Bloom Energy Corp
NYSE:BE
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Bloom Energy Corp
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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 have 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 have 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, product, new markets, strategy, financial position, liquidity, transactions 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 K. R. Sridhar, Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and Greg Cameron, Chief Financial Officer. K. R. 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 K.R.
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. His insights helped us to build a strong values based culture and always gave us courage to do the right thing. Alma, Michael and Mary and Linda, our heartfelt gratitude to you for graciously sharing him with us. Our thoughts and prayers are with you. His 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 and in the moment leadership lesson. Hey, K. R., good morning, now get on with it and talk about Bloom, talking to you, General.
Okay, then, what better ways for me to start than with our recent announcement on expanding Bloom’s partnership with SK ecoplant. K.I. Park, the CEO of SK ecoplant and I see this agreement as a transformational event for our two 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 servers 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 material impact on our business. A firm off-take 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 number one player in the hydrogen market.
Given the versatility of our platform, we have multiple factories to achieve that. Our transacted and deployed fleet of Bloom servers totaling over 1 gigawatt globally for the first time and 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 have 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 roadmaps and policy and financial support by the two national governments. South Korea government supported hydrogen economy roadmap 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 bills have significant provisions for accelerating the hydrogen economy, as well as building resilient micro-grids. Also, after 3 years of closely working with us, SK ecoplant’s investment in our equity leads 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 are 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 experience. We are seeing 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 [indiscernible] has joined as the VP of Commercial Growth in this space. Chuck has extensive experience in water, wastewater and environmental markets and held leadership roles in two of the largest investor owned utility and contract operations companies in North America. He will be sharing with you next month, a leadership hire on the hydrogen side of the business that we are very excited about as well as some new developments on the hydrogen front.
As you 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 am 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 this 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, K. R. The team did an amazing job this quarter navigating through the current environment. A couple of items a highlight for the third quarter. We achieved a record number of third quarter acceptances. We made significant progress on our technology roadmap with product releases of the hydrogen energy server and Bloom Electrolyzer. We are seeing the largest commercial pipeline in our history for our Bloom AlwaysON server as we continue to build out our commercial capability in new states and globally. We are at record levels of manufacturing servers, while 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 have previously achieved.
I will 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 one-time 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 have 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 one-time item that 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 one quarter to the next. The aluminum trays required for this installation has since been sourced and the project is on track for fourth quarter acceptance and revenue.
As I have discussed in the past, these types of delays reinforce our stated strategy to simplify our operating environment to becoming more predictable by reducing our installation process for business. We are accelerating our use of EPC partners. They will purchase the equipment from Bloom and performed the server installations. These partners will transact with the end customer for the sale of the equipment and installation work and earned the revenue from the end customer. While this acceleration will negatively impact our revenue dollars as we no longer paid for 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 have 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 per 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 four quarters.
As we focus on execution, we have prioritized meeting our customer needs. Even that comes with some temporary increases in costs 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 had 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 equaled a 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 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 AlwaysON energy server. As I mentioned at the opening, our commercial pipeline has never been stronger and reflects the efforts we have 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 their progress on our next earnings call.
We continue to make progress in operationalizing our stack 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 roadmap 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 have been able to show potential customers our efficiency superiority. To meet our customers’ timing needs, we have accelerated our investments in engineering, product management and commercial leadership to deliver an integrated product that was supplied and produced hydrogen ready for the customer use. Beyond our hydrogen initiatives, we have 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 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 planned 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 have 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 to be slightly offset by the margin’s improvement from reduced installations. This lower gross margin should translate into roughly a 3% non-GAAP operating loss for 2021 and push our CFOA expectations out of here. At the midpoint of the range, our revenue would be up over 20% versus 2020 and our non-GAAP gross margins will 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 that become a standing agenda item for boards and management teams across the world. Also, as currently drafted, the infrastructure and reconciliation bills, if 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 in carbon sequestration. While these programs are currently under discussion, they represent an increased interest by policymakers in resiliency and sustainability and reinforce the Bloom value to our customer.
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 K.R. shared in his comments and offer some additional perspective. Over my year and a half at Bloom, I have spoken many times about our special relationship with SK ecoplant. Our two companies share many goals and have built an amazing partnership over the past 3 years. The recent agreements we have made with SK ecoplant create a foundation to build additional value for both companies. For Bloom, we have contracted for a minimum of 500 megawatts of 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 entered 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 and 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 to 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 originations 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 in 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. Stephen, your line is open.
Hi, good afternoon.
Hi, Stephen.
Hi, Stephen.
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 products? I know you highlighted a number of supply chain headwinds. I am asking in the context mostly the electrolyzer in terms of just there are quite a few companies that are looking to scale up and reduce per unit costs. And I am 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 that growth on the other hand, thinking about the selling price continuing to drop and just thinking about sort of that, what’s the cost – can your cost 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 to RFs 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 is what I think Stephen, you know from knowing this company for a long time, cost reduction is in our DNA. Okay, we have done team’s 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. This was flat. All that we are not doing is we are not bringing the cost down as much as we need to, but most people are raising costs we are not, because our cost reductions are getting eaten away by some of these temporary things, then these pressures go away. Those cost reductions we brought along this year as well as whatever we bring with volume next year will all agree to our business. So I am 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. Your heads down on it, that’s our DNA.
