Thank you for your patience. Mr. Sullivan, you may now begin.

Thank you, Michelle. Apologies for those technical difficulties. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for Fuel Tech's 2025 Third Quarter Financial Results Conference Call. Yesterday, after the close, we issued a press release, a copy of which is available on the company's website, www.ftek.com. Our speakers for today will be Vince Arnone, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Ellen Albrecht, the company's Chief Financial Officer. After prepared remarks, we will open the call to questions from our analysts and investors. Before turning things over to Vince, I'd like to remind everyone that matters discussed on this call, except for historical information, are forward-looking statements as defined in Section 21E of the Securities Act of 1934 as amended, which are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and reflect Fuel Tech's current expectations regarding future growth, results of operations, cash flows, performance and business prospects and opportunities, as well as assumptions made by and information currently available to our company's management. Fuel Tech has tried to identify forward-looking statements by using words such as anticipate, believe, plan, expect, estimate, intend, will and similar expressions, but these words are not the exclusive means of identifying forward-looking statements. These statements are based on information currently available to Fuel Tech and are subject to various risks, uncertainties and other factors, including, but not limited to, those discussed in Fuel Tech's annual report on Form 10-K in section -- in Item 1A under the caption of Risk Factors and subsequent filings under the Securities Act of 1934 as amended, which could cause Fuel Tech's actual growth, results of operations, financial conditions, cash flows, performance and business prospects and opportunities to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by these statements. Fuel Tech undertakes no obligation to update such factors or to publicly announce the results of any forward-looking statements contained herein to reflect future events, developments or changed circumstances or for any other reason. Investors are cautioned that all forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, including those detailed in the company's filings with the SEC. With that said, I'd now like to turn the call over to Vince Arnone. Vince, please go ahead.

Thank you, Devin. Good morning, and I'd like to thank everyone for joining us on the call today. For the third quarter of 2025, we operated profitably, enhanced our gross margins, broadened the client base for our APC and FUEL CHEM business segments and maintained a strong financial position with cash, cash equivalents and investments of nearly $34 million at quarter end and no long-term debt. We are continuing to advance our Dissolved Gas Infusion technology through industry outreach and are well underway with an extended demonstration of this offering at a fish hatchery in the Midwest U.S. We also closed a modest acquisition of complementary APC intellectual property that we believe will help us address customer APC needs on a global basis. Our FUEL CHEM segment produced a solid quarter of growth, driven by increased dispatch at legacy clients and contributions from a new account added in mid-2024. Just a few days ago, we commenced a 6-month commercially priced demonstration program for a new FUEL CHEM customer in the U.S. As discussed on our second quarter call, the purpose of the demonstration is to improve boiler availability and reliability and reduce maintenance downtime for off-line boiler cleaning in order to maximize the power generation profile of this unit. This new engagement will have a positive initial effect on our FUEL CHEM results in the current fourth quarter with sustained segment contributions in 2026. We estimate the annual revenue potential from this commercial contract to be approximately $2.5 million to $3 million based on the customer running the program full time with the revenue expected to generate historic FUEL CHEM gross margins. Based on FUEL CHEM segment performance year-to-date and the impact of this new demonstration program, we now believe FUEL CHEM's full year 2025 segment revenue will approximate $16.5…

Thank you, Vince, and good morning, everyone. For the quarter, consolidated revenues declined slightly to $7.5 million from $7.9 million in the prior year period due to lower APC segment revenues, partially offset by higher FUEL CHEM segment revenue. APC segment revenue declined to $2.7 million from $3.2 million, primarily related to the timing of project execution on existing contracts. As expected, FUEL CHEM had a solid quarter with revenue improving to $4.8 million from $4.6 million. Consolidated gross margin for the third quarter rose to 49% of revenues from 43% in last year's third quarter due to increases in both FUEL CHEM and APC segment gross margins. FUEL CHEM gross margin increased to 50% compared to 49% in the third quarter of 2024 due to an increased volume of sales activity, combined with relatively flat segment administrative expenses. APC segment gross margins expanded significantly to 47% in the third quarter compared to 35% in the prior year period as a result of product and project mix that included a higher proportion of ancillary revenue consisting of spare parts and service revenue, which represents a higher margin contribution to traditional capital project margins. Consolidated APC segment backlog as of September 30, 2025, was $9.5 million, up from backlog of $6.2 million at the end of 2024. Backlog at September 30 included $4 million of domestically delivered projects and $5.5 million of foreign delivered project backlog. We expect that approximately $7.1 million of current consolidated backlog will be recognized in the next 12 months. SG&A expenses were flat at $3.2 million in the third quarter. As a percentage of revenue, SG&A expenses rose to 43% from 41% in the prior year period, reflecting lower consolidated revenue in the current period. For 2025, we continue to expect SG&A expenses to increase modestly…

