Xebec Adsorption Inc

TSX:XBC

Earnings Call Transcript 2022-Q2

[Brandon Chow, executive]

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Xebec's Second Quarter 2022 Investor Webinar. My name is Brandon Chow, and I'm the Director of Investor Relations at Xebec. I'd like to remind everyone that this webinar is going to be recorded and will be made available on the Investors section of our website later today.

[Operator Instructions] Joining me today will be our President and Chief Executive Officer, Jim Vounassis; our Chief Financial Officer, Stephane Archambault; and our Chief Operating Officer, Mike Munro.

Our earnings press release was issued earlier today before market open, and all relevant documents are available for download either from the Investor Relations section on our website or from SEDAR directly. You also find later today, a copy of today's slide deck on our website's Investors section.

During this call, we will make forward-looking statements about our future financial performance and other future events and trends, including guidance. These statements are only predictions that are based on what we believe today, and actual results may differ materially.

These forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other factors that could affect our financial results and the performance of our business, which we discuss in detail in our filings, including today's earnings press release.

Xebec assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements we may make on today's call. It may also be references to certain non-IFRS measures, including EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA, backlog, working capital, net debt and [ catalog ].

These non-IFRS measures are not recognized measures under the International Financial Reporting Standards and do not have a standardized meaning prescribed by IFRS and are therefore unlikely to be comparable to similar measures presented by other companies. Please see our disclosures for further information and reconciliations of these non-IFRS measures. With this, I turn it over to Jim.

[Dimitrios Vounassis, executive]

Thank you, Brandon. Good morning, and welcome, everyone, to Xebec's Second Quarter 2022 Investor Webinar. First, I'd like to thank everyone for taking the time to come out and listen to our investor webinar this morning.

It certainly has been an action-filled quarter, given the developments we've had to go through, but the team is excited to give you an update on how we are navigating the current environment and where we're headed. Before we dive into the details, I'd like to remind everyone about what we're trying to achieve here at Xebec.

We are a diversified company with an industrial foundation and firmly believe that cleantech is our future. What unites the entire company is our aim to drive lower-emission gases and everything we do through local production.

We're focused on developing technologies and solutions with this mandate in mind and have a dual purpose of not only reducing emissions, but also cost for customers, which has contributed to our commercial success. We ultimately have a unique exposure to three cleantech verticals, renewable natural gas, hydrogen and carbon capture and sequestration.

This combination and flexibility allows our customers to choose from an assortment of options that make sense for them as well as participate in this accelerating energy transition period.

When we combine these verticals with our service network, it provides us with a strong backdrop to manage different economic cycles within the verticals. With that being said, let's get into the executive summary.

Overall, Xebec had to navigate through many different macroeconomic events this quarter, as did many other companies around the world. This included the continued inflationary pressures, most notably in Europe, and supply chain disruptions from different factors.

In addition, we delivered some key developments under our Center of Excellence Framework, which we see as a key tenet in being able to reduce our cost structure as we continue scaling up revenues.

As a reminder, the Centers of Excellence Framework revolves around three pillars: One, assessing core versus noncore activities; two, product rationalization; and three, workforce and supply chain synergies.

One key development within this framework was dealing with a drag our legacy RNG contracts had on the financials. As many of you recall, this has been the most impactful aspect of our financial profile and dates to 2019 before my time here as CEO.

As we previously indicated last quarter, we wanted to contain these legacy costs by capturing everything to the best of our ability into a one-time charge to address the remaining costs on the projects and the discontinuation of this product line.

As a result, our goal is not to see any further financial impact of these projects and finalizing for our customers within this year. You will see throughout the presentation our metrics with and without these contracts to give you a clearer view of our business performance from the continuing operating -- operations, going forward.

These changes and our recent announcement on workforce reductions ultimately reflect the work the team is doing and will continue to do across the second half to reduce our cost structure and optimize the business with more standardized activities.

While at the same time, we continue to track towards our revenue growth targets and happy to report we achieved our second highest revenue quarter ever and our highest Q2 quarter ever and hit an all-time high backlog of $270.2 million, and we continue to see growing demand for our products and services in renewable and low-carbon gases.

While we still have a lot of work to do, we are encouraged by the direction things are headed, and we have the benefit of being able to draw down on the work we have booked to keep growing our profile and reduce costs at the same time.

Lastly, after the quarter end, we saw a headcount reduction of our workforce in North America by 13%, which was a tough decision for the team here to let go of our dedicated and hard-working employees. However, ultimately, we felt it was appropriate to ensure the entire business track towards a more sustainable profile.

And as per our framework, we'll continue to review product lines and potential options to enhance our liquidity. This could include divesting of certain noncore assets and entering into potential joint ventures with partners to unlock value.

I'd like to now quickly summarize some points on the quarter, which Stephane and Mike will cover in more details.

As I mentioned in the last slide, we made some key optimization so far, and we will continue to do so in subsequent quarters as we see fit to ensure we have an improved operating profile going forward. For example, you've seen in this quarter us capture the remaining legacy RNG contracts.

