Aquaporin A/S (00B.F) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Aquaporin Annual Report 2022 webcast. I would now like to turn the call over to Matt Boczkowski, CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you for the introduction, and welcome to the 2022 annual report for Aquaporin. And before we start, just a quick mention about the forward-looking statements that matters discussed in this report and in this presentation may constitute forward-looking statements, and this information should be treated by you as such. My name is Matt Boczkowski. I'm the Chief Executive Officer of Aquaporin; and I'm joined today with Klaus Jhul Wulff, the Chief Financial Officer. To get us started, a quick reminder of who is Aquaporin, what do we do and where are we situated. We are a pioneer in water technology. Our purpose is to rethink water filtration with biotechnology. We are headquartered in Lyngby in Denmark, and we have offices globally in Los Angeles in United States, in Turkey, in Shanghai and in Singapore. We are listed on the NASDAQ Copenhagen under the ticker AQP. Aquaporin has 1 core technology, which we call Aquaporin Inside. It is applied in multiple applications and industries. This technology is combined with standard engineering, which is what we call the convergence of biotechnology and engineering. This is heavily patented and allows us to operate in 3 main business areas. The business areas in which we operate are drinking water, industrial water and food and beverage. We are a company that is global. We offer solutions in different countries in all those 3 areas that I just mentioned. We are 86 employees, 20 different cultures, backed by strong cornerstone investors. One of the things that we've done in 2022, is also updated our company values, which I would like to just reiterate for you here as these are driving our operating model at Aquaporin. We are committed to our customers. We are focused on key applications. We have a very collaborative approach between different stakeholders, universities and employees. We dare to challenge the status quo, and we empower each other to take responsibility. A bit about our technology before we get into the key events of 2022. So first of all, Aquaporin is a protein that was discovered by Peter Agre 2003. For this he was awarded the Nobel prize. We took that discovery and commercialized it and industrialized it. Aquaporins are proteins that are responsible for filtering the water in nature, it's the proteins that you find in the roots of trees, it's the protein that you find in different cells, it's basically a highway for a water molecule that operates in nature and it has been doing so for billions of years. This highway, this protein is what we are able to grow and what we are able to separate and purify in our facilities in Denmark. This is a key component of our toolbox, which we then use to combine with membrane chemistry as well as different physical properties of the membrane. This toolbox that has those 3 different components is what sets us apart from other membrane producers. By combining these 3, we are able to create what we call the Aquaporin Inside membrane. In this Aquaporin Inside membrane, the aquaporin protein is stabilized and is incorporated in a thin rejection layer. This protein is what is shown with the blue dots on the screen here, and the rejection layer is that blue film. Then as the rejection layer is put on a support structure, and that's where the mechanical properties of the membrane come into place. Combining these 3 is what allows us to have a lower energy profile or to allow us to have a better flow rate compared to competitive products that are on the market today. Now focusing a bit on the key events of 2022. 2022 has been a year where Aquaporin has focused a lot on its growth. We actually had set the strategy at the time of the IPO. And we have been able to demonstrate that the strategy is now coming to life with the revenue that has been secured throughout 2022. And Klaus is going to be mentioning a bit more about that and -- in the financial part of the presentation. I think we've proven that we have been able to obtain the financial traction by growing repeat customers and also by landing new customers as we depicted here on this timeline. Going a little bit into the different details of what happened during 2022. In April, for instance, we secured a strategic industrial water partnership with Forward Water Technologies in North America. This allows us to gain exposure to the lithium, oil and gas and the mining space in North America. This is very interesting for us as we basically supply the core technology, and with our partner, we're able to access to an area of the industry, which is growing and which is important to Aquaporin. In May, we initiated a partnership with Flavourtech. Flavourtech allows us to deliver membranes to the food and beverage industry, specifically to the flavors segment. Flavourtech is a global company that is helping us to be in the coffee industry, for instance, in the aroma industry. And with Flavourtech, we are expanding our presence in these different markets. As you know, I'm joined here today by Klaus. Klaus joined us in May. He allowed Aquaporin to reinforce our executive management team. Going back to some of the commercial highlights. In June, for instance, we sold our first Forward Osmosis system to 1 of the largest wine companies, or wineries in the world, Ernest & Julio Gallo. This is a really large player in the wine industry with whom we have been able to work on developing some new potential products in the future. And this is going to be part of the key events that we are going to be working on in 2023 for this year. We also launched a purifier in Turkey with a home appliance manufacturer Vestel, and that is scaling up our commercial footprint in that region. Moving to August, we announced a collaboration with Las Palmas de Gran Canaria University to develop Forward Osmosis pilot. In this particular pilot, we are actually bridging 2 waste streams. We are taking the waste stream from a desalination plant, together with our wastewater stream, we are combining them, and we are generating an affluent that can be discarded back into the ocean, without impacting marine life. Meanwhile, we're decreasing the amount of wastewater that is being generated by the wastewater treatment plant. So a very positive impact on the environment. In September, we introduced our bLEAF container to a Chinese industrial customer to treat wastewater in a leachate collection and wastewater facility. This particular application is actually a very difficult-to-treat application, which demonstrates that our products are able to work under some severe conditions such as treating a very tough-to-treat wastewater stream. In November, we've obtained data from Aarhus University to demonstrate that Aquaporin's technology is able to remove PFAS from incoming water. Our removal capability is in excess of 99.9%. And this is extremely important as our purifiers that are introduced -- that are introduced this year into the market are based on the same technology that demonstrated this removal. This means that customers that purchase the purifiers are going to be able to have clean and healthy drinking water in their households. Now moving to 2023. I'd like to bring to the attention of listeners some of the highlights that have happened in early this year as these are quite significant for Aquaporin. First, in January, we signed a partnership with Philips Water Solutions, which makes Aquaporin the exclusive provider of membrane to Philips in China. This is significant for us since half of the global industry for purifiers is in China, and our partner Philips Water Solutions has the ambition of becoming the leading player in this industry. In January as well, we signed a distribution agreement with Andersen & Nielsen. Andersen & Nielsen are going to be our -- or are today, our main provider of purifiers in Scandinavia. And they have -- this has already generated some sales through that channel. In February, we signed a joint development agreement with Gallo. This is the outcome of the pilot that we have done in 2022 and shows that we are able to convert successful pilots into development agreements or into strong commercial agreements such as the one that we have signed with Gallo in February. In February as well, we launched under-the-sink purifier, the A2O Pure, which, as I mentioned before, is the same purifier that removes PFAS in a similar way that was demonstrated by the Aarhus University study. This purifier is available today through a number of distributors, which can all be found on Aquaporin's website. In February, we also raised proceeds of DKK 74 million, which was communicated a few weeks ago in our company announcement and through this, we also have today Topsoe holdings that became 1 of the major investors in Aquaporin meaning that they have more than 5% of the share capital. All in all, in 2023, we entered -- we are entering 2023 with a very strong order book and visibility to more than 50% of full year revenue expectations. This demonstrates that the actions that we have put in place in 2022 have allowed us to convert this into repeat orders or into purchase orders that give us security on our revenue numbers for this year. And this is also the way in which we wanted to operate going forward to really increase this amount of certainty and commercial traction by working with repeat accounts and focusing our growth strategy. In terms of revenue split, we anticipate that roughly 70% of the revenue will be coming from the drinking water meanwhile, 30% is going to be attributed to the food and industrial side of our business. In order to dive a little bit deeper into the results for 2022 and the outlook for 2023, I will pass it now to Klaus to walk us through some of the financials.

