Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the FuelCell Energy Fourth Quarter Fiscal Year 2019 Earnings and Strategic Update Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Tom Gelston. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Jacqueline. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on the call today. This morning, FuelCell Energy released our financial results for the fourth quarter and fiscal year of 2019. The earnings press release as well as the press release announcing the Company’s transformation strategy, are available on the Investor Relations section of our website at fuelcellenergy.com. Additionally, you will find a copy of the presentation that will be referenced during today's call. This webcast is being recorded and will be available for replay on the Company's website approximately two hours after we conclude. Before we begin our prepared comments, please direct your attention to the disclosure statement on slide two of the presentation and the disclaimers included in the press release related to forward-looking statements. The discussion today will contain forward-looking statements, including without limitation, statements with respect to the Company's anticipated financial results and statements regarding the Company's plans and expectations regarding the continuing development, commercialization and financing of its fuel cell technology and its business plans. I am joined today by Jason Few, FuelCell Energy's President and CEO; and Mike Bishop, Executive Vice President, CFO and Treasurer. After our prepared remarks, we will be available to take your questions. I will now hand the call over to Jason for opening remarks. Jason?

Thank you, Tom. And thank you to the FuelCell Energy team for welcoming me as part of the management team and for joining me in the pursuit of our new business strategy. And good morning to everyone on the call and thank you for joining. It is a real pleasure to lead my first earnings conference call as CEO to discuss our fourth quarter and fiscal year 2019 results. I am honored to have been appointed President and CEO of FuelCell Energy after having served on the Board of Directors. I want to thank my fellow Board members for their trust in the team and in me to lead the rejuvenation of FuelCell Energy, and I look forward to meeting many of you in the days, weeks and months ahead. In addition to our fourth quarter and fiscal year results today, we announced our Powerhouse business strategy through which we plan to continue to fortify our balance sheet to create greater flexibility for our Company, execute on our backlog to build our generation portfolio and recurring revenue, compete for and win new business globally, solidify our position in the fuel cell industry as the baseload power of choice for a clean energy future, develop and commercialize our advanced technologies platform of products and deliver on our goal of achieving sustained profitable growth. To that end, before diving into the strategic portion of our presentation, I'd like to start by providing a brief overview of our financial highlights for the fourth quarter and fiscal year. Mike will then provide additional detail on our financials. As this is my first earnings call at the helm, I want to begin with the discussion on FuelCell Energy’s purpose, which you will find on slide three. Our purpose is to enable the world to live…

Thank you, Jason. And good morning, everyone. Please refer to the results shown on slide seven. Overall, for the fiscal year and the quarter, revenue declined primarily due to lower product sales. As Jason mentioned, this is partially attributable to our previous strategic decision to focus on utility scale power purchase agreements or PPA opportunities to grow our generation portfolio, rather than selling our projects outright. This was also coupled with a decline in activity in the South Korean market due to the continuing situation with POSCO Energy. Fourth quarter revenue of $11 million reflects a 38% decline year-over-year. The revenue mix for the fourth quarter was as follows: Generation revenues increased by 206% to $5.5 million from $1.8 million as a result of the 14.9-megawatt Bridgeport Fuel Cell project in 2019. Adding this project increased our generation portfolio to 26.1 megawatts. Increasing generation assets in order to benefit from the long-term recurring cash flows remains a strategic focus of the Company. Advanced technology contract revenues increased by 16% to $4.3 million from $3.7 million, mainly in conjunction with the original carbon capture development agreement with ExxonMobil Research and Engineering. With the signing of our new $60 million joint development agreement with ExxonMobil, we expect carbon capture to continue to be a strong revenue driver into the future. Service and license revenues decreased by 72% to $800,000 from $2.9 million, driven by the timing of planned service work performed in the comparable period. Product sales totaled $500,000 for the quarter, a decline of 95% when compared to product sales of $9.4 million in the comparable quarter for the reasons I described earlier. Despite revenue being down on a full-year basis, adjusted EBITDA loss declined by $1.3 million to $31.4 million compared to $32.7 million in fiscal 2018. Adjusted EBITDA loss…