We also entered into a workshare program in Germany at Inmatec to reduce our labor costs and our recently announced headcount reductions in North America in July.

These will offer savings, going forward, and we will also explore other options as the team continues on our Center of Excellence path to reduce costs and enhance our liquidity. Overall, we're encouraged by the improvements in this quarter over Q1 2022.

If you exclude the impact of our special charge from legacy contracts, the revenues, gross margins, and adjusted EBITDA are all heading in the right direction. We are also working to manage our cash more effectively. And as at the end of this quarter, we ended with $50.3 million in unrestricted and restricted cash compared to $51.1 million as of the end of December 31, 2021.

Ultimately, the most important is understanding our commercial trajectory, which is headed in the right direction, for us to continue to get traction.

Our backlog hit record highs. We booked record hydrogen PSA sales and are seeing good demand for Gas-as-a-Service for our hydrogen generation technologies.

Our XBC Flow Services brand remains a foundation for us, and all this commercial activity could be further accelerated with the passing of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. And you'll hear more about this from Mike later in the presentation. With that, I'd like to hand it over to Stephane for his financial summary.

[Stephane Archambault, executive]

Thank you, Jim, and welcome, everyone, joining us. Let me start by reviewing our financial results for Q2 2022. Before I get into the details, I'd like to remind everyone that we've isolated the impact of the legacy R&D contracts, which include the special charge this quarter to capture those costs.

The special charge had a gross margin impact of $8.3 million and an adjusted EBITDA impact of $8.6 million and a net loss impact of $11.9 million.

As Jim mentioned, the intent was to capture all the expected cost of finishing and discontinuing the product line in [ one through ] so we do not have to see the financial impact of the legacy activities, going forward. You can also see the impact of this contract on the previous year, as we've shown in the difference as well in this table.

Firstly, we achieved revenues of $44.5 million in the second quarter of 2022 compared to $32.7 million for the same period in 2021. The increase is mainly explained by the integration of newly acquired companies, completion of second-generation Biostreams and organic growth initiatives in North America.

The increase is partially offset by a lower level of sales in Europe, primarily attributable to supply chain constraints and reduce sales on oxygen in hydrogen generators and a reduction of revenues from the deconsolidation of our Shanghai joint venture last year.

Our gross margin was $1.8 million for the quarter of 2022 compared to $5 million for the same period in 2021. The gross margin was 4% compared to 15% for the same period in 2021.

If we exclude the impact of the legacy contracts, the gross margin increased to $10.1 million or 23% versus $9.2 million or 29% of revenues. The gross margin percentage decrease from 29% to 23% is mainly related to lower cost -- lower margin on nitrogen contracts and higher material and supply chain costs.

Our research and development expenses were $1.1 million for the 3 quarters ended June 30, 2022 and were related to the continued development of our second-generation Biostream product and our Biostream upgrading and hydrogen technologies.

Selling and administrative expenses were $17.2 million or an increase of $5 million compared to $12.2 million for the same period in 2021. The increase is mainly due to additional SG&A associated with the newly acquired companies.

Note that a portion of our SG&A is comprised of depreciation and amortization, which was $3.3 million in the quarter compared to $2.5 million for the same period last year.

We expect SG&A expenses to remain around this level as we continue our cost-cutting measure and ensure we get the operating leverage of the business we're expecting.

We saw negative adjusted EBITDA up $12 million for the second quarter of 2022 compared to a negative adjusted EBITDA at $5.2 million for the same period in 2021. Again, excluding the impact of the legacy contract, the adjusted EBITDA for the second quarter of 2022 was negative $3.4 million compared to negative $0.9 million for the same period last year.

Net loss for the quarter was $23.4 million or $0.15 per share compared to a net gain of $10.2 million or $0.07 per share for the same period of 2021.

The decrease is mainly due to a 21.1 gain on deconsolidation of our investment in our Shanghai joint venture recorded last year, combined with the $2.6 million provision for potential penalties recorded on legacy RNG contracts, foreign exchange loss of $1 million and the settlement in -- and related costs of $1.2 million, which were mostly related to the legacy contracts.

This was partially offset by lower integration and acquisition costs. We had $50.3 million of unrestricted and restricted cash as of June 30, 2022, which compared to $51.1 million as at December 31, 2021. The increase in cash over Q1 2022 is reflective of the cash management improvement we spoke to you about before as we continue to execute the Centers Of Excellence Framework.

As Jim mentioned, we will continue managing the level as we see appropriate and then turn to certain activities in order to enhance liquidity to execute our 3-year strategic plan.

Overall, I continue to be pleased with the top line growth, and we will continue working with the coming quarters to improve the bottom line over the long term. There is a clear pathway to doing so as you've seen the development in this quarter, and this will be consistent [ theme ] across the entire organization.

Next, I'd like you to -- I'd like to help you better understand our growth profile and improving adjusted EBITDA margins. On the left here, you can see a chart that show our revenues have evolved.

Since Q2 2022, we've seen -- we've been able to maintain a CAGR of 50% plus, and we would like to continue this growth trajectory.

