Good day, and welcome to the Energy Vault Third Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Laurence Alexander. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you. Hello, and welcome to Energy Vault's Third Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, Energy Vault's third quarter earnings press release is available now on our Investor website. A replay of this call will be available later today on the Investor Relations website. This call is now being recorded. If you object in any way, please disconnect now. Please note that Energy Vault's earnings release and this call contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. These forward-looking statements are only estimates and may differ materially from the actual future events or results to be a variety of factors. We caution everyone to be guided in their own analysis of Energy Vault by referring to our 10-Q. This filing is for a list of factors that cause our results to differ from those anticipated in any forward-looking statement. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, except as required by law. In addition, please note that we will be presenting and discussing certain non-GAAP information. Please refer to the Safe Harbor disclaimer and the non-GAAP financial measures presented in our earnings release for more details, including a reconciliation to comparable GAAP measures. As previously announced, I'm delighted to introduce Bernie Colson, our new VP of Investor Relations, who is on this call and will be hosting these calls in the future. Joining me on the call today is Robert Piconi, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Jan van Gaalen, our Chief Financial Officer. At this time, I'd like to hand the call over to Robert Piconi.

Thank you, Laurence, and welcome to everybody to our third quarter earnings call. I'm really happy to share these results as you hopefully got a chance to see reporting record revenue in our young life here as a company in excess of $172 million as a direct result of our project execution performance that I'll talk about later. But I think a significant number in just looking at revenue for a second in terms of meeting our expectations here in our second half ramp. And just to remind you, our largest quarter before this, so it was actually $100 million in our fourth quarter of last year and our first year of revenue. So, really happy with the results in executing for customers. Obviously, this revenue recognition is a result of that and of the teams on the ground across the various sites where we are executing a very large steep ramp here to meet customer needs and expectations. The other thing, as I'll mention, we announced this morning, you would have seen our first turnover of our hybrid battery system in Southern California. It's one of the largest ones in Southern California, 275 megawatt hour. Again, another milestone for the company here in this year, which is about execution across a lot of the deals we continue to announce as we did last year in multi-gigawatt hours and continue to announce this year. But I want to share with you where I'm calling in from, which is China and speaking to you live from Shanghai, where I have a keynote speech later on today, I'll be participating on a panel as well. So it's quite early in the morning here. And the conference here is focused on carbon neutrality and a Green Investment Conference hosted by some of the…

Yes. Thank you, Rob, and good afternoon, everybody. Our financial results are highlighted by our record third quarter revenue of more than $172 million, more than 3 times sequential quarter-to-quarter growth after more than the prior 4 times sequential between Q1 and Q2. This revenue reflects continued construction progress and execution across our battery projects in the United States under a build, commission and transfer model. As you can see from the earnings release, we maintain our full year revenue guidance of $325 million to $425 million and remain confident in achieving it. Our gross margin was 4.2% in the third quarter, impacted by some temporary unfavorable timing in two regards. First, we delivered a lot of hardware in Q3 that we will be realizing the value-add margin from in Q4 and the POC accounting. And second, some high-margin licensing transactions shifted out from the third quarter to the fourth quarter. However, as you can see from the earnings release, we maintain our full year gross margin guidance of 10% to 15% and remain confident we can achieve it. Our adjusted EBITDA is trending well as it has improved 43% sequentially to a negative $10.3 million. The key noncash items that we added back were $10.7 million of stock-based compensation and $1.9 million in net interest income. We continue to anticipate adjusted EBITDA and operating expenses to stay within our guidance range as we remain acutely focused on managing costs. We are driven to optimize our cost structure to realize profitability as soon as possible as the business continues to scale up, and we remain very optimistic regarding our progress towards positive adjusted EBITDA. Operating loss was $22.7 million, an improvement over the second quarter of 2023 of $5.7 million, driven by continued focus on operating expenses and business costs. As of September 30, 2023, we had $132.2 million in cash equivalents and restricted cash, leaving us well positioned to continue our growth strategy and execute on our projects. The primary uses of cash are cash operating expenses and working capital needs associated with equipment purchases for our energy storage projects. As these projects achieve milestones and ultimately begin to generate revenue and gross margin. Some of that cash will return to our balance sheet. Considering these factors, for the year-end 2023, we expect our cash to remain at similar levels that we exited in Q3 or $132 million, given the expected project turnovers. In addition to the strong cash position, we expect to reduce the restricted cash portion significantly before the end of the fourth quarter. Please keep in mind that we maintain a bonding capacity in excess of $1 billion to facilitate additional growth projects as we desire. And with that, I'll hand the call back to Rob.

