Cambi ASA

OSE:CAMBI

Earnings Call Transcript 2022-Q3

[Eirik Fadnes, executive]

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining our third quarter presentation. As usual, I'm joined by our Managing Director of Cambi Invest, Maarten Kanters; and our CFO, Mats Tjemsl. As always, please read the disclaimer included in the presentation and published report. After the presentation, we will be delighted to take your questions.

But first, let me talk you through the key takeaways. Earlier this week, we announced a major contract in San Francisco with a contract value above NOK 200 million. As customers continue to recognize the total cost of ownership and other benefits of our solutions, we have successfully entered 3 new markets in Europe and Africa and signed contracts in 10 countries since the stock exchange listing last year. With the contracts awarded after quarter close, we've reached our IPO order intake guiding of NOK 1 billion for the period 2021 to 2022. From an operational perspective, we saw evidence of supply chain challenges, which have been impacting the progress in several of our projects starting to ease. We expect this to continue to improve through the fourth quarter with a positive impact to the start of next year. Through the period, we've managed to successfully mitigate the impact of inflation with gross margins maintained on new projects entering a growing backlog. The DBO pipeline progresses as planned, which Maarten will touch more on later.

As mentioned during the second quarter results presentation, we secured 2 new reference projects in the Nordics early in the third quarter. I will come back to these projects in a moment. In Australia, the Cambi THP system installed for Sydney Water at the St. Marys Water Resource Recovery Facility started operations during the third quarter. It can process mixed solids from about 750,000 people in the Sydney metropolitan area and the high-quality biosolids will be recycled to land ensuring a safe local circular economy. In Dallas, Texas, the first of 3 Cambi THP systems installed at the Trinity River Authority Central Regional Wastewater System started operations in the third quarter with the digesters ramping up gradually, and the remaining 2 THP systems are installed and ready to start operations.

Tarnów Water in Poland plays in order to increase the processing capacity of its THP system with an additional reactor. Cambi will deliver the turnkey reactor module early next year, increasing capacity by 50%. The project illustrates the good performance of the Cambi THP system that's been in operation since 2017 and the system's flexibility to adapt to changing client needs. The Damhusåen wastewater treatment plant in Copenhagen, Cambi will be delivering a turkey THP plant, including civil works and all ancillary equipment. Construction was officially started yesterday and is expected to be in operation in 2025.

In July, Frevar’s awarded Cambi contract to supply a turnkey sludge treatment plant with thermal hydrolysis pretreatment to Øra wastewater treatment plant in Fredrikstad, Norway. Only the value of the projects cooperation phase has been booked as order intake. And the cooperation phase has been kicked off during the quarter and is progressing to define the preliminary design and optimize integration for cost and energy efficiency. A construction contract is expected to be signed in 2023 after the cooperation phase has been completed and will be recognized as order intake accordingly.

As already mentioned earlier this week, Cambi was awarded a major contract from the city of San Francisco. This global landmark project for Cambi is set to commence this year and estimated to reach 80% completion by the end of 2025. Commissioning is planned for 2028. In October, Cambi also signed a contract with a Bulgarian consortium to deliver 2 thermal hydrolysis systems in Sofia. The project is currently in a holding period according to Bulgarian law and scheduled for commissioning at the end of 2023, subject to the holding period ending in January next year.

Order intake is on track to meet the target of NOK 1 billion for 2022, 2023. Equipment order intake year-to-date Q3 adjusted to the guiding foreign exchange rates as of Q1 for target comparison purposes was just shy of NOK 300 million. This includes the announced contracts in addition to contracts above NOK 5 million, not meeting this NOK 10 million announcement threshold. It does not include the variation orders below NOK 5 million. After the quarter closed, we received 2 awards with a total value of more than NOK 390 million, ending the total order intake at guiding currencies at 2/3 of the targets. With a growing pipeline of projects firming up, we reconfirm our guiding for the period 2022, '23 at NOK 1 billion.