It is important to understand that growth is still in the game plan as it allows more overhead absorption of costs as we continue to execute our plan. This growth is supported by the backlog, which I will go into more details, and the recurring revenue run rate of our service organization.

On the right, I've charted our adjusted EBITDA numbers with and without the legacy RNG contracts. You can see the bar on the right in blue is the amount that excludes the impact.

As Jim and I mentioned, our intent this quarter was to capture all legacy costs at once and to not bring it up again, going forward. You can see the impact it had on the bottom line and the improvement over Q1 2022, which is important to consider.

We're encouraged by the direction things are headed, and we expect to see further improvement from cost-cutting events that we discussed and new development under our Centers of Excellence Framework.

Ultimately, it boils up to three things for us: One, continuing to manage costs internally; two, continue to price appropriately; and three, continue to work in the supply chain. As we continue to progress through the framework, we expect to see more improvement to the bottom line.

Lastly, I'd like to discuss with you in more detail our backlog, which is a leading indicator of our growth as these are firming contracted orders. As you can see on the left here, we have had tremendous amount of growth in the backlog over the past year.

And this is in part due to the record contract we won from Summit Carbon Solutions. This is all while we posted a quarter of growth and so that we're able to replace the orders from customers as we execute. One [ contribution ] to the backlog was the record number of hydrogen PSAs we received from new partners such as Haffner Energy and existing ones such as [ GNK ].

Our diversified nature has benefited us as our RNG orders have been slower than expected to convert into backlog. I'd like also to point out that the majority of the service revenues under Support segment are not derived from the backlog. The amount of this segment fluctuate quarter-over-quarter, and this amount has covered steadily in the past quarter.

Lastly, our contract with Summit will begin manufacturing later this year, and we plan to execute the full contract by end of 2023. I'd like now to pass it -- along to Mike for his operational update.

[Mike Munro, executive]

Thanks, Stephane. I'd first like to start off by talking about the potential passage of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 as it could impact our activities in the U.S. significantly. This historic act was recently passed last week by the Senate, and it now goes to the House for approval and may be subject to change.

This is ultimately a game-changing piece of the legislation for us as most of our footprint is in the U.S. and provides another catalyst for domestic renewable energy production.

It initially proposes USD 369 billion for clean energy investment tax credits, covering all three of our cleantech verticals in renewable natural gas, hydrogen and carbon capture and sequestration, and this is really encouraging to see.

This tax credit includes new qualifications for biogas-to-RNG and more importantly, using RNG as a feedstock to qualify for green hydrogen. In addition, it also expands and eases the process for the 45Q credit for carbon capture.

Ultimately, we could not be more encouraged if this bill passes, given the U.S. manufacturing strategy we've already implemented alongside our service network to support this.

Xebec has all of the technologies and equipment to qualify for credits to produce RNG from biogas, convert RNG to clean hydrogen and capture carbon for sequestration, unlike anyone else in the space.

Overall, exciting times for the industry and for Xebec. Now let's take a minute and dive into greater detail into our RNG segment.

As Jim and Stephane made clear, we've addressed the drag from the legacy contracts this quarter. The special charge we took for provisions associated with the costs relating to completion of the projects, inventory write-downs, potential penalties and warranty claims and legal costs. We implemented an extensive review to make sure -- to the best of our ability, we captured all of them in one go.

We do recognize that orders have been slower to convert into backlog despite quotes increasing considerably earlier in the year. We believe this may be related to factors such as overall economic uncertainty, carbon credit pricing volatility and the early adopter nature of the second-generation Biostream product. We remain optimistic about this segment, and we'll have to be cautious about the pace of our order uptake in the short term.

Thankfully, our other segments are contributing nicely to the backlog and making up for the shortfall for the time being. Our delivery and successful execution of the Brightmark and Chevron Renewable Natural Gas Partnership contract remains a high priority for us, and we're on schedule to manufacture and deliver them by year end.

This will be an important development in ensuring that we cement our leadership in the segment and will create a great number of active RNG references for us in one contract.

We continue to quote on Biostream orders and see a clear pathway towards profitability in the segment, which is encouraging. Here in this background image, you see our senior RNG Business Development Manager, Alan Johnson, who helped spearhead all of our sales efforts in the U.S. His arm is resting on a vacuum pump in our second-generation Biostream, which, as you can see, is quite intricate.

So now let's jump over to hydrogen. Hydrogen, overall, is showing strong demand, and we're encouraged by the pathway towards more scale in this segment.

We booked a record number of hydrogen PSA orders, which was supported by the exclusive supply agreement and initial order with Haffner Energy out of Europe. That project, in particular, is an interesting one as they're producing very low-cost and low-emission hydrogen using a pyrolysis process.

Our hydrogen PSA is needed here to purify the hydrogen, the levels usable within a fuel cell application. This plays well into driving volume into our Blainville manufacturing facility, which is rapidly becoming our PSA Center of Excellence, as we move integrated systems to our Denver, Colorado location. In addition, we've had some existing partners such as JNK Heaters, continue to give us orders for their own hydrogen generation systems in South Korea.

