Clear Blue Technologies International Inc

XTSX:CBLU

Earnings Call Transcript 2023-Q2

[Miriam Tuerk, executive]

Hello, everyone. My name is Miriam Tuerk. I'm Co-Founder and CEO of Clear Blue Technologies. I'm here today to present the Q2 2023 earnings call. And I have with me today Farrukh Anwar, who's our wonderful CFO, as well as Ryan Fremantle from Sofit Capital, our Investor Relations partner is going to help manage the call. Ryan, are you there?

[Ryan Fremantle, analyst]

Yes, I'm here.

[Miriam Tuerk, executive]

Okay. So if you want to kick it off and then we'll dive into the presentation, Ryan.

[Ryan Fremantle, analyst]

Yes. I would just like to thank everyone for joining our Clear Blue Technologies Q2 2023 Earnings Call. Miriam, feel free to take it away.

[Miriam Tuerk, executive]

I'm having some troubles with my computer today, so hopefully, I will be able to find the buttons on time. Okay. Good afternoon, good morning to everyone. Welcome, and thank you for joining us. As always, please be aware that any information we're providing is with the best capability that we have, but it is sometimes including forward-looking statements.

So we take that please giving you the information to take it under advisement and consideration. So today, we're just going to go over Clear Blue a little bit, talk about the products and services and what we're doing in the marketplace. We're going to talk about our Q2 2023 results and then move into the future outlook of the company.

So as many of our investors know, 2022 was a very difficult year for Clear Blue. We had a material downturn as a result of the macroeconomic environment that hit us in Q1 of last year. We finished 2022 -- 2021 off very strongly. Hit the ground running in 2022 with what we thought was going to be fantastic growth.

And basically, everything after February of last year just stopped -- people stopped spending their CapEx, everything got frozen as a result of the war in Ukraine, the inflation, the interest rates, et cetera, et cetera. We've come through 3 difficult quarters as a result of that. But we did a lot of work in the meantime in terms of getting new products launched and in terms of doing an acquisition. And we're very pleased to see that Q2 begins to show that we are recovering and have an uptrend in front of us.

We are cautiously optimistic that, that uptrend is going to continue, and it does need to continue for a few quarters. So we're not sleeping well at night until that happens, but the bookings, the sales, the order backlog, the revenue forecast, everything is moving in a much more positive way. And so it really is a new era for Clear Blue. We -- in addition to launching the new products, as I said, we did the acquisition of eSite Power Systems, but we also raised $10 million in nondilutive capital, $6 million in grants from various government organizations and related agencies.

We've got great support. We've expanded our customer base by adding a number of strategic telecommunications customers and growing our business into wider markets. And because of the nature of the change of the products and the nature of what's happening in the marketplace, we've started moving into the core network and core infrastructure in the marketplace.

So just to summarize our product line, we really have 4 products. In the telecom IoT space, we have 3 products, and they have a wide range of power support. eSite was a company and a product that we acquired from Sweden in January of this year. We have merged -- are in the process of integrating that with Clear Blue Smart Power Illumient's cloud management and our recurring revenue business model and service.

And so that's ESite-Micro, which we would use for large systems and for retrofit and upgrade where much of the industry is converting from generators and diesel gas to solar hybrid systems, which is really where we can bring significant value. Our bread and butter product from Clear Blue is our Nano-Grid product.

And also, we have now delivered and are starting to ship in Q3 our Pico-Grid product, which is really well suited for WiFi, satellite customers as well as IoT applications. So those are the 3 products that we have, that we're selling around the world. Within North America, we are also very focused on Illumientt, which is our solar street light business.

Up until last year, we had the STRADA product, which was a lead acid large power system. In Q2 of last year, we launched CAMMI, which is our lithium-based product and has unparalleled capacity in terms of size of system and power and lighting that it can provide. And we, in Q3 of this year, are now shipping SENTI, which is our new all-in-one solar street light. This is a fantastic product because of its ease and simplicity.

Basically, it's an all-in-one system. Here, you can see at the top of the pole, and we're quite pleased that we are constantly using our common technology platforms for multiple products. So our new products that have begun shipping in Q3, Pico-Grid and SENTI, in fact, are both built on the same core power electronics infrastructure and system in the cloud as well as the actual electronics in the device, which we call Kevin. We have a number of million fans in the company.