Thank you, Matt. So we -- in 2022, we grew revenue by 243% to an amount of DKK 30.6 million. This was versus the original guidance we set out, which was DKK 20 million to DKK 30 million so we are well in [ exceed ] of that one. EBITDA before special items was a loss of DKK 89.9 million. The guidance here was made minus DKK 90 million to minus DKK 100 million so also a strong performance against this. This amount even includes write-off of slow-moving inventory, provisions for potential replacement of [ modules ] and a few other things so well -- a result for the EBITDA that we are very happy with. The EBIT before special items was a loss of DKK 108.4 million with a guidance of negative DKK 105 million to negative DKK 115 million. We recorded DKK 5 million of special items cost in 2022. This is all to do with write-down of inventory that was intended for sale in Russia. We had also special items in 2021 that was for the IPO parts. Our cash position at the end of 2022 was DKK 29.4 million. But as Matt mentioned, we did raise a gross amount of DKK 74 million in February that adds to this amount, and this comes from existing shareholders but also from new shareholders. As Matt mentioned, we ended 2023 with a very strong order book. And this following our commercial announcement of contracts with Ernest & Julio Gallo winery, Philips Water Solutions, Andersen & Nielsen, Flavourtech et cetera. The revenues [ grew by ] 242%. The DKK 30.6 million is made up by DKK 23 million coming from drinking water and DKK 7.6 million come from Food and Industrial. The gross profit that we report is impacted from write-downs on non-moving stock. If we normalize for those nonrecurring special items, the gross profit margin would be 28%. The EBITDA before special items normalized that we report is an EBITDA, where we removed some of those specific nonrecurring items as well, and that comes up to an amount of DKK 85.2 million of losses. That's really what we believe is the underlying performance that the business has. As I mentioned, we had the write-down on special items because of Russia. Just to elaborate on this, we have a very good customer in Russia that we had -- was keeping stock for and we decided that we -- after the war started, we do not want to do business with Russia and hence, we wrote that off. On the balance sheet, the key thing here is that we have no loans or borrowings. We didn't have that last year. We don't have that this -- coming out in 2022. As I said, the cash balance is -- was increased in February by DKK 74 million from the capital raised. And entering into 2023, we had an equity of DKK 157 million. Cash flow, our operating cash flow is impacted by investments of DKK 11.4 million. This is coming from 2 elements. We have investments of capitalization in R&D development projects of DKK 9.7 million, and we have investments in tangible assets of DKK 1.7 million. That's the relatively low CapEx, and this is what we also guide on when I give you what the guidance is for 2023. Looking at 2021, cash flow, we have to remember that it is heavily impacted by the IPO cash flow coming in, in 2021. So with this kind of [ factors ], the story that Matt alluded to on kind of key events and our performance, our guidance for 2023 is revenue in the range of DKK 50 million to DKK 70 million, a gross margin profit that are above 30%, and EBIT before special items of a loss between DKK 95 million to DKK 105 million and CapEx on tangible assets of DKK 10 million to DKK 15 million. With that, I'll hand it back to Matt.

