Earnings Labs

Plug Power Inc. (PLUG)

Q1 2015 Earnings Call· Mon, May 11, 2015

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Greetings, and welcome to Plug Power's 2015 First Quarter Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] It is now my pleasure to introduce Ms. Teal Vivacqua, Director of Marketing and Communications for Plug Power. Thank you, Ms. Vivacqua. You may begin.

Teal Vivacqua

Analyst

Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to the Plug Power 2015 first quarter financial results conference call. This call will include forward-looking statements, including but not limited to statements regarding our expectations for future business and financial performance, bookings, product shipments, revenue, margin, EBITDA, geographic and market expansion, and inorganic growth. We intend these forward-looking statements to be covered by the Safe Harbor provisions for forward-looking statements contained in Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. We believe that it is important to communicate our future expectations to investors. However, investors are cautioned not to unduly rely on forward-looking statements because they involve risks and uncertainties and actual results may differ materially from those discussed as a result of various factors, including but not limited to the risks and uncertainties discussed under Item 1A Risk Factors in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2013, as well as other reports we file from time to time with the SEC. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the day on which the statements are made, and we do not undertake or intend to update any forward-looking statements after this call. At this point, I'd like to turn the call over to Plug Power's CEO, Andy Marsh.

Andrew J. Marsh

Analyst

Thank you, Teal, and good morning, everyone. Paul will delve into the details for the first quarter later in the call. Would like to highlight how this past quarter set the stage for meeting our 2015 financial projections.

Wal-Mart

Analyst

Two, Kroger continues to add sites after deployments at Compton, California, Louisville, Kentucky and Stapleton, Colorado, Plug Power will deploy units at Atlanta, Georgia in the second quarter and Delaware, Ohio in the third quarter. Three, we recently completed deployment for new customer a Big Box retailer at their new distribution center in Ohio. This retailer has more than 100 distribution centers in North America and we are already in discussion for future deployments. We also signed a master sales agreement with a large footwear manufacturer for three sites and I think most important we booked more than $46 million in the first quarter. This will allow us not only to reach our goal of growing more than 50% in revenue in 2015 and also position the company for future growth in 2016. At the end of the quarter, the company had delivered more than 20% of our year end shipping target totaling 670 units. By the end of the first quarter, the company had completed or started seven hydrogen sites which represents more than 40% of the hydrogen stations required to meet our year end shipping. When you add this all in, we will achieve 35% to 40% of our expected revenue for the year by the end of June. Our operation performance in delivering our products and service backed by continued growth with all the new customers support our bullish position for 2015 and beyond.

Wal-Mart

Analyst

I now like to discuss our longer term progress increase in gross margins, we think about our material handling business has four activities. GenDrive, the fuel cells used the power forklift trucks this is our oldest product line. GenCare, the aftermarket service for our products, and GenFuel which consists of two items, the hydrogen infrastructure, as well as the delivered hydrogen to our customers. GenDrive gross margins continue to improve and we’ll achieve close to 30% gross margins by year’s end. Few years ago, the margins for these products was less than minus 60%. This turn around can be attributed to simplified design and maturing supply and higher volumes. In the coming year, we have initiatives to continue to reduce the cost of our products via design simplifications and the deployment of our own stacks. We expect the majority of the class three products in the second half of the year, will be Plug Power stacks. We’re not new to the stacks business, with more than 2500 stacks deployed in the stationery market. If one studies to gross margin improvement roadmaps for GenDrive over time, a similar trend is developing for our service activity. Our service business saw a 50% improvement in the past year, our unit uptimes are in excess of 98% and a number of stack failures have been reducing as we make continued improvements to our designs. Long-term, we expect the gross margins of the service business to equal our product offering. With our hydrogen infrastructure which is less than one year old, gross margins are also continuing to expand, a major step in the first quarter was the introduction of the in-house build of the hydrogen infrastructure. Today, what was done in the field over a months period is being built in-house at Plug Power on…