So Pico-Grid inside and SENTI inside has got Kevin inside of it. We acquired eSite in January of this year. It is a fantastic product that is particularly well suited for harsh non-air-conditioned outdoor environments. And many telecom systems are in small buildings with air conditioning and all of that stuff very nice and easy environment to operate on.

But when you're talking about much of the infrastructure, you're talking about outdoor environments. And eSite Power Systems was particularly built to have high reliability, high performance for those outdoor environments. It's a great technology. It's got a great brand out in the marketplace. They had focused a lot of engineering on the product itself.

Clear Blue, meanwhile, had built a very strong smart power management. And when you put it together, you end up with ESite-Micro. So ESite-Micro takes the core eSight product, turns it into an entire solution. So now we're selling energy systems with solar panels and batteries and all of those kinds of things. And we're providing it on an ongoing managed service basis with an industry-leading service model.

Where that drives us is that we are now on the road to 0 diesel. Customers are moving off of diesel generator systems, both because it's green and our solution provides the smallest green input out in the marketplace, footprints in the marketplace, but additionally, using our smart predictive analytics, working with our customers to move those hybrid systems to pure solar or solar grid and really getting diesel down to 0 or as close to 0 as possible is our mantra and key focus.

So all of our products, whether it's telecom, satellite, IoT, WiFi, we sell the device out in the field. We collect it to our cloud-based management system, and we operate on an ongoing service basis. So every system is managed through the Illumient's cloud control technology and then supported by our team in the field.

When it comes to smart power, Clear Blue has since day 1, been on the road map of building a large repository of data, analytics, performance management and predictive analytics. And they really come into a couple of key buckets. The first is energy forecasting. When you move to a system that includes solar, either a part of the system time frame or the entire system time frame, you are on limited energy. So it's like having an electric vehicle, you fully charge the battery, you get in the car, you drive.

And as long as you're driving, you've only got so much battery, only so much capacity you have to manage how much energy you are using, you now have unlimited power. So a key part of what we do is energy and weather forecasting and managing the battery life cycle as a result of that. Remote management and troubleshooting is a very key aspect of our product platform. We have unparalleled ability to manage and troubleshoot systems so that we can identify when a problem is going to come before it has actually impacted uptime and service performance. And also to do preventive maintenance, oftentimes, you can remotely do preventive maintenance and ensure that things are operating well.

Lastly, specifically in almost every use case, how much energy you can get access to and how you can use that for additional applications to turn the cell phone radio up to put a higher powered light to add different loads to the system is really something people are keenly interested. Once you've done a solar system, you basically have free energy. So potential energy analysis to say, hey, you've got this extra capacity or you don't have this extra capacity, you need to live with less is a key aspect of what we do.

So AI is something we're all talking about and learning about this year. I use that phrase very cautiously, and I thought this Gartner graph was a really interesting metric to understand that there's an actual trajectory of things that you need to build before you ever get to that last column called AI. First, you have to have the data and you have to have a network connecting and collecting all of that data. You then start to get massive quantities of data. 10 billion transactions is what we've processed more than 13.9 million operating days. Managing and doing all of that is not a trivial thing. Starting to overlay the analytics and the predictive analytics is key. We do all of that today. We're doing more and more predictive analytics.

And once you have built all 4 of those platforms, then you can start to add machine learning and artificial intelligence on top of it. Clear Blue has been building data, big data, analytics and predictive analytics since its founding. And as a result of the R&D program that we have in place over the next few years, we are going to be adding the machine learning layer to our product and moving to true AI, which is going to, as I said, get us to the road to 0 diesel and allow us to scale to a global level with tens and tens of thousands of systems in the field.

So what's the objective that we are trying to achieve? Well, the first part is we want to lower the upfront cost. And we've already validated that independently. We have published studies that show that you need 40% lower upfront cost of the system, less solar panels, less batteries with a Clear Blue smart off-grid system than you need with a regular system.

We then move to the hybrid world, where we're trying to reduce the actual diesel consumption by 20% to 50% over a competitor solution using smart predictive analytics, ensure that we're improving the maintenance windows and giving higher SLA performance, maximum uptime and ultimately, what that means is that when we sit down, we talk to the Chief Executive Officers of Tower -- telco towercos as well as telcos how we could basically drop 5% to 10% margin to the bottom line. This is an industry that is very cost constrained and margins are tough to earn and make and there's constant pressure. So this is an important dialogue we are having with our customers.

