Robert Piconi
Analyst · Thomas Boyes with TD Cowen. Please go ahead
Laurence, thank you and thanks to everybody for joining the call today. Just a few weeks ago, we finished our first year as a publicly-listed company, a year that saw us launch in February, while delivering our first $146 million in revenue throughout the year, $100 million of which was achieved in Q4 alone due to strong execution and customer focus by our people in our first start to deployments and project revenue. I was on the floor of the NYSE two weeks ago with Judy Shaw from the New York Stock Exchange who was interviewing me for a year-in review perspective as we have met the year before during the IPO. And it really struck me to step back and look at all that was accomplished. Starting the year having strategic investors like Korea Zinc and Atlas Renewable, step into the IPO with an additional $100 million of investment from the start, to then immediately breaking ground on our first EVx gravity system outside of Shanghai in March 2022 for the highlights of the first quarter. Note that this first 25-megawatt 100-megawatt-hour system once operating this year will be only one of two operating long-duration energy storage systems at this scale that is not a pump hydroelectric facility. And it really just shows you that the energy storage industry is still in its infancy, particularly for longer duration which is in its own early development stages. We're really excited to show the world what we're capable of here as the EVx system comes online this year. Sticking with gravity, we broke ground in Snyder, Texas in September with Enel Green Power with our first US-based EVx system. And we finished the year signing more territory expansions and license royalty agreement territories outside the United States in Europe and the Middle East, all of which set the platform for future builds and subsequent high-margin royalty streams as the longer duration storage markets develop and become more important as renewables become a greater portion of our power generation. Turning to where there is much larger and immediate demand in the short duration energy storage market, our EVx team executed with velocity and quality and development of our energy management system, enabling the signing of about 1.6 gigawatt hours of battery, hybrid, and green hydrogen energy storage projects with multiple regulated utility companies and some of the largest leading independent power players in the world. This is further proof that customers see and value not only our differentiation and unique hardware architectures and software design, but perhaps most importantly they recognize the seasoned operational and prior energy storage project experience of our team trusting us to deliver on very large scale and complex projects as we will be turning over this year. The type of customers that we are working with do not take risks on execution, full-stop. Their jobs are mission-critical providing power and our energy storage needs therefore have to support that. And we are excited this year to turn over our first systems. Our current backlog and awarded contracts now exceeds five gigawatt hours and approximately $2 billion. And I could not be more proud in supporting the team here at Energy Vault. We set some benchmarks in 2022, while executing well with a strong Q4 finish, demonstrating significant market validation via our strategy across short, long and ultra-long-duration storage wins across multiple storage mediums enabled through our software and innovative energy management system. And we look to continue to build upon this momentum in 2023. Let's spend a minute here on Q4. And regarding Q4 we announced our 2022 revenue of approximately $146 million, which is within the midpoint of our pre-announced higher range of revenue with gross margins of approximately 16% reflecting a mix of gravity license revenue from regional expansions in Europe and the Middle East and execution on battery-related projects in the United States. Our adjusted EBITDA of approximately negative $11.4 million was slightly under our prior guidance driven by upticks in investments in employees in Q4 to support the aggressive projects ramping into 2023 as well as some compensation-related expense given the overperformance achieved in Q4 and the year. Jan Kees will be reviewing more financial details of the Q4 performance shortly. Before we get there I do want to talk in some detail about the 2023 forecast which I know many of you are very interested to understand. As we had already announced and pre-announced a stronger-than-expected Q4 revenue, I would like to spend some time talking about that forecast. And before jumping into the specifics and our financial guidance, I first want to outline our framework and philosophical approach as we begin to share more financial details with investors transitioning from a first year in 2022 marked by large contract wins announcements. And deployment starts with top utilities and global independent power providers to now in 2023 where we will be commissioning and turning over our first gravity and battery energy storage systems globally. Let me first talk a little bit about the shape of the year and how we see our progress ramping. As we saw in Q4 with a significant revenue upside achieved through