Fluence Corporation Limited (FLC) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning. I appreciate everyone joining the call this morning. I would like to please note that all discussions regarding the financial results are on an unaudited basis. But what I did want to highlight for the fiscal quarter ending March 31, 2023, we -- Fluence finished the quarter with $14 million of revenue, which was down 49% from Q1 of 2022, mainly due to the reduction in Ivory Coast revenue and several SPS project delays. With that said, there were several bright spots like SPS revenues in our Southeast Asia and China business being up 50% from Q1 2022 due to growth in other key Southeast Asian markets, like Cambodia, Vietnam and Taiwan as well as the reopening in China that is picking up steam. Also, new orders in recurring revenue are up 100% in Q1 2023 over the same time period in 2022, leading to 35% growth in recurring revenue backlog, while backlog in SPS plus recurring revenue remained flat over Q4 2022. Lastly, we are having significant visibility on large near-term orders. Several orders already booked are expected to be booked in Q2 2023. And I will highlight a few of those as was released in our Q2 business update. Moreover, Fluence achieved fixed cost savings of $1.2 million in Q1 2023, which were down 17% from Q4 2022, reflecting the positive impact of implementing the restructuring that was announced in Q4 of 2022. On the cash side, as at March 31, 2023, cash and cash equivalents were $15.2 million, and the company held $13.7 million in short- and long-term deposits, of which $11.8 million is applied as collateral for bank guarantees related to the Ivory Coast project. Net cash used in the quarter by operating activities was $15.2 million, which is primarily due to the payment of more than $8 million in payables related to the Ivory Coast project that we're doing payable after collecting in excess of $14 million of cash at the end of Q4 of 2022. In general, Fluence receives payments for the Ivory Coast project in advance of making payments to the suppliers. And with that in mind, Fluence has already received the payment for Milestone 9 of the Ivory Coast project in April, which was a sizable amount of $18.8 million, and this is expected to lead to positive operating cash flow in Q2 of 2023. Lastly, the company is maintaining our guidance of total revenue of $95 million to $100 million in revenue in fiscal 2023, of which SPS plus recurring revenue, we expect to be $75 million to $80 million and EBITDA of $4 million, which represents an increase in EBITDA of more than 70% over fiscal year 2022. At this point in time, I did want to just highlight Tom Pokorsky, our CEO, did want to be here on this conference call this morning. Unfortunately, he is stuck underground in -- at a conference in -- sorry, in a subway station underground at a conference he is attending in Washington, D.C. called WWEMA. One other highlight I wanted to make note of that we are very excited to announce and we did announce during Q1 was the appointment of Doug Brown as Director and Chairman of the Board, which was made effective on March 20, 2023. If I could maybe hand it over to Mr. Doug Brown, who is on the call to just highlight -- to introduce himself, I may do that right now.

Thank you, Ben, and thank you all for participating in the conference. I -- as I think most of you know, I have an extensive experience in the water business having been CEO of 2 other water companies as well as a private equity company before becoming Chairman of Fluence. I'm excited about the opportunity. I know that Fluence's past performance has not been what the investors probably were looking for. But I see huge opportunities ahead for the company. I believe that their technology is very competitive. And the MABR membrane approach is unique and gives them significant advantages in the market, and the waste-to-energy business has a strong growth potential. So I believe that we have a bright future ahead of us. And I'm glad to be part of the firm, and I think I can contribute to the company's success. Thanks, Ben.

Thank you very much, Doug. As you can tell, we are thrilled to have Doug join our Board as Chairman, and we believe that Doug can contribute very positively to the growth of the business and successful execution of our strategy as has been presented. So while our quarter was a little bit light on the revenue side, we did have and we're successful in securing several new exciting wins that recently -- that were not announced publicly, some of which I'll highlight here, including a Coca-Cola water reuse plant for $1.1 million, and operations contract with Dow Chemicals for another $1 million over the course of that operations contract. We had another O&M contract with Coca-Cola for $300,000. And we have visibility on a significant pipeline of exciting projects that are expected to be announced in the coming quarters as we successfully deploy our growth strategy. Now on the Ivory Coast project. In Q1 of 2023, Fluence saw the continued successful execution of that project, including, as I mentioned before, achieving sign-off on Milestone 9. Payment of $18.8 million was received in April, and the release of an additional $3 million in advanced payments that had been held back is also expected in Q2 of 2023, which is going to contribute to the expected positive operating cash flow in the quarter. And the company continues to progress well toward the planned plant commissioning in Q3 of 2023. So just a few other comments on other parts of the business and progress in other areas. The company began operating under the repositioned structure that our CEO, Tom Pokorsky, announced in Q4. So internally, reporting for Q1 2023 is now based on the new product-based business units that were announced in 2022. So as illustrated by the 17% reduction in fixed costs in the quarter, we can see that the new structure has already begun to pay dividends. Additionally, enhanced cross-selling and collaboration between the business units is leading to a growing pipeline for new projects in all regions. So in part of that, the company has hired 4 new senior sales and technical roles in North America, which is obviously a highly focused area of growth for our business. And those hires are to develop the market for municipal, high-strength wastewater, which is our wastewater-to-energy business -- product line and industrial products, which is leading to significant pipeline growth, including over $50 million of qualified projects. Multiple municipal and private projects in North America are scheduled to bid utilizing our proprietary MABR technology. The food and beverage industry, in particular, has been very active, with high levels of interest in our industrial products as well as our high-strength wastewater, again, the wastewater-to-energy technology. The company has secured several letters of intent for large new projects, including a major project for a large chip manufacturer. Further, the company continues to see strong interest in its wastewater-to-energy treatment solutions, which generate renewable natural gas from wastewater. Such interest is being driven in part from government subsidies like the Inflation Reduction Act in the U.S., which has allocated $270 billion in tax credits for clean energy projects. The high-strength wastewater business unit is actively marketing these wastewater-to-energy projects in both North and South America and are seeing significant potential. The company has recently been notified that selected by a major food producer to partner in developing a large waste-to-energy facility. In addition, a design agreement has been signed with a major fish processing company for multiple projects. That concludes the formal portion of the comments here. And perhaps at this point in time, I would want to turn it over to questions.