Our longer-term target of NOK 1.7 billion for the period 2022 to '24 is also reconfirmed. And by including projects in collaboration phase, letter of intent and framework agreements and subject to these projects moving forward in the period, we would be at 2/3 of the NOK 1.7 billion target. Order backlog as of 3Q was NOK 619 million, up 37% year-on-year, but also sequentially from the second quarter by 14%. Including the contracts awarded so far in the fourth quarter, backlog would be above NOK 1 billion or more than double from the start of the year. By further adding the mentioned awards not yet qualified to be recognized, backlog would have been NOK 1.5 billion. This and a pipeline supported by strong economic, regulatory and environmental project drivers makes me confident that Cambi will deliver a solid growth in the coming years.

And with that, I hand it over to you Maarten.

[Maarten Kanters, executive]

Okay. Thanks, Eirik, and good morning, everyone. Let me just start while you figure out the videos, there we go. Good morning, everyone. Let's start the quarterly update for Cambi Invest with DBO projects. The development of DBO project has been slow but steady in the quarter. Progress was made on several projects, both in the U.K. as well as in the U.S. through various customer interactions. And our efforts to enter into direct negotiated contracts have not always been fruitful, but several customers have indicated that they are preparing DBFO tenders to implement our proposed solution. So that's a positive sign that we build on the pipeline into the medium term.

Towards emerging markets, we continue to search for local project development partners in order to mature the projects that we have identified and to be able to get them through the development process successfully. I am increasingly confident that we will enter exclusive negotiations on 1 project into the near future. As the customer is currently finalizing the formal procurement process, we expect a conditional award, meaning that the team of which Cambi's part will be selected to further develop the projects. and that means that we are -- we'll start obtaining the necessary permits and negotiate final terms. The final contracts will take some time before we can sign that. Hopefully, that will happen by the end of '23. But during this phase, we will gradually work with our partners to prepare the construction, so we can start that not that long after a signature. And as I mentioned already, there is also -- we see that there is more tender activity coming up as a result of the efforts that we put in so far that will also build on the activity level in 2023.

In September, Cambi launched Plug&Go, a turnkey complete solid pretreatment solution for smaller biosolid facilities with existing biogas production. So it makes it easier to adopt THP. It's modular and suitable to deliver as a service. This is a great tool to have in our toolbox to promote service or complete service offering, where Cambi can own and operate the equipment in return for a service fee. So the Plug&Go is aimed at the relatively large market segment for medium-sized plant or what in Cambi terms is the lower end of our THP capacity through the B2 system. It's designed to lower the threshold for customers to convert to advanced anaerobic digestion. It reduces the risk for the customer.

In terms of project delivery, in terms of the time it takes to install and the resources needed from a customer. It is designed in a way that it has 7 modules that can be very easily delivered to site and can also be removed again. It should take a short time to install and get it up and running. After removing it from a site, we can also redeploy it elsewhere. So this is really a holistic solution that can be attached to existing digesters as a pretreatment step for example. It's all based on proven technology. It's a standard Cambi system that's in there. The large parts of this, we typically offer as well on projects, but now it's standardized and modularized in one delivery.

Then I'll go over to green growth. The other part of the business on the next slide, please, yes. The activity level on waste handling contracts has been steady during the quarter, but unfortunately, there has been a slump in the construction activity in Norway due to the economic situation. This has now also affected the demand for soil sales. And through -- though we managed to win and deliver some smaller projects, the activity level in the market has been lower than usual. The soil packaging facility is on track to deliver peat-free soils for the next season, and the interest in this new product has so far been strong. And this is one of the initiatives to realize growth in 2023 as the bags are part of our plan to increase the market share in the consumer segment. In addition, we're also looking at more cost-effective ways for composting, and we're entering new soil markets like Bergen and Stavanger, where we're currently not present.

