Eos Energy Enterprises, Inc. (EOSE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone. Thanks again for joining us. We are going to chat here with the team at Eos Energy Enterprises. Admittedly, one of those promising upstarts in the battery space and non lithium-ion at that. So admittedly, in this case, just because the technology is novel, and frankly, I think there's still a need to understand exactly what -- how this comes together for them, we're going to turn it over to CEO Joe Mastrangelo to really walk through their slide deck and introduce -- and kind of give an update to where they stand on everything. So if you don't have that slide deck, obviously, it's available on the platform here. If you want it, ping us, I'm sure we can send it to you here momentarily through the course of the presentation if you can't access it otherwise. And with that, Joe, I will turn it over to you to take it away. And thank you both for taking the time with us this morning.

Yes. Thanks, Julien. Thanks for the time. Sagar and I are glad to be here today. Let's jump right into it on Page 3. Just quick on our 6 business priorities for 2021, and we'll talk through about progress, the $300 million in booked orders, $50 million in revenue. I'll give you an update on where we are in having the product and the system, UL certify and make some great progress since last time we were together. We're also -- Sagar's in our factory right now in Pittsburgh. We're building out the capability to hit 800-megawatt hours of production. We're a little bit shy of 250 right now. We're also -- we'll go through quickly on where we are for the next-generation on the C3 product launch. And then most importantly, I'll talk a few minutes here at the closing about investing in the people and the culture the company gets, as you say. Julien, rightfully, this is a unique technology that we're very proud of, and we've got a great team that's really working through to deliver for our customers and for our shareholders. So Page 4, a couple of quick things here. We all know the market is dynamic and changing. When you think about demand, a 3% increase year-over-year in demand, which is the forecast is like adding 13 New York cities to the system. And yet even with that type of growth, there's still 2x the population in the United States without reliable power. So that's the challenge in front of us is to how to handle that growth, yet do that in a way where we're decarbonizing the overall energy value chain. When you think about what's happening and our renewals are coming in, you can see on the chart on the right-hand side where the growth is coming from. I think with those 2 factors, the 2 biggest things that create the opportunity for us here at Eos is the fact that you see a lot of decentralization, significant growth in microgrids and home solar systems and storage systems. And then also that allows us to democratize power where almost anybody can be a power generator. So while our grids remain and utilities remain very important, the grid in and of itself was becoming very dynamic and very complex from the standpoint of everyone who wants to be connected, yet at the same time have the independence that have power available when they need it, both reliably, cost effectively and safer. We go to Page 5. The challenge that we're trying to manage is managing between the surplus of having overproduction at certain times and think about -- last year, there was a day in California where we curtailed so much power that it was more than all the storage that was put onto the grid globally in the year. And at the same time, we waste around the equivalent of 1 year's demand in Texas energy that's generated and not actually used. At the same time, there are moments of scarcity when you think about what happened in Texas this winter and also the rolling blackouts at California that went through with the wildfires. And the challenge is on the right-hand side of the page where you look at those curves and you think about that big peak that you see out in 2040. Our goal here is to create durable, long duration storage that allows us to shift and smooth that peak out to allow us to use renewable energy sources throughout the day. And we believe, here at Eos, that we've developed a technology that allows us to do that from anywhere from 3 hours up to 12 hours. I'll talk about the performance of our product and how that is working for us, both out in the field and in our test facility. And then when you think about where we are as an industry, as globally and also specific states, as renewables become more and more prevalent in our system, the complexity of integrating them into the system becomes more important when you think about the different colors on these charts and you look to the right-hand side of the chart. You don't need to have high penetration of renewables, and you think about Texas being at around 20%, but at the same time, there are points in a day where nearly all the power being generated is coming from renewables, and we've got to be able to help manage that, smooth that and deliver that in a cost-effective and safe manner. So that's kind of the market landscape, but I think what we're talking about is taking the storage capacity that we have now that is generally between 1 to 2 hours and shifting that median from 2 hours to 4-plus hours and even beyond 4 hours out to the 6- to 10-hour window of time. So the company in and of itself, on Page 7, we've discharged 265-megawatt hours of power, over 2 million operating cycles, both out in the field and in our test facility in Anderson, New Jersey. It's a technology that's proving itself every day and continues to increase as we operate and deliver systems to the marketplace. We booked $33 million of orders close to 150-megawatt hours of storage that we're -- that we'll be delivering to customers. That order -- that booked orders in 2021, we have a backlog of $51 million of orders, and I'll walk through how that's made up quickly. But the most important thing is we think about our $50 million revenue target. We have 50% of that target today in our backlog right now. Our opportunity pipeline continues to grow. It's $3.9 billion. It's 23 gigawatt hours of storage at various stages of development. And we continue to invest in our technology and our capacity, investing $9 million so far this year. And our revenue so far is $200,000, but we have shipped additional product here over the last couple of months, that was as of the end of the first quarter to where we're about $1 million of revenue shipped out to customers. So we're starting to see output coming out of our factory in Pittsburgh and the product proving itself out in the field. So if we jump to Page 9, just quickly to baseline what is the technology. It is a proprietary chemistry based upon zinc-plating technology. It is not a flow battery, it is an aqueous self-contained closed system design that has solved some of the challenges that zinc batteries have had in the past to improve performance and duration of the product. And that closed system design is very simple. When you look at the cutaway on the right-hand side of the page, we don't use any pumps, we don't use any HVAC systems, we don't use sophisticated fire suppression systems because the battery is inherently safe. And every raw material in the battery, which I'll talk about in a moment, is a readily available commodity. It's not -- there are no