Yes. Thanks, Jan Kees. Just in closing here and before we get to some questions and just reflecting. As you do, I think, every quarter and look back and we're getting here to the end of our year, really just encouraging to see our strategy and how it's playing out. I think, successfully across the world is something in light of some of the other newer energy storage companies and some of the things that are coming out here just recently. But a few key points I want to highlight here for investors and for those that will be listening in. I guess the first one, and to remind everyone, we are the only and remain the only storage company that's executing and implementing a portfolio of short, long and ultra-long duration technologies across some of the largest utilities and IPPs in the world. And I think that that point of our customer sets and who we're focused on and the people choosing us is fundamental and important. This is a manifestation of our strategy in the real world and expanding our ability to address the largest scope of this energy storage market opportunity. Obviously, participating in various segments because of our multi-technology, multi duration focus given the strong capabilities we have on the team. And thus, in participating in those with a very resilient profitability as a portfolio of solutions that spans these most important durations right now. And some of the new applications that still need to have economical solutions that we're very, very focused on it very mission-critical. Second, we're being chosen not only for our technology differentiation economics, but for the deep industry experience of our people and our team. And really, as we saw even in this last quarter, moving having earth to deliver for…

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] And the first question will come from Stephen Gengaro with Stifel. Please go ahead.

Good evening or good morning may be. Not sure. Thanks for taking the questions. So I think, first, what would be interesting from my perspective is when you think about the projects that you've announced and kind of what's in your backlog. I know some of these recent projects are royalty/licensing arrangements, right? But when we think about that, is there a way to sort of think about how the current backlog unfolds as far as the type of revenue you could see next year?

Yes. By the way, it is the question, as you look at our backlog, in particular, Stephen, that awards category. So I think our speed to convert those will shed more light if we've got the 800megawatt hour there, but we have a lot of other awards in there that are in process, various phases of contracting. And some of those with CODs next year, some of them with CODs into 2025 that we'll have revenue recognition. So I think the first thing I would look at there is just the size of that bucket of awards. I think is an important one. We also saw, I think, a good conversion from our short listings bucket into awards. So we've added to that and as well as converting an additional project for Texas in to a booking as well. So I think that is a space to focus on in terms of awards. And then the timing of that conversion, we're in the process of putting that together for our 2024 budgeting process, which is internal, and then will be external. We'll be sharing and setting those expectations at our Q4 earnings, which will be in February.

Thanks. You mentioned on the call progress toward reaching EBITDA positive. Is that a full year 2024 goal? Or is it going to happen in a quarter?

Well, we're absolutely expecting some quarterly hits of adjusted EBITDA positive. And what we're working on is just based on revenue recognition. So it's really just a POC accounting of rev rec and then timing of those projects to see if the full year 2024 can actually also be adjusted EBITDA positive. We are working on that. And if you look at our OpEx, Stephen, so I'd ask you to -- if you take a look at that, we're not sort of sitting idly here waiting for growth to happen and that we're going to somehow grow our way to profitability. That was never sort of our plan in a sense. And we are always looking at as we're executing this royalty, this license and royalty model for gravity, for example. And as we're looking at our learnings from our first, let's say, 18 months of operation and delivering our first project as you see there in the OpEx, we are optimizing and driving efficiency, and that's part of our clear driver to get to cash flow positive here even a little bit earlier than we may have been thinking about at the beginning of the year. And that's just a reflect of our focus on delivering for investors, but also on getting accretive with cash flow. We feel very good about our cash position, no debt. We're getting rid of all the final restrictions, most of which should be done by the end of the year that are just a reflection of the first projects where we restricted a little bit of that cash. But we have a great model in place. Now as Jan Kees referenced, we have over $1 billion in non-collateralized project funding or performance bonding capabilities now that we've built up. So that just enables us to execute our projects without having to tie up the cash lease associated with any letters of credit or other mechanisms. Hopefully, that's helpful.

That’s helpful. And just one more for me, if you don't mind. As the first EVx system goes close to kind of full completion operation in China. Do you have any kind of conversations with potential customers in other parts of the world are in China that there's a little bit -- is there any kind of wait and see like I want to see one of these up and operating and functioning? Is there any of that when you talk to customers? Or is it more just -- you've obviously had success already with new awards. But is there any of adding conversations with potential customers for the technology?