So now I'm going to move into our Q2 results, and I'm going to turn it over to Farrukh, who's going to give us an overview of our financials. Farrukh?

[Farrukh Anwar, executive]

Thank you, Miriam. So hello, everyone. Revenues for Q2 2023 was $75,325 which yielded a trailing full quarter result of around $1.67 million. The entire period was impacted by economic downturn triggered by macroeconomic environments of early 2022.

As companies around the world delayed the capital spending, Clear Blue's revenue was delayed by those pauses and customer rollouts. Beginning in Q2 2023, the company saw a return to strong bookings. And as those orders begin to ship, the company expects the trailing for quarter revenue will begin to grow again going forward. Miriam, next slide?

Trailing fourth quarter comparative Q2 period includes a result of quarters prior to the economic downturn. Where as a trailing for quarter Q2 2023 incorporates Q3 and Q4 2022 as well as Q1 2023, all quarters, which had been impacted by the downturn. The macroeconomic events of 2022 were the primary cause of this downturn.

The Q2 quarterly results show that the Clear Blue -- that Clear Blue is now back to revenue growth mode. And as we move forward, trailing for quarter revenue should begin to grow again going forward. Our telecom vertical, which has been growing consistently over the past few years, however, we saw for the first time a decline in this vertical during the previous 12 months. The decrease can be attributed to the same global macroeconomic environment issues, where we saw that certain telecom rollouts were delayed, resulting in a decrease in revenue for the quarter and trailing for quarter of 2023. Customers also delayed their CapEx expenditure in 2022, which caused project deferrals.

We should continue to have -- we continue to have a good relationship with these customers and are working with them to accommodate their revised rollout schedules. When we speak about bookings, you will see that the orders have now started to increase. So when we talk about Illumient and EAS recurring revenue, recurring revenue is the revenue that the company owns from its Energy as a Service and Illumients ongoing management services and cloud software.

Every single system that Clear Blue has ever sold includes an ongoing service covenant. Clear Blue manages and operates the power systems on an ongoing basis for our customers. This is the heart of our business and our value proposition.

As telecom customers increased wireless telecommunication bandwidth to support an ever-growing customer base, the power needs of those sites increase accordingly. This ongoing growth of telecom systems and ongoing operations and maintenance of the power needed to keep the systems functioning is what drives the growth in our recurring revenue. As you see, addition to our telecom customers rollout over the years is having a nice impact on the growth of our recurring revenue.

Recurring revenue includes all revenue from existing installed systems that are under -- that undergo ongoing management by Clear Blue. Customers will sometimes undertake to expand the capacity of the systems as telecom traffic grows and these onetime transactions are included in our Clear Blue recurring revenue as well. And as a result, we see a onetime upgrade undertaken in Q2 2022, was not repeated in Q2 2023, thereby resulting in a drop in recurring revenue when compared to the 2 periods.

As a result, Q2 recurring revenue was $139,000, a 61% decrease from the same period last year. This is because of the same economic downturn and pause in spending by customers. For the trailing for quarter period, recurring revenue also decreased by 10% to $646,416. In general, recurring revenue is expected to increase each quarter as Clear Blue sells more units with a subscription model and as the company's base of telecom installations grow.

Telecom systems tend to grow their capacity and power consumption, which also increases the recurring revenue of Clear Blue. Miriam, do you want to talk about our bookings?

[Miriam Tuerk, executive]

Okay. So when you start to see an uptick in your numbers, first, you have to -- the sales funnel grows, then the bookings and orders grow and then that converts into revenue. And as you can see, bookings are up 134%. Our bookings at the end of Q2 were $4.6 million in bookings, up from $1.9 million at the end of December last year.

As the company rolls forward through Q3, Q4 and onwards, those new orders are going to convert to revenue, and that is why we are pretty solid on our ability to grow quite nicely and return to positive revenue growth in the latter part of this year. Farrukh?

[Farrukh Anwar, executive]

Yes. So let's talk about gross profit. This is one metric that I'm really happy about. So we can see that if we look at the growth, if you look at the graph on the right, we can see the company has been able to grow its margin over the years, and now it's maintaining margins at the mid-30s percent range.