executing ahead of schedule for a 275 megawatt hour California deployment, we continue to expect a level of lumpiness in our results which could result in potential timing shift quarter-to-quarter and really not unusual at all given our stage of executing on our first deployments as a company. Our out-performance in the fourth quarter is expected to result in successive quarterly growth ramps starting low double-digit million revenue to high double-digit revenue into Q2 and getting quickly into triple-digit revenue quarter-over-quarter in the second half of the year. Our second half of 2023 will thus represent our largest quarterly revenues in Q3 and Q4 coincident with our first project turnovers as expected and for contractual commitments to a progressive build to our year based on contracted bookings from 2022. I want to talk a little bit about the macro factors and talk about how those could potentially impact our forecast as well. We are approaching the revenue forecast that we've given and specifically our cash and operating expense management with the level of tightness and conservatism as we prudently plan for: one, continued uncertainty in the macro interest rate inflationary environment and does general financial market volatility; two, the potential for further regional impact of COVID-related pandemic issues and work stoppages; three, general supply chain and labor tightness; and four, the potential for geopolitical and unforeseen escalation that may occur. At the same time and given our strong liquidity and cash position with no debt, we are well-positioned and poised to take advantage of the industry growth tailwinds for energy storage globally. And specific growth in economic accelerators in the US market driven by the passage of the IRA. And we'll talk more about that in just a minute. Third, let's talk about how we're playing to our strengths. Compounding the momentum we're seeing across our business is our portfolio of proprietary and differentiated storage solutions that is unmatched in the market. And our unique ability to address short, long- and ultra-long-duration needs across multiple customer use cases under the same asset management digital platform. The perspectives that we garner from our customers, from their short-term shifting needs given peak demand cycles to fossil fuel asset retirement tied to longer-duration needs and even very specific regional needs for backup and microgrid solutions requiring ultra-long or multi-day storage are all contributing to fortify Energy Vault's role as a true strategic partner, helping our customers manage through this complexity. In fact, we're very proud to have recently had our energy management system selected by one of the largest US public utilities over other current leading platforms which we believe demonstrates our innovation, our advantaged economics and the velocity of our Energy Vault Solutions team. Fourth, I'd like to talk about the IRA which was really a game-changer to our industry and just really refreshing to see the United States lead in this area given the priority on solving the climate change problem. And first to note that we haven't baked any of its expected benefits into our current forecast. In the US market in particular, we uniquely can take direct advantage of the IRA monetizing one the ITC which represents up to 50% CapEx reduction, thanks to our domestic content and project site in energy communities as defined. For our gravity projects in particular given we can be 100% domestic content and for the projects that we initially own for gravity. But in addition the advanced manufacturing credit which is a $45 per kilowatt hour for our hybrid green hydrogen storage solutions that we integrate deliver under EPC contracts. While the general energy storage market is made up of players that are more single-threaded in their technology and selling into broader growth trends, Energy Vault uniquely can capture significant direct benefits on top of the broader market growth for projects we may initially own. And we have optimized our strategy to do just that pending the Treasury guidance that we expected forthcoming, especially with our gravity energy storage portfolio given its optimal positioning enabled through the IRA for the US market. Just to remind, we are not currently including these benefits in our forecast for revenue, cash or margin as we await final guidance from the Treasury Department on the actual mechanics. But we strongly believe the legislation as intended can and will have significant benefits to our company in an outsized way. Fifth, I'd like to dig in a bit more on the unit economics for our business, which is an area that many of you have asked about as we began our project deployments in 2022. And as evidenced in our 2022 project wins, we will continue to generate higher returns than the industry average because we are continuing to focus on large projects with unique needs that we can match with our high-energy storage solutions from a megawatt hour per acre high density and more efficient design for augmentation, as was the case with batteries, no degradation in the storage medium, as is the case for our gravity energy storage solution and for ultra-long-duration in small footprint, as we did with our hybrid green hydrogen solution for