Bloom Energy Corp
NYSE:BE
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Bloom Energy Corp
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Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Bloom Energy Fourth Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants’ lines are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers presentation there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today’s conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions]
I would now like to hand the conference over to Suzanne Schmidt, with Investor Relations. Thank you. Please go ahead.
Thank you operator. Good afternoon everyone. And thank you for joining us on Bloom Energy’s fourth quarter 2020 earnings conference call. To supplement this conference call, we have filed our Q4 2020 earnings press release with the SEC and have posted it along with supplemental financial information that we will periodically reference throughout this call through our Investor Relations website.
The matters we will be discussing today include forward-looking statements regarding future events and the future financial performance of the company. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that we discuss in detail in our documents filed with the SEC, specifically the most recent reports on Forms 10-K and 10-Q, which identify important risk factors, including those related to the COVID-19 pandemic that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements.
These include statements about the effects of COVID-19 on the Company's business results, financial position, liquidity and outlook. We assume no obligation to revise any forward-looking statements made on today's call.
During this call and in our Q4 2020 earnings press release, we refer to GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. These 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 Q4 2020 earnings press release.
Joining me on the call today are K. R. Sridhar, Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Greg Cameron, Chief Financial Officer. K.R. and Greg will review the operating and financial highlights of the quarter, and then we will take questions. I would also like to note that we are all dialed into this call remotely, so we apologize in advance for any audio issues that may occur.
I will now turn the call over to K.R.
Good day and welcome to Bloom Energy’s fourth quarter and fiscal year 2020 earnings call. Thank you for joining us. I am delighted to report that, because of our efforts in 2020 Bloom Energy is financially strong and even more resilient and transformative than ever before. 2020 was our best year yet on so many dimensions. Here are a few highlights.
Our fourth quarter and full year revenue are a company record. Our annual non-GAAP gross margin is the highest to-date. We improved our financial health by retiring the high interest debt that was coming due. We added four exceptional leaders to our management team with proven records of operational excellence.
Our teams in supply chain, manufacturing, installation and service navigated to the myriad of local and global obstacles to safely manufacture, accept and service record numbers of Bloom servers a clear demonstration of dedication and commitment.
We announced applications and partnerships that leverage our platform in innovative ways. We are advancing the technology for our hydrogen fuel cells and electrolyzer, bio gas power generation and carbon capture. We also forced a partnership to deploy our fuel cells on ship.
The Bloom team's community spirit and contribution are also a highlight of 2020. We refurbished ventilators provided emergency clean power to pop up hospitals and hurricane victims and began co-hosting a COVID testing lab for local companies, schools and underserved community members.
We made a deliberate and tough decision to ensure that we emerge out of the crisis as a stronger company and conserve our cash until we had strengthened our balance sheet. We delayed our manufacturing facility expansion in early 2020. We focused instead on increasing the production and reducing the cost of our current product in existing factories. We were able to sell out our manufacturing capacity for 2021 based on sales in our current geographies.
This enabled us to defer market expansion related expenses and further manage our cash position. We made sure that we kept our innovation team well funded. Since securing financing, we have initiated a plan to double our manufacturing output by the end of 2021. The new facility is architected and we kept to build our Gen 7.5 product. We are also making the requisite investment to expand to new states and countries.
Our product install and service cost reduction now enable us to offer our resiliency solutions in states that commercial and industrial customers pay $0.09 per kilowatt hour or more for power. At this price point, we are competitively positioned in a majority of the 50 states according to the U.S. Department of Energy Data. In 2021, we will enter new state by securing orders with both existing and new customers.
Outside the U.S., Bloom’s head of international group Azeez Mohammed is actively building his strong team to expand our global business. The maritime market is also a large growth opportunity for Bloom as we discussed during our Investor Day. I'm happy to report that Tim Schweikert, who was the President and CEO of General Electric Marine Solutions, has joined Bloom as a special advisor. Our collaboration with Samsung Heavy Industries is making good progress. With all these positive developments, we expect robust backlog growth in 2021. That expectation of robust backlog growth is strengthened by several policy and market tailwinds, both nationally and globally.
In the U.S., President Biden's Energy and Climate agenda called for the extension of existing clean energy incentives like the Federal Investment Tax Credit, increased subsidies for carbon capture and investments in blue and green hydrogen. The President has pledged to deploy billions of dollars to improve infrastructure and improve climate resilience. Bloom is ideally suited to provide the reliable power and clean energy solution that the administration is looking for.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has pledged to pursue pro market policies that augur well for increased investment in our infrastructure. Energy Secretary nominee, Jennifer Granholm has called on American companies to partner in the clean energy transformation and create good paying job. She has emphasized the need for carbon capture and sequestration technologies, which enable cleaner natural gas power generation and ensure that the clean energy revolution also benefit gas producing state. Bloom Energy's technology solutions and its American made products are well suited to meet these needs and aspirations. We have seen similar balls move from leaders in Europe and Asia in recent months. These policy announcements coupled with market flow create the potential for robust growth in several new areas.