Thank you, Mike. Next on slide 10, I want to highlight a few additional accomplishments we made in a short amount of time. In June of last year, Tony Leo was named CTO, and Mike Lisowski was named COO, strengthening both our innovation and operational execution capabilities. We also restructured our business to realize annualized operating savings of $15 million in fiscal 2019. By paying off the senior secured credit facility with Hercules Capital, and other short term debts, we moved more than $30 million in short term debt to long term to better align with the execution of our project backlog and revitalize business development plans. As previously discussed and noted by Mike, we entered into our second joint development agreement, or what we call JDA 2, with ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company, we further developed carbon capture technology, utilizing our proprietary carbon and fuel cell technology and our 50-year history of innovation. And just to reiterate, we are successfully executing on our backlog. We ended the fiscal year and calendar year having made significant progress on our existing order backlog, and achieved COD on our Tulare biofuels plant. Moving to slide 11. Prior to becoming CEO, I knew the Company well from serving as an independent member of the Board of Directors. Now that I've been on the job for about five months, I would like to share some of my initial observations. FuelCell has an amazing team, fully committed to the Company, each other, customers, stakeholders and our purpose. FuelCell has incredible manufacturing and engineering expertise. The team has deep expertise in harnessing and delivering the most out of carbonate fuel cells, multi-fuel processing, and quality manufacturing. This expertise is rooted in 50 years of research and development, and reflected in over 255 megawatts of our carbonate…

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Colin Rusch from Oppenheimer. Your line is open.

Guys, thanks so much for all the detail on the performance in the presentation this morning. The one thing that I would like to get a little bit more information on is what's going on in Europe in terms of kind of early returns from customer conversations and how we should think about that market growing and when you can start shipping product?

Colin, thank you and thank you for your comments on the call and for joining us today. In Europe, as we talked about, we established a strategic relationship with E.On who already owns two of our projects in Europe today that have been quite successful. So far, our early conversation with customers across Europe has been very positive. There is a lot of excitement that we’re back in the market with our some megawatt product platform as well as our larger megawatt scale products also. We feel very confident about our ability to grow our Company with European important part of that growth in the future.

Okay. And then, just shifting gears around project timelines and cycle times. Could you talk a little bit about the efforts that you are making in terms of shortening that cycle time? Obviously there is some things that are hard to manage from a permitting perspective and citing that can take a long time. But the things that you can control, what are the opportunities for you guys to really shorten some of the those construction cycle and save some costs on that side of things as you start to execute on this portfolio growth.

I will maybe start out and then I will ask Mike Lisowski to add some additional comments. We put a really tight project management process in place around all of our projects. We are accelerating how we're working to get through regulatory approvals as a big part of making sure that we can stay on time and on budget with our projects in addition to the fact that Mike has really enhanced discipline around our project management and making sure that we're working very effectively with our EPC partners as well as the customers to ensure that we stay on a very aggressive timeline. Mike, I’ll let you add any other comments that you have.

Thank you, Jason. Good morning, Colin, and thank you for your question. As Jason mentioned, yes, we're very focused on our operational excellence and the lean initiatives across our operations. In terms of reducing our cycle time and/or improving our lead time for delivery, we have a very, very tight linkage between our sales and operation planning and the production process. This is something that's continually being reviewed, new projects, project backlog as well as our service field replacement requirements. And we have our manufacturing and our project management teams very, very well positioned to execute. We're really attacking lead time and cost across our business, from the elimination of waste, attacking indirect costs and expenses as well as optimizing and reduction of our overall direct materials and direct labor in support of those objectives.

Your next question comes from Jeff Osborne from Cowen and Company. Your line is open.

Hey. Good morning. And I’m glad to have you guys on the call. It’s been a while. Just a couple of questions on my end as it relates to the revenue ramp that you laid out in the chart. I think it’s page 22 or 23. Could you just talk about what the breakeven model was previously, prior to the restructuring, and what it is now? From eyeballing at it, looks like 50 megawatts of generation gets you to adjusted EBITDA breakeven, from memory, I want to say it was 60 before but I just wanted to confirm that.

