Bloom Energy Corporation (NYSE:BE) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Operator: The next question comes from the line of Ameet Thakkar with BMO Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Ameet Thakkar: Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. Hey, Greg. I just wanted to come back to the — I guess the area of the 10-Q you pointed out on the PPA V restructuring. First question was always kind of embedded in your guidance for the year. I know you guys have talked about it for a while, but I just wanted to clarify that.

Greg Cameron: Yes, yes.

Ameet Thakkar: And then — yeah, go ahead.

Greg Cameron: No, just yes.

Ameet Thakkar: Okay. And then, so if like — it looked like it was $162 million of kind of revenue impact, and then the COGS is around like $196 million, if I like back all that out again, based on the disclosure on page 27, now I’m coming up with a gross margin of closer to 12%. Is that right?

Greg Cameron: No, no. The $162 million would be for the 31 megawatts that we sold, completed in the third quarter to get to a margin number. Then take the COGS number because the COGS number you’re pulling has both — has the impairments that we removed for the non-GAAP pro forma adjustments. So the best way to do it is go to the supplemental and look at what the cost per kilowatt was on an average basis. And that’ll get you to the margin on these. So pretty healthy margin, which is why we’ve liked these and have done them a few times over, but that’s the best way to get to a margin calculation for this.

Ameet Thakkar: All right. Thank you.

Operator: The next question comes from the line of Abhishek Sinha with Northland Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Abhishek Sinha: Hey, just wanted to get an update on the electrolyzers in Korea for the nuclear power plant. Any updates on that?

Greg Cameron: Not in Korea, we’ve got a lot of work going on here in the US on the nuclear power side. There’s some industrial applications that we’re working with our partner on that we’re proceeding — that won’t — they’ll be larger than pilots, but not at scale. And we expect to make some announcements on those over the next six to 12 months. And they’ll deploy very quickly. But hydrogen as a market, as you know, if you spend time in Korea, it’s in every, every billboard as you go through the airport. They’re very committed to hydrogen market over time. And we think that fits in very well, not only for our electrolyzer, but for our fuel cell, because that continue to run on a mix and then ultimately moving the hydrogen. It’s one of the reasons we’re so excited about that Korean market.

Abhishek Sinha: And just as a follow up. Out of all the potential international projects, which one seems the most imminent and promising? Thanks.

KR Sridhar: Again, we as a rule don’t speak about projects that we have not inked. And so we are working on several projects. I can tell you markets, right? Just think about this. In the last 18 months, we have entered five markets. Italy, UK, Belgium, Germany, Taiwan. Very soon because our customers spoke about it and our partners spoke about it, we reentering Singapore, right? You are like seeing that. And we just demonstrated our first units using CHP in Italy with Cefla and for Northern Europe, CHP is super important. And with cooling coming off from what we do for Southern Europe, CHP becomes very important. So we think all these markets have great potential. Taiwan, Singapore we think are amazing markets for us, because there’s shortage of power.

So if you look at Singapore, short-term, midterm, long-term, it’s a country that just cannot — has no land to put renewables, solar, or wind. 95%-plus of the power being produced for them is being produced using natural gas. So we can go in right now and give them a lower carbon footprint along with the CHP. Then they are big into both carbon capture as well as bringing in green hydrogen and green ammonia. We are future proofing their systems when we put them, unlike other technologies that cannot do that. And we are offering them quick time to power at a time when their data centers are starving for power. So we think we have a great play, short-term, midterm, long-term. This is how we evaluate the markets and we enter those markets, how it plays out and what big projects we’re working on, we will tell you about them once we close.

Operator: The next question comes from the line of Noel Parks with Tuohy Brothers. Your line is open.

Noel Parks: Good afternoon.

KR Sridhar: Hi.

Noel Parks: So, one thing I wanted to ask about, just trying to sort of broaden my imagination a bit, is — for example, you talk about data centers, obvious you have expansion opportunities of firms preexisting in that business. And I’m just wondering when you’re looking at projects or potential projects that are more like new build, commercial or industrial sites, I’m just curious, is there a role or are you seeing sort an effect distribution channel through the EPC vendors, the guys who are — who are planning out sort of longer term, larger scale projects? I just wonder as those are thinking of Bloom technology coming in either as an add-in or to solve the immediate pain point in existing or like a micro grid application. So any thoughts you have on that would be great.