Let me highlight one such market opportunity, powering electric vehicles, which are becoming more prevalent. The Federal Government has recently pledged to convert its entire fleet into electric vehicles. General Motors aims to produce only zero carbon vehicles by 2035. And many global automakers have set similar goals. Increased adoption of electric vehicles will put a greater strain on the aging electric grid. Toyota's President Akio Toyoda recently noted that Japan would run out of electricity in the summer, if all cars are running on electric power. Even if the generation capacity were increased, the last mile distribution upgrades in cities like New York, Tokyo and Mumbai would be cost prohibitive.
Additionally, power grids are often disrupted for prolonged periods of time, after natural disasters. In a world replete with electric vehicle, resilient power is vital for safety and security, enabling people to evacuate if needed, and for essential aid to be delivered. Bloom Energy offers that resilient solution. Our unparalleled always on product includes 24/7 base load power, with very high availability, quality, and point of consumption generation. Bloom provides an option for electric utilities to eliminate or mitigate the need to upgrade local distribution or create new generation capacity. This presents an opportunity for Bloom’s servers, to be part of the infrastructure that powers of vehicles at fleet terminal or more broadly at a new network of charging stations.
Our 400 volts direct current output is ideally suited for reliably, rapidly and most efficiently charging easy battery and offers the flexibility to operate on clean and green fuel. I want to stress the significant progress that Bloom Energy has made since the start of last year. We are a stronger company today than we were a year ago. We have balance sheet strength and flexibility. We have a very compelling value proposition. And our message to policymakers is resonating now more than ever. We are at the forefront of innovation in the energy sector. 20 years ago, we laid-out a bold vision for energy transformation. We have been developing and delivering solutions based on that vision. The field immensely encouraged by the momentum that we are generating and are confident in our ability to execute with a strong leadership team, new solutions, new market and multiple pathways to low and zero carbon energy. Bloom Energy is exceedingly well positioned for this moment.
Let me now turn it over to Greg.
Thanks, KR. And it's a pleasure to connect with everyone again. Before I jump into the financials, I want to highlight some of the changes we've implemented to our earnings process in order to provide additional transparency in a more standardized format. As you've hopefully already observed, we've increased the information in our earnings release. We will no longer be providing the shareholder letter, but have included the relevant information into the earnings release. We have evolved a supplemental financial information presentation to provide additional insights into our operating environment. We've made these changes based upon your feedback and will incorporate additional input going forward.
Now, let me get into the financial performance for the fourth quarter in the year 2020. I'll be referring to the slide presentation posted to our website. While 2020 was an exceptionally challenging year, we were pleased with the progress we've made to advance our strategy, grow our business and delivers strong financial results, all while improving our balance sheet. We are well positioned in 2021 and beyond to enter new markets, evolve our technologies and build larger operating scale. We ended the year with 450 acceptances in the fourth quarter up 16.6% versus the fourth quarter of 2019 bringing us to 1,326 systems for the total year up 11% versus last year. These are record numbers for Bloom both in the quarter in the total year for acceptances.
These acceptances also delivered record revenue for the fourth quarter of $249.4 million up 16.8% versus the fourth quarter 2019. Even in this challenging environment, we were able to improve our performance versus 2019 increasing our total revenue by $9 million to $794.2 million for 2020. We are proud of our team's effort in a very difficult operating environment.
Moving on to our profitability metrics, we continue to see improvement in our margins we drove a reduction of nearly 17% in our total product costs for the year. In the fourth quarter, our non-GAAP gross margins were 27% up 11.3 points versus the fourth quarter at the prior year, and 23.1 for the total year, up 4.9 points versus 2019. As you'll see in the upcoming analysis and Slide 5 of the presentation, we continue to improve margins for the lower product costs and the better performance and installations. More to come on this later.
The improvement in gross margins translated to improvements in operating income, with non-GAAP operating income of $12 million for the fourth quarter an improvement of $23.8 million versus the fourth quarter last year. We improved our total operating income by 29 point 6 million versus 2019.
We delivered adjusted EBITDA of $25.5 million for the fourth quarter and $45.5 million for the total year 2020 with the increase in acceptances in revenue, the fourth quarter was up $24.3 million versus prior year. This resulted in a total year increase of $2.6 million as the fourth quarter performance was enough to surpass the higher EBITDA profile of the second and third quarter of 2019. These margins and operating performance and coupled with a reduction in our debt costs dramatically improved our adjusted EPS versus prior periods.
With respect to our debt and balance sheet, it's important to revisit and in the fourth quarter we completed the retirement of the 10% senior secured notes due July 2024 and the conversion of the remainder of our 10% convertible notes due December 2021. This addressed our near-term maturity overhang, and when compared to last year, improve their cash position by $39 million, while reducing our debt outstanding $131 million.
Overall, we're pleased with our performance in 2020 and encouraged by the fourth quarter, both in our ability to grow revenues and maintain our trajectory and profitability. These are meaningful proof points on our journey to the objectives we share data Analyst Day. We feel we have a strong franchise with our core product. It's a platform that's flexible and adaptable. As we execute on our growth pillars, we can build additional applications for hydrogen fuel cells, electrolyzers, Marine bio gas in carbon capture technologies.
Now let's take a look at our bookings and backlog as we only provide this one time each year. Even in a very difficult environment, we’re pleased that we’re able to maintain our backlog of nearly 2,000 systems plus merge such as hospitals, universities and in retailers were impacted by COVID, especially early in the year. As we proceeded through the year each quarter we saw an increase in our bookings as customers reengaged.