We are quoting a number of key generation projects, which will increase utilization of the floor on our operation in the Netherlands, which is important for better cash generation. Ultimately, the key for our hydrogen generation vertical is to develop gas service opportunities, in which we're seeing a great demand to fill our manufacturing capacity further. The U.S. and Asia have recently shown promise for gas as a service, and we will certainly keep working these opportunities.

Ultimately, we expect to benefit nicely from the growing trend of converting RNG into green hydrogen. We have an ideal solution for this application as most RNG installations in the U.S. are small scale and we have a modular reactor that can efficiently do the conversion using a steam methane reforming process and it's in a shipping container footprint.

On that subject, you can see in the background here, one of our newest gas as-a-service hydrogen installations at a flat glass manufacturing facility in Eggborough, United Kingdom. I'm referring to the white shipping containers in the middle and the storage cylinders just south of them. You can see the 2 trailers and connections to the right. The flow rate is approximately 7 normal cubic meters per hour, and the hydrogen is used in a float glass manufacturing process as a protective layer.

It's quite amazing to see how these projects come together. Now let's go over our oxygen and nitrogen business. Our oxygen and nitrogen business is ultimately responding to the new demand curve which is reverting back to long-term industry means. The goal here is to supplant record oxygen generator demand that we saw in recent years with industrial nitrogen generation units.

We had a new customer this quarter ordered two large nitrogen generators for an inverting process for specialized high-tech metallized plastic hose connections. Our solution is able to save this customer over 230 liquid truck shipments per year, approximately 44,000 kilograms per year of CO2. It is quite impressive to see the cost and emission reductions our solutions can have for our customers.

As Jim and Stephane mentioned earlier, we've also implemented a work share program will result in an estimated $0.5 million in SG&A savings for the second half of fiscal year '22. This work share program is renewable every 6 months, and we intend to utilize it when we can as it allows us to retain key personnel while still reducing costs.

And lastly, as we're doing across all of our businesses, we've implemented pricing adjustments and here in the nitrogen oxygen business, we've specifically seen them accepted by the market. This will continue to be a focus across all of our segments as we look to manage costs and continued growth.

Now let's finish off with a look at our foundational support segment. Our support segment continues to deliver solid operational results well within our expectations. Though this segment is still seeing some impact from COVID-19 weigh on the technician productivity and the impact of supply and inflation pressures impact margins. We have already begun to address this internally, and we'll work to improve the margins over time and to price within current market rates.

We continue to grow our base of trained technicians. Technicians have been difficult to get in this current environment, and these are critical employees who are constantly out in the field, generating value add and revenue for both of our Industrial and our Cleantech -- for both our Industrial and our Cleantech equipment.

Our first service location is now running on our global ERP, and we will continue adding new locations as we continue these integration efforts, enhancing efficiency and visibility. Our brand transformation efforts continue to be underway, and we expect multiple locations to reflect the XBC flow services brand by year-end.

Overall, we would like to characterize our work in this segment is progressing very well. I'd also like to take a second to point out Chris Titus in this background image who was recently promoted to service an installation manager for all of our Biostream units. Please join me in congratulating [indiscernible] new role. And with that update, I'll turn it back to Brandon for Q&A.

[Dimitrios Vounassis, executive]

I think Brandon is on mute at the moment. So perhaps. We'll start off here, and then Brandon, you can join us as soon as your technical difficulties are over.

[Brandon Chow, executive]

Sorry everyone about that. Thank you, Mike and the team for that. We'll now open the floor to questions. Please note that you may ask a question at any time in the right of your console. And note that on average, we do receive quite a number of questions, and we will unfortunately not have enough time to get thrill them today. However, someone from Xebec will follow-up on them, and we thank you for your patience on that. We'll just give a couple of seconds for questions to queue up, and we'll dive right into that.

So our first question comes from Nick Boychuk from Cormark Securities. What drove the sequential drop in the support revenue?

[Stephane Archambault, executive]

Again, thank you this one -- sorry. So basically, we've seen these revenues are seasonal. And we've had some slowdown in terms of converting some of the material. COVID-19 also did not help by reducing the productivity. And as I said, the extended delivery of capital equipment and related revenue recognition contributed to that. We do not see this as a trend. We definitely looking forward for the second -- the third and the fourth quarter where revenues will pick up.

[Brandon Chow, executive]

Our next question comes from Irwin. There was mention of asset divestiture in the MD&A. What assets would be considered?

[Dimitrios Vounassis, executive]

Yes, I'll take this one, Brandon. So of course, it would be not prudent for us to discuss which assets we would divest or intend to divest at any point in time until there's something concrete and then we'll let everybody know. But it goes back to what we discussed last quarter and what we discussed at our Investor Day, as part of our centers of excellence journey. There's some product lines, for instance, the legacy RNG product line that we decided to discontinue. This product line, there was no value in us looking to divest it to somebody else because the core technology of that is our PSA technology which, of course, we value because we sell a stand-alone for methane applications, helium applications, hydrogen applications. So we would not want to let go of that technology, but there could be other technologies as Mike, myself, Stephane and the team go through our Center of Excellence analysis of each of the product lines where we may decide that there's better value for somebody else on the market. And if -- and when we do that, we'll let you guys know.

