Sune Mathiesen
Analyst · Craig Hallum. Please go ahead
Thank you, Robert, and good morning to all of you. Thank you for joining us today to discuss our third quarter 2019 results. I'm very pleased with the results of the third quarter, which highlighted our third consecutive quarter of record quarterly revenue and also a new net income record. Further and equally important our bookings continue to remain very strong with a growing order backdrop. Absent the hiccup we’re experiencing in the fourth quarter due to the mechanical issues in two of our four existing furnaces, I couldn't be more pleased about the progress we're making. Let's go into the third quarter a bit deeper. As I mentioned, our third quarter marked our third consecutive quarter of record quarterly revenue coming in at $9.7 million, a 189% increase from the third quarter of last year and up from $9.3 million in the most recent sequential quarter. I'd also like to highlight that the record quarter was achieved despite of the traditional European summer holiday season in July and August, where most companies shut down for several weeks. Our net income in the quarter was $656,000. This was also a new quarterly record for the company. This was a great improvement from a net loss of $922,000 in the third quarter of last year, and a step up from a net income of $147,000 in the most recent winter quarter. The new record was achieved despite of $200,000 of exceptional cost associated with the new expansion of our Hobro facility. We also had several low margin filtration system orders in the quarter, orders that we accepted due to the longer term strategic significance for our core market. We have now worked through the majority of these low margin projects and our strong growing market position has enabled us to increase prices on the new orders we are now booking. Our margin optimization program continues to be on track. During the quarter, we completed the acquisition of BS Plastics, which has been just one of the key components to the margin optimization program we laid out at the beginning of this year, the sourcing of certain manufacturing activities. By bringing the manufacturing of certain plastic tanks and machine plastic products for our water filtration systems in house, we expect to save upwards of $1 million in 2020 based on our current production levels, with more significant savings in the years to come as volumes increase. Additionally, BS Plastics has other customers for which they continue to generate revenue and profits from. So when you cover the cost savings with profits from BS Plastics the existing operations we expect to pay back to shareholders to be approximately one year on this investment. In the third quarter, we introduced a new MK6.1 version of our filtration system. With this new version, we have been able to decrease the cost per system by almost 20%. We delivered the new cost optimized system for about one fourth of the projects in the third quarter, and the plan to deliver it for most projects in the fourth quarter of 2019 and the first quarter of 2020. We’re also currently in the development of a new MK7 version of the system, which will offer further cost reductions. The MK7 version is set to be ready in the second quarter of 2020. Overall, we are on target to achieve our goal of overall gross margins to exceed 30% in the first half of 2020. Now as I assume most of you saw in the press release, we actually encountered some mechanical issues with two of the forward system furnaces that make the ceramic membranes for marine scrubber filtration systems. As you can imagine, with the significant ramp we have seen over the last few months, we've been operating these systems of throughput higher than they have ever seen previously. Unfortunately, this has caused the delay in the manufacturing of ceramic membranes for several projects set to be delivered in the fourth quarter of 2019. Due to the furnace issue, revenues for the fourth quarter of 2019 are now expected to be approximately $6 million. Customers that may have been impacted by a delay in their original scheduled fourth quarter shipments have been notified. The mechanical issues highlight our forward thinking in order to -- order additional furnaces when we did. As we talked about last quarter, the first of the new furnaces that we ordered as part of our manufacturing expansion is said to be installed later this quarter. With three additional furnaces set to be installed in the first and second quarters of 2020. Each of the new furnaces are much more efficient, and they have a much larger capacity than our old furnaces. Our old furnaces will be scrapped, as we put the new ones in production. In total our capacity set to have tripled by July 2020 net of scrapping. As earlier discussed, we have also placed conditional orders for further furnaces, which could further increase our capacity in the second half of 2020. One final point the manufacturing, the installation and building expansion of Hobro facility has been completed and put into production. The production -- the expansion was completed approximately one month ahead of schedule. As you saw in our press release yesterday, we look forward to hosting you in Denmark in January for our second Investor Day. The event is just set just outside Copenhagen at our Ballerup facility, where you will see where we make our ceramic membranes, including the new furnace installations, please contact Robert Blum for additional details. From an order perspective, we continue to gain market share within the marine scrubber industry. This is largely in part to the unique ability for our proprietary ceramic silicon carbide water filtration systems to work seamlessly with a number of different scrubber manufacturers. This agnostic approach has served us well as a number of new engines have come into the marine scrubber market, particularly from Asia where we have added new customers. During the quarter, we continue to experience a strong interest for our water filtration systems. We are pleased to note that our order backlog continues to grow and it provides us with great confidence in a strong 2020. In the quarter, we also announced our largest single order to date placed by one of the world's three largest shipping companies. The order follows the recent installation and system