Hydrogenpro ASA

OSE:HYPRO

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q1

[Jarle Dragvik, executive]

Good morning and welcome to HydrogenPro's Quarter 1 2024 Presentation. Today, I'm accompanied by CFO, Martin Holtet; and CTO, Odd-Arne Lorentsen. Contractually and on FID rewards, Q1 can appear like a quiet quarter. On the sales side, however, it has still been high activity level on answering out tender requests and customer negotiations. In line with previous communications, Q1 was for HydrogenPro what I would describe as an intermediate quarter between deliveries from completing ACES project and starting up ANDRITZ and Salzgitter production and delivery. Of recent achievements, it was secured a strategic investment by ANDRITZ of NOK 82.7 million. The general assembly elected a new Board chaired by Dag Opedal. The cash balance ending quarter 1 was NOK 185 million, up NOK 24 million. This is not including proceeds from the ANDRITZ investment.It goes without saying, I would mention that there are, therefore, no immediate plans for raising capital. The U.S. buildup is showing positive results with an awarded FEED study of 300 megawatt. And we have feasibility and detailed engineering study ongoing of capacity increase for next generation electrodes in Denmark. This as we are getting more and more interest from our customers in the new technology. The ANDRITZ investment is a testimony of their belief and confidence in HydrogenPro's technology by investing the NOK 83 million. This is not only representing a capital contribution, we do see synergies in support in the future technology improvement. We have now together a strong organization in EPC engineering and technology side. Also with the strong sales and market positions from ANDRITZ, they have with large industrial players in energy sector, in the steel and pulp and paper area, which are seeking solutions for decarbonization.As mentioned on expansion of our electrode capacity, ANDRITZ and HydrogenPro are having a joint interest in developing this further. This also together with large scale testing and verification of the electrode technology. As mentioned from the last general assembly, HydrogenPro has now a strong Board composition representing solid industrial experience from public listed companies with legal, financial, EPC and sourcing competence to mention some of the strong point. We are strengthening our organization, leadership and technical competence in the group management, which was 1 of the deliverables announced in my second quarter presentation in 2023. We now have a strong and vast experienced group management with last onboarding of Jon Backer as COO. This now sets the organization going forward.We counted a total of 40 megawatt projects awarded during the quarter 1, which is split on 7 different projects. The relative economics in many of the green hydrogen projects has also been negatively impacted by lower prices of natural gas and general inflation, which leads the project owners to bring up their calculators again and calculating the profitability of the projects. But we see project awards and FIDs expected to mature during the second half year of 2024. HydrogenPro's sales pipeline growth remains stable with, what I would say, insignificant project cancellations. And also at the same time, the U.S. and EU are both pushing for more hydrogen. The European Commission has awarded nearly EUR 720 million to 7 renewable hydrogen projects. These projects are selected through the first competitive bidding process under the European Hydrogen Bank.HydrogenPro is becoming well recognized and we are pleased that Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store in his opening speech of the Hannover Messe where we contended and contributed commended HydrogenPro and the contribution to decarbonization. Going forward, we are now focusing on 5 key priorities. The first one is the successful installation and commissioning of ACES. We are also preparing and start production on delivering on Salzgitter project. Increase of order intake, continuously building a healthy pipeline and we see projects coming to maturity leading to increase of order intake. We are also preparing for a full-scale evaluation of the electrode technology together with ANDRITZ. And conclude the expansion of electrode manufacturing capacity, which I mentioned, in our Danish operation.So with this, I would like to hand over the word to Martin Holtet.

[Martin Holtet, executive]