Thanks very much, Ellen. Operator, let's please go ahead and open the call for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Amit Dayal with H.C. Wainwright.

This acquisition, do you need to make any additional investments to meaningfully monetize this acquisition? And just in terms of the time line for you to see any sort of contribution from this IP, should we expect anything coming in this year itself? Or is this more of a 2026, 2027 type situation?

Okay. Two questions there. I'll answer your first question at this point in time. I don't expect that we may need to make a significant amount of incremental investment here internally to capitalize on the IP that we've acquired. We are familiar with the technologies that we have brought in-house. And so, at this point in time, no, I'm not anticipating any sort of significant investment required to monetize. Your second question is, we are going to get at least some small contributions relatively quickly from some of the aftermarket opportunities that will come our way from the very large installation base that Wahlco, Inc., does have in place and that they've built historically over the past 3 decades. So we will see some near-term benefits as an incremental to our aftermarket business. But obviously, we would like to see some larger scale benefits in terms of capital project awards as we move into 2026 and beyond. So specifically, we will see some near-term favorable impacts from an aftermarket business, but those won't be what I would call extraordinarily material. As we move into '26, we'll look to capitalize on utilizing that IP to pursue some capital project awards. But from our perspective, this was an easy decision and a very solid strategic investment for us to make as we look to continue to build out our APC portfolio of solutions for our end markets here in this country and the remainder of the world.

Understood. And then for the data center type opportunities, are you working with any folks in the value chain from a distribution perspective? Or are you directly approaching some of these entities with their solutions?

So as we've discussed a little bit previously, we are the back end of the solution to your power generating source. So we are typically brought into the equation for the data center build-out from one of the engine or turbine OEMs, okay? That's generally how we're brought in. And so, we're looking to work with those parties to try to bring ourselves into the opportunity that's there. As I noted in my script, so recently, we have been contacted by some other parties that are looking to enter this space that are what I would call nontraditional players. I mentioned a company that manages aircraft engines. They maintain, they lease and so on and so forth, very large organization, but they're looking to repurpose some of their aircraft engines to be applicable to generating power for data centers. So that's a new entrant that we're trying to work with to bring our solution to the opportunity. And we have been contacted recently by some of the integrators as well that are looking to package a solution and bring that solution to the end customer. So now it's the OEMs, it's some new market entrants and some integrators as well. And so, we're expanding our, call it, our method of opportunity, our method of supply chain to get into this data center marketplace.

Understood. And then from a pipeline perspective, how big is the pipeline already? I don't know if you can share color on that. But I'm just trying to see if you have already started to include some of this data center opportunity from a pipeline perspective.

So from a pipeline perspective, we have 8 to 10 opportunities that we are pursuing today, and those opportunities are worth $80 million to $100 million in total. That's what we're sitting on today. Those opportunities are broken down into different categories. A couple of them are commercial, and we would expect to have finalization on those opportunities either before the end of the year or early in 2026. The majority of the remainder are what I would call more initial inquiry, budgetary inquiry in nature, whereby a customer comes to us and they are looking to evaluate how they're going to make a proposal to their end customer, and we give them a budgetary quote. So in total, as I said, 8 to 10 opportunities valued at $80 million to $100 million in total.

Our next question comes from the line of [ Ankur Sagar ], who's a private investor.