rares. There are no conflict materials. There are no toxic materials in the battery itself. And when you think about our electrolyte, the PH level of the electrolyte is about the same as Coca-Cola. So very safe and very durable system to be able to operate out in the field. We shift to Page 10. We've talked about UL certification, and we've gotten our UL certification for UL 9540A, which is certifying the safety of the battery of itself. And we are in the process of finalizing our UL 1973. We've gone through and passed all the tests around the system itself. We're currently in the process of finalizing our documents in doing a relative temperature index testing on the polymer that we use for the battery itself, the white material that you see that creates the battery, the mechanical design of the battery itself. And should be closing this out by the end of June of this year, which will give us full UL certification for the product, really a great piece of work done by [ Grant Cosco ] and our team to get us to this point and very successfully. And when you look at what the team has been able to do on Page 11, we have what is a fireproof battery. Unlike other technologies where you're trying to manage and mitigate the risk of a fire, we don't have the risk of fire. We look at 4 important tests that we've gone through to get UL 9540A. Relative benign when you look at the pictures because, as we've gone through an over discharge of our battery, so taking it down to 0 voltage, we did -- we saw no degradation in the system, we saw no capacity loss in the battery and the battery could run again. We shot a 2.5-inch nail into the battery itself. We saw a 25-degree C temperature rise, which was within the limitations that are designing parameters for the battery with no flame, no explosion, no thermal runaway. We 200% overcharged the battery. That battery got up to 90 degrees C. Again, no flame, no explosion, and a little bit of electrolyte and steam. And if you look where the circle is in that picture, we designed the systems that we capture that steam so that there's no release out into the environment. And then we short circuited the battery. And on that one there, again, the battery went up to 80 degrees C. We had 425 amps of peak current going through the battery, and we had a little bit of steam release and no fire once again. So we look at the system and we look at how we've tested it and what we put it through, it is a very safe, robust system that can meet the demands of operating in the most complex environments in the world. Now the next piece, which is very important to us on Page 12, is recyclability. And our goal is to drive this to cost-neutral recycling. We have recycled the last 3 generations of our product over the last 5 years, and we don't require any special processes. And you can see, as we've laid this out, everything that's in our battery can then be turned back into the raw material and use somewhere else. So we've gone through on this with our -- with a company we've been working with for 5 years, and we're developing the end uses for the raw materials as we recycle. So this would be cost neutral, not required toxic processes to be able to break down the product and start to go back to the raw materials, but allow you to truly complain -- create a cradle-to-cradle sustainable energy storage of products, something that we're really proud of. Now the next page is something that's very interesting on the system testing and battery product test that we've been doing in our facility in Edison, New Jersey. The team led by [ Steve Lever ] and Francis Richey. This is a battery that we put through 4 continuous cycles, same battery. We did a 3-hour discharge at 1,000 watts. We did a 4-hour discharge at 750. We did a 6.3 hour discharge at 500. And we did a 12, almost 13-hour discharge at 250. So just varying the power level, but running to maximum energy, you can see underneath that we delivered consistent performance on a per-container basis by running these 4 different scenarios, these 4 different use cases, if you will, on the same system and on the same technology. So this allows our customers to be able to operate over a wide range of time. So if you need longer duration storage, you can do that. If there's a period of time where you need the energy out of the battery quickly, the power out of the battery quickly, we can do that within 3 hours. We can even go down to as little as an hour. It's not our normal use case of what we suggest you use the battery for, but the battery is flexible enough and the system is flexible enough to be able to do this. So this is a battery where we can show the data to our customers and to the market that you can operate it across many multiple use cases and provide operating flexibility. That's our knowledge no other technology in the market can deliver at the cost and the performance that we do. What's most important, just flipping ahead quickly here is being able to build and deliver these batteries. Our team led by Jody Markopoulos is working on developing our facility. We went from an empty factory to facility-producing in 11 months. We're working on improving our equipment yields. We've got -- our yield's above 90% across our 4 main processes. We've got to take some variation out of that and standardize and automate to take costs and cycle timeout. On our materials side, we've taken 40% of our battery costs out over the last 5 months. And on the people side, we've added 2x the people in our facility in Pittsburgh over the last 4 months. So we are producing and shipping batteries out of our facility in Pittsburgh. It's something that we're really proud of. When you think about the size of the company when we were sitting here at last year this time to be able to do this through the pandemic and everything that we've been going through and the complexities we have to manage to be able to be delivering product at this timeframe is a phenomenal job by everybody in the company and something that we are really proud of. You can see on Page 16 a snapshot and some view of those 4 key processes. It's a facility that we're proud of. It's something that we still have to work on. We did differently than other companies did, was we worked on our individual manufacturing processes to get those right, and now we're automating the interfaces. Between those processes, we did this to be capital-efficient in how we scaled up the business. So there's more manpower than we need right now, and we'll be able to scale this up in a more cost-effective way as we continue to develop and improve those processes over time. On Page 17, we just want to focus, I mean, and I spoke about the 4 key elements that are in our battery. And I want to make sure, Julien, you called this a novel technology. It's novel in the sense of how it's used and us getting out into the marketplace. But it's technology that's been around for a while. Our electrolyte fundamentally hasn't changed over the last 6 years. We've been using titanium in our bipolar path for the last 6 years. We've been using graphite felt for 5 years. The only thing that's really changed recently is the outer core cover of the battery where we've shifted to a new material to make the battery safer, more sturdy and ability to be able to deliver a better product at a wider temperature range. And when you think about how we're managing our supply chain, we're a very low percentage of the raw materials that