With higher inflation and increasing commodity prices, there has been pressure on the company's margins. However, in most cases, the company has managed to either innovate lower costs elsewhere or pass a portion of these increased costs of materials to its customers.

Trailing for quarter margin slightly increased to 37% when compared to the comparative period. Given the acquisition of eSite at the beginning of Q1 2023 and other cost pressures on the company, we do expect the overall margins to stay within the mid-30s range. Right.

Operating expenses. In this economic environment of high inflation result in higher costs, Clear Bue's management is focused on reducing operating expenses where possible. In Q2 2023, the operating expenses decreased by 24% compared to the same period in 2022.

The operating expenses include $345,000 related to the acquisition of eSite and upon excluding these expenses, the revised operating expenses relating to the company for the 6 months ended June 30, 2023, is $761,047, which decreased by 48% as compared to June 30, 2022.

Travel-related expenses were lower compared to the comparative quarter by $25,587. Salaries, wages and benefits decreased by [ $407,000 ] and business development and marketing expenses decreased by $90,000 compared to Q2 2022.

The decrease was partially offset by an increase in research and development expenses of $73,000 and professional expenses were higher by $43,000 when compared to Q2 2022. For the trailing 4 quarter June 30 -- ended June 30, 2023, the operating expenses decreased by $479,000 to $5.3 million compared to $5.8 million in the previous period.

Excluding eSite, operating expenses were $4.986 million, which decreased by 14% when compared to 2022. So as a result, our EBITDA loss was [ $1.611 ] million. It is an increase of 33% for the quarter as compared to $1.2 million -- negative $1.2 million in the comparative Q2 2022 period.

The result is due to the adjustment of the government grants, which in the previous quarter, we showed as in our income statement. But now we are offsetting the grant to our intangible assets because that's where the costs of these government grants like the intangible cost was booked. Excluding the impact of the R&D government grant, the revised EBITDA loss is a negative -- EBITDA loss is $664,000, which was a 33% improvement as compared to Q2 2022.

As Clear Blue's revenue is expected to grow nicely in the second half of the year, we expect our non-IFRS adjusted EBITDA to improve. Adjusted EBITDA loss improved by 33% for the quarter but worsened by 15% on a trailing 4 quarter basis. In addition to the government grant adjustment, the delta in non-IFRS adjusted EBITDA between Q2 2023 and Q2 2022 can be attributed to the inclusion of operating expenses from eSite. Miriam do you want to?

[Miriam Tuerk, executive]

Okay. So where are we? Q2, we have now returned to revenue growth from the 3 previous quarters. So if you look at the revenue graph, you could start to see the uptick. We -- as a result of -- having seen the results in our sales activity and our go-to-market and the orders are very confident that this was a onetime 2022 macroeconomic cost situation. With strong bookings in the quarter, yielding $4.7 million -- $4.6 million in bookings, the company has visibility to a strong second half of the year.

To put it more succinctly, we've turned the corner. The downturn is behind us and bookings, revenue and EBITDA are all on the upstream. In addition to these sales-driven metrics, the company continues to have a wonderful support of a number of government programs to assist in funding its R&D program. As Clear Blue increases its predictive analytics performance and begins to implement machine learning AI, we do have approximately $5.4 million of -- sorry, $4.6 million of available ongoing funding, which is going to support our R&D program going forward.

So in terms of the outlook, our sales funnel is robust for Q3, Q4. Bookings and orders are also showing positive trajectory. As I said, the $4.6 million of bookings is going to provide strong revenue for the second half of 2023. And we do expect a number of really nice deals to be closing in the fall. ESite-Micro is contributing revenue and sales funnel is building as Clear Blue ramps up its sales on those products. So we're also really happy to see that our revenue is growing across all product lines in all markets.

We are seeing a good mix of Nano-Grid, Illumient and eSite contributing to our revenue going forward. And that is really important to us and I think good from an investor perspective as well. Our Illumient solar lighting business has been quite strong this year and the number of projects in the planning stages continues to grow.