PG&E. Generally, this means a move from the mid- to high-single gross margin percentages on our initial projects to mid-teen gross margin percentages across the board on all content and value added that we supply. And in fact our 2023 gross margins will reflect this as our projection reflects of 10% to 15%. This includes allowing customers who wish to do so, or if we strategically decide to contract directly with suppliers to pass through products, such as battery packages and utilize the Energy Vault to deliver our proprietary hardware architecture across the gravity battery and hybrid systems, coupled with our energy management system. Importantly, our business model and approach flexible, to be able to adapt to each specific customer and project, whether customers choose to procure batteries on their own, or not, for example. This may result in lower total revenues for some projects, but importantly in those cases, we will be exclusively focused on the higher-margin opportunity set associated with the project development, which we target in the mid-teen to 20% margin range. While our revenue will be growing in the 2 to 3x range year-over-year, we are holding our operating expense flat off of our annualized Q4 2022 run rate as we exit the year. This will allow us the potential to achieve positive adjusted EBITDA in Q4, 2023, as we exit the year, assuming that we execute within the high end of the revenue range and perhaps, more importantly, allow us subsequently to enter 2024 on pace to achieve positive operating cash flow and adjusted EBITDA for full year 2024 results. Now, back to the specific 2023 guidance that we highlighted in our earnings announcement sent out just 30 minutes ago. We hold all of the factors above to influence our 2023 outlook, but have taken a very conservative baseline approach that we're adopting in how we forecast our business and felt it most prudent to take a very measured approach to 2023, especially given the significant second half revenue ramp that constitutes our range of $325 million to $425 million for the year. At the low end, our updated 2023 revenue forecast of $325 million reflects only contracted revenues, already under execution, with planned CODs within 2023. At the upper end of our range captures the potential associated with projects forecasted to be placed in service later in the year. Some pending gravity and technology portfolio license agreements that are underway, other territory expansions and other potential projects within the short listing or submission phase of our sales funnel. Importantly, we'd emphasize that even at the high end we have adopted a level of conservatism that does not full capture the various projects and discussions our team is working on. We plan to update this and refine this range throughout the year, as we gain greater visibility on the development and completion of our large-scale projects. Additionally, as I noted earlier, our forecast does not assume any benefits as well from the pending IRA legislation, pending the Treasury guidance. Based upon the revenue forecast above and projects contracted and under development and deployment, we are projecting gross margins in the range of 10% to 15% for 2023. This expected gross margin outcome reflects the blend across our wide-ranging project slate, including gravity, battery and hybrid green hydrogen projects. Further, we believe it evidences our thoughtful approach to managing the returns of our business, as well as our ability to remain nimble and flexible in developing the right solution to our customer's energy storage needs. As mentioned above, we are holding our OpEx, our total operating expense relatively flat to our fourth quarter 2022 annualized run rate, given the growth investments made in 2022. While this might be surprising, given the 2 to 3x revenue ramp from 2022 to 2023, we believe this will enable more flexibility, as we ramp the year and ability to continue to invest in the most attractive opportunities that prevent themselves. Taken together, we're currently forecasting adjusted EBITDA in the range of minus $50 million to $70 million in 2023. Importantly, however, there is a significant amount of leverage within our range as we ramp into the second half of the year, of between minus $15 million to positive $1.1 million, allowing us to potentially be adjusted EBITDA positive as we exit the year if revenue approaches the higher end of the range, and thus entering 2024 with a platform for positive operating cash flow. One thing I want to iterate here at the end of some of the specific guidance is our primary focus for this year, which really hasn't changed on our focus from last year, which is executing to customer needs. This year becomes even more critical in that regard as we will be turning over our first systems to customers and demonstrating, not only our innovation and the development of technology, our innovation and execution capabilities to deliver on time and on budget but delivering a quality technical performance and operating performance for our customers for our initial gravity and battery energy storage systems that will be delivered and turned over this year. I want to talk also a little bit now about EVx and turning to some project-specific progress updates. Let's start in China, which is