Jim Deller
Analyst · H.C. Wainwright. Please go ahead
Thank you, Brent, for the financial overview. I thank everyone for joining us on the call today and for your interest in ClearSign. It has been only a few weeks since our last update call, but we do have more developments to share with you. On today’s call, I will review our business segments, starting with process burners and our most recent Multi Heater announcement. Next, I will touch on the developments in our boiler burner business and then update you on China and our progress there. In regards to our process burner segment, most of you may have seen our announcement regarding the engineering order for two heaters that was released in the middle of April, April 19 to be specific. This order is from an early adopter of our technology in California. So this is a repeat order from an existing customer. Additionally, this customer came back to ClearSign after initiating an alternative option to install a traditional selective catalytic reduction of SCR, NOx control system and inherent complexities associated with such a system. As stated in our press release, the engineering purchase order for this project stated that the procurement and fabrication of burners may be added at a later date or not at all. So there was no expectation or assumption that this was going to progress and develop into more than just the initial engineering phase. And just yesterday, we were happy to confirm that the full project is moving forward with the receipt of a purchase order for the procurement and fabrication of burners for the two separate process heaters. What is notable about this project is that it is the supply of burners for two different multi-burner heaters with a total of 13 burners. The fuel gas includes hydrogen, so this will not only give us valuable installations, but we believe will validate our technology, but also installations demonstrating our capability to control NOx emissions from fuel gases containing concentrations of hydrogen gas as is expected to be an increasing need out of increasing value in the future. This project illustrates the point that it’s worth emphasizing in light of the global decarbonization and environmental justice initiatives. Installations such as this, demonstrating the capability of ClearSign technology to control NOx emissions to a level sufficient to avoid the capital and operational requirements of SCRs and achieve single-digit NOx levels burning significant concentrations of hydrogen in the fuel gas illustrates our important contribution to the ultimate goal of decarbonization. That is the operation with hydrogen fuel gas. The reduction of greenhouse gas and ground-level ozone through the control of NOx emissions to fairly low levels and by providing cleaner local air and eliminating potential emissions of ammonia as our feature of SCR systems also support environmental justice initiatives. We very much look forward to completing this project and seeing these burners in operation in California. Our 20 burner Southern California project is progressing well. As noted on our last call, the final witness test went as planned, and we are fabricating the burners for delivery to our customer. For those that are interested, we have posted a summary version of this test data and report on our website as we believe the data and details are informative to specialists from the industry, investors and other stakeholders alike. This can be found on our website on the process burner page in the products section labeled test results. Alternatively, just go to the technical library section and look under process burner white papers. We are scheduled to be fully complete with the manufacture and delivery of these burners later this year, which will largely complete this order. At this time, we do not have confirmation whether the site shutdown during which these burners will be installed will be undertaken in mid-2024 or perhaps later as the timing of this work is dependent on our clients’ plans and shutdown scheduling. Bear in mind that there are lots of activities included in these refinery shutdowns, so the planning process is complex and dependent on a multitude of factors, many of which have little or nothing to do with ClearSign burners. As mentioned on the last call, regardless of the eventual installation timing, we expect to be able to invoice and receive payment upon delivery of the burners by the end of the year and only a small part of the purchase order revenue and cash will remain until installation A byproduct of this project is that we have the burners used for the demonstration at our partner Zeeco’s facility. These were not part of the final production run and will not be included in the shipment to California. These burners will be kept for demonstration purposes for potential customers and stakeholders. To that end, we have customer demonstration events planned for the coming months. These burners demonstrate NOx emissions numbers significantly below the 5 PPM guarantee and robust performance throughout the operating range. This is important because in this industry, while we have presented and promoted our burner technology, for most industry people seeing in person is believing. Lastly, in our burner segment, I want to mention our 100% hydrogen low NOx burner development. On the last call, we mentioned that we have completed the successful testing of this new burner. The first phase of this project was funded by a Department of Energy grant of $250,000. Data has been submitted for a Phase 2 grant, which is up to $1.6 million over a period of 2 years. We expect to learn if this application is approved by the end of July. This project will extend our successful Phase 1 proof-of-concept demonstration to create a full range of commercial process burners. As we were the only company to have been granted a Phase 1 grant for this high hydrogen-fuel burner project, we are optimistic that the Phase 2 grant will also be awarded to ClearSign. The objective of this project is to develop and commercialize a range of burners that will