And with that, I will hand over the word to Mats.

[Mats Tjemsl, executive]

Thank you, Maarten, and good morning, everyone. I will now take you through the financials for Q3.

First, let's take a look at the overall picture, looking at Cambi ASA. Revenues in Q3 were NOK 109 million versus NOK 130 million same quarter last year. The drop of NOK 21 million is mainly from the group segment. And the key reason for the slowdown is the project execution going a bit slower than anticipated. EBITDA in Q3 was negative NOK 2.4 million versus NOK 16.3 million same quarter last year. The key drivers for the drop of almost NOK 19 million is mainly lower gross margin from lower project volumes and increases in sales and G&A expenses for the Cambi Group.

And next slide, please. Now looking at Cambi Group, where the revenues were NOK 83 million in Q3, and 78% of the Q3 revenues is from the equipment segment, while the remaining 22% is from the services segment. And the revenue same quarter last year was NOK 105 million. And around -- out of the drop in revenue of NOK 22 million, around half of this is from the equipment segment and the other half is from the services segment. And the main driver here is the delay in project execution, as mentioned earlier. The EBITDA was negative NOK 1.9 million in Q3, down from NOK 15.5 million same quarter last year. And this reduction is mainly driven by lower gross margin of NOK 14 million due to the delay in project execution and NOK 4 million in increases in sales and G&A expenses which is mainly related to increased payroll costs, travel activity and other expenses.

And next slide, please. Now looking at Cambi Invest. The revenues from Grønn Vekst were NOK 26 million in Q3, in line with the same quarter last year. The slight increase in revenues was driven by higher soil contract prices following contract renegotiations to cover cost increases coming into effect. This was, however, offset by lower soil volume sales mainly due to lower construction activity levels in Norway, as Maarten mentioned earlier. And the EBITDA was negative NOK 0.5 million for Q3, which is slightly down from NOK 0.8 million same quarter last year. And the drop is driven by the higher production and transportation costs in addition to increased activity in DBO project development.

And next slide, please. Now looking at the order intake and the order backlog for Cambi. The order intake was NOK 184 million for Q3. And NOK 144 million of this were equipment orders from the 2 equipment contracts signed this quarter, as mentioned earlier, in Denmark and Norway. And 2 contracts have also been signed in Q4, and we see continued positive external drivers for Cambi projects. The order backlog ended at NOK 619 million. And with the 2 contracts signed in Q4, this will be an increase to above NOK 1 billion, as was mentioned by Eirik earlier. Further, the estimated value of announced projects that are not included in the backlog now is around NOK 500 million.

So next slide, please. And lastly, to round up the walk-through of the Q3 financials, let's take a quick look at the balance sheet for Cambi. The overall messaging is that the company maintains a solid financial position. Intangible assets were NOK 88 million in Q3, an increase from the same quarter last year. This is due to the acquisition of technologies from Veolia that was mentioned in the previous quarter announcements. And the financial asset position was reduced to NOK 100 million, down from NOK 201 million same quarter last year. This was partly to fund the mentioned Veolia transaction and partner to fund Cambi operations.

And this concludes the walk-through of the financials for Q3, and we are now ready to move over to the Q&A section.

[Eirik Fadnes, executive]

Let me see if we have any questions here. There's one. Can you provide more details on the revenue recognition of the San Francisco contract? Could we expect distribution relatively stable from to date towards 2025? Or is more back-end loaded with a step-up in 2024?

For the San Francisco contract, as I mentioned, it will commence this year with design and eventually also starting procurement in the beginning of 2023, and we expect to reach 20% of the progress -- of the 80% progress by mid next year and then a gradual development till the end of 2025.

I think we give it some time. And currently, no open questions.

Okay. Once again, thank you for participating in our third quarter results presentation. Have a great day ahead.

[Maarten Kanters, executive]

Thank you.

[Mats Tjemsl, executive]

Thank you, bye.