More and more, we're now seeing actual power utilities starting to come and look for solar, off-grid solutions. And many customers are starting to think solar first for street lighting. The stories from Lahaina and Maui from what we've seen in the Northwest territories in Colona and elsewhere around the world have been quite gut wrenching. And the issue of the power grid and all of those cables and pole to pole wiring being the cause of starting many of those fires is something that really causes us to be reinvigorated to promote and sell our solar lighting where you can eliminate so much of that cable infrastructure and have a very strong green product and solution but also something that's defensive against the climate change factors that we're seeing in the marketplace.

Pico-Grid and SENTI are now shipping. We do see a solid market interest for both products, and we expect them to start making a contribution to our revenue in 2024. So that's everything for today. Ryan, I want to turn it over to you. Do we have any questions from everyone?

[Ryan Fremantle, analyst]

Yes. Thank you, Miriam and Farrukh. We'll now begin the question-and-answer portion of the call. [Operator Instructions]. But if we're unable to answer a question for some reason, please feel free to submit a question directly to the e-mail, where that is provided on the screen. So let's get started here. Gross margin increased this quarter to 41%, which is a good improvement over a year ago. What is the company's target gross margin? And how should we think about this trending into the second half of the year in 2024?

[Farrukh Anwar, executive]

So as I mentioned in my presentation that our gross margin is -- we expect the gross margin to remain in the mid-30s, so because eSite, we've got a new product eSite with us. And there still continues to be pressure on our gross margins. We are trying to offload as much of the increased prices, as I said, but 41% was really good for this quarter, but I think that a midrange of 35% to 37% is something that is more sustainable over the next little while.

[Miriam Tuerk, executive]

Yes. I would just add that the ESite-Micro product has the potential to deliver strong margins going forward. We expect to grow them, but there is some work to be done and it will take us a couple of years. As we've done -- if you look at the gross margin chart, as we've done with our core products, we've increased the margins significantly quarter-over-quarter-over-quarter. That takes a lot of work. There's a program around it, and we're just at the beginning of that program on the ESite-Micro side, which is why we just want to temper a little bit to allow for some growth through in there.

[Ryan Fremantle, analyst]

So I'm going to try and clump some of these questions together here, so we can address the same themes throughout. So a few questions in regard to guidance and expectations. Please help us understand how you expect to be cash flow neutral? What level of revenue supports breakeven?

[Miriam Tuerk, executive]

So our target for the year was a net 0 cash burn and a breakeven EBITDA. If you look at our Q2 numbers with revenue of around $700,000, we had a negative EBITDA of $664,000 as our revenue converts over to what we've given as guidance outlook for Q3, which is a number between $1.5 million and $2.2 million, that's going to have a material impact on our EBITDA -- our adjusted EBITDA. So over $2 million, somewhere in the $2 million to $2.5 million, maybe I think $2.5 million is where we are EBITDA positive and cash flow breakeven.

The nonoperating expense aspects of the business, which are R&D related, that's helping us to build our product portfolio and helping us to really establish and strengthen our market leadership in terms of smart protective analytics and AI is supported through government funding programs for which we are highly appreciative. So in around the $2.5 million range a quarter is where we are really nicely comfortable.

[Farrukh Anwar, executive]

I just want to add to this that we've got inventory in hand of around north of $3 million. And that inventory is going to be used in our sales that we projected for the rest of the year. And that would draw down some of our inventory as well as be cash neutral for us. So that's also going to help.

[Miriam Tuerk, executive]

So we're on track to maintaining our plan for 2023, which was a cash-neutral plan for the year.

[Ryan Fremantle, analyst]

Q3 guidance was for revenue of $1.5 million to $2.5 million. The range seems quite large. What are the drivers to hit the top of the range? And if it's just timing, could a potential lower number in Q3 lead to a much stronger Q4?

[Miriam Tuerk, executive]

Yes. So we've given a range of $1.5 million to $2.2 million. And as we said in the announcement, the lower end of the range would occur in the event that some of the shipments from our suppliers, which are scheduled and confirmed for September slip to October.

So the backlog of bookings and orders that we have should drive us north of $2 million. But in the current environment and with some of those states being in the latter part of September, we just wanted to give a lower range in case we had some supply chain ship. But you are exactly right. If it slips, it really just slips from the last few weeks of September to the first few weeks of October and does have an impact positively.