[Operator Instructions]

One of the questions that was asked is why did Richard step down as Chairman. Richard, as you know, has no direct experience in the wastewater, the water treatment industry. And I think the company and Richard himself recognized the need to bring in a more experienced team that has direct experience in water treatment and wastewater treatment. I've been in the waste -- the water treatment business and wastewater business for over 25 years. We brought in Tom Pokorsky as our CEO, who's been in the wastewater business for some 40 years. Ben Fash, who is our CFO, has been in the water treatment business for pushing 20 years. And so we reset the management team, including the Chairman of the Board, with people who are -- have a deep experience in the water business. And I think Richard was a full supporter of that. We don't expect Richard to go off the Board. We expect Richard to stay on the Board as a Nonexecutive Director. And so he's not going away, but we recognize that my experience in the water business is far deeper than his, and that's what the company needed.

Thanks, Doug. Okay. There were a few questions around operating cash flow and when management expects things to be cash flow-positive. As was noted in the Q2 business update and as noted on this conference call, we do expect with the receipt of Milestone 9 of the Ivory Coast project in April that -- as well as the release of the additional payment of $3 million that we will be operating cash flow-positive in Q2. There's a question around what is the company's short- to medium-term objectives around generating shareholder value. And I believe that we have been consistently communicating our strategy to de-emphasize the Custom Engineered Solutions, the CES side of our business, and shift our revenue segmentation to significantly more SPS revenue plus recurring revenue, which we have been successful in doing and continue to push our strategy towards doing so. That results in quicker-turn projects at higher margins and takes advantage of the technologies that we have in-house.

There was a question about -- sorry, Ben.

Yes. No, please go ahead, Doug.

Yes. So there was expect -- a question about do we expect Fluence today to raise capital. Our objective in the short term is to have the company be cash flow-breakeven -- operating cash flow-breakeven going forward. We've reduced expenses, and we're increasing SPS sales. One of the plan -- parts of the plan, though, is to look at selective M&A opportunities. We think, especially in wastewater treatment plant operations, there are some interesting opportunities out there that would be very accretive. To the extent we are able to secure an M&A opportunity, that might necessitate rating capital to support that. And the other thing, long term, that we hope to do is to develop more projects that are more like order-as-a-service as opposed to equipment sales where we build the plant and we own it and we operate and we sell a service where we get paid a monthly fee from the customer, generates recurring revenue. The margins on that kind of business are higher. And to the extent we need to build a plant or purchase equipment to support that business, that might necessitate raising capital at some point in the future. So it's possible. We don't have any immediate plans, but it's possible that we will be looking to raise capital to support the investment in fixed assets and/or to support acquisitions. Yes.

Okay. Thank you, Doug. There were several very specific questions on certain specific projects and sales, some of which I think we would not be in a position to answer due to confidentiality obligations and so forth. So I probably will not address those. There were several questions around the timing of the Ivory Coast O&M contract and are we bidding on the O&M contract for Ivory Coast. And I think that how I would answer that is just to say that we continue to successfully execute the main works of the contract and the goal of which is to position ourselves for the future O&M contract. There is no visibility on the time line at this -- in that moment in time. Can you -- there was a question around our waste-to-energy business in the U.S., and to what extent does this product sales compared to projects? Is there a need to recruit more staff to deliver these projects as you win more work? And the short answer is no. We have the expertise in our business already to execute and deliver on these projects. As a business expands as we hope it will, of course, we would look to augment and supplement that team. But as was mentioned before, we continue to add to the team in the U.S., including sales and technical resources, which we believe will help supplement that growth.

It's worth to note that -- it's just -- Ben, it's worth noting that in the waste-to-energy business, we've already implemented many contracts around the world that are operating successfully. So the technology and the engineering capabilities are already in-house.

Absolutely. Any other questions? Now there's a question on -- refers to visibility on large near-term orders, what is -- roughly is large? That can vary, but certainly, a number of the projects that we are looking at are similar to the ones that were discussed before in the $1 million, $3 million and $5 million range. We would certainly consider those to be on the larger side, but there are some in our pipeline that even potentially exceed those sizes. Just scrolling through the questions. And I think, Doug, are there any other questions you would want to address here?

Yes. Some of these questions are very specific about specific projects. And unfortunately, we can't get into the details with that. And I think that's about it.

Okay. All right. Well, so...

So...

Go ahead, Doug.

I was just going to finish up by thanking everybody for joining the call and for your interest in Fluence. And I would encourage you to continue to watch this space. You have a new team for the company. We have a new strategy for the company. We think we have a good path for success for the business. And we're looking forward to continuing to communicate with you as we move forward and turning Fluence into a significant success for our shareholders.

Yes. Thanks for those final words, Doug. And I'd also like to reiterate thank you, everyone, for joining the call and for your interest in the business.