are produced that we use in our battery when you look at that green and yellow line there second up from the bottom. And at the same time, we're not taking for granted that it's always going to be that way, and we're going through and developing alternate sources and alternate materials to continue to allow us to flow our supply chain as the company and the industry grows. On Page 18, just quickly to walk through the dynamics of how we're ramping up production here over the next 6 months. We've been very thoughtful about how we've done this. We want to put good product out in the field. So we've been doing extra testing as we started to ship. And now we're starting to turn up the production levels here in the month of May into June and over the summer to get to that 100% capacity target that we have for our line in Pittsburgh, which would be around 250- to 260-megawatt hours and then expand from there up to the 800-megawatt hours a year by the end of the year. At the same time, on Page 19, this is our cost block. There's a lot of details that go behind the graphic on this page, and we've done a lot of work with our suppliers to get good sourcing agreements and execute on cost actions. We've locked in those first 3 buckets, are really locked in and are about delivery. The 20% is still to go. Some of that is around our Z3 products. We're shrinking the size of the battery to put less raw materials and get more power out of the container. And then getting more pricing discounts with suppliers and having strategic agreements with them and automating and optimizing our process to get down to what we think, by the end of the year, is a cost leadership position for an overall integrated system out in the marketplace. On the commercial, both orders and revenue growth, I think it's always important, on Page 21 here, spend a couple of minutes to walk through our commercial model and where we are. We don't -- lead generation, the far left-hand side of this page, is our ideas that customers come to us with that we don't have a technical use case that we can actually quote a project to but we want to work with customers. And when you think about that $2.4 billion, there's a lot of turnover in that number. Not all of it transitions over into pipeline. Something only becomes pipeline when we can actually quote a use case that has a good financial return. We go through and do a technical proposal and give a nonbinding quote. You can see the split between those 2. At the same time, as we're doing that, we're always looking to sign long-term letters of intent, firm commitments with customers. This -- our goal here is to get on the same side of the table as our customers. We've already started turning some of these LOIs and long-term commitments into orders, but these are really where we sign a deal and then work with the customer to get their land rights, their financing or their interconnection. This is us working as a seamless team, where Eos is selected as a technology. And the transition from an LOI to an order can range anywhere from a couple of months to a couple of years, depending on the complexity and size of the project. And as we've talked about, we're really proud, when you think about back in November when we went public, we had a couple of million dollars in orders. So far this year, we booked $33 million in orders. So we have $51 million in orders and backlog, something that is really -- we're really proud of. And that's what's feeding that demand in the factory that I just talked about to get product out into the field. If we go to Page 22, I, just want to walk through the geography of that $51 million, over 200-megawatt hours of orders in backlog. It represents 25 projects, 19 different customers. We've got, as I said, when you look at our 2021 flow, we've got half of that in backlog. Around 80% of what we have is scheduled to ship in the second half of 2021, which was per our ramp plan in the factory. We've got commitments starting in 4Q for the Z3 battery, which I'll talk about in a moment. And then we've got a split when you think about where we are on equipment delivery of $25 million in 2021 and $17 million in 2022. We do 3 really types of sales. We have cash sale, which is just a straight ship and collect. We do asset leasing on systems, so we have 4 projects that we're doing that on for $10 million. And then there's long-term service revenue that we also generate, which is on 18 of our 25 projects and has a $80 million backlog of orders that will be delivered over time. And generally, we'll start in year 3 after we ship and install and get the equipment up and running. So great progress here so far by the team. A lot of work left for us to do, but the pipeline and the opportunity in the market is there for us to deliver on our commitments. If we talk for a moment on our new battery, our new battery is really repackaging the same technology. So it's really not anything. It's not a revolution, it's an evolution. Basically, what we've done is as we've learned and improved the quality of our raw materials and our manufacturing processes, we're now able to shrink the battery, where today, it's the size of like a window air conditioner to tomorrow, it's going to be the size of a computer [ chip ]. It's 1/3 the size of the current battery. You can see a picture of it there. On the lower left, it's the one in the middle, which is a little bit bigger than what we're going to manufacture. This is a prototype. But it requires less material. And at the same time, that less material generates more power than what we learned about how we should manufacture and operate the equipment. So we're going to get 40% more power out of the system with 1/3 the size of an individual battery. And at the same time, that then translates into reduced total system and operating costs. You have -- we can operate at higher temperatures now. We don't need HVAC, as we talked about. We don't have parasitic load losses. So it's around the 25% lower levelized cost of storage compared to the product that we have out in the market now. So it's a great advantage for customers as they're trying to secure financing and deliver a return on using our assets to store and deliver power to the grid. And just with that, just wrap up. And Julien, again, thanks for the time here. These are the goals, objectives that we look forward to talking about as we come out of our second quarter and just going through and expanding our pipeline coverage, getting green bond rating, which is very important for our customers to be able to lower their cost of financing. We're going to be commissioning tank containers, shipping $10 million of sales over the next 5 months. We'll come -- we will deliver on the UL certification. We'll be well down the path of ramping up our factory. And we'll be able to talk more about other prototypes on tests and how the batteries are performing and where we are in supply chain and capacity development for the Z3 battery. And we're going to start launching our sales team in Europe and expanding our software and system engineering team to be able to serve our customers better. So we're really focused on as a leadership team and really the whole 200-person company is building, strengthening the overall company to build the company for a long-term that can deliver on that challenge of where we started and where the market is. With that, Julien, I'll turn it back over to you for some Q&A. Thanks so much.