Notwithstanding that, we are seeing strong momentum and are working hard. We believe we have a good opportunity to have our best quarter being Q4 and even exceeding Q3 numbers. That's what we're working towards at this point.

[Ryan Fremantle, analyst]

Great. A few more questions in regards to guidance and expectations here. Last quarter on the call, you said you wouldn't give guidance specifically, but mentioned that an $8 million to $9 million range was kind of the right way to think about things for 2023. Could that still be the case with a stronger second half?

[Miriam Tuerk, executive]

Yes. I think what we had said was that we would have a return to our pre-downturn numbers and that they would be more in line with 2021 numbers, which was in the $8 million to $9 million range. I still believe that's the case.

If you look at our revenue for Q3, it's really in line with the pre-downturn numbers of -- sorry, look at our Q2, you can see that it's really in line with our Q2 numbers from 2021, 2 years ago before the downturn. So certainly, when looking at Q3, Q4, we see a strong quarter whether or not they punch way above their -- [ very close ] to make up for the downturn in Q1 and Q2, I think it's tight. So I would say below $8 million. But in that, we're at that upper end. We're certainly nowhere near the number that we were last year.

[Ryan Fremantle, analyst]

Okay. So it sounds like you're expecting strong growth in the second half compared to the first half. Can you provide some more visibility into what products are driving this? And although it's early, how do you think about 2024?

[Miriam Tuerk, executive]

Yes. So as I said, we are really positive on the fact that Illumient, eSite and Nano-Grid, all 3 of our main products in all 3 markets are going to contribute in revenue in Q3 and in revenue in Q4. So that's exciting for us. We're happy to see -- we started from ground 0 when we did the acquisition in eSite, there's usually a 12-, 18-, 24-month sales cycle. We got our first order in Q2, and we've got more orders coming for eSite that we believe will hit in the fall.

A Nano-Grid is -- got some good funnel. It's been a little bit soft earlier this year, but we see some good funnel for Nano-Grid. So we think it's going to be strong in Q3, Q4. And Illumient is just lots of stuff happening. So it's a good mix of all 3 products for the remainder of this year.

Traditionally, and historically, Q1 is always a very soft quarter for Clear Blue. People are solidifying their budgets. They're trying to figure out what their spending is, and then they're trying to manage the construction cycle. So we oftentimes see like almost no revenue in Q1.

For 2024, we don't think that's going to be the case. We have visibility to orders that are going to give us a strong first half of next year. And we hope that by the time we get to the earnings call at the end of November, we will have solidified a number of orders that will allow us to provide guidance that Q1 and Q2 are going to continue the trend of Q3, Q4. That's the plan we have internally. We have visibility to a pipeline to making that happen, and we just need to execute this fall to solidify it.

[Ryan Fremantle, analyst]

With the quarter more in line with historical norms, can you give your insight on the low stock price?

[Miriam Tuerk, executive]

I think the low stock price is just going to wait a few quarters to recover from -- they will -- as I have said in this call, you can see the trend line, but you need the trend to go forward a few more quarters. So my expectation is that the stock price will begin to recover as we start to show more than just a few small quarters as the uptick starts to go.

And as we can demonstrate to the company that we are, in fact, delivering on the cash flow positive aspect that we don't need to do a raise from that perspective. I've talked to a number of people in the field that have some good insight. And I think we just keep our heads down and I expect that in 2024, the stock price will recover. We just need to show a couple of good quarters.

If you look at our trailing 4 quarter because we're reporting on the last 4 quarters and those last 4 quarters include 3 quarters of downturn when you look at the top line numbers of our trailing fourth quarter results, we're still showing those numbers as part of it. So we need to work them out a couple of quarters.

Many of our supporters, I think it's a great time to buy. It's a great time to average down the price. And I think we will recover quite nicely as we do that.

[Ryan Fremantle, analyst]

We're going to switch here to customers and markets. Just to kind of build off of the stock price question there. Are there any significant deals in the pipeline with a high wind probability?

[Miriam Tuerk, executive]

So we're pretty ruthless on our sales funnel. We look at the numbers and look at it. We have a fairly strong book of business that is at the later stages of the procurement process. It's diversified. So there's a number of deals don't have to have a single, oh my god, we got this $2 million purchase order. There are some of those in the sales funnel.