Absolutely. And I would say despite even these announcements, which are massive, right? Over 3 gigawatt hour in China alone, you can imagine there's a set of customers that want to see Rudong up and operating and get some of the first performance metrics. And that's not just in China, I would say that globally. So it's a great question and it is, I think, in a lot of cases, there's customers doing their planning right now for some of their longer duration needs. As you're aware, there's -- the long duration market generally is still developing at a much different type of pace, where the short duration whereas a lot of the economics are right now. But generally, we have customers that are absolutely looking at some of the initial performance metrics that are going to come out. However, we do have others that are progressing, and I mentioned in my comments, South Africa, India and even in the U.S., where we're progressing things along. And we are seeing, I'd say, in particular, in the last quarter, us having the discussions and getting to proposals now and costing out systems that I expect to be announcing here in the near term. So that's very, very encouraging on the gravity side. But absolutely, there is a segment of customers that we're in discussions with that want us to share the metrics, the performance metrics as they come up there.

Excellent. Thank you for the color.

Yes. Thank you.

The next question will come from Chris Ellinghaus with Siebert Williams and Shank.

Hey, everybody. How are you?

Hi, Chris.

The revenues were surprisingly good, but Jan was talking about the margins. Can you give us any more color on the shifting? And what does this tell us anything about the Wellhead margin, for instance?

Sure. Yes. Let me comment on that. And I think Jan Kees mentioned this. But in any quarter, we're going to be taking deliveries. And in particular, if you do the math on the second half ramp for us and the fact that we're reaffirming our guidance, we took deliveries of a lot of material in Q3 and under POC accounting and GAAP accounting until we add value to some of that material, some of the profit on it does not get recognized. So hence, there's some delay as we're going to be now in the middle of adding value as we're integrating equipment, for example, and doing more of the services onsite, which as you saw in some of the earlier quarters drove some of the higher double-digit margins. So it is a little bit lumpy, Chris, and as you can expect, in an EPC type of business for the shorter duration type of solutions we're providing. But I also want to make sure you're aware that none of that quarter's gross margin has anything to do with anything on Wellhead. So Wellhead was a successful project that we implemented. We did it on time. There were no LDs impacting gross margin. And so, that's not a reflection on the Wellhead piece. It's more of a reflection of we have a 440-megawatthour project, of which there's a very large substantial component of that project, almost 70% of it is related to the battery portion alone, which that is going through the overall project because we're integrating the entire thing. So I'd look at this more of a timing of where we are in the second half ramp. And I think we can expect these things to smooth out a bit more as we go forward.

Okay. Great. I think the press release sort of suggests there are additional projects in Nevada. Can you give us any color on what you've added to the pipeline there?

I don't know how specific on Nevada we were in the release, but we've added more projects in the U.S. for sure as part of our bookings growth. And in addition, I mentioned this before, we're seeing a very interesting uptake in our gravity applying some of our gravity technology to some very specific customer needs and specifically in the utility space in the West. So we're going to be saying more about those things as we progress those through definitive agreements with customers. But suffice to say, I'm very encouraged by what I'm seeing in terms of market book development, adoption and discussions around applying our various technologies. And that includes, by the way, the backup systems and approach that we started with in the first project with PG&E.

Okay. Just looking at the income statement, SG&A and R&D lines specifically, are either of those two sort of starting to hit their normalized run rate for the near term?

Yes. By the way, great question and observation. I would say that we're generally there, meaning if you take our Q4 times for last year, you'll see that we're quite a bit below that. Obviously, the Q4 has some onetime items, but even if you normalize it, we're actually running flattish to slightly even down from the Q4 times for last year. Now we had initially had a growth investment plan even on OpEx this year, and we've adjusted that just by nature of where the markets are, obviously, given what we're seeing on both the macro and I think given investor requirements here in a higher inflation environment. So we got in front of that in the first half of the year. We're seeing some of those results now, and we're continuing to look at that as we look at next year because we're very focused on not only any one quarter of cash flow or adjusted EBITDA, I guess, positive. But doing that for the full year, and we'll be able to update that as we give guidance at the next quarterly earnings.

Okay. Great. I appreciate the color. Thanks, Rob.

Thank you, Chris.

Your question will come from Thomas Boyes with TD Cowen. Please go ahead.

Thanks for taking my questions. I appreciate it. I was hoping if you could provide some insight on the company's Vault-Bidder solution that was introduced, they're at already plus. What does customer feedback been like there? And then maybe what's kind of the time frame to have that solution deployed with customers?