Paul B. Middleton

Analyst

Thank you, Andy and good morning everyone. I would like to start off by sharing some financial highlights from the first quarter. We ended the quarter with over $9.4 million in revenue representing a 69% growth over the first quarter of 2014. This growth stems primarily from our GenKey solution introduced in 2014 and the continuing commercial traction we are gaining in the marketplace. First quarter 2015 represents continued sales momentum and even more important a quarter of build activity preparing for the number of GenKey programs slated for the second quarter and the balance of the year. In addition to the 265 GenDrive unit recognized revenue for the quarter, Plug shipped 419 GenDrive units and made construction progress on seven hydrogen installations. Looking at the gross margin, total gross margin as a percentage of sales was negative 22% for the first quarter of 2015 as compared to the total gross margin of negative 41% for the first quarter of 2014. This significant continued operating improvement is indicative of our ongoing progress both in terms of volume and cost down initiatives. We recorded an excess of $46 million in orders in the first quarter of 2015 and ended the quarter with approximately $165 million in backlog. Our backlog is a combination of units and installations planned for the near-term as well as the service in hydrogen delivery commitments for the next few years. The growth in overall backlog is indicative of our success in the market and provides a strong base as we focus on delivering on 2015 forecast. We used $13.6 million in operating cash for the first quarter of 2015 to fund the ongoing commercial efforts as well as required working capital investments. We ended the quarter with $131.5 million in cash and $155.7 million in working capital,…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator instructions] Our first question comes from Matt Koranda with ROTH Capital Partners. Please state your question.

Matthew Koranda

Analyst

Good morning, Andy and Paul, thanks for taking for questions.

Andrew J. Marsh

Analyst

Hey, good morning, Matt.

Paul B. Middleton

Analyst

Good morning.

Matthew Koranda

Analyst

Just wanted to clarify on shipments for the quarter or actually units recognized as revenue, the 265 units that were recognized in Q1, is that primarily the size of about 238 units that you guys had shipped in Q4?

Andrew J. Marsh

Analyst

Yes.

Matthew Koranda

Analyst

Okay. And then, what has made up the balance of the units recognized during the quarter, is it just replacement or new units at existing sites?

Andrew J. Marsh

Analyst

Yes. Its common trend we see across many of our sites is they launch and deploy, they tend to add units as time goes on. So those largely reflect additional units in the existing customer programs.

Matthew Koranda

Analyst

Okay. Got it. And then for the 419 units shipped in Q1, just to be clear, the 238 units size that you recognized in Q1 was not counted as shipments in Q1, is that right?

Andrew J. Marsh

Analyst

That’s correct.

Matthew Koranda

Analyst

Okay. Got it. And then, just in terms of the 418 units that shipped during Q1, could you just provide a little of color on why those weren’t recognized as revenue during Q1, is it the financing issue again or what’s going on there?

Andrew J. Marsh

Analyst

Yes. It’s really a factor of timing with the commissioning of the sites, its relatively consistent with what we started the year in terms of the deployment planning and one of them is a Big Box retailer, that the hydrogen sites coming online here in the second quarter, other factors that affect timing are things like weather that happened to be in the North. So obviously this was a pretty brutal winter in terms of snow. So varied factors, but the good news is they are again relatively consistent with our deployment planning schedule and both are coming online in the second quarter.

Paul B. Middleton

Analyst

I would like to just add this, Matt, one of the items we’ve done with some of the customers who we have longer term plans with, is able to beginning to talk through how the schedule doing, deployment in the winter and the south and deployment in the summer in the fall in the north to help balance out the load.

Matthew Koranda

Analyst

Okay. Great. That’s helpful. And then I think one of the things that well, you guys highlighted from the Q4 call was that third-party finance units can sometimes slip just depending on when you guys receive the payment from the financing partner and it seems like you guys have the balance sheet to do some sort of in-house financing product, but, I was wondering if you could comment on your latest thinking around this and whether you may have additional stuff to say on the power trip tour that you guys are dealing or maybe just provide some color for us there?

Andrew J. Marsh

Analyst

Matthew Koranda

Analyst

Okay, but not comment at this point in terms of whether or not you guys could provide some of those financing solutions in house?

Paul B. Middleton

Analyst

It’s not our strategy and we don’t have plans to do that.

Matthew Koranda

Analyst

Okay. Got it. And just then, couple more here, for Q2 it seems like implied in your commentary is about $26 million to $31 million in revenue for Q2, could you just help us understand how that breaks out between products revenue and service revenue?

Paul B. Middleton

Analyst

Okay. So I’ll give a quick rundown Matt. I would expect that - I’m staring at the numbers here. About 75%, actually a little bit more than that probably more like 80% will be product related that includes both GenDrive and hydrogen infrastructure.