[Brandon Chow, executive]

Our next question comes from Nick Boychuk, again. What caused the increase in working capital, i.e., inventory accounts receivable? And when do you expect that to unwind?

[Stephane Archambault, executive]

Well, the working capital actually has been affected this quarter by deferred revenues mainly. We were able to get some traction on the deferred revenue side. And -- but basically, I mean, we're seeing the inventory and the cash receivable being stable. We are collecting our customers. So that's why we're seeing this stable. Inventory went down because of on a special charge that we talked about on the inventory side related to the legacy systems.

[Brandon Chow, executive]

Thank you, Stephane. Our next question comes from David Quezada from Raymond James. Could you comment on margins specifically for the [indiscernible] still delivered to Chevron\Brightmark? Have they come in line with your expectations?

[Stephane Archambault, executive]

Mike, do you want to take this one? Or you want me to take this one?

[Mike Munro, executive]

Right now, we're actually progressing really well on this particular contract. We've seen tracking some of the measures we've taken to reduce cost. We've seen a fairly reasonable decrease in overall labor component on the Brightmark project, meaning that we're -- our margin is expanding in line with exactly what we thought. Of course, the first few units of a second-generation aren't quite going to have the same margin as the next. But we're seeing, as we've marched through, we produced 6 units now, a labor drop in a considerable rate and an attendant drop in materials as well. So our margin -- our expected margin on Brightmark is in line with what we expected.

[Brandon Chow, executive]

Thank you, Mike. Our next question comes from Adam Gill from Paradigm Capital. Excluding the legacy R&D contracts, gross margins did see some pressure quarter-over-quarter. That said, as you start to deliver on the sizable compression unit order, do you expect that gross margins will recover or inflationary pressures still going to depress gross margins?

[Stephane Archambault, executive]

I can take this one. So just to answer the question, there's no impact in this quarter related to the to the carbon sequestration project. And then as we see the volume will be expanded significantly as you saw in the backlog. And then we tend to have a positive contribution margin from these contracts.

[Dimitrios Vounassis, executive]

And I would add that as we move forward in time. We will also see the benefits of our Center of Excellence program and the moves that we recently made here post the quarter in July, which will also contribute to improving our margins.

[Brandon Chow, executive]

Thank you, Stephane and Jim. Our next question comes from Eric Stine from Craig-Hallum Capital Group. What is your confidence that these legacy RNG issues are founding behind the company? Maybe talk a bit more about how that process was underway?

[Mike Munro, executive]

Well, the legacy -- what we've done with the legacy is to ring fence them into essentially what the BGX plant product represented. We used to essentially take on the entire project and an end-to-end very, very similar to an EPC sort of approach. We've changed our product approach on BGX specifically by no longer supporting that particular product line. But instead doing what we know how to do, we know how to do PSAs. We know how to do engineering. We know how to produce portable plants. So by sticking with what we know, we know that we're not going to enter into any additional trouble because we're simply not going to quote like an EPC anymore. As we quote RNG projects, we're making sure that the scope is well within what we know how to do, that the margins are attractive for us to take on. And we have -- to be perfectly frank, no interest in taking on projects that are at a loss.

[Dimitrios Vounassis, executive]

And if I may add to what Mike said, I think for the existing legacy pieces, as Mike described, going forward, this is a continued product line. But for the existing legacy pieces, a couple of key things that were done, right? First, Mike and his entire team, the thorough reviews of each project, what's left to be done have communicated with the customers. We have a good view of the remainder of the work in front of us. And then with Stephane, the team was able to capture the cost. And then on top of it, as we indicated in our MD&A, we've also tried to capture future warranty type of exposures, et cetera, to give everyone a one point in view, which was something that was requested a lot from the investment community. And this is our best, best estimate of it. And as we indicated, as I stated, Stephane and Mike, we don't expect to revisit this special statement in the future.

[Mike Munro, executive]

I'll take that. We're going to take the hit in one swoop as Stephane said, and we're not going to enter into these type of agreements going forward.

[Brandon Chow, executive]

Thank you, Mike and Jim. Our next question comes from Adam Gill, again. With the $4 million in annual cost reductions from the headcount reduction. How much of this will be seen in Q3 given severance costs?

[Stephane Archambault, executive]

Well, you can see that as an annual number, so you can take a 1/4 of that basically. And then -- and that's the type of -- for the event that happened in North America. So that would be the impact. And as Jim and Mike mentioned, I mean, the activities or the actions we took in Germany with the workshare program will bring an extra $0.5 million for the remaining of the year, so that's $250 million. So you can see around $1.2 million, $1.3 million direct impact per quarter until the remaining of the year.

[Brandon Chow, executive]

Thank you, Stephane. Our next question comes from David Quezada, again. Do you still anticipate reaching a run rate of 100 Biostream by 2024? And how is this ramp-up coming along?