Yes, Jeff, thank you for the question. And yes, this chart is really indicating our ramp tied to the products that we have in back log. But, Mike and speak more to what it will -- what our breakeven mark is for production at our plants.

So, if you think about it from a -- there's a couple different ways to think about this. And yes, in the past, we have essentially said, when you get about 50 megawatts of installed assets on balance sheet, that's breakeven. What the Company has been doing, obviously, over the past year, has been a very concerted restructuring effort. We've taken about $15 million of operating cost out of the business. As I said in my remarks, operating expenses significantly lower than where they were a year ago and there is still one time, legal and consulting cost in our fourth quarter, which you won't see next year. So, operating from a much lower base. If you look at our financial statements coming through the fourth quarter, there's still a drag of unabsorbed overhead that's essentially coming through product cost of sales. That is a result of the lower run rate, we've been -- over the course of this year, a very low run rate. We're back up to 25 megawatts as we sit here today. So, that drag goes away as you get closer to 40 megawatts. But it's historically been over this past year, if you look at the financial statements in the $3.5 million range. So, you'll see improved margins across the Board as the Company continues to execute and ramp up in the factory.

And then, my follow-up was actually on the expense that you alluded to. Can you just give us a sense of what we should be thinking about quarterly run rate of OpEx, given the onetime items this quarter? Like what the true run rate would be by the each of the segments would be helpful.

Sure. So, again, if you look at Q4, R&D is significantly down from where we were. So, that is essentially showing the full impact of the restructuring that we have gone through, as well as reallocation of resources to revenue producing projects here, mainly in advanced technology with the ExxonMobil program as we go forward. So, that's at a much lower rate. You would expect to see SG&A continue to come down as we go into next year. As I mentioned there, there was over the course of the year, significant one time legal and consulting costs related to our restructuring. As Jason mentioned, we ended our relationship with our restructuring consultants, right at the end of the fiscal year. So, you would expect that to trend down as we go into next year. But, the realized savings that you should see come through the financials on an annual basis is in the $15 million plus range.

Got it. And then, if I could sneak a few more in. Is there any reason you couldn't have a sub-megawatt project in the U.S.? You highlighted you're working on that for Europe? But, is there any applicability to the domestic market?

Yes. Jeff, thanks for the question. There is no reason why we could not have a sub-megawatt product in the U.S. And as you may know, we actually used to offer a sub-megawatt product in the U.S. market. As part of our strategy, our Powerhouse strategy and really looking at every aspect of our business, that is something that we are currently evaluating internally to look at reintroducing the sub-megawatt product back in the U.S. market. And we think that there is applicability to that, especially as you think about some of the comments I made in terms of leveraging some of our unique capabilities. For example, we have a proprietary biofuels, gas cleanup scale that we think creates quite a bit of differentiation for us. And if you just think about the growing production of biofuels, that's a market where we can expand our opportunity by offering a sub-megawatt product to make more use of smaller scale biofuel opportunities that exist across the country. So, it’s something we're actively considering and evaluating. But there's no technical reason why we couldn't do it in addition to the fact that our sub-megawatt products provide combined heating power. So, when you think about in building solutions, you think about trying to do things from a micro grid perspective or even hardening the grid or whether you're a industrial developer or commercial developer and you're trying to create value for customers as to why somebody would pick your location to maybe place their business for manufacturing as an example. If you look at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Frankfurt, that's an example where we have a sub-megawatt product or 400 kw product. And we provide the hot water for that hotel in addition to the electricity. So, we think that applicability around CHP and particularly as you look at the sub-megawatt products, gives us the distinct advantage to smaller sub-megawatt fuel cell products that exist today in the U.S. market and around the world.

Got it. That's helpful. And my last one is on the project side. Can you touch on -- it was in the Q that Bolthouse Farms was removed from the backlog. Can you just expand on that? And then, any status update on -- I think it's Brookhaven rail terminal as well as Yaphank industrial park, in terms of PPAs. It looks like those are still in backlog, but I don't think you have a signed PPA on those.

