding the impact of the Ivory Coast Addendum that was signed last year.

Most notably, municipal, industrial water and reuse and industrial wastewater and biogas, their orders increased by $8.4 million or 23% over 2023. This resulted in our total backlog finishing 2024 at $88 million, $58.1 million of which is forecasted to be recognized in 2025. Lastly and perhaps most importantly, the company has started fiscal 2024 off strong, as Tom mentioned, with approximately $5 million in new orders and awards thus far in January, most of which is expected to be recognized in fiscal 2025. So as noted, this demonstrates despite the disappointing delays that we had on the Ivory Coast Addendum project and the softness in China, the areas where we are placing our strategic focus are experiencing healthy and profitable growth, which we are optimistic about.

Our SG&A and R&D costs continue to come down as well due to the actions taken. With the full benefit of the 2023 reorganization, combined with the sale of the aeration assets in Q1 of 2024, the company realized $2.6 million in savings in fiscal 2024, which is 11% lower than the prior year. To provide an additional data point, SG&A and R&D is $6.7 million lower in 2024 than it was in 2022, just 2 years ago, representing a decrease of more than 25% in those 2 years. This lower fixed cost overhead provides a platform for significant operating leverage and profitability as revenue rebounds, particularly at the higher margins we are generating.

Additionally, the company commenced a further restructuring of its global municipal business to further align resources, increase efficiency and reduce fixed costs. This restructuring will result in headcount and facility reductions in Israel, Dubai, Egypt and the U.S. This restructuring commenced in Q4 and is expected to provide $1 million to $2 million in annual SG&A and R&D savings globally, although some of those savings are expected to be reinvested in key areas like sales, marketing and operations. Additionally, in Q4 of 2024, as Tom mentioned, Fluence made several changes in management of its Southeast Asia and China business unit as a result of weak financial and operational performance.

Due to the challenging market conditions in China, the company has been focusing its strategy on growth outside of Mainland China in countries such as Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines and South Korea, among others. The leadership change is part of the evaluation of our current strategy in China and help determine the path forward in a region where Fluence has been successful historically, particularly with its MABR technology. As part of these changes, [ Mickey Schmitzer ] has been named Interim General Manager. As Tom mentioned, Mickey has been instrumental in developing Fluence's commercial success with its MABR product line as well as helping to lead Fluence's initial commercial and operational setup in China.

As a result, he is very familiar with the market and the local team and therefore, uniquely positioned for this role. Fluence has also bolstered its local operations and finance teams in recent months, adding seasoned and experienced professionals. These changes are expected to improve operating and financial discipline, competitiveness and support a renewed growth strategy in China. We also wanted to provide an update on the Ivory Coast project as it obviously had a large negative impact on our financial performance in fiscal 2024. Firstly, Fluence continued commissioning on the main works, which is now in the final stages. Due to the large rainfalls in 2024, commissioning was delayed and is now expected to be completed in the first half of this year.

As it relates to the Addendum project, Fluence was able to finally advance and complete the financing of the Addendum contract. And as a result, the company received the notice to proceed from our customer ONEP in December of 2024 and was able to commence the execution of the works immediately, including detailed engineering design and the procurement of long lead time materials. The Addendum works are expected to take approximately 18 months, and a significant amount of the revenue was originally forecasted to be recognized in 2024 with the balance in 2025. These delays had a significant negative impact on the reported financial performance for our business in 2024.

However, with the notice to proceed now secured and the Addendum works commenced, the project is expected to deliver significant revenue contribution to the company in 2025. The company only recognized $7 million of revenue in 2024 compared to $22 million in fiscal 2023 on the Ivory Coast project, a decrease of $15 million. On the cash flow side, $3.6 million in deposits related to the Ivory Coast Main Works project were returned and released to Fluence in Q4. While the company was expected to receive the initial milestone payment of $8.5 million on the Addendum project in Q4 as well, the continued administrative delays pushed receipt into January of 2025, but we can now report that, that milestone has successfully been received.