[Dimitrios Vounassis, executive]

Perhaps I'll start, and Mike, you can add some color. Certainly, from a capacity perspective, we have the space. We have the equipment, and it's just a matter of manpower for Mike and the team to add for us, the biggest thing that Stephane and Mike and I are looking at is, what's the volume coming in from the market right now? And how do we manage the volume? We want to be very prudent with our capital. So we're not into building 20, 25 units ahead of the market. Certainly, we're not going to go there. We'll make decisions on how many units will hold in inventory as we get closer to each quarter going forward. And then we'll let the market dictate it.

[Brandon Chow, executive]

Thank you, Jim. So our next question comes from Rupert Merer from National Bank. Jim mentioned potential to divest of certain assets or enter into JVs to enhance liquidity, are there any business lines that stand out as "noncore" or any particular business plans that could be attractive for JVs?

[Dimitrios Vounassis, executive]

Yes. So as I mentioned a little bit earlier in the call, I think there was a similar question. We will not speculate on calls as to which one of our product lines may have an opportunity for a joint venture, divestiture or to be wound down. As we go through our process, which is a quite structured process, like we announced the wind down of the legacy RNG business. When we have all the facts, when we're ready to do so, we will let everybody know.

[Brandon Chow, executive]

Our next question comes from Justin Strong from Scotiabank. Can you please speak to how Xebec is positioned to take advantage of some of the inflation reduction a provisions versus peers?

[Mike Munro, executive]

Well, we're actually positioned quite well. It's a really exciting thing for us. The acceptance of RNG to produce green hydrogen as a highlight. Of course, we made the move to large presence in the U.S. The U.S. -- made in the U.S. figures them prominently both in our marketing strategy and as a result of this sort of legislation. Tax credits are always welcome. The customer is happy with them. They make things a lot more economical. Yes, improvements to the fuel tax credit makes it easier for taxpayers to utilize 45Q, as you heard earlier in the presentation. Really, it's -- there's a lot of upside for us, and we've already established that foothold with our Denver, Colorado location. So I mean, we're quite excited about the entire thing.

[Dimitrios Vounassis, executive]

And I'll add one very important point to what Mike said. So beyond extended tax credits, giving extra tax credits for made in North America, which validated Mike's strategy of building our capacity in the U.S. Another equally important proposal on the table for us who have the three Cleantech verticals altogether is the fact that they're creating a new clean hydrogen tax credit that allows the use of renewable natural gas as a qualifying treat start, i.e., we will be able to sell SMR technology to our U.S. customers. They will be able to buy a RNG contract produced from our Biostreams, and that will qualify as a green hydrogen product, which is really exciting for us. And of course, the extension of credits on carbon sequestration, again, an area where we are in our third vertical, where we continue to look for opportunities to grow the business is another exciting thing for us. So overall, we are hopeful that this bill will pass the house as it really, really gives us a nice lift in a big market like the U.S.

[Brandon Chow, executive]

Our next question comes from Sanjeev. Can potential permitting delays in Summit carbon pipeline impact the realization of revenues projected for 2022 and 2023? Just trying to understand whether Xebec deliveries through SCS will happen regardless of the ground realities of the project?

[Mike Munro, executive]

As a matter of fact, the way the agreement is set up, delivery will continue. We're not delayed by delays in installation.

[Brandon Chow, executive]

Our next question comes from Aaron MacNeil at TD Securities. You mentioned pricing appropriately in your prepared remarks. The Summit Carbon Award represents a significant portion of the backlog. Can you give us a sense of what you think the margin performance might be for this project?

[Dimitrios Vounassis, executive]

Maybe I'll take it and then certainly, we don't talk about specific project margins. Right, as we go through each one of our projects because then it's quite competitive information that we don't want to share. And this -- we're talking about one unique project. What I will say behind the door is we have a very thorough review process that Mike [ spear ] had on all our large projects. And we are certainly seeing that between ourselves and some of the arrangements that we made with Summit upfront, we are able basically to sustain the margin that we projected in the project by managing effectively our supply chain, which is always the biggest risk in a large project like this because we are basically the integrators and the packagers. So we acquire a lot of the components, but I think that the team's done a great job. And perhaps, Mike, you want to add a little bit of color with one or two examples.

[Mike Munro, executive]

No. So, the acquisition of our major materials, including large equipment, large turning equipment like compressors all the way down to commodity-type materials for skids, have come in, in lockstep with what we were originally arranging with the vendors, and we're quite happy with it. So we know we're going to perform on this particular one exactly in line with what we quoted and maybe there's a possibility of some additional improvement on top.

[Brandon Chow, executive]

Our next question comes from Rupert Merer, again, from National Bank. How will sales unfold under the contract with Summit? Will we see much revenue this year?

[Stephane Archambault, executive]

I can take this one. So the majority of the revenues will happen in 2023 because this is when the units will be shipped. We're going to see some revenues this year, but mainly in the last quarter. But it's going to be very small compared to the bulk of the revenues, which will happen in 2023.

[Brandon Chow, executive]

Thank you Stephane. We have another question from Nick Boychuk, again. How has the slowdown in BGX Biostream motor flow impacted expected manufacturing of the systems? And will you continue to build new systems to deliver faster when orders convert. And how many orders do you hope to fulfill over 2023 and 2024?