enable the control of NOx emissions to the levels required to control ground-level ozone in critically polluted areas, combined with the adoption of the new hydrogen economy and use of hydrogen fuel for industrial heating. The anticipated outcome is to achieve reductions in the industrial emissions of both carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides. Currently, the available hydrogen burning solutions are able to reduce CO2, but the byproduct is higher NOx. Our novel burner is expected to enable zero CO2 by burning pure hydrogen in commercial applications but importantly to create NOx emissions so low that they compete with SCRs in a low single-digit parts per million range. We are also already in discussions with potential customers regarding the future deployment and in particular, the adopter opportunities for this new hydrogen-focused burner technology. On a side note regarding government funding and industry funded grants, we are seeing interest from additional parties regarding our low emissions technologies. As I have said earlier, we are seeing other opportunities also, some that we plan to pursue for ourselves and some that may provide opportunities in partnership with customers. Nearly all are related to decarbonization and/or pollution reduction and generally have a consideration of social equity or environmental justice, which supports our business and target market as well. We see these grants as a means to accelerate the development of our technology and also but more important to us to incentivize the critical initial installations necessary to gain the confidence of customers and the air regulators or to put it another way, we are not a research company. We see the funding and grants available as a means to an end rather than an objective of its own. The grants not only help fund and raise the priority of the development of our technology for new applications, but very importantly, because of the way that the grants are structured, they also provide a mechanism to incentivize customers to put new technology when developed into use. I will now move on to development in our boiler burner product line. On the last call, we went over our initial announced sales of boiler burners, both in California and Texas. The first burner order was sold into a medical and business waste services company and was in conjunction with our partner, California Boiler into the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District of California. This is on schedule to install in the current that is second quarter. While this first sale was significant in the fact that it was our first California commercial 5G boiler burner order in and of itself, it is also very encouraging because the customer came to us for our solution after competing products failed to meet the new district sub-5PPM NOx emissions requirements. California Boiler also has a 500 horsepower rental boiler with our burner in it that will be deployed and an operation on this site to provide the customer with steam during the installation of the new burner. This will provide us an additional reference point and some prolonged run time on that larger installation. The second order was also sold into the California market. Our burner will be part of our recycling planned upgrades that will increase energy efficiency as well as reducing NOx for one of its customers nationwide sites. The second boiler burner sold into the California market was to a national provider of recycling services to the food production and restaurant industries and will be installed with a new boiler. This was sold as a package with our partner, California Boiler into the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District of California. The burner and new boiler are scheduled to be installed in the third quarter of 2023. We believe the second burner in particular, will truly set the bar for boiler burners. This burner is larger and is in the size range requiring sub-2.5 PPM NOx emissions, a capability that we believe is unique to ClearSign burners or the solutions require the inclusion of an SCR and the associated capital costs and ammonia handling that go with them. As we stated in the press release at the time, this burner is our first commercial boiler burner sale guaranteeing sub-2.5 PPM NOx specifically developed to enable clients like this to operate in compliance with California Central Valley region’s new regulations and without the need for ammonia and the hazards associated with such potent chemicals. To help explain why this installation is so important, the boiler into which our burner is to be installed is from a major international supplier, demonstrating our burner of working in commercial use and meeting the 2.5 PPM NOx requirement, will position us well to be included as the burner technology in their future boiler sales when low NOx emissions are required. Playing the scenario forward, hypothetically, if we enable this boiler supplier to have a more cost-effective and SCR free offering, we expect that they will have a competitive advantage over their competition, either allowing them to win a disproportionate share of the opportunities which will be good for us or forcing other boiler manufacturers to follow suit and offer ClearSign core burners, which will obviously also be good for us. The third boiler sale was unique in the fact that it is our first application of our boiler burner technology into a non-boiler heater and very importantly, our first sale to a refinery heater manufacturer, who has included our burner as a chosen solution to meet their customers’ needs. Also, it was our first sale into Texas where after California, we anticipate the Texas Gulf Coast region will be the next large market for us. Lastly, the sale is also the first to this global chemicals company and the first in the industrial chemicals sector. The manufacture of all of these burners is underway and on schedule. We are very optimistic that getting these installations up and running will provide a great catalyst for others. These will also provide a benchmark