Great. Good to hear you, Thomas. Yes, look, this is really exciting and a part of the development of our software platform and investments we've been making really the last 24 months. But this is giving additional capabilities to customers to look at optimizing their economic both charging and discharging of electricity in some unique ways. Just to remind everyone, we have a team made up of -- well Energy Vault a newer company. Our team is made up of people that were at some of the leading companies in the software and the integrator space through essentially the periods from 2012 and beyond. And so we've essentially taken a lot of that experience and looked at how we can help customers optimize how they're going to get more out of their systems. In particular, in the shorter duration side where they're charging and discharging and leveraging time of day and variations or volatility in time of day pricing. So that is a product that we've begun to implement with some customers so we can get some good history with it sort of from a looking backwards and looking and how we could have helped them versus the results they've achieved. And then going forward, it's essentially a module as a part of our broader energy management system that includes other asset management and other optimization capabilities. So in terms of the second part of your question, I would say that I would characterize this as something that is in a live testing phase at some customers now. And it will be something that I think can help be a differentiator for people that want to turn on certain capabilities over time as we complement our innovation on the hardware side with software.

Appreciate the color there. And then just maybe one on some of the other partners that you have announced for kind of that licensing and royalty agreement in Europe and Cypress. So just any kind of timing there, what do you think is maybe holding back some momentum in those markets?

Yes. Well, we just announced those just within, I guess, about nine months ago. So typically, just like with China that we announced right away as we went public. They're just now announcing development in projects and then there'll be royalty streams that would start to come as they get built out. So on those things, you can assume that from announcement that you would be looking at a minimum of 18 months to 24 month type of time frame of when both first projects would be get announced and some royalties would begin. And as I said, if you look at those announcements that were made, they're essentially about nine months to a year behind the China time line. So I would say, we'd be looking at impact of some of these things toward the second half of 2024, but more, I think, in better volume in 2025. And we're going to try to give you some good guidance on that as we work toward providing to investors in our Investor Day sort of a three year plan on the various parts of our business. Because we, I think uniquely, I imagine create a challenge for some of you given the different streams of business we have in terms of the EPC side of the business, the licensing side of the business and even some of the other unique solutions that we're doing and how we're monetizing gravity, for example, and other services. So we're going to provide, I think, some updated more segment type of guidance over a three year period here as we get closer in the coming months also in providing guidance for our 2024 at our next earnings.

Perfect. Thanks again. I’ll jump back in queue.

Thank you.

The next question will come from Stephen Gengaro with Stifel. Please go ahead.

Thanks for taking few more questions. So, I guess a couple of things. One is, maybe it's easier to ask this way. When we think about your quarterly revenue, I know it's going to be lumpy and there's a lot of moving pieces. Is there any way to think about a baseline number? I mean, obviously, it went from 11 to 40 to 170, right? So trying to model it, it's really hard. I mean, is there any kind of baseline number from revenue recognition we can think about? I mean even your fourth quarter guidance right theoretically, $100 million window there based on the full year guide. Is there anything you can add there, either specifically in the fourth quarter or just in general?

I would say generally on the shorter duration projects. So whether they're the hybrids and battery Stephen, we're executing those. And if you look at Wellhead, which we announced, I think, signed at the end of August last year, September and had it mechanically turned over in June. So I'd say on the shorter duration in terms of rev rec, it's anywhere from nine months to 15 months, it depends in some cases, on some customer control timing. And yes, I know it's difficult because these things are lumpy from a formal accounting rev rec perspective. As you look at the project and look at our rev rec this year, for example. We're rev receiving some of the initial services and value add the payment milestones to customers differ a little bit than the POC accounting. And then as we get closer to the CODs, that final six months is where most of a good chunk of the revenue will come because it's tied to larger deliveries at the site and things where we begin to add value to equipment. So I would say that what's important to pay attention to is the COD, the customer COD that we would share. And typically, we do share those unexpected timing of when we'll be turning over. And if you do the math on the rev rec and turning coming back between nine months to 15 months from that project, we typically like we've done for PG&E. We've given guidance because it's public information, PG&E on their hydrogen project, where it's publicly should be delivered in June of next year. So I think that's a way to do it. But one action that we'll take with you is we'll get offline and maybe into next week. I'll be happy to participate when I'm back in the U.S. and coming back on Friday. And let's get a call next week and we can provide a little better guidance to make it a potential a little easier for you on that in terms of assumptions.