Matthew Koranda

Analyst

Okay. Got it. And then last one here from me in terms of booking cadence for the year, I was wondering if you could share with us your thoughts on what to expect for the remainder of 2015, I mean it looks like Q1 implies kind of relatively steady, but are there any large customers that are in the pipeline that could create a bulge in anyone particular quarter?

Paul B. Middleton

Analyst

Matthew Koranda

Analyst

Okay. All right, understood. Just to follow-up on that really quickly, I mean is there a particular quarter where that is more likely to occur than not, or if you can provide any color on that that is great, but after that I'll jump back in queue.

Paul B. Middleton

Analyst

Good question, Matt. Probably I will take - those sort of activities, I would say, I will take a pause on that one.

Matthew Koranda

Analyst

Okay, fair enough. I will jump back in queue. Thanks guys.

Paul B. Middleton

Analyst

Yes.

Andrew J. Marsh

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Aditya Satghare with FBR Capital Markets. Please state your question.

Aditya Satghare

Analyst · FBR Capital Markets. Please state your question.

Thank you. Good morning all.

Andrew J. Marsh

Analyst · FBR Capital Markets. Please state your question.

Good morning.

Paul B. Middleton

Analyst · FBR Capital Markets. Please state your question.

Good morning.

Aditya Satghare

Analyst · FBR Capital Markets. Please state your question.

Thank you. So few questions here, so firstly on the very higher level, could you maybe talk about as you look at your high potential customers, how many sites do they have, how many sites are you going after and if think about current penetration rates, what kind of discussion are you having with your customers about penetration rates on their sites say two, three years from now?

Andrew J. Marsh

Analyst · FBR Capital Markets. Please state your question.

Wal-Mart

Analyst · FBR Capital Markets. Please state your question.

Now there are in the manufacturing side a good deal of push going on with especially with some of the large auto companies, some which have over 80 sites, one of them we actually have activities going on with five of their sites at the moment. So I think that with our long established customers we could be at that 25%, 30% range at the end of 2016 and for some newer customers in the 10% range. Does that help the issue?

Wal-Mart

Analyst · FBR Capital Markets. Please state your question.

Now there are in the manufacturing side a good deal of push going on with especially with some of the large auto companies, some which have over 80 sites, one of them we actually have activities going on with five of their sites at the moment. So I think that with our long established customers we could be at that 25%, 30% range at the end of 2016 and for some newer customers in the 10% range. Does that help the issue?

Wal-Mart

Analyst · FBR Capital Markets. Please state your question.

Now there are in the manufacturing side a good deal of push going on with especially with some of the large auto companies, some which have over 80 sites, one of them we actually have activities going on with five of their sites at the moment. So I think that with our long established customers we could be at that 25%, 30% range at the end of 2016 and for some newer customers in the 10% range. Does that help the issue?

Aditya Satghare

Analyst · FBR Capital Markets. Please state your question.

Very helpful Andy thank you. Second question was I wanted to make sure I understood, you mentioned that half of the low-power stacks would be your internal stacks, I firstly wanted to confirm that and secondly what I wanted to understand was as you incorporate more of the internal stacking into your product, what kind of effort will that have on the service business, I mean does it give you more predictability and does that cause the bigger improvement in the overall service business?

Andrew J. Marsh

Analyst · FBR Capital Markets. Please state your question.

Yes that is actually good question and I would say this, so yes it brings down the REIT bill cost significantly, so that will have a huge impact and our service cost is dominated by stack replacements representing about 70% for both our internal stacks and power stacks we are continuing to make improvements with. So we see a roadmap where we’re looking for in the next two to three years stacks to last the lifetime of a lease, which could have a significant uptick in our stack business. So instead of focusing great deal on rebuild and which we are spending time on, the key item is that to push the life of the stacks so that the total cost of ownership is lower and our margins are higher, but we’re saying with our own stack and actually with improvements we see Ballard making that, we are seeing real life time improvements with the design as we go through the past year.

Aditya Satghare

Analyst · FBR Capital Markets. Please state your question.

Paul B. Middleton

Analyst · FBR Capital Markets. Please state your question.