for the air districts in California and the rest of the United States, and we expect these installations to provide a reference as they consider modifications and updates to their clean air regulations. When talking about our asset-light strategy, heater and boiler manufacturers are a prominent channel to market for burner equipment as burners are part of almost everything they sell. It is gratifying that we are establishing relationships and trust with some of these manufacturers. As we have said before, we are very encouraged by the early boiler burner orders in multiple markets this year, but we are also encouraged by our list of outstanding proposals and look forward to adding to this list. Turning to China. Our President of Asia, Manny Menendez, is over in China as we speak. Mr. Menendez arrived in China last week and hit the ground running, so I do have some updates to give and expect to have further news in the near future, both regarding progress and anticipated time lines. His primary objectives are to get the 500-horsepower 5G boiler burners installed, commissioned and then government certified. The 500 horsepower boiler size is our top priority as we along with Shuangliang believe that there is a readily addressable market in the region of Shenzhen, where the government has recently rolled out new Street NOx emission requirements. Shenzhen has a population in the region of 18 million to 20 million people and is one of China’s richest cities, if not the richest, after Shanghai and Beijing. In addition to that, the NOx regulations there will now be the most stringent in China. A trip is planned jointly with our partner Shuangliang to that region to promote our joint capabilities and unique offering to both customers in the area and also the local government officials responsible for administering the new air quality standards. Once those are complete and government burner certification is in hand, we expect to see some early sales and anticipate that we will be able to have some initial orders resulting in deployments of our technology and our integrated boiler burner package from our Shuangliang partnership in China in 2023 and continuing in 2024. To illustrate the pace of environmental regulatory developments in China, Hebei province, which is the large province next to Beijing, has just rolled out a new emission requirement requiring less than 10 PPM NOx for all boilers. We are also planning to engage with customers and government officials in that region, similar to Shenzhen in the near future. We recently participated in the ISH China & CIHE exhibition held May 11 to May 13, where we met potential customers and possible collaborators for ClearSign. The ISH event had a dedicated energy section focused specifically on industrial clean energy. Our strategic alliance partner, Shuangliang Group, had an impressive booth at that event. Before ending this update on our China progress, I want to draw your attention to the level of engagement and investment being made by our partner, Shuangliang, in China. Those of you who follow us on LinkedIn will have seen yesterday, pictures of the 500 horsepower boiler Shuangliang have built and a high-pressure gas line that they have got permitted and installed along with the new water line to enable them to demonstrate a 500 horsepower boiler burner for certification. They have made significant other investments also, including facilitating the certification of our 125 horsepower boiler burner. We have jointly made effort to keep this relationship strong through our for separation and slowdown due to COVID and to see such material evidence of the strength of this relationship and its indication of the magnitude of the market potential in China is reassuring. Looking forward to the rest of the year 2023, we will proceed with the manufacture of a large California refinery order following the successful customer demonstration earlier this year. This will also deliver significant revenue and gross margin. We will complete the production demonstration testing of burners for the most recent two-heater order for our client site in California, followed by the manufacture and supply of the burners. Installation will be in phases starting in early 2024. You will continue to see increased promotion of our process burners and we are planning to hold industry demonstrations at the test facility of our partner Zeeco this summer. We are also optimistic about our prospects for the follow-on hydrogen burner development grant and believe we are well positioned for further grants from a variety of sources to aid and accelerate the adoption of our hydrogen compatible technology. Following our recent chemical company order, we look forward to increasing business in Texas and also through heater companies. For our boiler burner business, we will deliver our first commercial orders and look forward to having those units in operation in California and Texas. We expect to build on this and increase the level of inquiries that we are seeing to keep momentum in California and look to expand our business in new markets like Texas, particularly following the recent agreement between California Boiler and Gulf Coast boilers based in that region. In China, we look to progress our plans with Shuangliang including burner certifications and winning and delivering our first orders under that collaboration. One subtle change you should expect to see as we transition to having commercial deployments of both our process burners and boiler burners in service is an increase in promotional activities. A few examples include, the full scale demonstration burners I have mentioned during our last call. This week, we have a team and a full-scale process burner on display at the American Petroleum Refining and Equipment Standards meeting in Seattle, and a second team with a full-size demonstration of 5G boiler burner at the Texas Environmental Trade Fair and Conference onus by the Texas Commission on environmental quality in Austin. With that, I would like to open up the call for questions. Please, operator?