Graham Corporation (NYSE:GHM) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Gary Schwab: Yes. Hi, Dan, Chris. Great job like everybody has said. Question about the lithium, on the direct lithium extraction. Are you — there’s a number of companies that are involved with this. Are you talking with any other companies in the U.S or overseas?

Dan Thoren: So, in general, I would say that we talked to a lot of different companies that need surface condensers for their power cycles. So yes, we do end up talking to quite a few of those folks. The Shelton C application is unique. It’s really kind of exciting. So this is the first one that we’re providing equipment for. And when it’s successful, I know that our customer wants to repeat it and they’ve talked about that in the press. So I think that there’s this ongoing opportunity to continue to support that. It’s — again, geothermal power is a low margin endeavor. It is tough to make money in geothermal power, coupling, this lithium extraction with that process is really kind of nice from an economic perspective, but the process itself is a lot cleaner, and more efficient than the standard put it all out into a lake bed and start to evaporate water. So it’s pretty cool. And it’s fun to be connected with that for a lot of different reasons.

Gary Schwab: Okay. You mentioned hydrogen, I think three times in the presentation, but you really didn’t expand on that. Can you — what kind of projects are you working on in hydrogen?

Dan Thoren: Yes. So, hydrogen as you know, can be pretty challenging. First of all, it’s cold in its liquid form. And then from a material perspective, there’s a limited types of material that you can use in hydrogen. And so, it ends up being some pretty specialty equipment that is used in hydrogen operations. So Barber-Nichols is a turbomachinery house and they have built cryogenic pumps for gosh, over 40 years. And so, Barber-Nichols has been involved in providing cryogenic pumps, liquid argon, hydrogen, helium all types of stuff. And with the major air products players have supplied turbomachinery to those major air products types of players. And so, we see opportunities from them, and I can’t name anything specific, but we see opportunities with them to provide turbomachinery.

And then Graham has some unique heat exchange capability with their Heliflow heat exchanger that can handle some really extreme temperature ranges. And it’s very applicable to hydrogen service. And so, again, we have been supplying these heat exchangers to various companies that are involved in the production, the transportation, the distribution, fueling side of the hydrogen economy, and everybody is kind of working on their best solution to enabling the hydrogen economy. As you’ve seen, there’s a lot of chatter in this market. And people are spending some big dollars to invest in it and develop the capability to support it. And so, we’re in there and we’re participating still too early to say, what will come out of it. But again, great place to be at this point in time.

Gary Schwab: Okay, great. Let me just ask a couple of bookkeeping questions. On the K [ph], you said there remains approximately $1 million to $2 million in potential additional exposure. We’re talking about Virgin Orbit related to the space customer. Depending on the outcome of these proceedings and the asset sales, — depending on the outcome of these proceedings in the asset sale, it says, however, at this time, the company does not expect any further impact in ’24 or beyond. So does that mean that the $1 million to $2 million could be recaptured?