We are encouraged by the continued commercial momentum and are hopeful to see additional opportunities with the new administrations focused on clean infrastructure. In addition to our system backlog we’ve a service backlog of 3.4 billion in line with the increase in our installed base and combined with our system backlog, our total backlog is 4.4 billion.
As we discussed during the Analyst Day presentation, there is currently enough system backlog for nearly all of our planned acceptances required to support the $950 million to $1 billion of revenue targeted for 2021. Meaning within the U.S. market, we're not dependent upon any new bookings in 2021 to support our projections and for our international business, given the short timeframe between bookings and acceptance we planned 2021 acceptances either identified in pipeline or backlog.
Given our growth expectations, we’ve reached a point where we will be making investments to increase our manufacturing capacity. Today we’ve capacity to support 200 megawatt of revenue system stacks, we are securing an additional 200 megawatts of fuel cell manufacturing line is part of our Bloom 7.5 introduction. This combined capacity will provide 400 megawatts of fuel cells or nearly 1 gigawatt of electrolyzer capacity that we can allocate based upon market demand.
As KR mentioned earlier, a significant benefit of our platform so that we can utilize of same manufacturing for all our applications with limited investment or customization and the investments we do make are very efficient. An investment of $50 million to $75 million requires a double our capacity has a payback of less than one year and fully utilized.
On Bloom 7.5, we completed our first customer installation in December, the unit is functioning as expected and we are gathering performance data. We will operationlize the manufacturing Bloom 7.5 and increase productions throughout 2021 and in 2022 Bloom 7.5 will call forward to being the majority of our systems being manufactured. Given the strong performance of our current Bloom 5.0 technology is demonstrated in our margins, for now we will continue to manufacture it at its current levels and new investments will be made for Bloom 7.5 in the manufacturing facility that we are securing will have the space to triple our capacity of our first line.
With 2021 underway, our team is focused on increasing our bookings to support at least 25% growth in 2022. We've made adjustments to our sales force and focused on expanding in the U.S. with additional states and through new partnerships both domestically and internationally. These expansions coupled with the technology roadmap of our fuel flexible platform provide multiple avenues to secure new bookings to support our growth.
Moving on to Slide 5 for our margin analysis. Here we’ve broken down our non-GAAP gross profit and margins by source of revenue. Our overall increase in non-GAAP gross margins is largely driven by improvements to the product margin resulting from continued reductions in product costs. For the fourth quarter, we achieved our targeted 40% non-GAAP gross margin for product.
We had a good quarter on our performance on installations where we nearly breakeven. For the year we’re roughly the same as 2019. Remember this is a part of our business where we’re targeting breakeven as we pass along the budgeted cost of installation to our customers. Going forward, we're exploring partnerships that would be accreted to our margins, as those partners will perform the install and earn the revenue thus reducing the operating complexity and dilution to our margins.
For consistency we’ve included the dollar per kilowatt analysis that we’ve this historically provided in our shareholder letter. The profit per kilowatt result a tumor to the total business with an increase in profitability in 2020 versus 2019. Especially in the fourth quarter of 2020, as we go forward, I would expect that each quarter, there may be some variation in our profitability depending upon acceptance mix. Our service business lost nearly 7 million for the fourth quarter. We’ve committed resources to achieve profitability in the near future.
As we turn to slide 6, we layout the changes and results to our service business. KR referred to this in his opening remarks so I’d like to share some additional details. We’ve more than doubled the life of our power modules since 2012 and expect our recent synergies to season but over a five and a half year life. We've also made changes using data from our systems in the field, and how to optimize the fleet by targeting specific power modules for replacement. These changes are important as they reduce the frequency of providing power modules which is a significant portion of our service cost.
In addition, since 2012, we've reduced the cost of each of these power modules by 61%. The combination of all these changes, results in less service costs or as we are required to provide less power modules and those we do provide are at a lower cost.
In the second half of 2020, we made an investment to provide additional power modules to increase the power output for our customers which increased our cost. As part of our pathway to profitability we plan to make that investment over the course of two years. When additional modules became available we took the opportunity to accelerate the shipments and move the business towards profitability sooner.
In Analyst Day, I committed to the service business being profitable by 2022. Now with these investments we’re projecting to achieve profitability for the year 2021 earlier than we anticipated and we expect the service revenue to grow and profitability to be sustained over the long term and very positive development for our overall business. As part of our commitment for increased transparency we’re planning to host an investor event this month to provide additional detail on the economics and processes underlying our service business. We think these focused presentation and the follow on discussions are in good way to go a little deeper into our business and help the financial community understand our approach. I look forward to sharing more and the team’s performance as we deliver through 2021.
The next slide is an analysis of our cash flows, cash balances and debt levels. A few highlights from the page. Going forward we will focus our cash performance and cash flow from operating activities or CFOA as this provides insight and as a cash generation capability of the business. While we were user of cash in 2020, I note we reduced our usage in the fourth quarter through an increase in our EBITDA and a reduction in our cash payments for debt interest. These improvements were not enough to offset the needs for working capital within the quarter.