where we broke ground in March of last year with the first 100 megawatt hour system. And China continues to progress. And this success is leading to more opportunities for us in the Asia market, as you may have seen announced. I'm really proud of the Atlas Renewable and the team from China Tianying, as they worked through two long COVID-related shutdowns in particular in the Shanghai area, which is where Rudong is located approximately 45 minutes outside of Shanghai. We've included in the investor presentation some additional pictures from Rudong. And you can see the extraordinary progress being made in such a short period of time. This is also further validation of EVx's economic and technological viability. In a few short years from 2017 and 2018, when we built the first 5-megawatt system in Switzerland, we have been able to develop the new EVx system in a new form factor leveraging all of what was proven in Switzerland with a 5-megawatt system to an interconnected grid system and to now to be close to be commercially developed in our first 25 megawatt and 100 megawatt hour unit in Rudong China that as I mentioned earlier, will be one of the first systems in the world in long duration at that scale that's not pumped hydro. We continue to be very excited about that and excited also about what we're implementing in that system. Let me give you a little bit of a higher level of context as well as we see the present and future market segments for our EVx and how we are maximizing our opportunities for success. Let's start by segmenting the EVx market into two end-use types. The first segment is the utility grid uses and the second being the industrial and micro-grid uses. The first segment for utility grids continues to be heavily biased in the current time to shorter duration needs and use cases that are currently being served as we are serving them with lithium-ion solutions. As time goes by and renewable power reaches a larger percentage of the overall power pool, the need for long duration will drive broader adoption of solutions like EVx in broader deployments. And to address these market realities for establishing strategic relations early on with these same utilities that we're currently integrating some of the shorter-duration projects where we've gained installed footprint. Our strategy is to expand these relationships in the future to include the EVx as their long-duration storage needs emerge and progress. And in fact most of the utilities we're working with have those needs as they were shutting down some of their existing fossil fuel assets over time and will require longer duration storage solutions at the end of the existing grid. Shifting to the industrial and micro-grid applications, we see a lot of strong interest today that requires durations of eight to 12 hour and use cases accordingly and are not well-suited for existing shorter-duration technologies like lithium-ion. We've talked a lot about our metals and mining investors and operations are great examples as they electrify their operations and this has enabled us to work with our strategic partners such as Korea Zinc and BHP to develop ways to implement the EVx to decarbonize their operations. Other segments, such as green hydrogen that are emerging, as well as the strong demand required to meet the need for sustainable aviation fuel, which is a market that we believe is going to be in the multibillions in the coming five to 10 years. In parallel with how we are addressing these segments, we are also executing three initiatives for us to extract both near-term and longer-term economic benefits from EVx. The first as you might expect is our continued cost reduction programs. With the feedback design and construction of the EVx in Rudong, China, which follows all the learnings from Switzerland on our first grid-interconnected five megawatt system in our Arbedo-Castione coupled again with the R&D efforts with our team in Switzerland and the United States led by Andrea Pedretti and Chris Wiese we continue to design test and validate the latest innovations to increase the economics of the EVx system. This includes leadership from Dr. José Andrade, who was a former PhD and Head of the seismic studies department at Caltech and joined us over one year ago bringing tremendous expertise and research to help us continue to optimize the performance of that system. I'm also pleased to share with you that we have retained the services of William Baker the renowned engineer of the Burj Khalifa Tower in Dubai, which is the world's largest building at the height of over 2,700 feet. Bill will be applying his past expertise in development of the world's most innovative high-rise structures to our optimization efforts, but also to specific customer opportunities where his presence and expertise will be welcomed and will also help us accelerate the permitting of the existing range of height of our structures and the potential to even accelerate those same heights of those same structures. Within our gravity focus, we have a team that's supported by over 70 team members. And we're excited to see the development they are able to make throughout 2023 and look forward to share the details of their progress in the coming quarters. Another initiative associated with our EVx systems, as we previously