Clear Blue Technologies International Inc. (0YA0.F) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning. My name is Miriam Tuerk. I'm honored to be Co-Founder and CEO of Clear Blue Technologies. I am joined today by Farrukh Anwar, our CFO; and Jonathan van der Veen, our Head of Marketing. We are going to be presenting our Q3 results this morning in this call, and we appreciate your time and attention in joining us. As always, please take into consideration our caution on forward-looking statements. So just a little bit about Clear Blue and the market we're going after. The world is wrestling with growing energy challenges. There are problems with utility grids and in emerging markets where diesel has historically been the go-to energy source, it's now becoming and has become prohibitively expensive. So solar has really entered the mainstream. Whether it's hybrid or off-grid solar, it has the potential to fill the need, but it needs to be reliable and perform. That's where Clear Blue comes in. Our vision is to become the world's largest virtual power utility, not just an energy generator like a solar farm, but an entire smart solar energy operator. Today, we are already well on our way toward that goal. Since day one, we have designed the required technology, both smart power electronics and cloud analytics and control. We've deployed more than 15,000 units around the world, and we operate and manage those systems for our customers on an ongoing basis. Clear Blue is a unique company with the world as its market, having systems already in more than 35 countries around the world. So Q3 and subsequent events. 2025 has been a year of hard work and solid results. Of course, the leading indicator is sales and bookings that comes in the door first before we can ship and revenue recognized. In Q3, we had a huge increase over the same period in 2024, and our [ year-to-date ] numbers are also up quite a bit. On the expense side, ongoing cost management has continued, and we go into 2026 as a very lean and efficient organization. Subsequent to the end of the quarter, we announced another large order from our long-term partner, iSAT. And additionally, our work with Eutelsat is yielding results as they launched and promoted our joint product to the entire African market at AfricaCom earlier this month. We anticipate that orders will begin shipping for Eutelsat in Q1. On the corporate side, we go into 2026 with significant nondilutive grants and incentives, the recent budget, when finalized, will finally deliver tax refunds for R&D to public companies. This was something that's been available forever for private companies, but public companies could not benefit from these tax refunds. Now that is going to be allowable going forward. For us, this means an extra $500,000 to $600,000 in cash next year. We've also announced today a private placement, which we are targeting to complete by mid-December, so we can hit the ground running in January. And the first close for $300,000 of that is already done. I do want to extend a big thank you to our shareholders and stakeholders who have historically supported Clear Blue and are supporting us today in this private placement. Taken together, our 2026 plan is all about growth and more growth. Sales and commercialization is our entire focus and management is solidly behind the plan for positive EBITDA and positive cash flow in 2026. As you know, first, you sell it, then you book it and then you ship. So bookings is a leading indicator before the revenue starts to hit the bottom line. And for Clear Blue, that number is up significantly. Year-to-date 2025, we have in hand $5.7 million of new bookings, that's up 161%, almost tripling last year's number. The revenue numbers are following. And as you know, every order we receive also includes 3 years of prepaid recurring revenue. Eutelsat has, in the last 12 months become a leader in the market. Having received billions of funding and contracts from the governments of both France and Britain, Eutelsat is Europe's low earth orbit satellite player. LEO, for which Starlink is the leading player, is a game changer when it comes to pricing and performance of satellite Internet services. With the global changes in the new world order, Eutelsat is Europe's bet for its own LEO satellite service. As a result, Eutelsat is now focused on a significant global ramp-up, including across Africa, Europe, of course, but also in Canada, reliable managed solar power is critical to their success. In the past, they had experienced a 30% failure rate of solar power systems. Clear Blue has been working with them on an integrated tightly engineered systems. Final field testing of that product is just concluding, and we expect to begin shipping systems in Q1. So our Q1, Q3 results -- revenue results were $3.1 million, a 43% increase over the same period in 2024. Because orders take 2 to 5 months to ship and arrive, revenue lags behind the growth in bookings. In Q3, a large part of the orders were North American lighting. We had 2 data center projects and a number of new customers and projects across North America. Recurring revenue is growing, and our renewal rates for ongoing services is quite high. While the smart solar energy opportunity in the world today is a multibillion-dollar market, we wanted to really dive down on what we are going after. So let's talk about the serviceable obtainable market. Actually, the SOM, as it's called, is a new term for me. The definition of serviceable obtainable market, or SOM, is defined as the portion of a market that a company can realistically capture, given its resources, products and competitive landscape. It's a specific actionable market share estimate that helps businesses set revenue targets and goals that are realistic and informs their sales and marketing strategies. As you know, we have 3 key pillars of growth: Satellite Internet with Eutelsat, but also with other partners such as Avanti that we are working with; telecom tower systems, where our expertise in energy and solar is a key advantage as they move off of diesel; and solar lighting across North America, this is a market moving into the mainstream with a number of power utilities now ramping up services. Together, Clear Blue's 3-year SOM is greater than $50 million. Farrukh, over to you.