Specifically we secured an additional 22 million in Safe Harbor inventory to ensure our customers retain the ITC benefits scheduled to be reduced at year end. While ITC was extended for two years in December, it occurred so lately in the year that we were unable to significantly adjust these inventory levels over the course of 2021, we expect to utilize these inventories while avoiding additional investment thus reducing our working capital.
Our cash balances have increased since the last year. Total cash increased by 39.3 million to 416.7 million and the unrestricted component grew by slightly more up 44.1 million versus prior year to reach 246.9 million. The reduction in unrestricted cash from the third quarter was driven by the payoff of the 10% senior secured notes due July 2024 for approximately 79 million.
We’ve reduced our recourse debt by 117 million by paying off high coupon notes and the exchange to equity of our legacy convertible debt. These reductions and the decrease in comparable interest rate for convertible green bonds issued in August have reduced our annual debt service cost by 44 million since the first quarter. These savings place Bloom in a much stronger liquidity position than we were just nine months ago and provide us with the opportunity to further invest in growth.
On slide 8, we revisit the outlook we provided in December and we’re reaffirming all of our 2021 targets. For revenues based upon the visibility of our backlog and pipeline we expect to be between 950 million and 1 billion. Non-GAAP gross margins are targeted at around 25% and we expect to deliver a positive non-GAAP operating income of roughly 3% of revenue.
With the extension of ITC we should be able to reduce our inventory levels creating less need for working capital, providing an opportunity to improve on the cash metrics. As CFOA is a new metric for us to forecast, I’ve left the outlook as approaching positive. As we proceed through the year and gain more visibility I’ll provide update on this expectation. While we’re not providing quarterly guidance, each earnings call we plan to provide an update on performance and expectations versus our 2021 framework. I’ll endeavor to highlight anomalies while incorporated in our internal plan may not be apparent in the total year framework.
One example, just as in prior years we expect the second half revenue to be greater than the first half. Also like most product companies we expect to be a user of cash in the first half of the year as we build inventories for the second half deliveries. In summary, we had a very strong operating performance in the fourth quarter and given the environment it was a really good year for us in 2020. We’re gaining momentum in our commercial operations and are expanding our footprint in the U.S. and internationally. We continue to have great relationships and growth opportunities in South Korea and are focused on new market opportunities and geographies as well as partnerships both domestically and international. Our service business outlook is improving. We now expect to be profitable year sooner. Our liquidity position has strengthened versus a year ago with increased cash and reduce debt.
Lastly, we are reaffirming our 2021 framework. Bloom Energy is well positioned and has a roadmap to create significant shareholder value.
With that operator, let's open up the line for questions.
Certainly. [Operator Instructions] We will pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Stephen Byrd from Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.
Hi, good afternoon. Hope you all are doing well.
Great. Stephen, how are you?
Doing well, thank you. I wanted to explore a couple of technology and product developments if I could maybe first just on carbon capture. I'm just interested in your latest thoughts in terms of both the technical product feasibility as well as sort of the commercial interest in the product and sort of your general views on the progression? KR you noted that there certainly is, potential support here at the federal level. [Technical difficulty] But I'm just curious for your thoughts on your own product development and sort of commercial rollout?
So, Stephen, great question. And this is extremely important. If you look at whether it is the Department of Energy, whether it's IPCC, whether it is CIA, they all talk about carbon capture being essential in this transformation as we go forward and abridge to decarbonizing, which is the most important thing for climate change. And the beauty of our technology here, there is a change since we last talked to you of connecting the hydrogen demand and carbon capture together. That makes us even better. Really one plus one being greater than two kind of an example of yours, right, which is with our server, we can now bring in natural gas. And we can produce blue hydrogen, electricity and carbon capture. And we can dial between the amount of blue hydrogen produced and the electricity we produce.
If you remember our old technology flow diagram from the hydrogen analysis that we showed you. Coming out of our system, we can separate out hydrogen and carbon dioxide, we can even send the hydrogen back into the fuel cell to produce electricity or we can supply that hydrogen for hard to decarbonize industrial uses, which becomes a premium product. So being able to work in 20, 50, 100 megawatt chunk where we can produce tri generation, if you want to think about it that way of electricity, hydrogen and carbon dioxide together. So this is a technology that's being rapidly developed in the lab. We are working on it. And I think given what you've seen in the Federal Government, and the interest in saying all of the above to decarbonize as a technology, I'm very bullish about it. Did you understand the ability to combine carbon capture and blue hydrogen?
That makes sense and the ability to sort of TARGO and flex mix make sense and I guess I would have thought the energy sector broadly would be highly interested in this.
There is interest in the energy sector for this and we are building our lab demonstration and working very hard to demonstrate it and the beauty with our system that again I want to emphasize, is unlike many technologies that you developed in the lab in small scale, but when you scale it, you have scaling issues, because of the modular architecture that we have, we can build this add-on to the platform, and demonstrated at a power module level. And the scaling is not a scaling issue for us, unlike anybody else. So that's one advantage. And second advantage here is also, while we are focused on CO2, let's also remember that this is the only technology that does not bring about the air pollution and does not require water and does not need that big land use you need in some other cases, and easy to permit, you put those things together, it becomes very compelling value proposition.