[Mike Munro, executive]

Okay. Go ahead, Jim.

[Dimitrios Vounassis, executive]

Sure. Okay. So I'll start off, and Mike, please feel free to add. I had mentioned a little bit earlier in one of the other questions that certainly, between Mike, myself and Stephane, we want to keep the speculative number of BGX Biostreams of our second-generation product to something that is manageable by the company. So we do not think that we would build ahead more than a handful of units. That's our internal target. And in terms of where we see demand now at this point in time, I won't speculate on the 2024 because it's a little too far away right now. But certainly, with Mike and his strong effort on lead time reduction that we've been doing, it gives us a lot of flexibility. So right now, we see the 2023 Biostream market signaling somewhere in that 20 to 30 type of units, but we'll get closer, and we'll firm it up and share with you much more of this as we get into the Q4 time frame because it could change rapidly.

[Brandon Chow, executive]

Thank you, Jim. Our next question comes from [ Yan ]. In your efforts to improve efficiency, including the continuous implementation of your ERP, do you foresee to extend these efforts to sales to accelerate the top line?

[Mike Munro, executive]

We already have a fairly integrated CRM, but yes. I mean, we're implementing standardization and process standardization across the organization. We have really good visibility in our CRM right now to our sales pipeline, and that allows us to be lockstep between functions as we mature these things from opportunities all the way to book to contracts. Did that answer the question?

[Dimitrios Vounassis, executive]

Yes. And I think if I add to Mike, it goes back to what I said on the previous question, this CRM technology that's allowing us to try to make a very opaque crystal ball on the RNG side much more clearer for us. And with the quite good lead times that we're getting on the Biostreams right now, it gives us a bit of flexibility to ramp up and ramp down as quarter-by-quarter.

[Mike Munro, executive]

And we're concentrating on the right opportunities.

[Brandon Chow, executive]

Thank you, Jim, Mike. Our next question comes from Nirav who firstly, would like to wish everyone a good morning and thank the team for taking steps to reduce the cash burn. They want to understand how we see the Canadian climate policy and its impact on our growth prospects there?

[Dimitrios Vounassis, executive]

Again, I think we welcome basically every attempt to reduce the impact of our world on the climate. With the Canadian policy, we're still working through trying to understand all its aspects. Certainly, things like carbon tax and the increasing of the carbon tax is something that we can certainly see a benefit for us as we go into the marketplace. I think the other thing we're keeping a close eye on is what's happening at the provincial level in Canada because the provinces have a lot of sway in this. And we were quite glad to hear yesterday from our own home province here in Quebec, quite a big commitment towards injecting capital into the renewable natural gas sphere and influence. So we continue to monitor. Certainly, the marketplace is not as big as the U.S. marketplace, just like every other product, but this is an important hometown market. And what applies to the U.S. market also applies here, right? We have our Canadian facility. Our Canadian facility is geared up and is making Biostreams, and we'll make Canadian Biostream. And of course, our PSA technology, which we leverage for both helium production, which, a lot of helium production in Canada and hydrogen is also mainly Canada. So we have a good -- I think in both countries, we have a very good footprint to take advantage of anything that comes from the government.

[Brandon Chow, executive]

Thank you, Mike and Jim. We have another question from Rupert Merer, again. Where do you see the largest opportunities for Xebec in the U.S. with the potential for a $3 per kilogram production tax credit for green hydrogen? Is it electrolysis, RNG, hydrogen as a service or carbon capture? Have you had any dialogue with potential customers on this?

[Dimitrios Vounassis, executive]

I'll start and I'll let Mike comment on the customer front. Certainly, we see the opportunities as we've laid out in our presentation today, renewable natural gas and SMR technology to produce green hydrogen from renewable natural gas. I think these two Cleantech verticals of ours will see some good traction. And perhaps, Mike, no, I think -- if I understand well, you've gotten some inquiries already from some customers on this front.

[Mike Munro, executive]

We have actually. We're talking to quite a few. There's been, like we said in the presentation, quite a bit of interest along both RNG and hydrogen lines. And we're well poised because we've got modular RNG covered, and we've got modules or SMR to cover. So we -- like Jim said, we're poised really well to take advantage across our clean tech offering of everything from our RNG generation, RNG &G conversion to hydrogen and carbon sequestration.

[Dimitrios Vounassis, executive]

And I would add one final point. I think where we're seeing the big demand is for the green hydrogen from SMRs is in the format of gas as a service. So people are looking for the molecule basically.

[Brandon Chow, executive]

Our next question comes from [ Ken Monroe ]. What is your current headcount? And is there a clear trend in revenues per employee?

[Stephane Archambault, executive]

Well, I can take this one. So we -- for us, the fact that we have large contracts and then we're executing on those it's not a metric that we use often, the year of revenue per employee. We do look at it. But it's not like if we would strictly be on a service business. the fact that you've got those milestones as you ship in equipment, for instance, you've got a lot of revenues, and it kind of skews the metric relevant. So now I think with the reduction that we've made just to answer the question, I think we're hovering around 600 employees right now. We're a bit less than that, and that's the current situation right now. And as I said, on the matrix, it's a good matrix to have, but not for us at this point.