Absolutely. Thank you, Joe and Sagar here. I appreciate the opportunity. It sounds pretty exciting there. Lots going on, on your side. But maybe just at the outset here, I mean, as we've talked in the past, how do you think about those orders coming in? Who are you talking to? Where should we expect it? Because you could really think about this technology scaling in several different directions, right? You could look at the larger end of things. Obviously, you have a lot of attributes that actually work well at a smaller scale interestingly, right, in indoors. Can you talk about sort of the success in marketing both those sides of the business here? Where should we see these -- the incremental backlog to kind of hit these '21 targets coming in, right? What kinds of projects? What geography? If you can start on that.

Yes. Sure, Julien, great question. So I think what you'll see is some select projects in Europe with the bulk of the order profile coming from United States, which is really where our footprint is right now. And I would say, you're going to see us start to fall up on the size scale. For us, being a bigger project in the 10 -- 5-, 10-megawatt range, I think for the larger projects, from a supply chain standpoint, we'll be ready to start delivering those as we get into 2022. So this is really doing microgrid and small scale -- smaller scale stuff while bidding. And if you look at our pipeline, there are a lot of longer -- larger projects that have deliveries as you get to the end of 2022 into 2023. On the indoor stuff, which I talked about, it's something that we're really excited about. We've made good progress with the Fire Department of New York and the Building Commission. We're going to do an outdoor system in New York, and then go indoor from there in rack systems. So I think we need a little bit more work to do just to get everybody comfortable with where we are on the technology, but making great progress on that as well.