That makes sense. And then maybe just for my other area, focus, EV charging, in this, I guess care links to the power density point you raised. And I think it's an important point that, as we think about fast charging, it is challenging for utilities to put in place the infrastructure needed for very high voltage very fast charging. So I see the potential advantage here of what you offer, could you maybe speak a little bit more to the path to sales for this and sort of how you might approach this, I was just kind of curious everything from likely types of customers to any certifications or just other sort of qualifications needed to sort of have your product be a viable option here for fast charging?
Sure. So, there are three or four things that I want to talk about, and for people to appreciate, which I'm sure you do, but for everyone to understand, right? Just imagine a significant double-digit adoption of electric vehicles happening very soon, you don't have to imagine it's going to happen, right? So when you see this happen in metro areas, if every family has an electric car, and they need to charge this, the increase in the amount of electricity needed in any one zip code, is going to be so large that that last mile transportation distribution upgrade that needs to happen. And imagine having fleets of vehicles, whether it is delivery vehicles, warehouse vehicles, all those things, if they had a fleet of vehicles that need to be charged, if there are bus depots that need to get charged, school buses that need to get charged, significant amount of power that needs to come in.
And that now poses a very good option for the utility to consider. Am I going to invest in transmission distribution last mile issues that are very difficult to permit? Or do I want to put resilient power, right where I can charge and the efficiency of not having the transmission distribution loss, the efficiency of not converting power from DC to AC and then back to DC to charge a vehicle to get that high voltage vehicle you needed to not create instability in the grid. It's a huge advantage. So the question you asked there is, with all these advantages, who is an ideal customer? That's a great question. And it could be depending on the locations. And depending on the customers, it could be very different. In many places, I would imagine the utility would want to own that asset and we able to provide that power and rate basis, because they can defer D&D costs.
And it's a win-win for the customer and the utility and for the local welfare. In some other cases, it could be the fleet vehicle owners that want to offer not only the fleet vehicle, but also the charging as a service. And in that case, it could be the fleet owner that'll be the customer. In some cases, it could be the large corporations that own the very similar to them, buying the PTA electricity from us, would also want us to be part of it. And in some other cases, it could be the charging infrastructure people that would want to not only provide the charging infrastructure, but also have the generation so they can avoid the demand charges that come from utility. So it could be all of the above.
That's really helpful. Thanks very much.
Your next question comes from the line of Michael Weinstein from Credit Suisse. Your line is open.
Hi, guys.
Hi, Michael.
Hey, I guess it’s in the past you've been limiting the backlog updates to once a year. And I think that's because of the lumpiness of bookings over the course of the year, it could make it highly volatile statistic to be updating. But I wonder if I in this case, this year, maybe it might make sense to maybe a midyear update on it just to see, I mean, you said it's -- you extend a pretty good year for bookings this year. And I know you're going to get asked a lot about this for the rest of the year, so…
Yes.
Michael its Greg. So listen, we went through in depth a lot of feedback, especially around the Analysts Day and what the expectation was from folks and how they think about it. And in overwhelming for sure, no one was encouraging us for every quarter to put that out, just because the volatility, some of our large bookings and the distraction that may create from our operating performance. I think, though, going forward, rather than maybe doing it quarterly or even semi annually, what I'll endeavor to do is similar to how we're approaching our total year framework, and not providing specific guidance on each quarter, I think there's insight that we can give on each one of these calls and how we're doing without providing you the number, right. Are we making progress? Are we seeing activity internationally? Are we getting into the additional states that we thought we were at? Are we getting interest there? Or is that leading, leading to bookings? And are we establishing the partnership to lot. So feedback well taken and going forward I'll take it on personally to make sure I’m providing some transparency on that even if we don't publish a number.
Great, and also on service profitability, you mentioned it'll be coming in earlier than expected is that this year, you think you'd be profitable, on a run rate basis by the end of the year?
Yes. So we are running the team, there it’s done an amazing job of positioning that business both in driving costs out of the individual power modules, as well as the cost to provide service, the backlog continues to grow, the installed base continues to grow and we fully expect that business be profitable for the total year 2021. And on top of that, we expect revenues to grow in line with the installed base and to maintain that profitability and the go-forward basis. So, and you remember that was the business that from a profitability standpoint struggle in encouraging big losses in the past. So we feel like we've turned the page on that business. And we're really encouraged to see that to be a contributor to our gross margins and a net positive to our operating income.
Michael, let me underline what Greg just said, right. Ever since the first time, I think you said, you were asking me questions. This was one of the big concerns in the industry and for all of you right, on service and what does this mean for our long-term contracts and things like that. So the key point that Greg made, and I will emphasize again, then we will breakeven and get to profitability this year. But every year we expect that margin to grow. And this is going to be huge good annuity business for us. And this is what he believed in; this is what we put the infrastructure for. We can see a clear pathway to that.
When do you think you'll get to 20% gross margins?
I think that was the original goal.
Yes, so we're pricing at today. So those deals go in. And as we continue to mix, and as well as is continued to take the cost down in our current contracts, it'll move towards profitability, I wouldn't commit to you it's not a ‘21 it's not a ‘22 as we forecasted out it’s probably more in the ‘23 range till we get to that level of profitability, maybe ‘24 on the outset, but we will definitely be profitable and we'll move up to that that 20% as we continue to price at that level, and book new deals at that level.