deployment by this same customer on the two largest container ships in the world. This particular shipping customer has placed multiple orders over the last three years for our proprietary water filtration systems, with us, having received over 95% of their planned and completed installations so far. I believe this order, along with many other very large orders we're working on continues to validate our market position within the marine scrubber market. We have also started receiving orders against our third framework agreement announced in October 2018. This new product, which was specifically developed in conjunction with the scrubber manufacture, would be a great addition to our existing marine scrubber water portfolio, as it offers an attractive operating structure with rapid return on its capital investment. We have great expectations for this corporation and we believe that it will be a very important part of our revenue going forward. The market dynamics of marine scrubber industry continue to trend towards closed loop systems as opposed to open loop systems. Again, closed loop systems include a water filtration system that cleans the dirty liquid prior to discharge back into the ocean. Open loop systems, simply take the dirty water, which includes all the contaminants and discharges it back into the ocean. Open loop systems defeat the purpose the IMO was trying to achieve by removing these harmful contaminants from the environment. Based on conversations we had with our largest customers, the marketplace understands these dynamics and are already preparing for what many believe is the invincible pain of open loop systems in favor of closed loop systems. One of the largest manufacturers in the marine scrubber market mentioned to us that they expect up to 50% of the 2020 marine scrubber orders to be closed loop. This compares to approximately 10% closed loop systems and 90% open loop systems at the same time last year. They also mentioned that the current trend towards closed loop scrubbers is not only driven by the expectation of a worldwide ban of open loop discharge and the current ban of open loop discharge in more than 60 ports around the world. But it's also driven by increased pressure from end customers and shipping companies to utilize superior environmentally friendly scrubber solutions. By the end of 2019 industry forecasters estimate approximately 4,000 open loop installations all planned installations. With the current trends, we believe that -- with the current trends, we believe that many of things will be converted to closed loop. This significantly increases the already large addressable market we have estimated in the past. One of the growth areas we have discussed beyond the marine scrubber market was our ability to take our technology and have it applied to a variety of other industries, where the need to filter very heavy contaminants was required. Two notable areas were increasing legislation, as well as market dynamics is driving demand is in the power plant, as well as oil and gas industries. We continue to book orders for power plant systems and believe that it will be an important part of our business in 2020 and onwards. In the oil and gas market, we successfully completed a pilot trial with one of the world's largest oil and gas companies. We are now bidding on numerous projects with this and other customers with order expected fee received in the first half of 2020. For those that have followed the company for many years, you will remember that the oil and gas market was one that we had limited success in many years ago. As the price of oil drops, we were less looking for alternative applications. Given the success we have had in the marine market and the current trends in the oil industry we are now revisiting many of those previous relationships with much higher levels of interests. We look forward to reporting back to you on the outcome of these projects [indiscernible]. Lastly, we continue to make progress on developing our NOx reduction products. Many within the industry believe this will be the next key initiatives following the implementation of IMO 2020 which is a SOx reduction initiative. We remain on target to launch the product in 2020. Before I turn the call over to your questions, a couple of last points I wanted to highlight. First, we installed a new $5 million credit facility for the leasing of new furnaces and other the working capital needs. This new working facility -- this new working capital facility coupled with our profitable operations, and a balance sheet that has $11.6 million on it has been put us in a very strong working capital position. Also, now that we are approaching the end of the year, I would like to take a step back and look at 2019. We have managed to triple our business, and at the same time turn the company profitable. We continue to gain market shares in the marine scrubber market, and we are making progress on margin optimizations, with further improvements planned for the coming quarters. Overall, I'm very pleased with the progress we made in 2019. 2020 is also setting out to be equally exciting. We have regulatory tailings that continues to grow our addressable market in the marine scrubber industry. We're making progress in several new applications and industries. We have a growing order backlog and we're expanding our capacity to meet the demand. So while we are going to see a bit of disruption in the fourth quarter due to the mechanical issues on the two furnaces, we believe that we should be back to operating at full capacity shortly and returning to our most recent growth trajectory in the first quarter. With basis in our current order book, we're expecting first quarter 2020 revenue in excess of $12 million. We also expect continued improvements in our profitability due to increased sales prices and cost optimizations. It's gratifying to see the adoption of technology across the marine scrubber market and now in to adjacent industries. I believe there are far reaching applications for our proprietary technology, and we're just scratching the surface for the various opportunities available. I look forward to the continued growth and diversification of our business into the future. With that said, let me now turn the call over to any questions you might have. Operator, please.