[Dimitrios Vounassis, executive]

Yes. Suffice to say, though, you saw our backlog go up and you saw our headcount go down. So as Stephane said, it's not the one and only metric we look at for the Stephane explained, sometimes it fits well with our business, sometimes it doesn't, but we certainly pushed it in the right direction if that's a metric that people are keen on.

[Mike Munro, executive]

One that we track very carefully project over project is margin has quoted versus margin has built and that gives us a cross view all the way across.

[Brandon Chow, executive]

Perfect. Thanks, team. We have another question from [ Ken Monroe ] as well. Can you elaborate a bit more on the -- one of the credit facilities currently being in forbearance? And is it possible for that to be reinstated that the company meets the loan covenants in the future?

[Stephane Archambault, executive]

Yes, absolutely. This is a temporary thing. We did reach one of the covenant, and that's why we had to have that [indiscernible]. We came up with an agreement with the bank, and we're monitoring the situation. that's the situation right now. And as I said -- and then as I pointed out, I mean, we can definitely reinstitute that with no [indiscernible] as we fixed the ratio.

[Brandon Chow, executive]

Our next question comes from Louis Jutras from Desjardins Capital Markets. Can you provide an update on the progress achieved on the decentralized hydrogen production hub strategy?

[Dimitrios Vounassis, executive]

Perhaps I'll take that. So we are continuing, as we mentioned in our Investor Day. We are continuing to look for the right partner or partners basically to help us grow the hub strategy faster than we can because we continue to believe that our use of capital is much better on the equipment side than on the hub side. And as things evolve and as we find the right partners, we will let everyone know.

[Brandon Chow, executive]

Thank you, Jim. Our next question comes from Andrew. With some of the challenges of the legacy RNG contracts, we would like to know what the plan is to win more biostream ones?

[Mike Munro, executive]

We're putting the horsepower exactly where we need it. We talked about the CRM. We talked about the focus of the team. I know that we spoke about in the last meeting here, the number of opportunities we had for quotation going up. And we are addressing those, and it has gone up. We've essentially doubled the amount of inquiries over last year. It's the conversion rate that's a little bit slow. That's got more to do with macroeconomics and people's hesitation to commit capital right now than anything else because we are on -- what we're quoting, we are the vendor of choice. So it's a matter of to get it converted from opportunity into -- through pipeline into backlog. We're just not again [Audio Gap] and like I said, the messaging here basically is the global conditions are making it so that things are slowing down, but these projects are not getting canceled. They're getting deferred a little bit. So that's kind of what we're feeling a little bit on that front.

[Dimitrios Vounassis, executive]

And if I would add, that's why we welcome and truly hope the House in the U.S. passes the IRA. Because if they pass the IRA, then there the extent tax credits. It allows us to manufacture products in the U.S. It gives our customers up to a 10% boost if they use local labor to install the equipment also on their tax credits. And as a policy -- if I take a step back, as a policy, we as a company, also across all our verticals don't announce all our orders unless they have a strategic value and we never announced orders that we have not received the purchase order on.

[Brandon Chow, executive]

Thank you, Mike and Jim. Our next question comes from [indiscernible]. Can you please talk about your plans and expectations with the operations, particularly in China and with the Quebec initiative with FSDQ?

[Dimitrios Vounassis, executive]

Yes, I'll take that. So we're very happy with our Chinese joint venture. We continue to see that the team in China is growing well with our partners there. So our plan right now is to continue to work with our partner there to make sure that we continue to provide some key core technology out of North America and then that the local partnership in China builds and makes things for China in China, so to speak. And we'll evaluate this and how it evolves over the next couple of quarters, and we'll make whatever other decisions we decide that the benefit of both Xebec and our JV partnership in terms of technology sharing as an example, and anything out. In terms of our GNR capital in Quebec, our joint venture with the FSDQ, which is the second largest fund in Quebec employment fund, we continue -- the two partners continue to look at how we can extract maximum value from GNR capital. Certainly, as I mentioned a few minutes ago, this recent as the sweet passage the Quebec government on supporting RNG projects in the province. It's something now that we have to digest and we have to look at. And we're working with our partner and we'll make decisions that are best for GNR Capital and best for Xebec.

[Brandon Chow, executive]

Thank you, Jim. That's helpful. Well, thank you, everyone, for your questions. And unfortunately, this is all the time we have for. And this wraps up today's webinar. With that, I'll turn it back over to Jim for his closing remarks.

[Dimitrios Vounassis, executive]

Well, thank you very much, everyone. I think you saw that this quarter was a quarter that we delivered a lot on the items that we talked about in Q1. And we look forward to seeing you again in Q3, and I wish everyone a safe and happy remaining part of your summer. Thanks a lot, and have a great day.

[Brandon Chow, executive]

Well, everyone, that concludes our webinar. The materials will be posted through our website shortly, and you may disconnect at any time. Thank you, and we look forward to seeing you out next time.