Sure. Jeff, on Bolthouse, as we talked about, one of the things that we're doing is really taking a very active approach to portfolio management. And really looking at the projects that we had in backlog and whether or not they really fit the margin profile that we want to drive for the Company. As we look at Bolthouse, specifically to this project, and the increase in the interconnection cost which is really more specific -- location specific to Bolthouse, and some of the challenges with the gas pressure line coming into that facility, the cost no longer made sense for the customer or for us. So, it really didn't fit our margin profile. So, as we actively managed portfolio, we made a decision that the project would likely no longer move forward, in addition to some of the regulatory changes in California that specifically impacted this project just made it no longer a project we wanted to move forward with from a economics returns standpoint as well as aligning to the customer's preference around that also. I would say that as it relates to California and our opportunities there, for example as we noted that we just went COD on Tulare, we continue to believe that that’s an attractive market for us and will move forward on other projects including our recently announced project win out there in San Bernardino. As it relates to LIPA and our projects, we are aggressively moving forward on Yaphank. That project is continuing to move forward. We feel very good about where we are as we’ve reengaged on that project as we did across the same with Tulare and Groton as an example. The one thing that you noticed or noted in the backlog is we've made a decision that we're going to talk about backlog for projects that we have signed PPAs. The other two LIPA projects as PPAs aren’t signed, they are still in ISO. So, those are things that we continue to work on but great progress to-date on Yaphank.

Your next question comes from Eric Stine from Craig-Hallum. Your line is now open.

So, before a few follow-ups, just wanted to clarify, so on your fiscal ‘22 target, I mean, should we take that as that’s really generation -- I mean, it’s your generation portfolio and you are assuming little in terms of product sales or how should we think about that?

Good morning, Eric. This is Mike. So, we put out the ‘22 target, as Jason said to really layout the markers here as we go forward as we said in our remarks. We fully expect to engage again in product sales, obviously less this year than in prior years for the reasons we talked about on the call. But, Europe and Korea are both great product sales opportunities. And as we demonstrated in the past and in -- for certain projects, particularly behind the meter those lend themselves, product sales as well so. As we talk about revenue growth going forward, you will -- we would expect to see that as part of the mix as well.

Okay. And following up on that, I know the introduction of the seven-year stack, just curious how you think that impacts the customer decision in part because of less focus from you, in part because of just challenges in certain markets and challenges on the product side, just like how would that impacted to by versus PPA decision for a customer? And then, curious also, when you own those projects, what kind of impact do you see that having from a margin perspective?

Sure, Eric. So, this is Mike. So, I will take that one. So, as we highlighted in the presentation, the Company has done a tremendous job over time in increasing stack life. And as we sit here today, that’s seven years, the team is absolutely focused on continuing to increase that, reduce cost, increase power ouput as we go forward. So, when you think about economics on a project -- and we think about it, not just economics to us, but all the stakeholders on a project. The longer the stack life, the overall lower cost of service, which allows us to be more competitive as we're going out with the value proposition to our customers and potential other stakeholders and owners on projects. So, it is a significant benefit as we continue to increase stack life and we're focused on that as we go forward here.

So, Eric, just to add to that. I would say, look, it's important for us and as we think about customers and customer relationships that we sell and offer our products in a way that makes the most sense for the customer. And we believe that we have the flexibility to do that, whether it’d be product sales or PPA or as I talked about, doing things around the design win type scenario. So, we're going to be very flexible in how we work with the customers to present one, the best set of economics for them and the highest return opportunity for us but we’ll be very flexible in how we approach that.

Maybe last one for me. Just since it's been a couple of quarters since I'm on a call here, just on ExxonMobil I know you're kind of going on two paths. It's the power path and also the industrial path. And just maybe how you see both playing out? I know power plant was first. And then on the industrial side, I believe you've sold the technology to ExxonMobil, but then are licensing it back. So, maybe just talk about how you expect those two to play out going forward?