Excellent. I mean, how do you think about even just differentiating this technology versus some of the others in this world of, should we call it, zinc bromine? Other -- in fact, if I were to categorize this, how do you think about it versus other non-lithium ion technologies as competition? Right now, I imagine it's so -- there's such low penetration rates. There are probably so many opportunities. You don't really think of it that way. But I'd be curious to what extent you see that in the marketplace at all.

Yes, Julien, majority of what we've come up against commercially continues to be lithium ion. There are a lot of other technologies out there that I think, and again, like in 30 years of being in the industry, we're always going to have an energy mix. And I think some of the other technology that you see coming in are different than ours and serve a different market segment. I think a lot of the flow battery technology can do longer duration if they try to come down into the range where we are below the 12 hours. The tanks and the amount of electrolyte in the pump system becomes complex. It becomes high cost to be able to do that. And there's a lot of development work, I think, that they see -- that still needs to be done, and the other technologies to be able to deliver at scale. The most challenging thing that we face, which I think any battery company or any storage company faces, is taking the invention and turning it into a scalable product. We've had a lot of lessons learned here to get to the point of where we are. And I think that's -- the reason why as we start looking at other companies that are out there, the time horizons for them to be able to get to the market are a little bit longer than ours. And they're going to go through the same learning that we went through as a company to be able to start producing a quality product that performs.

Yes. No, that's very fair. How do you think then about the critical sales point with getting customers on board and comfortable with the bankability and just the performance characteristics. I mean, obviously, that -- as you say, your go-to-market strategy, it's probably not coming up against alternatives. It's really lithium ion, right? And I think there's some comfort in sort of this established product. How do your customers comfortable and open to the idea of saying, we're going to do something new? Admittedly, there's a lot of merits to the technologies you've already talked about for the last little bit. But how do you get them on board with that, right? Because that's -- I suppose that's almost like the chicken-and-egg question, right?

Yes. Yes. And look, I think, first, it comes down to spending time and walking through the technology. Unfortunately, in the world that we've lived in here for the last years or so, a lot of that goes on via video because the best tool that we have to be able to do exactly what you said, Julien, is bringing customers to Edison and walking them through the facility and seeing all the technology that's being tested and how we test it and then going to Pittsburgh and seeing the manufacturing. That's starting to pick up again, and that really hopes show that we are an operator company. The biggest thing, though, is just that those 265-megawatt hours of operation, 2 million cycles, walking them through what we've done, what we learned and how the technology works. And then going through in either -- on some of the bankability stuff, it's either getting insurance on the product, building escrow of batteries if we need to, to enable them to have security of supply given where we are in our development. And I think the other thing has just been as going public and capitalizing the company. Customers have become more and more comfortable with the longevity and the sustainability of the company itself, but it's a lot of work by a lot of people on the team to be able to explain to them where we are, how it works and why it works. And really, when you do these -- we had a customer in a couple of weeks ago. When you do these, like and you're in the company every day, you kind of forget how far we've come until you explain it to somebody. And it truly is an amazing body of work by a small group of people there that are very dedicated to the vision of the company. And that's really what it takes to convince people to try the technology.