Thank you, Miriam. All right. So let's jump into the Q3 highlights. The story here is simple. Our plan is working, and it's showing up in numbers. Revenue is up sharply, 158%, which confirms the market rebound we expected. More importantly, this is flowing to the bottom line. Adjusted EBITDA has improved by 58%, showing our cost controls are effective. Our future pipeline is solid. Bookings have increased by 682% this quarter and recurring revenue is up by 60%, building a durable base. And we now maintain a strong working capital position to fund this growth. Our takeaway, we've moved from fixing the business to growing it steadily. Miriam, next slide, please. Okay. So a key part of this turnaround was fixing our balance sheet. The 55% net debt reduction was a deliberate strategic move we did at the end of last year. So we did this by converting debt to equity and restructuring remaining obligations into manageable long-term instruments. The result is simple. We've eliminated a major overhang. This gives us financial breathing room and allows the management team to focus 100% on execution and growth and not on balance sheet management. Next slide, Miriam. So this chart tells us the story of our recovery. Revenues were depressed in the second half of last year, and we navigated our financial -- as we were navigating through our financial restructuring. I'm pleased to report that revenues have now recovered and are tracking upwards. When you combine the top line growth and our continued focus on cost management and gross management -- gross margin improvement, it creates a clear pathway to sustained profitability. We are now in a far better position, and we're poised for growth in 2026. Next slide. Okay. So our financial. Let's put it this way. Our improved financial trajectory is being driven by 4 strategic shifts. We've moved our R&D spend from pure invention to commercialization, sharpening its focus. What we're doing is we are running a much leaner operation with new cost-saving measures and actively, these measures are being implemented. Furthermore, what we're doing is we're now focusing on monetizing our existing fleet of over 15,000 systems, which is a significant asset for us. And finally, our capital-light partner strategy is the engine for our next phase of scale. Miriam?

Thanks, Farrukh. So in summary, Q3 was solid, and Q4 has been just humming very, very busy. Bookings are up, leading the increase in revenue, which is also up. All the efforts across every aspect of the business, sales and revenue, margins, OpEx, balance sheet puts us in a place where the path to profitability is short, and we are excited about 2026. The partner strategy we have is yielding results. Eutelsat, ISAT Africa and Cooper Lighting in North America are all big and respected players. We have proven ourselves and the value of our capabilities to them and ramp up from early smaller orders to large-scale rollout is happening. Today, we've also announced a small private placement, which we would like to complete before the end of the year. So that's our presentation for today. I'd like to open it up to any questions that anyone may have. Jonathan, anyone who has a question, please post it in the Q&A or the online chat. Jonathan, do you want to curate those questions and let us know whether we've had any questions or comments from people?

Yes, absolutely. So currently, it doesn't look like we have had any comments. So maybe I'll just give it a sec for people to put something in the chat. I'm still not seeing anything coming here.

Okay. Well, we'll just give it another minute. I do want to encourage you any time. I try to make myself available to any interested shareholder or investor. Please don't hesitate to reach out to me. Brandon Chao is working with us from an Investor Relations perspective, and you can reach him at his e-mail shown here. And I want to thank everyone for their time and attention today. Jonathan, are there any other questions?

No, I'm not seeing anything over here.

Okay. Well, thank you so much for your time. Please don't hesitate to reach out if you do have any other questions, and we look forward to speaking to you in the new year.

Thank you, everyone.

Thanks.

Bye.