But I like it when I've got 10 $500,000 deals that are coming in because they're all going to have follow-on and if 8 of the 10 happen, then it's $4 million for the quarter, and that's okay, too. So yes, our funnel is building and our opportunity to convert those deals into sales for Q4 and Q1, Q2 next year, is quite imminent, which is why we believe that we think we can start the year of next year strong and that we're going to convert those deals in the fall. So we do anticipate that we will have a good size of number of deals, not necessarily all huge. There's a couple that are like that, but also a lot of really good, solid $0.5 million, $0.75 million deals that we hope to announce through the fall and convert into revenue.

[Ryan Fremantle, analyst]

Few questions here specifically on Pico-Grid, can you speak to the opportunity to Pico-Grid all 3 of your verticals? What do you expect to see in terms of growth here?

[Miriam Tuerk, executive]

So in terms of Pico-Grid, remember that there are 2 products inside -- for Pico-Grid. There's Pico-Grid and then there's the SENTI, all-in-one solar street light. For Pico-Grid so far, we have focused on our satellite partners and our go-to-market with those satellite partners.

So customers that in the satellite industry will by Nano-Grid systems and then Pico-Grid systems around the Nano-Grid system. We have a good amount of demand, not a large amount of demand for that -- with those satellite partners.

In the streetlight market, we are -- we have a good distribution channel and a good sales distribution, and we're seeing strong interest. In terms of taking Pico-Grid to the wider IoT market, we've just begun shipping in Q3 of this year. We need to get the first hundreds out there, installed, up and running and solidified before we blow our brains out. And so we really do anticipate that, that ramp-up is going to occur in 2024.

[Ryan Fremantle, analyst]

So you just touched on Pico-Grid and IoT. Could you give an example of a use case for that?

[Miriam Tuerk, executive]

A Tsunami sensor in Maui, a smoke and fire sensor in the middle of the forest in Colona, a security camera, agricultural applications, WiFi access points to provide Internet to communities, especially when cellular systems go down. Those are a few examples that I could name.

[Ryan Fremantle, analyst]

Do your customers see any incentives from the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act to purchase your solutions?

[Miriam Tuerk, executive]

Yes. So we do see infrastructure spending. So the Infrastructure Act and the -- so the Clean Energy Act and then the Inflation Reduction Act, which had an infrastructure spending, is definitely fueling investment in the infrastructure.

And as I said earlier, what we're seeing there is people are really starting to look solar first. Used to be that they would go with the grid if they could, and it was just if there was a place where it was hard to get the grid, then they would look at solar or you'd have some innovative. I'm a leading edge, and I want to lead the charge with solar.

Now we're seeing solar first defaulting to solar, eliminating of all that cable. When you have power cables from pole to pole to pole and there's a chance tree could fall on it and it could start a fire. That's just infrastructure management that people want to avoid and people understand that it's not easy to manage that stuff.

And so I even commented power utilities. And that's interesting because most power utilities think of, well, anything I connect to my grid, that's the business I'm in. And so they're starting to change away from being a power grid delivery service to I deliver energy and if it's off-grade, it's off-grade. So we're doing a number of solar lighting projects for DOTs and power utilities, and that's exciting to see.

[Ryan Fremantle, analyst]

We've got 15 minutes left and 4 questions remaining so far, so we appreciate you all staying on the line. Is there a market for Illumient outside of North America?

[Miriam Tuerk, executive]

So we did a lot of work on selling Illumient in international markets when we acquired the UGE -- solar street lighting business from UGE a number of years ago. And what we found is that certainly in emerging markets, it's not mission-critical infrastructure. And again, we focus on mission-critical infrastructure.

So generally, we decided that from a -- we have some projects in Oman and in Morocco and in Nigeria and a couple of projects in Europe, but we decided to focus mostly in North America. That may change with SENTI because SENTI is very simple, very cost-effective, high performance, and it's just in a box. So I think that once our SENTI traction starts to grow, that may become our go-to-market solution for the rest of the market.

[Ryan Fremantle, analyst]

What's the seasonality in your business? Will the upcoming quarters be seasonally stronger or weaker? I believe you've mentioned this during the call, but please just clarify for those listening again.