Do you mind talking about this? Because I've gotten a question inbound, too. I mean, amidst this excitement, it's sort of tough to balance the orders and the scaling of the technology and building out your facilities. I mean, I get it, it's complicated. How do you think about your cash position as it stands right now and your financing needs to kind of get to where you're going, right? I mean, there's lots of different puts and takes. I could -- dare I try to spell them out, but more importantly, how do you think about just the CapEx to ramp the facilities against your 100 million-ish or whatever cash as of the end of the quarter? Can you just kind of provide the highest level of cash to walk as best you see it and where you're trending?

Yes. Look, so the facility build-out is going to be -- it's $35 million to get where we need to be. We obviously have the cash to be able to do that. There's other options that we're looking at around that, that Sagar and the team are working on to kind of feather that in and extend out so we can ramp up, and we're -- we constantly look at that. When you look at the structural cost of the company, we've kept it really low. We haven't added a lot of structural costs, so everything is really variable, tied to volume. And then as we grow, we earn the right to grow. And then we'll look at where we are as we go through this in the fall and see what we need to do, what are the best options for us to be able to do that to keep the company capitalized where we need to be to be able to grow. But I think we're in this mode now where as an entire company, we want to show people how good we are. We've never had the capital in the past that we have right now. We have a plan with multiple options for us to be able to get where we need to be, but we have enough money to get through the plan and to be able to do what we need to do right now.

Excellent. And in fact, as you think about this ramping dynamic, I mean, can you elaborate a little bit more as to how you think about sort of the core cash required to run the business versus actually generating revenue, right? I mean, how do you think about that FCF breakeven as a conceptual point that you think about over time? Maybe as a starting point -- go for it.

Yes. I'll let Sagar kind of take that one as the CFO, and then I can jump in from there.

Thanks, Joe. Julien, so from a free cash flow perspective, for our guidance in the projections that we put out during our merger into B. Riley cut us back, we are expecting to be free cash flow positive in 2022 and ramping up that positive cash flow in '23 and beyond. On the cash part, going back to your previous conversation. Look, from our perspective, we have the cash on the balance sheet required to run the necessary priorities that Joe talked about on the 2021 play, both from an investment capacity point of view, minimal structural cost and the required R&D to be able to generate the Z3 battery into production.

Excellent. Go for it.

No, that's really what I have to say. You're on mute, Julien.

Sorry about that. Apologies here. So when you think about that free cash flow pivot here in '22, et cetera, can you talk about sort of the specific milestones in getting there, where you stand today against the '21 and '22 targets, orders, backlog? How are we going to see this ramp-up? How chunky is it going to be? Just set some expectations, if you will, right? Because sometimes these storage orders can be larger and smaller. I mean, maybe what's the average size of an order that one should be conceptually thinking of here as you kind of ramp the business itself?

Yes, yes. No, great question. So a few things that you should be thinking about -- or we think about and we would advise you to consider the same. First, let's start with the orders. So Joe talked about how in our current backlog, we are addressing orders that are in the 10-megawatt hour range. That will be expanding, and we'll be focused on larger orders as we get into the 2022 and '23 deliveries. So that's what you should expect from the sizability point of view. That then adds to the scale required on the cost of goods sold to be able to get to the gross margin profitability. Joe talked through our cost-out strategy for this year between the volume pricing and the aspect ratio from the Z3 product we're going to put out there. Next year, we'll be focused on automation, which to his point, we are going to invest in once we have the configurations of the equipment aligned with both what we need for the 800-megawatt hours and the current 250 that we have today. So automation will be a big driver of that productivity. And the next thing will be the larger scale volume discounts as these sizable projects come into our backlog. From an SG&A perspective, this is a pretty capital-light business to Joe's point on the structural costs required. It's a minimal run rate. We intend to keep it the same. Any investment we make in SG&A will be to focus on building out our commercial pipeline -- excuse me, our commercial team in Europe and in broader reaching parts of the world, plus in the U.S., and on R&D to focus on the technology company that we are. And that's our game plan at a high level to get to the profitability, both on free cash flow and on margin.