Thank you, Klaus. Just to wrap up here before we open it up for questions, I just wanted to say that we are very proud of what we accomplished in 2022, and we really are looking forward to doing the same this year. We're very thankful to our shareholders, partners, customers and employees. Solving water challenges is not easy, many companies have to join forces to build a healthy and clean future for our next generation. On behalf of all employees at Aquaporin, we are saying thank you to our stakeholders and are really looking forward to continuing to make a difference. Thank you very much, and we would like to open the floor to questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Thomas Bowers from Danske Bank.

Yes. A couple of questions from my side here. So I'll just take one at a time to make it a bit more easy. So just to kick off here. So in connection with the IPO, you have some aspirations for 2024. And then back then, you highlighted a positive EBITDA level when reaching around those DKK 350 million, DKK 400 million in revenue. So can you maybe just elaborate a bit on the operational changes in order to get a better understanding on your capital needs going forward until you actually can reach breakeven? So how much would you actually assume is needed to grow the top line before to -- before we get to that breakeven and inflection point?

Thank you, Thomas, for the question. Yes, the aspiration was set when we did the IPO and then there's a lot of the assumptions that's been kind of changed and also some of the dynamics in the business, obviously. I think one of the key elements that are different to -- at the time of the IPO is the assumption on our cost base. We don't anticipate that we need to grow our cost base at the pace that was kind of anticipated in our -- at the time of the IPO and in the aspirations. So hence, the number you also mentioned DKK 350 million to DKK 400 million that was set out at the time, that number is now lower. I saw that in your kind of commentary -- your kind of first commentary this morning on our results assumed DKK 200 million, DKK 250 million. I don't want to put an exact number to it, but also still it depends a lot on what are the margins, what are the timing of projects, et cetera. But I mean, overall, I mean, you're not far off without putting an exact number to it.

Okay. That's very helpful. And then maybe just digging into the margins. So on gross margins. So this year, as far as I could tell you our you're at 28% when you sort of make the adjustments, and that's somewhat lower than last year. I think it was close to 40% or 38%. So maybe you now guide for plus 30%. So I'm just a bit curious on -- has anything changed on sort of the longer-term potential? So do you have potential to reach above those 40% once you have more scale?

We definitely see potential. Right now, we have -- with the mix of products we have, we have that 28% that we also mentioned for 2022. We do see that in 2023, we are introducing some new projects -- new products, the A2O Pure and A2O Bar that actually will be driving the margins up. But I mean, the impact from that is going to be over time because they've only been introduced this year. So people [ up in pace ] will delay that kind of margin impact to it. We do have some other projects on the side of it that actually drives up the overall margin. But again, to what level that they kick in, it's difficult. That's why we are saying right now we are comfortable with saying we will achieve above 30%.

Okay. That makes sense. And then just lastly, just on your outlook here for '23. So on the revenue outlook, I'm just a bit curious here on how much is already in the books? And how much is from what you can say sort of expected new commercial deals and then also in comparison to repurchasing? And is there anything material included in that guidance related to milestones or any license upfront or anything like that? Or is this level you guide for, is that based on basically pure sale?