[Miriam Tuerk, executive]

Ye's. So we are generally in the CapEx spending line item of our customers. If you are a fiscal year to -- as your calendar year, then your CapEx budget gets nailed down in -- somewhere in the middle of Q1, then you do your procurement planning in Q2, you order the staff Q3 and you ship in Q3, Q4.

So we have traditionally had most of our business -- our strongest quarters are Q3, Q4 and traditionally, our Q1 is very soft. That's changing a little bit because we see ongoing orders and we see overflow from Q4 into Q1. So as I said, right now, our plans are we have a strong opportunity to have early Q1 and Q2 orders for next year, so that next year's Q1 is not seasonally low, but in general, it is normal for it to be seasonally low in Q1, and Q3, Q4 being the highest.

[Ryan Fremantle, analyst]

All right. Two questions left here. Do you anticipate requiring to raise additional capital in 2024?

[Miriam Tuerk, executive]

It is not our plan. Our plan is that we are now at a point where we believe that we've gotten back to 2022 numbers and growth beyond that and that we should be able to operate the company quarterly basis with positive cash flow and positive EBITDA, and that's our target for 2024.

[Ryan Fremantle, analyst]

Final question here is just about the revenue model. And I do believe Farrukh mentioned this during this course of the call, but can you please describe how you generate recurring revenue? And how do you think that this part of the business is going to grow moving forward?

[Miriam Tuerk, executive]

So when we sell a system, we provide ongoing management and operational services to operate and manage that system. And so -- it's kind of like when you buy your car, you get the first few oil changes for free included in the upfront price.

So even though you're getting an ongoing service, you prepaid for it in the upfront fee. So when we sell an upfront system, we include the first 3 years of our ongoing Illumient service as part of that onetime fee and then we revenue recognize it over time as we actually deliver the service.

At the end of that 3-year period, people will then renew for an ongoing basis to get -- avail themselves of the service and the support from us on an ongoing basis. Because energy systems will grow, what are the key features of our product actually better than other products in the marketplace is it's modular ability to grow and change. So you start off with a 3G, 4G cell phone tower in Africa, and now you're adding 5G to the tower, all of a sudden, you've got more radios there. You need to spend the capacity.

So as part of that ongoing service, there will also be what I would call the move, add and change aspect of it. So there are periodic onetime lumps that are as part of our recurring service. But that ongoing service and all of the fees we get from an ongoing asset that we manage and operate for our customer is included in our recurring revenue line item.

[Ryan Fremantle, analyst]

Great. We have a couple of questions here trickling and we's have some time left, so we'll continue to ask them. Is there any intention for further acquisition in 2024?

[Miriam Tuerk, executive]

Not in the early part of 2024 as it stands right now with the expansion from really 2 products to 5 products. We've got more than enough on our plate to absorb. The wonderful thing about our current platform from a smart off-grid perspective, is that it is built in a scalable way to add products to it.

So integrating eSite into our Smart Cloud platform, our product, our service and everything is unlocking significant value as a result of that acquisition. We are very well set up to doing more acquisitions that way. But right now, we're not doing anything on that because we've got enough to do just to absorb what we've got.

So the first part of 2024, I would say no. But probably later in the year, we would be out shopping again, looking for valuable opportunities for us to do that.

[Ryan Fremantle, analyst]

Okay. Great. Thank you. This concludes the question-and-answer portion of the call. If for some reason, we weren't able to get to your question or you have any questions come up back in the fact, please feel free to message us directly and submit questions via e-mail to either [e-mail] or [e-mail]. Miriam, I'll pass it back to you now for concluding remarks.

[Miriam Tuerk, executive]

Thank you so much, Ryan. Really appreciate your support. That is everything. I just want to emphasize, you can reach out to me at any time or Farrukh for any questions that you may have. The company is very excited about the future. We're pretty pumped. Lots of work being done on shipping and production and supply chain, sales activities are busy as all get out.

So the company is really busy and active, and we're just putting our heads down and continuing to execute so that we can realize the results and deliver for everyone. So we look forward to talking to you at the next quarterly call. And as we get material updates, on orders and things like that solidified and permission from our customers to announce them. I will emphasize sometimes you can't get the permission to even announce it. We will be coming back to the market with that information. So we thank you for your support and patience. And wish you a rest of the summer, a good time, and I hope everybody is okay in Colona and elsewhere.