announced our continued licenses and royalty programs that give us the opportunity for attractive recurring revenue at very high margins that will materially and positively impact our overall company blended margins. In addition to the announced opportunities in China and the follow-on opportunities alone in China of up to six gigawatt hours as have been announced in the last six to eight months, I am pleased to announce today two new EVx licensing partners in CITC based in the UAE for Egypt and also New Energy Keepers based in Greece to also develop the Cypress market, which were signed in the fourth quarter. We will continue to pursue these types of businesses globally to make EVx a meaningful margin contributor to the bottom line today, while bridging to the future state of broader market adoption of longer-duration systems, as the grid develops with more renewable power generation, and therefore, the need to address the increased intermittency that comes with renewables. The third initiative is leveraging the IRA as another amplifier and accelerator for our EVx business within the United States as we've discussed above. And perhaps globally, as other nations and even regions may follow suit on the leadership the US has provided in developing incentives to accelerate the deployment of renewable energy and renewable storage. While the legislation has not yet been fully defined at a detailed implementation level, we believe that it will come to market more or less in the same form and function as currently understood. We currently believe that both the advanced manufacturing credit and project investment tax credits could significantly and positively impact the economics of the EVx in particular for the coming years. We believe that the local manufacturing construction of EVx would make it suitable to receive advanced manufacturing credits of perhaps as much as $45 a kilowatt hour. An attractive design and draw of the EVx is the ability to locally source material and label that would enable the system to take advantage of many of the domestic content portions of the ITC as well. You can expect a lot of focus and continued updates in this regard on EVx the U.S. market and development of the IRA in the coming quarters. Just to highlight a few of the commercial activities and progress, as we came out of Q4. We have 1.6 gigawatt hours of signed contracts and booked orders in the backlog. This is a more than 3x increase from the third quarter of 2022, where we exited with 495 megawatt hour. This includes 275 megawatt hour with Wellhead Electric, 220 megawatt hour with Jupiter Power which was acquired by BlackRock Infrastructure in Q4, 440 megawatt hour with Nevada Energy and up to 700 megawatt hour with PG&E in California. Our submitted proposal pipeline, grew more than 50% quarter-over-quarter as energy storage demands and needs as we see remain robust and we remain with a seat at the table in making proposals. Our awarded category shifted by approximately 17% for the quarter-over-quarter, driven by positive factors as projects were converted that were sitting in the awarded category into booked orders. As I mentioned before, the primary focus of 2023 will be on project execution. We are currently on track to deliver all of our signed projects on time. And our team is working very hard to navigate the supply chain permitting and interconnection delays that are prevalent in the industry but thus far, have been able to manage through and working both with our customers and with our supply chain partners. Given the rapid pace, that we are seeing with the energy transition and all the unique use cases and solutions required to meet our customer needs, we continue to believe our differentiated holistic solutions-based energy storage approach is the best one suited for this market and will set up Energy Vault for a very large and unique future, as a major leading player over the next five to 10 years. One last comment on the project we signed with PG&E for hybrid, green hydrogen plus battery storage solution in January really showcases the differing needs of our customers and our ability to deliver on them. In this case, and this is the case in California, they needed a product which could provide a minimum of 48-hour-long duration energy storage to address needs in the event of a power safety shutdown as was evidenced by the wildfires that impacted the utility industry in California some years back. But they also required black-start and grid forming capabilities in the event that there was a public safety shutoff event. And given our technology-agnostic approach with our software we were able to engineer, design, integrate and will in the future operate the system with our proprietary software that will actually enable up to 700 megawatt hour or almost four days of long-duration energy storage. We're very excited to bring and demonstrate and showcase our broad technology expertise to be able to design and architect this solution with our partners and to progress on this project to completion, planned in the second quarter of 2024 and to continue an even broaden this partnership with PG&E, and the city of Calistoga. With that, I'd like to turn the call over, to our CFO Jan Kees van Gaalen, who can provide more details into our financial results from Q4.