NuScale Power Corporation (NYSE:SMR) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Ramsey Hamady: Yeah, I want to remind our analyst and our investor community – power ENTRA1 announced new scale as their technology provider of choice. And that was a great announcement for us. And we know that there have been doubts in the market and we can’t we look forward to dispelling those doubts. We are working very hard to get agreements in place where we can show revenue coming, we can show the structure of the agreements and we can push forward. I mean, it is beat up our stock price and we understand that. And let me assure you that management is working very, very hard to come forward with more information as we are able to support the deal that we have.

Ryan Pfingst: And then turning to CFPP, obviously, the learnings are very positive helped the development process for new scale going forward. But can you talk about the key headwinds a little bit more between the subscription model and the site and maybe some others that ultimately didn’t lead to that project getting built that you don’t expect to face in subsequent projects from here?

John Hopkins: This is John. If you look at the tenure of that project over the years, a lot of great successes came from that project. NuScale was able to get through the rigor of the Nuclear regulatory commission. We put together a standard plan design. We have got our COLA submission that was going in January and probably 60% to 70% of that construction operates and license agreement can be moved to another customer. We got the four genes that are ongoing currently with our partner in Doosan, our key supplier. Those are fungible assets. And we are in discussions with DOE and the owner currently about moving those assets to another customer. So if you look at what I would call sum cost most of the achievements are going to benefit our next customer.

There is some direct site specific engineering, obviously that won’t, but then the totality of it, that was really minimal, because the site characterization and was putting up fencing and doing some volcanic geological assessments for seismic, but the majority will move elsewhere.

Ramsey Hamady: Maybe to further articulate on this, one of the reasons or the reason that we mutually aside to terminate CFPP was subscriptions and both new scale and UAMPS and the DOE, I worked very hard to keep this project moving along. And ultimately subscriptions are something that we are not our control. I think, in future projects we learn from CFPP, we learn from some of the hurdles, we learn from some of the development risks that have come along with that. And I really think that the model that we have now with Enterra1 where we step away from the development role and focus on what this business is designed to do, which is sell new scale power modules, license the technology and sell services associated with those. As long as we focus on that, I think we can steer clear of some of the pitfalls that we had previously.

John Hopkins: Yes, a lot of the issues we face at CFPP are really unique to CFPP, such as the issue of subscription. The customer had made it very clear that they had to achieve 80% of their total for this project to move forward. And with all the hard work that went into it, it was just not achievable. So looking at ongoing costs, we mutually determined, it is probably the best thing to for collectively we move on. It is the old Dakota Indian, once you are on a dead horse, you dismount quickly and move on to others. And that is where we are here. So I’m very proud of the cost accomplishments over the years that we have had with that customer and that project and that business is business

Ramsey Hamady: And just to buttress John’s earlier point, we anticipate half approximately of the cost that we incurred the development then incurred the generic development that moves with us to other projects that informs our future business. We really made a lot of great accomplishments with CFPP. I think everyone’s really very proud despite the fact that we didn’t get to the finish line. I think, we are all very proud of where we got and what it means for the business overall.

John Hopkins: I think what is critically important is if you look at the dynamics in the industry right now, the market trends continue. We do have another customer in Romania, Row Power. I have been in discussions with their CEO this weekend and that project continues to progress. They are keenly interested and continue to be with new scale as the technology of choice for that project. We continue to get great support from our government. So all the indicators, the industrials that we talked before, Jose Reyes, Dr. Reyes is in 17 to 20 industrials have approached us for different areas of either be it hydrogen or ammonia or process heat. So we are not seeing any slowdown in the market. I don’t know – from this project. We are reallocating resources. So we just got to get our next couple of customers in the door against some firm contracts.

Ramsey Hamady: I think, John, just to add around the demand profile, the exciting thing around Standard Power and the data centers is that the demand profile is extremely different. It is very robust. The need for reliable available power is extremely important, and the demand value for what they need in order to provide their into the market space of AI is far different. So we anticipate that, that profile and that need is a much different experience than what we are seeing with a subscription model of UAMPS.

Ryan Pfingst: Got it. That that all makes a lot of sense. And thank you for all that detail. If I could just sneak one last one in, John, you started to talk about it a little bit. But if I am thinking about the customer pipeline in the near-term, maybe what geographic regions or customer types do you think have the best shot of converting into committed customers from the pipeline today?

John Hopkins: I still believe particularly with our coal plant refurbishment requirements within this country and you know how many coal plants are forecasted to come on offline just by 2030. Is still a very good model. Our ability from a scalability where we can offer 46 up to 924 megawatts, that whole coal refurbishment. Overseas, it is still pretty much the same, heavily driven by energy security needs, particularly Central and Eastern Europe. One thing we are doing with the limited resources, it is the vetting of the opportunity that is pretty important. It gets into the – and that is heavily oriented to what is the regulatory framework and where is the funding coming from? So I have been to the last three – and I think that is going to be interesting to hear you get to hear a lot more about nuclear coming out of – I feel advanced nuclear.