As of 31 December 2024, the company's cash position was $8.9 million. In addition, the company holds $3.6 million in short- and long-term deposits, of which $3.3 million is held as collateral for bank guarantees for the Ivory Coast project. Operating cash flow, including deposit receipts received, was a positive $0.6 million. And within that, again, $3.6 million of that were related to deposits from the Ivory Coast main works.

Obviously, we had a weak year in terms of negative cash flow, and this was primarily due to the delays that we experienced on the Ivory Coast Addendum project and securing that preliminary milestone payment, delays in collections associated with our municipal Middle East business, specifically around that New Mansoura project, the slowdown in China resulting in lower project revenue and weak collections and also repaying the Upwell facility in full, which obviously required a significant amount of cash.

Just as a reminder on that point, the company did fully repay the Upwell facility in July of 2024 and at the same time, replaced that facility with our current revolving credit facility for up to $20 million. That revolving facility was used in part to pay off the Upwell facility at a much lower interest rate. It sits at 7.5% equal to the U.S. prime rate. In October of 2024, the revolving facility was expanded by $5 million to its current level of $20 million to provide additional working capital for new projects. So in conclusion, after a challenging 2024, our management team is encouraged by the outlook for 2025.

With almost $60 million of backlog expected to be recognized in the year, the recent commencement of the Ivory Coast Addendum works, improved operational discipline leading to higher gross margins and significant SG&A reductions over the past 2 years, management believes Fluence positioned for profitable growth in 2025. With that backdrop, Fluence is anticipating 2025 revenue of $80 million to $95 million and EBITDA of $3 million to $5 million. At this time, I'll turn it back to Tom for any parting comments and to take questions from our webcast participants. I very much appreciate your time and your continued interest in Fluence. Thank you.

Thanks, Ben. Just 1 or 2 comments. One order in particular, we got in January is worth noting. It's a $2.4 million MABR order in California. It would be -- okay, you got the slide up there. This project was supposed to go forward earlier in the year. It's just they had some financing issues. But it's a very good margin order. It's a very, I will not say easy, but a simple order for us. And it's part of a development of real estate area that's going to build something like 4,700 homes, and there could be multiple phases to it. But the key thing is, as I mentioned to you in the past, in the U.S., you have to go state by state to get approvals.

And this will become the first MABR in California, which will also open more doors. There's some more projects like this. I believe there's one in Idaho coming very soon. So we're starting to finally make some headway on that. Another order -- significant order to point out is the one that we were expecting in December. It came in January. is the third one on the list, the 2-year O&M contract renewal in Argentina for Dow. And it's $700,000 a year in 2-year increments, and we hope to renew that. This is the second renewal. We hope to keep renewing that going forward, but it's recurring revenue, and it's good work, and we'd like to keep building on that.

And you can see there's a couple of other ones there. And I think I'll save some of the other comments for the questions because I see some of the questions asked about them. So with that, I think we can go to the questions, Ben.

And I'll just start them off. The first question is, when do we expect to become profitable?

Well, Ben just mentioned, we expect to have a profitable year in 2025.

Another question coming up here. It says how will the fires in California affect potential orders?

It's very hard to tell. There is going to be some water infrastructure work done there. How that irons out, we're not quite sure.

I can tell you, though, that crossing the country the other way in North Carolina from the floods, from the hurricanes, we're getting calls constantly about emergency units to be put in place for temporary water. We don't have any in stock, but we are considering and analyzing a strategy to work with these people that provide emergency systems to build an inventory for them for rental. And again, that's going to take some cash, but it is possible we will get some work out of these disasters. We already did get some wastewater work out of some earlier disasters, but these are fluid situations, so I can't really comment on what they can and can't do for us at this time.

The next question, was the big order BOO order expected at the end of the year, Bimini? Yes, it was. It's the same order.

Next question deals with the 3,000 potential highway service areas in China.