Second -- the last question first -- the last part of your question, first, Thomas. I mean this is not milestone changing. This is purely based on services and agreements like this. It is predominantly driven by repeat customers. It's one of the big changes versus last year. And as Matt also said, we can see and that took a -- we have eyesight, very solid eyesights of, let's say, 50% of the revenue in 2023 already. And we have also in the pipeline, it's not like we can see how we get to the guidance. We have in our pipeline because -- actually, those items identified that will bring us to the guidance.

Our final question comes from the line of [ Johan Berglund ] from Danske Bank.

I have a couple of questions in regards to the PFAS and the partnerships and pilot projects. So in 2022, there was a lot of focus on the harmful effects of PFAS in drinking water. I was just wondering if there's -- or you see any tightening of regulations with regards to PFAS, which could potentially boost your sales this year or in the coming years? And looking on the pilot projects, it's very nice to see that some of these pilots are turning into commercial agreements. But compared to, I believe, 18 industry pilots, that is the last number I have, how many is active and potentially about to mature into commercial deals? And finally, back in August 2022, you entered into a collaboration with the University of Las Palmas on the desalination in wastewater project. Could you give an update on the pilot project? And maybe the impact if this project were to be successful, and what it could mean for sales and margins?

Thank you for your questions. I'll start -- I'll try to start in the order that you asked them. So starting with the PFAS one. Indeed, there has been a lot of noise or news if you want, in the market about PFAS. It is actually something that has been in the market for quite some time. I think that we are seeing some regulations potentially coming into play. There's been some very recent announcements as early as a few days ago about certain states in the United States looking at creating some regulations around PFAS. I think that should regulations be put in place. I think this is going to drive municipalities to adopt different types of technologies and that could open up some opportunities for Aquaporin at the sort of larger utility scale. What we have been focusing on with regards to PFAS is really to provide a solution to the consumer market today with point-of-use purifiers that use our technology, which is what we have tested. So I guess a long answer to say, yes, regulations will definitely help us in selling our technologies. Presently, what we are selling to the market is really a point-of-use solution so that is something that is sort of independent of regulations. It's just something based on how consumers want to purchase in their own behavior. You also mentioned the...

Just a follow-up question on that one. You mentioned that China is kind of like the most important market in terms of drinking water here. Do you see any regulation there?

In China, we have not seen regulations with regards to PFAS. In China, it's a large purifier market because culturally and traditionally, people in China have been using purifiers for a very long time. and they have been using purifiers to separate out viruses, bacteria, parasites and other contaminants in the water. And I know we talked quite a bit about PFAS, but really the purifier does a lot more than just remote PFAS. It removes actually contaminants, so viruses, bacteria and so on. And the majority of the places where we provide purifiers, the value proposition is actually getting rid of those contaminants that could make people sick.

Okay.

I think you had -- one of your questions was around pilots?

Yes.

So we do have a number of pilots. I think maybe before giving an answer on the specific number, I think what -- there's different ways to describe a pilot. For us, a pilot -- when we did the publication of the 18 pilots that are ongoing, it actually -- some of them were large pilots, like, for instance, the unit that we sold in 2022 to Gallo, we sold a similar unit to a Chinese customer in a different area in 2022 as well. So these pilot units are converting and they are proving our technology. They are leading to serve scale ups or to repeat orders or to joint commercialization agreement. We also have a whole other area of what we call pilots, but these are really very small trials where we have partners that purchase a membrane. They use it for a certain application, then they come back to us and say, "Yes, we would like to move forward with you on this particular application." So the next step in those smaller pilots is not a scale up, it's not a commercialization but it is sort of a proof of concept that leads us to a further discussion on the application. I don't have a number in front of me to give you how many pilots we are converting and so on. But what I can tell you is that part of our strategy, which was to focus on customers and focus on specific applications, one of the benefits has also been that we've been picking areas where we know that by doing a pilot with a customer, it will lead to significant market potential should that pilot convert for a proof of concept, to a pilot, to then scale up. And so we have those types of developments in the flavors industry, for instance, in food and beverage. We have them in the wine industry. We have them in leachate treatment, in biogas wastewater treatment. We have them in the coffee space as well. And we also have them in the brine recycling treatment. That last one, is what I think touches -- your question with regards to the desalination project that we announced with the University of Las Palmas in the Canary Islands. That particular partnership does have a lot of potential. It is an area where we take the brine from a desalination plant, and we use this brine as a driving force to extract water from another source -- from another waste stream, which is -- it could be industrial wastewater. So our technology, in a way, combines 2 wastes to create a product. One is freshwater. The other product is water is sea water that can then be rejected into the ocean. The pilot with the university is progressing. We do have a large industrial player who is part of this pilot as well. The idea is that once this has proven to run for a number of -- for an extended period of time, we will be able to then talk about scaling this up in some specific geographies. I think that 1 of the areas that is very conducive for us to do this is -- are some of those islands where you have to rely on desalination to provide freshwater, also the sort of geography makes it quite convenient as often these islands have a wastewater treatment station that may be quite close to the desalination station and that geographic proximity allows us to bring the 2 streams together and then create the product that we are -- with our forward osmosis technology.