Thank you, Jarle. Then I will walk you through the Q1 financials. So as mentioned by Jarle, now we are sort of in between the ACES delivery and now starting the preparations for the Salzgitter delivery and this comes also very visible then in the financials for the first quarter. In the quarter we generated revenues of NOK 4 million, a gross profit of 0 and an adjusted EBITDA came in at minus NOK 56 million with a net loss of NOK 47 million in the quarter. A replacement of some auxiliary components on the ACES project has reduced the result in the quarter. The impact is NOK 5 million on gross profit and NOK 13 million on EBITDA. Please also note that the personnel expenses is NOK 6 million higher versus the fourth quarter and this is driven by a reclassification of mainly a factory payroll in our manufacturing site in Tianjin, which were previously allocated to COGS and now it's part of payroll, and this is due to the reduced delivery activity in the first quarter.Looking at the cash position. So the cash balance ended at NOK 185 million at the end of the quarter. That was an increase of NOK 24 million during the quarter and we have less than NOK 10 million in future committed investments. Also important to mention the ANDRITZ equity injection took place in the second quarter so that will further strengthen the cash position. Looking at the changes in the cash balance during the quarter going from left to right. The quarter then started with NOK 161 million. We had adjusted EBITDA of minus NOK 56 million. There were no investments during the quarter. And then the remaining factor is then a positive impact from net working capital changes, which is mainly driven by reduction in trade receivables of NOK 82 million during the quarter. The order backlog stood at NOK 445 million at the end of the quarter versus NOK 423 million at the start of the quarter.There were no significant contract awards in the quarter so this change is then mainly driven by a strengthening euro and dollar versus the Norwegian kroner. This is a slide I would like to spend some time on. We have proved that it's possible to scale up and grow while maintaining a strict capital discipline and we plan to continue to grow profitably by keeping a strict capital discipline. Our top priority is to invest in technology to become a technology leader and our high R&D activity is enabled by R&D grants, which makes it very, very capital effective. Our electrode technology is a game-changing technology and we are currently conducting our feasibility study to look into expansion of the manufacturing of this technology. HydrogenPro has chosen 1 core electrolyzer technology, the high pressure alkaline technology for large scale applications.So we have a focused offering that is scalable to meet different project sizes and this sort of platform gives us the operational leverage where we can grow and maintain a lean global organization. And further to that, instead of building now a large organization in Europe, we have partnered up with ANDRITZ and we see also that this gives us a much better market reach as well. To generate industry leading margins, we have a competitive and flexible supply chain. And lastly, we focus on retaining a sustainable net working capital when we take on new contracts and continue to grow the company.That concludes my section and I will leave the word to CTO, Odd-Arne Lorentsen, who will go through the technology update.

[Odd-Arne Lorentsen, executive]