And again, the key point here is the contracts in your writing today, over the life of the contract will be will be at that or better margins are expected right?
Another question, could you think we'll see a cash flow positive situation for 2021 especially since no safe harbor purchases are going to be needed?
Yes, so we've spent a lot of time on that metric. And I tried to give you the context, how I see it. It's a new metrics for us to forecast, we’d obviously been publishing our CFO, CFO where in investing financing components for a long time. But as we forecast that, that number, it is not the easiest number to forecast it as a bunch of different variables across the business, that all come into that I would agree with you that not having the ITC in the Safe Harbor. It's the $22 million that we invested in ‘21. And then there was probably that number. And again, so that was originally in our ‘21 plan. So those should be good tailwinds. I want to get through a quarter or two on it, but we are targeting not being cash flow positive.
And we are much more confident in our approaching positive. And I'm hopeful that I can update that. I'll look for folks in the quarter or two as we just get some more operating experience under our belt, if that makes sense. But I would agree with you based on the changes that ITC, based on the improvements that we expect in our EBITDA, based on the reductions in our debt service costs. All those are big tailwinds, to getting us from being a cash user to a cash provider.
Got it? One more question. Just to get it in the record. What's the service life of a Gen 5 module now? And where do you think 7.5 is going to come in at?
Yes, so give me a give you on 5. So there's a little bit there's always, what we're observing versus what we're seeing. So from the things that are out in the field that are at that median life, they are observed now right at about the five-year if not a little above that, the ones that we are forecasting. So the 5.0 that have gone out last year, as well as will go out this year, are well over 5.5 in continuing to push forward. Our expectation as we roll out Gen 7.5 is that we'll continue to extend that like towards six years as we get more experience in operational capability in our manufacturing. But our goal is to be moving towards that six-year life.
Great, thank you very much.
Your next question comes from the line of Paul Coster from JP Morgan. Your line is open.
Thanks very much. And thanks for taking the question. So it sounds like you are growing at the pace at which you are investing capacity this year. Is that a true statement? Are you essentially leaving money on the table? Could you be growing to master? What is the growth rate that you think the market can support?
Yes, it's a great question Paul. And now that we've got the balance sheet in place, and giving us a lot more flexibility. We're very happy that we've secured this manufacturing spacebar stack, our stack manufacturing, we're going to put our first line in for 200 megawatts, there's 160,000 square feet there, we can put three lines in place, and it's relatively capital efficient. So for the 50 to 75, that we put in for another $150 million, we could get to an get to a total 600 megawatts of bad fuel cells capacity, and that'll get us towards two gigawatts of electrolyzer capacity. So I don't think that for our current list of orders, and where we're at that we are limiting our acceptances based on our manufacturing capacity, but it is my full expectation that I will be back to KR and the Board, sometimes in the course of the year in timing when we add that additional capacity. So we don't run into that situation.
Is it conceivable to that you could do upside to 2021 revenues? Or is it just simply, you've locked in now?
Yes, I think Paul we've got the space, we're putting it in place, we've ordered the long lead items, but they're really not going to be fully operationalized towards the back end of the year. So we are a bit limited on that. But as you start to move into ‘21, and we build the order book, like we expect that capacity will come online and support growth that year.
Got it. Okay and then just a little bit on the international market. So it still mystifies because, so much of his career, and little else at the moment, but you've talked to other parts of Asia, and you've got a team now that's focused on it. And you haven't mentioned Europe, so which you know it’s actually hotbed of the hydrogen. Can you just give us some sense of what's happening where you think your best prospects are? And are you going to build it and then they will come? Are you going to follow your customers into the markets?
It's a little bit of little different strategy depending upon the geography. I was on the phone this morning at 7 A.M. early with Azeez Mohammed’s extended team. He's done a really good job of finding some industry expertise in market, especially in Europe. For some people that can help advise as we look for partners to build out. As you know, Paul, the amount of Euros that are being invested, especially in Europe, especially around hydrogen is a huge opportunity around our electrolyzer.
But we think there are opportunities for our fuel cell technology there as well, maybe not everywhere, where there is strong resiliency in the grid, but there are definitely opportunities for it. So I think you should think about Europe, the countries that you think about are the ones you'd expect us to be working on the France, the Germany's, the Middle East, the Spain, the U.K. And we're putting resources on ground there to begin to engage, I think the Middle East is incredibly attractive. And I think parts of Asia are attractive as well.
So I'm very hopeful that the resources that these have been building out, will be bringing opportunities for us. And I would expect you to be hearing about those over the course of the year. I think it's a huge opportunity.
Paul this is KR, I add to the two questions that you asked, they are the right questions you should be asking us. And I think we've made it very clear, until we secured our balance sheet and stabilized financially. These are prudent in the use of our cash. And we made sure that we sweated as much of the assets that we had already invested in the factory and got the maximum out of it to reduce our product cost heavily, we invested in the future. And both of that, and as soon as the security is starting in Q4, we have green lighted for the factory expansion, as well as, as we are seeing very visibly put money into market expansion. And this is a long lead market expansion. So expect, starting this year to see expansion both in the United States as well as internationally.