Great. That’s helpful. And then just one more quick one. Just to triangulate your gross margin guidance for the year suggests something for the fourth quarter, which could get you pretty close to EBITDA breakeven if things go well. Am I thinking about that right?

You are.

Okay. Good. Thanks for the color on all that.

No problem, Stephen.

Your next question will come from Noel Parks with Tuohy Brothers. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good afternoon.

Hi, Noel.

I just had a couple. I had a couple about China in particular. And I was wondering with the most recent announcement that specified the five new plants in various regions in China. With that level of detail now disclosed, just curious. Was Tianying planning these different projects? As far as I know -- was that a pretty much a centralized negotiation, all of these sort of coming together or sort of being planned out contracted simultaneously? Or sort of were they all in the independent streams and just sort of got bunched together at the time of announcement?

Yes. By the way, it's a great question given the nature of the regulatory structure and even the government structure here. But it's not what you would think, meaning there's -- these aren't things driven necessarily by a central plan that then CNTY sort of just bolting into. CNTY is doing its own development and leading development in different provinces of China with this technology because it is new. As I mentioned in my comments, and these are things that hopefully aren't lost on people because it's not easy to do. But we've been approved in China as a technology already, which if you look at the installed base here, you've got pumped hydro, lithium-ion and there's really, as far as energy storage goes with the 20% mandate, there's really nothing else to deploy. And hence, you're seeing these announcements of project signings with CNTY a multi-gigawatt hours, and we're not even up and operating yet at full capacity here in Rudong. But to specifically answer your question, this isn't being sort of driven out of a single office in Beijing, and we're just sort of bidding into some Central. We're going province by province because the decision-making -- while the overall goals obviously in the country are out of Beijing, the provinces decide. So CNTY is doing the development work and very impressively doing the development work, sharing the technology, sharing how they've optimized it specifically for Chinese and driving that development that you're seeing. Does that make sense?

Totally. Great. It’s just what I was wondering. And as you look to the royalty revenue stream, I guess not taking anything for granted was revenue recognition. Is that pretty straightforward from an accounting perspective? Like you're just going to be booking a receivable over time is going to get sort of smoothly move over into cash?

Yes. Let me explain how that works. And under GAAP accounting and also specific SEC guidelines here on royalties, we don't really create a receivable for them just because until they actually start building projects, we don't have that exact visibility when it's coming in. Now once there's a project that's defined under if they're going to own it and operate it, which will mean a certain timing of the rev rec or if they're going to be building them and handing them over, that would be under a more accelerated type of recognition. So I think once those things are contracted in a way where we get timing visibility. We might create a receivable for that. And generally, we're rev receiving these as they come. So as the royalties will be paid and they will become more predictable and we can sort of build them in and share with you what we're seeing. As you've seen, you've got about 3.2 gigawatt hours of projects announced here. And those are going to be built out. Now over time and depending on the business model, we'll be receiving royalties on those projects, and we can build those into the timing. So that will get more predictable. But this is, I'd say, something from a modeling perspective, on the royalty side typically come into the other income line item or the royalty revenue, just depending on the type of income it's going to hit and if it's recognized over time or in a lump sum. So we'll be able to provide some more guidance now as these projects are getting built out. I know it's a little frustrating as people look at is understanding, hey, what's the timing, what's the margin impact? Obviously, these are essentially 95% basically pure profit that comes in because we recognized the cost through the R&D or to the license already. So there are great streams to have and giving some guidance on the timing of those, we will be doing with investors as we get into our Q4 results. I will say that I think the good news is you look at it and as people look at us is we're going to have these streams coming for people that are hopefully long-term investors looking at Energy Vault the fact that we're monetizing this that will result in as these projects that were just announced, large and profitable streams or royalties that will become a larger percentage of our revenue. I think that is all a good thing. It's just a matter of timing. As we build these things out, we'll be able to shed more light on how that timing is going to work into the second half of 2024 and into 2025.

Terrific. Thanks a lot.

Yes. Thanks, Noel.

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Robert Piconi for any closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Just to thank everyone for your time. We have a very intense quarter we're in the middle of here, given multiple customer sites and supporting customers here. So a lot of focus continues there, as I mentioned. I think that is absolutely job one, as is our ability here on continuing to convert from our large awards bucket there in the bookings and as we go into 2024. So I appreciate everybody's time and support through this and your feedback. And we'll be back to you here and be looking forward to more interactions here in the coming months. Thank you very much.

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.