Thank you, Martin. Good morning, everyone. My name is Odd-Arne Lorentsen and I joined HydrogenPro 2 months ago. Just to get a little bit more familiar with who I am, I would give a brief introduction to my career. I started as a young process engineer in Elkem doing commissioning and start-ups. Then I went to NTNU to do my PhD within electrochemistry before I started working for Hydro where my main focus was on technology, bringing it through piloting to industrialization. During that period, I was also partly an adjunct professor at NTNU to focus even more on the fundamentals of electrochemistry. Working for Yara, I got to know the ammonia and the fertilizer industry and more importantly, I worked with how this industry could go from a fossil based to a green based fertilizer production where hydrogen and electrolysis is 1 of the main components to achieve that.The last 3 years before I joined HydrogenPro, I worked as CTO in the start-up company called Gen2 Energy where my focus was to look at different technologies necessary to bring hydrogen from production all the way to the customer. I also evaluated about 50 different electrolyzer companies during that period. What attracted me with HydrogenPro was the strategy they had developed. They had a strong technology in the background and also the fact that they had strong partners like ANDRITZ and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries was really attractive. The locations is also worth mentioning because we do have production in China enabling low CapEx. We also have a strong team in Denmark developing new electrodes, which is essential for bringing the power consumption down. And we also had a location in Porsgrunn where Heroya Industrial Park enabled us to do full size testing of the new technology we are bringing to the market.My team is a strong team as well. We have this team in Denmark developing materials for reducing the power consumption on electrodes. We have a team of about 10 people doing engineering, developing new technology, doing calculations for how to do this; but also supporting the sales team to accommodate the different needs of the customers. Last, but not least, we have a production development team in Porsgrunn where the key components are the electrodes itself, but also the gas separator. But it's also worth mentioning that we have a team in China with long experience with startup and commissioning, but also having a strong link to the production site enabling the new technology we are developing. I've been writing a lot of application during the years and I can promise you what I really see as a trend that is the competition is increasing.I find it then very attractive and quite rewarding to see that the team in Denmark has been able to raise about NOK 200 million for their research indicating that they are doing the right things. I listed some of the tests or the project we have gotten support for, but the essence of this is to look at the material signs behind the electrodes, how they are performing and also how the gas evolution and release from the electrodes is happening, building models for it and improving the design even further. It requires a lot of quite advanced techniques, which they have developed in addition. I should also mention that we have now built production capacity, which enable us to produce electrodes that we can use also in full scale. It's still a small unit, but we learn by doing and the good thing is that we can actually as we develop, we can still use this tool just using different recipes to improve the performance.I should also mention that the recent application we have sent has enabled us to increase the production and we have onboarded a new CEO with experience from building 500 megawatt capacity fully automated system that we are now currently working on to enlarge the production. When it comes to the attractiveness of HydrogenPro, I think in essence this slide illustrated why I chose to join HydrogenPro. Safety is a core that the whole industry is working with and alkaline electrodes has been around for quite some years and decades so it is proven. But it's something we constantly work on to ensure that it's safe. It's also worth mentioning that having a robust and reliable operation is essence and that is the feedback we get also from our customers that 1 of the key elements about our technology is the robustness of it. I think there is a misperception that PEM is more suitable for a dynamic operation.But with the technology we have with pressurized electrolyzer and 0 gap configuration of the electrodes, it's as dynamic as a PEM electrolyzer, enable us to utilize renewable intermittent electricity. Of course cost is of essence so bringing the over potential on the electrodes down is essential to bring also the power cost down. But also important to mention is that we have customers where cooling capabilities are scarce due to the high temperature. So bringing down the cooling needs is in essence of what we are delivering. Cost I already mentioned, producing it in China enable us to offer low price product with high quality. Pressurized electrolyzer is also worth mentioning. There's been a lot of focus on the cost of electrolyzer in itself, but I think it's fair to say that in order to really understand the full cost of hydrogen, you need to include the balance of plant.And I can promise you if you look at the cost of compression, it is a key cost factor that should not be forgotten. It also requires quite a lot of maintenance. So the more pressure you can produce in the electrolyzer basically for free, the better it is also for the economics. And last, but not least, the high purity product is of essence. We have proven that we can operate even at low load and still produce high quality. And it's also worth mentioning that it's not only the product in the end, but also enabling us to have sufficient safety limits because if hydrogen and oxygen is mixed, it represent a loss; but more importantly, it's a safety aspect we need to take care of. And we have proven and also gotten confirmation from our suppliers that we are delivering the necessary quality of hydrogen. I think that 1 of the key factors that we should mention is having Mitsubishi onboard has been giving us an opportunity to test electrolyzer successfully in Porsgrunn.They bought then their own electrolyte, brought it to Japan and they have continuously now testing this for more than 3,000 hours. So we are now enabling buy more experience within electrolyzer, which will be exactly copied to the ACES process. We also have ANDRITZ onboard with complementary competence and also more power basically to do more work together with us and that has turned out to be a very successful recipe. Preparing ACES, learning from the startup and operation, bringing that competence to operation of the Salzgitter plant. The figure on the right there is showing an illustration of the performance increase that we have achieved. The relative difference between the upper and the lower line indicates the performance improvement we have gained and this is exactly what we are continuously developing.We will bring the new electrodes onboard, but we will continue working with this to bring the power consumption down in the years to come. So at the end if you look into the horizon, it's inevitable that the successful operation of ACES and Salzgitter is our key priority. We will do more piloting and we will do more data analysis. It's fair to say that this industry is still young and we need to ensure that we learn from the experience and the competence we have there. And having production online and collecting data improves our understanding, but it also improves our models, enable us to improve the technology even further. So being able to utilize the electrodes we are now developing, learning from the past gives an opportunity to strengthen and speed up the further development.So when you look at a more long-term horizon, we will really want to optimize all the learnings, bringing in the new electrodes, optimize the operation and make sure that we fully capitalize the technology we have developed. And then more on the long term, I think we can compare ourselves with a car manufacturer, every now and then you bring up a new technology and a new platform. That is definitely what we are doing and the same key elements come in reducing the energy consumption, increasing the lifetime of the electrodes and of course keeping sure that the cost of the production is continuously being kept at a level or even dropped. So commercializing this new technology is something that will come quite soon onboard and this is really what we are now working with; developing more models, utilizing the industry process data we will gain over the years and then bringing a new even better technology platform onboard.With that, it concludes the presentation and I would like to invite our 2 colleagues, Jarle and Martin, on stage for the Q&A session.

[Jarle Dragvik, executive]

Thank you, Odd-Arne.

[Unknown Executive]

We have some questions that's come in throughout the course of the session here. First question is about DG Fuels. Can you provide an update on DG Fuels given the latest news regarding their focus on blue hydrogen?

[Jarle Dragvik, executive]

Well, first of all on DG Fuels, DG Fuels is responsible for the communication. They own the project and they are also regulating and controlling the communication. However, when it comes to the speculations of is green hydrogen out, what we can say is that in the communication we have with hydrogen now with DG Fuels is that the green hydrogen is still a major part of the project. The blue hydrogen comes in addition through the efficiency that they now see in the gasification of the stock feed. So to our information and knowledge, green hydrogen is still a major part of the project.

[Unknown Executive]

Also on the DG Fuels topic, have HydrogenPro converted its $3 million loan to DG Fuels into shares in the DG Fuels project? And if yes, how many percentage of the shares do you currently own?

[Martin Holtet, executive]

So we have not converted that convertible note to any shares. That's still outstanding in our balance sheet, the $3 million.

[Unknown Executive]

Could you provide some more information about 300 megawatt FEED contract that you have received in Texas? Is offtake secured? Does the client have funding?