Got it. My last question then is, you've seen one of your competitors really sort of go to gold, every opportunity that's coming along of any scale, they're grabbing, and then I'm afraid of entering into joint venture partnerships and accepting third-party cash to scale fast and know you could easily build another, -- it's only $50 million to $75 million to build the capacity in this big chunk, then you could easily double, triple, quadruple your capacity with the help of third-parties in other regions. Is this a strategy that you are open to? Or is there seem to be the embodiment in the space to understand?
Look, I don't think given that we went out. And our investor base, our management team, our leadership, our employee for 10 years worked on a technology that nobody could make happen in 100 years, and that we know how to do it. I don't think anybody can question whether we have the appetite for risk. We have the appetite for risk, and we take the most prudent risks that we need to take. We think the market opportunity is so large, it's not the first person who comes to the market and grabs something of that.
This is the transformation of an energy industry that multitrillion dollar. And the factories we are building, unlike what other people do, are flexible, to build fuel cells, to use any kind of fuel to be able to do carbon capture, to either produce hydrogen for the automotive market or electricity for the automotive market. If you look at transportation, we cover both ends of it. If you look at electricity generation, we can do it at small utility scale with carbon capture. We can do it right at the site for resilience. If you look at industrial heat, being replaced by electricity, we can electrify. So we are building factories that build these platforms, where we don't have to wait for a market, one market to develop within a time or not have our capacity, we can use that capacity for all these other systems. So if we think the building is very prudent approach to how we build for the future. And we are marched into that and very comfortable with it. As Greg pointed out, now that we are focusing on the top line, we are going to make sure that we are not going to leave money on the table to answer your question earlier than the opportunity arises. But we want to be prudent about watching when the market develops, as opposed to what people think it'll develop into.
Got you. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Colin Rusch from Oppenheimer. Your line is open.
Thanks so much, guys. Can you give us a sense of how much of the backlog and your expected 2021 revenue is coming from the international markets?
On the backlog it's hard because they all price -- not price their acceptance timeframe is different. I think the way I'd answer it, we broke our revenues are today kind of internationally on that percentages, I would say going into next year, the total year will look very similar to what the total year this year looked like on it. I would say early in the year, my expectation is there are some large deals that will get shipped that ratio may be a little bit internationally. But as we go through the course of the year, and complete some of our U.S. installations based on their size, I'd expect to get very close back to the ratio we had this year.
Okay, thanks. And then from a project level capital perspective, can you give us a sense of where project capital is pricing out? And what you're doing with kind of the available pricing power that that enables? It seems to me that would interest rates where they're at right now, there's an awful lot of give in terms of the pricing model to your customer?
So we're in that process, now. We're working with a couple providers on it, we definitely expect it to price inside of where it's been traditionally, that's partly driven by some of the improvements in our own credit outlook, as well, as it continued to work with new providers to buy that capital. I'd tell you that the biggest issue remains not the quantity of capital. The biggest issue in the marketplace remains the tax capacity. That's there, so while we were all very encouraged to see ITC extended, and I understand there's some bills out that would not only that extend, but it increase. The most hope that I would ask from our friends who are in decision making places was to help us create the capacity on that. We're doing very well on our processes as we go through it, but it's an effort to make sure that we are securing that for the behalf of our of our customers. And given the amount of capital that's out there bringing in more tax capacity would definitely make for the whole industry make it easier.
Okay, thanks so much, guys.
Your next question comes from the line of [Indiscernible]. Your line is open.
Good afternoon. As you are in the process of making the transition from the blue 5.0 to the 7.5 modules. Just curious, could you sort of talk about a little more about how the manufacturing transition happens on 5.0 volumes would probably be relatively unchanged while you ramp up 7.5. I am just curious, as far as actual implementation of the 7.5 do you -- or does it make a difference or are there advantages to rolling them out as upgrades in place to existing installations versus going in to a brand new installation just with all the 7.5?
It's a great question. So how we're operationalizing manufacturing and 7.5 that is part of the new facilities that we're securing in California. So we are tooling that all the tools we're buying are specific to the 7.5. We're doing it in a way in which we're not going to destruct 5.0, because it's a great product, we continue to find ways to take cost out of it. And it does what we need, but we'll operationalize 7.5. And once we figure out all the process of that we will -- we can expand from one line to two and ultimately the three lines within that space.
Plan is, we've always are backward compatible and everything around our different rollouts of our technologies. And to the most part, I take -- for the complete part our customers are in different on which technology that we shipped. So it'll be for us they -- we can continue to supply the 5.0 and 7.5 comes on, we'll begin bringing that into you -- in your installation process. And that'll be really just part of our new installation to start with. And at some point, that'll be the predominant technology out there. And that'll be part of our replacement power modules that we'll bring into the fleet as part of our as part of our service offering.
Great, thanks for that clarification. And just to touch, again, a little bit more on international expansion, you've talked about having good success in hiring, with your new international business chief income and any thoughts as far as what that might mean for sales cycles? I'm sure it wouldn't move the needle on the full company's numbers. But it also is there a point that we're going to be seeing pretty distinctive ramp up in sales and marketing expenses, maybe in advance of realizing the revenues from, from new partnerships and so forth?