Well, of course, a good deal of our past work was in highway service areas, and we still have a very close relationship with a company that does this work and is still buying product from us. One of the problems is that some of these highway service areas didn't get the money they needed, so everything got stalled. And that's the issue in China. The money has got to be flowing. We don't do work in China without getting the down payment. And if they don't have a down payment, we know there's no money flowing. So we're still working on those projects. Can I give an update on the U.S.A. production line, including a target date for being operational?

Yes. The -- we did, in fact, move the machine from Israel to the U.S. It's on the ground in Knoxville, Tennessee. We are finalizing negotiations for the lease of a big facility there who will also be able to help us in some membrane research, the company that's in there. And I expect to have that machine up and running in the next several months. It's on site. It's just got to be put together. We're bringing assistance from the Israeli team and possibly the China team to get it up and running. I'll see next question. Let's scroll down here, Ben.

Will the new administration U.S negatively affect the pipeline in this area.

I don't think so. Like I said, in the past, most of the water and wastewater funding has been given out to states for the last 20 years, and there's something like $80 billion in wastewater and $60 billion in funds for water that's already out there that are on a revolving loan status with each state. We don't see that slowing down. Now there may be some slowdown of some environmental regulations, but those are going to be dealing with very sophisticated constituents.

Most of the work we do, the regulations are already in place, and the money is starting to flow. There is a possibility it could slow down some of the incentives for some of the waste-to-energy projects, but it won't slow down the need for these places like slaughterhouses to build new facilities because they still got to meet regulations. Yes. The next question is, can I give some color on the Iowa order for lagoons. As a matter of fact, I was just sent an e-mail. We are having a webcast with the key players on that project. I'm sure it will be on our website.

That pilot has worked very well. It's solving a problem. And if you listen to these people, which are the university and the regulatory agencies say it could be a great solution for over 700 lagoon projects in Iowa. So that is a very positive project for us. It's working well, and we do expect more work out of it. But go -- take a look at -- if it isn't on our website, I'll make sure we get something out. But there's going to be kind of like a fireside chat with all the players discussing that project very soon. Okay. Next question. Ben, I'll leave that to you. Do you see it?

I see it. Yes. No problem. I see it. Yes. So the question is, what are the chances of exceeding fiscal 2025 guidance?

I would say the path to exceeding guidance would be in bringing in a near-term sort of larger project that several of our business units have in their pipeline, but we tend not to plan using those. We tend not to build our budgets or provide guidance hoping or hoping for these larger projects. But they do exist and they are out there. There are several of them in Southeast Asia.

Our industrial wastewater and biogas group is working on a number of these larger projects. industrial water and reuse group as well has a few that are, I would say, more sizable in nature and could happen quickly. So that would be the path to exceeding fiscal 2025 guidance. Sitting where I sit here today, I think the guidance we've provided in that range probably captures, again, 80% to 90% probability of that range. That's why we sort of have a guidance range of $15 million in revenue and where we finish in terms of revenue, obviously has a big impact of -- on the bottom line EBITDA.

Next question is the cash flow now in a position to go after some bigger contract deals? Well, yes, having better cash flow, we can go after some of the bigger jobs. But we're -- when we talk bigger jobs, we're talking $5 million to $10 million, not $50 million to $100 million. So it's...

And Tom, if I could take that as well. Like our cash flow has improved, and we are now expecting 2025 to be cash flow positive. And again, all of our projects now are negotiated in a way that fund themselves for the large majority of them. But we also have to sort of show the market that the business can be sustainably cash flow positive for us to be able to go out and secure really good financing partners like banks who obviously want to look at historical profitability. So I think 2025 is going to be an important year to sort of show that we've made that step and then bring in financing partnerships that might allow us to go after some of those bigger contracts. At this point in time, I think it depends on how you define bigger, like Tom said. But I wouldn't say that our cash flow is in a place where we could start going after $10 million, $15 million, $20 million BOO contracts, for example. Would you agree with that, Tom?

Yes, I agree. And if we do have an opportunity to supply the equipment on a big job like that, we would bring in a financing partner for it. We just don't have the balance sheet to do that. And unfortunately, there are very -- it seems every $1 million, $2 million or $3 million BOO project ends up turning into a product sale because it's not worth it. And in fact, the MABR in California had looked at all kinds of options about a BOO, real estate developers like to preserve their cash. And any way they could build that plant without investing a bunch of cash. But when they looked at all the numbers, they decided to spend the money and just do it because it was -- they could.