Understood. Fair point, you’ve had a long history of pretty significant annual cost reductions. So, that’s 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 hope that it does, in particular, the support for green hydrogen is quite significant. Do you see the potential for that legislation to kick start significant growth in electrolyzer sales in the 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, Stephen and I will get started and then I will 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 there is going to be a phenomenon. That’s number one. Number two is going to be that there is refundability on both this investment tax credit and production tax rate 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. If we put that in the context of the entire world of investing 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 our electrolyzer business. On the electrolyzer side, as it is written, the $3 a kilogram hydrogen credit will enable us to sell hydrogen at parity in cost to grey 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 grey hydrogen, you are obviously going to pick green hydrogen.
Yes. No, I think that’s exactly right, K. R. is 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 two points I’d make is around demonstration dollars. 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 are talking with today about putting our servers in motion and having a place for people to go see those. And it will be important for us. So I think it’s a good nice tailwind as we think about the business going forward.
So, great overview and good point on the last there on just carbon capture, I’d forgotten about that element that could be beneficial as well. So, thank you very much.
Great. Thank you.
For our next question, we have Michael Blum from Wells Fargo. Michael, your line is open.
Thanks. Good afternoon, everyone.
Hey, Michael.
Want to ask another question on the SK partnership here. In terms of 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 two centers?
Yes. Hey, Michael, it’s Greg. And this was something that 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 are 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 are doing within our labs and how we are optimizing our products within there, if you think about what exists from a balanced 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 a 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 are looking for compressed hydrogen or they are looking for an ammonia application or it needs to go into a truck or it needs to be produced onsite and put right into a manufacturing process. All that innovation should be happening in those centers. So, we are really excited to have that as part of the deal.
Great. Thanks for that. Appreciate it. Second question, I just want to ask about the cash burn rate and how you are planning to finance the build out of the factory and the other capital obligations in light of this, I think you have – you are 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 kind of lot in that question, so…
Yes, so Michael, I think what we – yes, what we talked about for this year, where our hope was to be CFOA positive and we have been approaching it all along, when we reforecast out, given where we are on margins and you trickle that through. It obviously postpones it. 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 as our expectation is. We will be approaching CFOA positive we think. The cash – reduction in cash balances this quarter, a lot of it had to do with – we had still have 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 are 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 are 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 are going to continue to build out on our originations capability. And we are 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 that 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 are going to take that capital and make sure that we are, as soon as we get one line up and going within the factory, we are moving on to the next 200 megawatt line. And based on our view, we see that we will need those lines in place over the coming years. So, I think we are well positioned given the investment that we have received – we will receive this quarter from SK.
Perfect. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Michael.
For the next question, we have Vebs Vaishnav from Cooker & Palmer. Your line is open.
Hey, guys. Thank you for taking my questions. Can you hear me?
Yes. I can hear.
Hey, 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 determent, like I think, like 20% margins? And how does it mechanically happen? How much of that is from scaling up? And how much of that is from product getting better?
Yes. So, these are some – I think is we had Glen earlier in the year do the teaching, right. And his key points were a few things around it. One is we constantly had the opportunity to provide new power modules into our install base. And each power module we put in is at a lower costs and a longer life. And that gets us the benefit. The second part is each contract that we are pricing today has at least a 20% product margin built or service margin built in 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 breakeven a slight profit where we are today. Our expectation from here is to grow forward. And we will achieve that 20% gross margin not this year, not next year, but in the out years will grow from there. And we are 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 that’s a journey as we move forward. And we are very encouraged that we have had three quarters and that were in a row here where we have been at least breakeven to a slight profit.
And Vebs, this is K. R. 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 are shipping today.
Maybe switching to the SK announcement and K. R. you meant – and you talked about – K. R. 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 a more of interesting point for me in this SK announcement that you guys can now target this ex 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 ex – the other countries from the SK announcement?
Thank you, Vebs. So look, this 500 megawatts and we have emphasized it is the minimum guaranteed off-take, right. So, this is all for use in Korea using our core product. And it’s predominantly whatever we are shipping today very similar kind of products is what you are looking at. And that’s the minimum order. By no means are the two 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 are 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 the 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 would add K. R. is 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 – simplifying 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 built in the U.S. in those countries.
And there is an added thing, which is exciting is they are heavily into wastewater treatment, other kinds of biogas related projects, to be able to bolt on the most efficient device that can take in 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 this numbers that you saw that we will be – we hope to develop. In terms of building factories, you just heard what we have said. The core product, the IP, we can build those throughout the exact lines and to pay for itself in less than a year. Wherever the market is similar to the JV that we announced with Korea, that’s where we will do the final assembly. So, it’s a creative two jobs here in the U.S. And it will be accretive to jobs in the local economy that’s been absorbed the product, it’s a win-win.