Vince, as you -- thank you for elaborating on the factors for the data center opportunity. As you listed, I mean, there is an immense shortage of these gas turbines and some of the entities have even just started using like aircraft engines, which require emission control. And it's been on the news, for example, like xAI, which is a large hyperscaler, which really put this whole setup with gas turbines quickly, but then had to go back and get a permit for refitting these turbines with SCR. So there is a lot happening, and you're involved in this. But anything you can share from a time line perspective on when do you expect sort of like in any of these pipeline opportunities to come to fruition?

Yes. So as I just mentioned in my comment to Amit, 2 or 3 of these contract opportunities we consider to be commercial opportunities, and we would expect to have a response on them, again, late this year or sometime in Q1 at the latest on those 2 to 3. The remainder need to progress a little further relative to the project development phase. And so, I can't offer time lines on that as we sit here today. But with the 2 or 3 that are indeed commercial, I would expect some sort of conclusion on them here within this next few months' time frame at the most.

Okay. And then these couple -- 2 or 3 that you expect some response before that -- are these like more like where they will convert from pipeline into orders? Or these are also like platform opportunities where you are retrofitting your solution with some other vendor, whether it be a gas turbine or OEM or an integrator where you can probably have more than just the 2 orders or anything?

Can you clarify your question one more time between the -- before I give you an answer, if you don't mind, please.

The couple of opportunities that you would see some news or results on before the end of this year, are these also like platform opportunities where your solution will get retrofitted in another company's solution, whether it be an OEM turbine maker or an integrator where it will not just be just the 2 orders, let's say, you get, but there is a potential to get more than just the 2 in '26.

Ankur, thanks for the clarification. To answer specifically, these initial orders that if we're able to bring them to fruition, would be giving us the ability to expand and participate on additional opportunities that these customers would have prospectively. So yes, if these orders come in-house, I would expect that -- it's not going to be an automatic that we're fixed to all of those customers' opportunities prospectively, but it is going to give us a very nice opportunity to expand business with these entities prospectively, and we would expect then incremental orders prospectively.

Got it. Okay. One last one. In this, I think, fiscal year in the last 3 quarters, I mean, from a cash flow perspective, I think your team has done really well. Your cash on the balance sheet has increased from working capital done really good. How do you expect Q4 to be from a cash flow perspective?

Yes. I would think as we look to our cash balance towards the end of 2025, I would say flat to slightly down as we look at the end of the year. Q3 is typically our best performing quarter, generally speaking. So we have the opportunity for increased cash flow. And we did have some excellent cash collections in Q3 as well to build the amount. But as we look towards -- moving in towards the end of 2025, I'd say flat to slightly lower for the end of the year. But still, we're very pleased with our cash balance in terms of where it is today at around $34 million and no debt. It gives us a great platform to be able to evaluate and assist our potential customer base as we're looking at the landscape of opportunities that we do have. It gives us a lot of flexibility.

Our next question comes from the line of Richard Greulich with REG Capital Advisors.

Vince, last quarter conference call, you mentioned a global sales pipeline of, I don't know, $75 million to $100 million. Was that including the data center opportunities that you've been talking about today?

No. Actually, that number would not have included the data center. Actually, that number was the data center opportunity more specifically. And we would have had, call it, more regular ordinary recurring APC business that would have been another $10 million to $20 million in pipeline on top of that number. So today, as I'm talking about 8 to 10 opportunities for $80 million to $100 million, that's data center opportunities only. We have an additional pipeline of what I would call more standard APC business that is another $10 million to $20 million on top of that amount.

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the call back over to Mr. Arnone for any closing remarks.

Thank you, operator. I'd like to thank everyone who joined the call today. We were indeed pleased with our results for Q3. We are very excited about our outlook as we look to end 2025 and move into 2026. The APC landscape of opportunities is indeed the best landscape that we have seen in several years as a company. Our goal as a team is to capitalize on that opportunity. For our Chemical Technologies business, we -- this year, we're looking at our best performance with that business segment since 2022. And with the very solid opportunity of bringing on another coal-fired unit as we look to end this quarter and move into 2026, we have a wonderful outlook for 2026 for our Chemical Technologies segment as well. So very pleased with where we are sitting today as a company. Again, thank the Fuel Tech employee team, thank our shareholder base. Everyone, have a wonderful day. Thank you.

Thank you. This concludes today's call. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation, and have a wonderful day.