[Jarle Dragvik, executive]

Well, first of all with FEED studies, it's normal that for project preparation, the client doesn't want to be revealed. This is an ammonia project. It's in the south of the U.S. can be precise in the Texas region and it's a financially strong partner behind the project. Going into their financing, et cetera, it's nothing we can comment directly on.

[Unknown Executive]

So a question about technology. Can you give an update on the production capacity in Denmark and what is the planned capacity going forward?

[Odd-Arne Lorentsen, executive]

Well, first of all, we are now using the pilot we have as I presented in Denmark to produce for the Salzgitter project. We are doing now an evaluation, technology and cost evaluation of how much it would cost to increase the production. We will do it in 2 steps. First, we will double the capacity we have in Denmark with a similar design and then assuming that this goes quickly, we will then enter into a FEED study to also evaluate the cost of a full plant. It's too early to say when that's online, but it's definitely something we have started working with.

[Jarle Dragvik, executive]

I think maybe we could add when you say full plant, this would be then a much larger scale. The plant is a full plant, but not at the same magnitude as we would look at further down the road.

[Unknown Executive]

And this also ties in with the question. So when do you expect to have fully commercialized your [ third ] generation electrodes? And will you sell them to external companies or just use them in your own equipment?

[Jarle Dragvik, executive]

At the moment, the capacity is what we need ourself. Also when we look at the expansion that Odd-Arne was referring to, it's still at a level that we do not see that there is capacity to share beyond our own need. As I mentioned in the presentation, we do get more and more requests now from customers in order to have a more efficient and economic operation. So we are basically developing in line with the requests that we are getting in. Whether that will be available for the market in general is something we are evaluating, but we have not decided on whether we want to offer it to competitors or we keep it ourselves. But as long as we have limitation in our capacity, it will go solely to our own customers.

[Unknown Executive]

So a few questions on the financials. So how did you manage to grow your cash balance with only NOK 4 million in revenue?

[Martin Holtet, executive]

Yes. As explained in the presentation, that was mainly a working capital reason behind that with a reduction in trade receivables of NOK 82 million during the quarter. That's the driver behind that.

[Unknown Executive]

And does the investment from ANDRITZ of NOK 82.7 million come on top of that cash balance?

[Martin Holtet, executive]

Yes is the answer to that. That was a Q2 event that will now be visible from Q2 and onwards.

[Unknown Executive]

Yes. On the backlog, it's currently at NOK 450 million for Q1. Can you give a little bit more details about what is in that backlog? Is there a couple of big projects, is there customers, et cetera? Can you give them more detailed breakdown?

[Martin Holtet, executive]

Yes. So it mainly constitutes of 2 projects. One is the Salzgitter project where we have not started to recognize any revenues yet on and the other is an after sales contract on the ACES project. And on top of that, we have some ongoing FEED studies as well, compensated FEED studies.

[Jarle Dragvik, executive]

I think here we also should add that we are very conservative when we announce the backlog. We are only recognizing as backlog what is firm orders. We are not, should we say, forwarding or applying any of what we have in the pipeline although it's developing in the positive direction and so forth and intention agreements and so forth are not in the -- or letter of intent whatever we name it are not recognized in the backlog.

[Unknown Executive]

Right. You mentioned this quarter that revenues reflected that you were in between 2 projects. Was this expected and do you expect periods of low revenue in the future as a result of being between projects?

[Jarle Dragvik, executive]

Yes, it was expected and yes, it was communicated. This was communicated during our fourth quarter presentation that we were completing the ACES project and we were just preparing for starting up the ANDRITZ project or the Salzgitter project. And Martin was also then giving indication of when we would recognize the revenue from that project. So this is clearly in line with previous communication. Will we see the same in the future? We don't have a crystal ball, none of us. We see that the pipeline is developing positively. We see that we're getting more and more interest. So our ambition and focus, as we said, is to secure now more orders going forward.

[Unknown Executive]

Can you also give an update on Kvina Energy?

[Jarle Dragvik, executive]

The Kvina Energy project is basically the same answer as we gave in the last quarter presentation. We are a partner in the project. It's developing. They secured the concession or the permit to transfer or transport the power to the site. Now they are working on the zoning of the area with the municipality and applying for the operation permit.

[Unknown Executive]

There's 1 last question here that we received. It's a broad question and it's about whether you can give an update on commercial process and new contracts, what's in the pipeline?

[Jarle Dragvik, executive]

Well, as said, we do not comment directly on the pipeline and we do not recognize it in our order backlog. What we can say, as I said initially, that it was a busy quarter with discussions, negotiations and answering out tender request and that is continuing.

[Unknown Executive]

Thank you. That was most of the questions that's been sent in today. Some of the more detailed questions will be answered in writing after this.

[Jarle Dragvik, executive]

Thank you.

[Unknown Executive]

Thank you very much.