Okay. And just for clarification, have you guys broken out the 500 megawatts into fuel cells versus electrolyzers, or is that something that we should expect?
It’s all fuel cells. What we have agreed to is the contract today exists around our core product. And that’s what we have got that as a minimum for which is in line with our expectations for the market. And then the electrolyzers, we developed that out would be upside to that number.
Alright. That’s very helpful. Thank you.
Yes. Thanks Vebs.
For the next question, we have Colin Rusch from Oppenheimer. Colin, your line is open.
Thanks so much, guys. You have talked about a different sales process in the U.S. And I am curious what the returns are, as you charted with some of the bigger customers and curious how that conversion process is going, or you can tell us I know you don’t provide backlog more than once a year, but we would love to get a better sense of that process?
Yes. Colin, we just give out bookings and backlog once a year. So, we will do that. And we will do that on the next call. And what I promised after last year was I tried to share a little bit more and give the sense of how we are doing in the middle of the year. I would point to our commercial timelines, right. And these are real opportunities moving through are 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 have needed – we did 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 have 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 input picked in of installations. So, it’s, we are really – we really feel good about the commercial pipeline. I would tell you Sharelynn Moore as of 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 are 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 timeframe for implementation and [indiscernible] to really get the impact the COGS?
Yes. So, I have a couple of points on 7.5 and 5.0, because we think about it a lot. If 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 have already achieved a lot of those cost downs with our current product on 5.0. And we think firmly there is more opportunity to take costs out of that product. It’s going to be here is 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 are 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 are seeing in our components that we are building for our machines. So, we are in a process as we operationalize 7.5. We are 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. So, Colin, our customers are indifferent to whether it’s 7.5 or 5.0, right. 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 will share best practices across those. So, I think we are pretty comfortable where we are. We are trying to de-risk our plan for next year and at the same time, introduce the new technology simultaneously.
Okay. Thanks so much, guys.
Thanks Colin.
For the next question, we have Pearce Hammond from Piper Sandler. Pearce, your line is open.
Yes. Good afternoon and thanks for taking my questions. 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 you need to understand for Bloom, we never take the fuel risk on our side, or the fuel benefit on our side. So we are – you would like 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 build into our product, why. If the costs were to go up, the large baseload power and peaker powers that produce electricity at much lower efficiencies. And then on top of that have transmission distribution losses will feel the impact of that lot more than the very efficient Bloom servers that operate on-site. If you put the two together, since our customer has the choice of buying baseload from the utility or buying baseload from us, they stat – they look at the difference, and not as absolute numbers. And they should be happier for having the Bloom system because they are more efficient.
Thank you, K. R. That’s a very detailed answer. I appreciate that. And then my follow-up question. I know it’s still pretty new, but I am just curious if there is any update on the Idaho National Lab. The reason I am 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 is 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 – 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 am 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 electrolyzers that operates at higher temperature, you can give part of that as heat and part of that as electricity. Heat will cost you one-fifth what it will cost electricity, even in cheap renewable source. So, when you bring in high temperature steam 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 costs. So, this project is essential and it will be a great showcase, number one. Number two is all the nuclear power plants love to operate on baseload. As we bring in more renewable during the day, that baseload 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 are excited about the project. It is on track. We are hoping that our customer will report that in our report, the results of that test very soon.
Thank you very much, K. R.
Thanks.
And for our next question, we have Pavel Molchanov from Raymond James. Your line is open.
Thanks for taking the question. You talked a lot about built that better and the new green hydrogen credit, wanted to ask about what you are 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 for it, it seems like the addressable market for electrolyzers in Europe is materializing a lot faster than it is here, even within your subsidy?
Pavel 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 like Europe. We are clearly identifying opportunities. I think it was two 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, UK, all though - 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 adopt this. And we don’t see this just as an U.S. opportunity.
Right. Okay. Also on the 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 a call with you next time, you will see some exciting releases coming from us.
Fair enough. We will hold you to that. Alright. Thank you.
For our last question, we have Alex Zukin from Wolfe Research. Alex, your line is open.
Hi. Thanks for taking my question. One, just on the SK announcement, I am 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 of the next through 2025. And what the service cash flow stream looks like?
Yes. Alex, it’s simple. It’s about a third of it comes upfront in the equipment sale. And we are in about two-thirds of it over the service life.
Great. Thanks. 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 where the solid electrolyzer would really work for them?
So, yes, I am glad you posed that question that way. I want to be very clear nuclear is just one application. So, here is the beauty of the Bloom electrolyzer, even it’s 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 a alkaline electrolyzer, we will offer a 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 the nuclear side of the story, we are talking to all the applications. We are looking at everything. And that is the reason we are – 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 a end customer is going to buy, they are 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 with the core product. And that’s what we want to offer to the customer.
Great. Thanks very much.
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, corporation has 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 those graphs 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 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.