And I would say, Julien, on the order, I think near-term 2021 smaller projects making up the bulk of the delivery of the $50 million, that's per the plan. I think just where we are to have that optionality in executing projects and getting multiple applications out in the field is going to be very important. I think we are working down the negotiation stages, again, for larger projects, but with delivery timeframes more towards the back end of 2022 into 2023 and really good progress across multiple customers. We're not ready to talk about publicly yet, but really very positive discussion that we're having. What I would want to -- what I do want to emphasize, which I kind of think links the 2 questions together, the question earlier on capitalization and this question is, we have -- the way we design everything in the company is to give us the maximum flexibility to either move faster or slow down depending on what happens in the market and depending on the cash that we have. So while we're doing 800-megawatt hours of production, that's broken down into chunks where we can decided to slow a chunk down if we have to or to speed up a block of capacity if we need to. What's most important for us is to really keep driving that levelized cost of storage and that dollar per kilowatt hour costs of the overall system because that's what's going to bring us to breakeven and cash flow positive as we exit 2022, which really needs to be the focus of the company so that then we're a self-sustaining company with profit and positive cash flow. And that's how we think about it. And as Sagar said, we don't want a lot of structure in the business. We've added structure mostly because of being -- becoming a public company, which has helped us become a better company. And we're going to keep it to a minimum and really put our investment on the shop floor and then the engineers and the sales people.

Got it. So as we think about trying to wrap up the conversation, a couple of remaining questions. I want to make sure we clarify here. Elaboration, if you had before, you talked about $100 million and $35 million and being able to fed this out. And Sagar, I know you said you were trying to figure out some things that stretched these payments out. Do you have a pathway to getting that positive cash flow in '22, as you guys talked about with sort of a runway of potential orders, et cetera? And then in tandem with that, if I'm hearing it right, you've got an adequate cash balance today to get you there from hearing you're right, too, right, especially relative to some of these abilities to push out the payments, the $35 million. I just want to clarify that. And I got a quick follow-up here, if I can, on the orders, too, before we call it.

Yes. Look, the cash balance that we have today, like we said, Julien, will get us through to execute on all the 2021 priorities that Joe had laid out on [indiscernible], and that's what we are focused on. As a growth company, we will always be seeking opportunistically to seek capital at the right time. And as the Board and Joe decide when that right time is, we'll be sure to address the market on the company's priorities from that perspective.

Excellent. And then secondly, I mean, I think the other big question is, when you think about anchor customers, partners, right, potential sources of projects from repeat business, right, what we've seen other smaller sort of energy niche companies really build out scale off of, are there any of those kinds of customers out there when you think about who you're talking to today, whether existing customers you've already signed up or otherwise that really could be quite meaningful in signaling confidence and credibility in the technology and the like, if you will?

So Julien, what I would say, we -- the customers that we have, we have repeat projects with the majority of them, which is great news. They are smaller entrepreneurial companies like ourselves. And then at the same time, we are working through with larger IPP and utility companies and going through the process of becoming qualified for larger recurring projects, and we continue to work through that. And we'll update as we get progress that we're ready to talk about publicly, but there's a lot in the works with a lot of people of getting systems and technology approved going through, as you rightly pointed out, going through and explaining bankability and the history of the product, and we'll continue to work through that and update everybody as we finalize things. But I'm happy with the mix of customers that we have. We've got to spread that mix out a little bit more, though, to be able to grow the company and get to the growth that we need as we start getting into 2023.

Excellent. Well, thank you, guys. Best of luck on everything. I know lots going on. So I'm very keen. We'll connect here in a few months, see how things are going. Have a great day, guys. All the best to you.

Thanks for the time. Really appreciate it.

Be well. Cheers.

Bye.

Bye.