Yes, no, hopefully, you saw we included a page I didn't reference it in my comments, but it is posted on, we are making investments, not only to our R&D and our technology, but to our sales and marketing team. And it is a part of we lay -- as part of what we lay out our financial model here, we're going to improve our gross margins each year to get to the from the 25% to 30% liquid laid out at Analysts Day. We're going to increase our investment in it that will show up as expense. Not only in our R&D, but in our sales and marketing part of that a big part of that will be building out our presence internationally.
I think we right model to have will be one true partners, similar to what we use with SK in South Korea. So that team is focused on finding partners for us to distribute our products through. And I wouldn't expect to build out a direct sales force internationally. But they will be -- these are very senior people that are very steepened in their geographies and can be very helpful to us to not only make introductions, but to build the types of partnerships that we're going to need.
Great, thanks a lot.
Your next question comes from the line of Ben Kallo from Baird. Your line is open.
Great job. Just a question about SK because I guess what that is. I'm trying to differentiate the difference between what you're doing with them and what plugged in with them in their investment. And then just a second question, is with the CO2 is there another revenue stream you can get from capturing that? Like maybe like bricks or solar or something like that? Or what do you do with CO2 capture?
Sure. So Ben, let me answer that question. And I will keep it fairly short. Because we are running over time. And so first question on SK. Look, they are a large Korean conglomerate, they were in energy before they formed the partnership with us and they have many lines of their energy business. And each one of those business units operates as independent businesses. Let’s say and see with whom we have the partnership is different from SK unit that has signed the deal was and we, the SK E&C are working on stationary parts and scale in Korea, and also with our hydrogen electrolyzers and types of [Indiscernible]. And that relationship is strong, going forward very well. We are not exclusive to them. They are not exclusive to us. And but it's a very strong partnership.
And the fact that they are signing up other deals shows that they are completely committed to this energy transformation. And there are many other areas like the automotive, even not at play for us and they need other players and partners. With respect to CO2, there is a 45-Q federal subsidy that our understanding that this administration is going to improve upon for capturing carbon. And that carbon being provided for use in so many industrial cases is definitely an application. It will definitely for the early applications of CO2 capture it will be there. But one CO2 capture becomes the amount of CO2 generated will be very large. And at that point in time you would have to sequence for it rather than just to utilize it. But in the early days for at least a few years, there'll be lots of uses for that carbon dioxide to be utilized in industrial processes.
Thank you very much.
We have time for one last question. Your final question comes from the line of Pavel Molchanov from Raymond James. Your line is open.
Thanks for taking the question. I'll ask just one. This one's kind of high level, cost of capital, as we see in across green tech is extremely low. You have moved away from the Bloom electrons model many years ago. But I'm wondering, would there be any appetite for reviving the recurring revenue nature of the business in terms of leasing out assets on your own balance sheet?
Pavel. It's good to hear you. And is the next GE Capital person who had $100 billion balance sheet as leasings in his last job, it's, it's definitely something we think about. But I think if we prioritize our capital today, where we really want to make sure we're using it is for investing in our manufacturing capacity and investing in our technology, in investing in our brand and product management. I think they'll probably be a few areas, especially where we can't find sources of capital at a competitive basis, then I'd be willing to use some of our own balance sheet there to help facilitate maybe a new technology or new application. But for the most part, given the amount of capital that's out there, in where there's great expertise on that. I'll leave it for there, our cost of capital wouldn't be one which would look attractive given where we are other providers will be in the space.
And if anything, what we're finding is we line up with some of our future providers as they can take on some of the operating complexity that we've had here, right, we've had our teams that have had been built over time to help build different structures and things for our customers, I am anxious to find people who we can leverage the partnerships to do that, and need to take that talent and work with them to apply them on some other opportunities that we have in the company. So, sure way saying it's not something I don't think about, especially given my background, but I think given our priorities, we're going to focus on growing the business from there and leave the leverage to people who haven't.
Thanks very much.
Thanks Pavel.
That concludes Q&A for today. I now turn the call to CEO K. R. Sridhar for closing remarks.
Thank you very much. I know that we are running, the all time. So I'll keep this very short to our employees, to all our stakeholders who helped the 2020 into a tremendous year under these challenging circumstances. I want to say thank you and to our shareholders, thank you for your continued support. If we just look at where we are, as a company, we are so much stronger today. In any place, where commercial customers are buying electricity for $0.09 or higher, we can economically compete with them. Think about the strength of that value proposition.
Resilient power, you don't have to worry about natural disasters, you don't have to worry about future costs of electricity coming from the grid. You don't have to worry about sustainability because we're future proofing you. You can start with natural gas, you can go to biogas, you can get carbon capture, you can use hydrogen. You can -- if you electrify your vehicle, we offer the best option for you. That combined value proposition that not polluting the air, not using water, having electricity where you need it so you can control your electricity destiny means that with our existing customers and with our new customers, we can at least approach a majority of the 48 United States the contiguous United States today. And that is room for growth. In addition to that, what we're also doing internationally of Cisco. So when we look to 2021. We are excited to be building more capacity. We are excited for our top line growth and optimistic that we will have a great year and a great future going forward. We are extremely well positioned and couldn't be more thrilled with the momentum we are experiencing. Thank you very much.
Thank you everybody for joining today. That concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.