Eric, thank you. What I'll do is maybe hand that question over to Tony Leo, who's worked extensively throughout the entire time we've had a relationship with Exxon. And he can talk about how he sees both between power plants and industrial application opportunities for carbon capture.

Yes. Thank you. When we see them playing out, I would say is we think of the power plant opportunities, the larger opportunity, but the industrial might actually be the opportunity that happens first, because you can do smaller projects, because industrial carbon capture emissions tend to be higher CO2 concentration, they are a little bit easier from technical standpoint. So, that -- it could all change, but that's kind of how we see it sort of playing out as we enter these markets.

Okay. And then, I mean, industrial, is that something -- well, I mean, I guess in regards to the fiscal ‘22 targets, I mean, it could move first. But, I mean, are these -- I would still think there's a little bit of a development path on both?

Yes, sure. That's the whole point of the joint development program is we're optimizing our carbonate technology, which is right now optimizing power generation, we're optimizing it for carbon capture with a variety of different types of fuel gases. So, you're exactly right. We’re positioning it for these different applications.

Yes. I think, it's fair to say, as you think about it opportunistically in our financials, looking outside the time horizon we've outlaid in terms of really seeing growth on carbon capture, it will be outside of that window. But the work that we're doing in the JDA 2 is paramount to us getting to that point.

And our final question is from Joe [indiscernible] from Raymond James. Your line is open.

Kind of high-level regulatory questions, if I may. One -- and you've alluded to this in relation to California. But more broadly, there are eight states now that have 100% renewable target distant in the future of course. But, to what extent is this influencing customer behavior and kind of dissuading them from investing in natural gas solutions, even 20 years ahead of those deadlines?

Hey, Joe. This is Jason. Thank you for the question. If I understand the question correctly, it’s as we think about natural gas and utilization of natural gas, we consider that to be an important part of the energy mix going forward. We make very effective use of natural gas with our power plants for a non-combustion technology. We have low-emissions on CO2 and negligible emissions around SOx, NOx, and other particulates that we know impact the air quality for example. We think that some of the decisions or momentum that we've seen around states to not support natural gas, you're starting to actually see some of that -- the headwinds around that change to where there's a recognition that there needs to be a much smarter transition as each state thinks about how it wants to reduce its environmental footprint. And so, we think that we have the ability to present our products in a way that addresses the concerns that a particular state may have around the utilization of natural gas. In addition to the fact that as a technology, we have the advantage of being a multi-fuels technology. And so to the degree that we can take advantage of biofuels or direct to biogas, we offer customers an opportunity to have different set of solutions to address whatever their marginal goals are. For example, if you just take Tulare, that's an example where we're actually taking advantage of on-site biofuels. That's a direct use of the biofuels that are being produced at the wastewater facility. There's not a requirement to put that into the common carrier gas pipeline, because we're able to take advantage of that right on site. And we'll continue to look for more of those kind of opportunities. But, we strongly believe and will continue to educate and advocate for a transition that makes sense in terms of how you think about what a fuel mix might be for the energy grid of the future.

Okay. That's helpful. And then secondly at the federal level. In two years’ time, under current law of course, the tax credit for fuel cells will zero out. How does this kind of play into your medium term planning for 2020 and beyond?

As we think about the tax credit, we certainly remain positive in terms of thinking about that there's an opportunity that that will get extended. We certainly will continue to actively work to try to help make sure that happens. In addition to the fact that as we expand globally, there are other incentives around global markets that continue to very aggressively try to put incentive programs in place to deliver clean energy solutions within those respective countries. And so, that's a big part of how we’ll continue to focus even on a global landscape where you don't see some of the phasing out that you currently see planned for the ITC in the United States.

There are no further questions at this time. I will turn the call back over to presenters for closing remarks.

Jacqueline, thank you very much. And thank you to everyone that joined our call today. We really appreciate your interest in our Company and wanting to know more about what we're doing to really advance and transform FuelCell Energy. So, thank you for your time today. And I look forward to spending -- as I said, spending time with many of you in the coming days, weeks and months ahead. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.