There's another question there. There is no BOO project in Iowa, just to be clear about that, that I'm aware of. The next question deals with JBS signed a deal with Green Gas USA last year.

Does that mean the potential deal with JBS is off the table? No, it's a different project. The project that was signed was an existing Lagoon project in Colorado, where all they're doing is is collecting the gas off the lagoon. And what we're talking to them is another project where they have to actually build the gas digesters and build a treatment plant. So it's a different project. It's still being worked on. It's a big project, and it's going through the motions. So nothing -- that was one where they gave us like $100,000 to figure out a project for them, and we're still showing them the options that they have.

I'm not sure I understand this next one, Ben. Do you...

I'll take this one. Yes, there's a question on do you think that the current share price aligns with the current state...

Share price. And I was thinking strategic plan...

The answer, I think that we probably -- I think we gave in the last quarterly update as well is, first off, we're probably not going to comment on the -- where the share price should be. But what I would say is that we believe that as our operating results trend more positively, we think that the share price will follow. I think that ultimately, we need to show the market, and we understand that, that this business can grow and grow profitably, and that's what we intend to do.

There's also a question here around clarifying an early comment about $20 million to $30 million of EBITDA. I don't recall, Tom, you stating those numbers. So again, our guidance was around $3 million to $5 million for 2025, and we haven't provided guidance on that.

I have never used $20 million to $30 million in EBITDA, my God. I don't -- I must have misspoke or you misunderstood me or something.

Do you want to talk about the impact of the end of the Inflation Reduction Act, Tom, there was a question on that. I think to that.

Well, that's what I was talking about. The Inflation Reduction Act really was the act that added all those incentives for clean energy and things like that. And that -- there are a few projects we're working on that they're racing to get -- in fact, we are working on one that they were trying to get some purchase orders issued in December to get a certain amount of work done to meet the Inflation Reduction Act. But again, I don't know if that's going to -- I doubt that will continue on.

I think this administration is not going to put money into clean energy or they're going to put money into oil drilling. And -- but having said that, -- all that was, was an incentive for people to start doing the building, but they still have the regulations to deal with. And while many of them may not spend extra money to convert biogas to energy, it's still a good economic number. Any of the economic numbers we have been using on these projects totally ignored the Inflation Reduction Act because that goes to the owner, the customer. So I don't expect that to be a significant issue slowing us down anyway in the next couple of years.

No. And in fact, I think that what we have seen and continue to see with our industrial wastewater and biogas business is significant growth of their pipeline in North America. And I think seeing some early successes, some recent project wins, and that continues to build momentum. So if that were going to impact that side of the business, I'd be surprised, especially given what we're seeing in terms of the demand for the products that we're selling.

Yes. And I think, there's a compliment on one final question. Thank you for the compliment, whoever wrote it. And I appreciate that, but there's -- I really can't comment beyond that. So I guess that's the end of the questions, Ben.

If you're so. So we really appreciate all the questions and the engagement. I think they were all excellent questions. So I think that, Tom, if you want to have any parting comments, I think we can probably wrap it up there.

No. I guess I will just say even though for you people out there, the share price is the most critical and EBITDA drives the share price, we are well aware of that. I do think we made a lot of strides of streamlining, fixing, bettering the company this year. We are working very hard at only taking good orders. When I say good, priced right, decent margins, decent cash terms. And that does -- that's a culture change with the sales team. And sometimes it's like pulling teeth with customers, but we're sticking to our guns. It's slowing things down a little bit.

But in the end, we're going to win. And I've been here 3 years now, and I really feel we are getting to a point where we've fixed the stuff we need to fix, and we can only go forward now. And I'm really excited about 2025.

With that, thank you for tuning in. We really appreciate it. And like always, you can always send an e-mail if you have any other questions or comments.