Okay. So just to make sure I got it right. The collaboration with the university, that's kind of like a small pilot, so you have to make the proof of concept and then go into the pilot before making a commercialized deal?

No. That pilot is of a size that would allow us then to go to a small commercial installation afterwards. If -- we did receive a question online. So I'd be happy to maybe just for those that do not see the questions online who are only on the phone, I will just read it and then I can answer it. It comes from someone who would be happy to hear about our strategy in industrial wastewater treatment, particularly the partnerships, the system integrators and the target geographies that we would like to focus on moving forward and why? So to answer this, when we talk about industrial wastewater, we really talk about primarily using our Forward Osmosis technology. So Forward Osmosis technology, you would use it, you can use it in many different applications and instances. However, what makes sense is to use it in areas where you cannot use reverse osmosis and perhaps where evaporation is too energy-intensive or too costly. So that creates a niche segment for Forward Osmosis that allows to then treat some very specific wastewaters. And that's how we've been developing our go-to-market strategy is to really find those very specific areas where we provide the value that cannot be found otherwise in the market through technologies that already exist and have been proven today. To give you some examples, we use, for instance, this approach for leachate wastewater. This is wastewater that comes from garbage collection stations. So we're able to extract really clean water using our Forward Osmosis technology from a wastewater source that is extremely complicated to treat. Another area is we're able to extract clean water from digestate. Digestate is the wastewater that is left when you do a digestion process to produce biogas. There's a growing demand for biogas today given some of the energy uncertainty that we are in today, primarily around natural gas and oil. And biogas production produces digestate and we can use Forward Osmosis to extract clean water from this. This is really important as we can do that in a very small footprint. So the advantage here is that not that it cannot be done with other technologies, but is that we can do it in a containerized system, which otherwise you would have to build a larger installation to do that. I think we talked already about the desalination and the brine treatment. So I would say that all in all, what we do is we try to target some of the tough-to-treat applications or applications where you can recover resources from the wastewater treatment. Now we are only 86 people, so we're not a very large company. So we have to partner in order to accomplish this. We have partnered with Forward Water in Canada. That's a company that is targeting certain areas of wastewater treatment, or water extraction. They're looking at the lithium industry, some of the -- some areas in mining as well as some areas in oil and gas. So that's how we tackle these through our partnership with Forward Water. We have a customer with whom we're working on the leachate application. So again, after we have proven our technology on 1 site, we are able to scale up to numerous sites afterwards through this 1 customer since they are operating quite a few different landfill collection stations in China. So again, what we're trying to do is to partner with customers -- or partner, sorry, with system integrators or partners in specific areas where we are going to have access to repeat business once we demonstrate the technology. So I hope this answers the question that came online. I'm not sure if any other new questions came up over the phone.

We don't have any further questions at this time, sir. I would now like to turn it over -- the call over to Matt Boczkowski for closing remarks.

Thank you very much. As we wrap up this call, I really wanted to thank you, everyone, for -- first of all thank everyone on this call for your questions. As always, a pleasure to hear from different stakeholders, whether it's investors, customers, partners. I think it's what makes us really excited to tell you about our company. We've had a really good 2022. We've put in place a strategy of focusing on fewer accounts, doing fewer things, but doing them better. I think that our numbers and our progress that we've made really has demonstrated that. We are really super excited about 2023. We're going to continue in that same vein, pushing the repeat business with our existing customers, tackling a couple of new areas that are adjacent to what we have been doing so far and where we have been successful. And as we explained in the call today, we are looking towards doubling what we've done in 2022. And everybody is excited here at Aquaporin to be part of the journey to figure out how to solve some of the challenges that are out there today really as it pertains to water treatment. So all in all, really looking forward to a great 2023. And once again, a big thank you to all of our stakeholders who motivate and who drive us every day.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This does conclude today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.