To be honest, I think we’re pretty well structured, I mean I look about the different functions of the company and we’ve made very prudent investments and a lot of disciplines and as you know, running a $100 million size of business in itself requires a certain level of investment and we've kind of hit that critical mass and I don’t see any gaping holes and any kind of functions of our company, I think there will be some, there could be some nominal incremental investments. But the bigger investments if they came, probably would come from pretty critical strategic ideas and thoughts that we have whether its expansion in the Europe or looking at hydrogen solutions in other places I mean and others are yet to be defined and determined and when they, do develop into something more meaningful in size, we’ll have better visibility in terms of what that looks like, and we’ll share that with you guys as that unfolds. But today, I think we’ve got real opportunity to leverage both our, manufacturing overheard as well as our administrative cost overhead and we're seeing that even in the second quarter, you see the big dip in chart as we progressing and get the sales recognition that we see in the balance of this year. I think you are going to see tremendous leverage as we go forward.

Aditya Satghare

Analyst · FBR Capital Markets. Please state your question.

Thank you, guys. Thanks for the advice.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Jeff Osborne with Cowen & Company. Please state your question.

Jeffrey Osborne

Analyst · Cowen & Company. Please state your question.

Great, good morning. Just a couple questions on my end, I was wondering Paul if you can update us on the units, not shifts you mentioned 3300 for the year, but units that you expect to recognize revenue on that would be helpful.

Paul B. Middleton

Analyst · Cowen & Company. Please state your question.

In 2015 the total would be an excess of 3300.

Jeffrey Osborne

Analyst · Cowen & Company. Please state your question.

IIs that shift or actual revenue recognition for it, I’m just trying to get a sense bit given the…

Paul B. Middleton

Analyst · Cowen & Company. Please state your question.

Yes, Sorry. Yes it would be revenue recognition.

Jeffrey Osborne

Analyst · Cowen & Company. Please state your question.

Okay. And then you mentioned 29% gross margins exceeding the fourth quarter for the forklift shipments, the GenDrive shipments, but how do we think about as the ReliOn units ramp up for the utility customer that you have and some of the other product revenue. What would be a good product gross margin you used for the year given that there is a mix issue there?

Paul B. Middleton

Analyst · Cowen & Company. Please state your question.

Well I don’t have the number in front of me, I can get that back to you, but I think, just so you have some perspective I mean GenDrives in total as we look at total 100 million that we forecasted this year, is probably going to be 55% to 60% of that total number. So, a total $100 million in sales, so it’s a pretty big blend in terms of mix as we continue to grow sales for the course of the year. So I think you’re going to see - and if you look at it comparatively, ReliOn is going to show good progress this year, but it’s still going to be kind of 6% to 8% of sales. I think you’re going to see a dilution of its impacts, even though it’s get - we’re showing margin leverage on that business line as well. I think you’re going to see the overall margin mix being heavily concentrated on GenDrives.

Jeffrey Osborne

Analyst · Cowen & Company. Please state your question.

Got it. Is there still an intent to design in the ReliOn product into your units this year? I think you had originally talked about sometime in the spring?

Paul B. Middleton

Analyst · Cowen & Company. Please state your question.

Yes, so Andy said, if you look at the back half of this year that stack development that we have been working with that team is going to be about half of the low power stack in the balance for the year. So we’re going to start to see the impact and benefit of that pretty immediate as we progress into the year.

Jeffrey Osborne

Analyst · Cowen & Company. Please state your question.

Andrew J. Marsh

Analyst · Cowen & Company. Please state your question.

Well, I believe the rely on was about a $0.5 million for the first quarter. And we should see about $2.5 in the second quarter, Jeff

Jeffrey Osborne

Analyst · Cowen & Company. Please state your question.

And that’s affiliated with the telecom rollout.

Andrew J. Marsh

Analyst · Cowen & Company. Please state your question.

That’s actually mostly still with the utility rollout.

Jeffrey Osborne

Analyst · Cowen & Company. Please state your question.

The utility, okay.

Paul B. Middleton

Analyst · Cowen & Company. Please state your question.

Stuck with the Southern rollout, Jeff.

Jeffrey Osborne

Analyst · Cowen & Company. Please state your question.

Right. Got you. And then Andy, can you just I’m curious on the hydrogen strategy that you kind of first alluded to six to nine months ago mentioned in passing today. Give us a sense of what your thoughts are there and in any update on the Praxair partnership that you announced several months ago would also be helpful.

Andrew J. Marsh

Analyst · Cowen & Company. Please state your question.

Sure. Well, I would say this, Jeff. Prax is for our new deals this year is almost our exclusive partner and Prax is treating us as their distributor to the material handing market and Prax has about half the hydrogen capacity for liquid hydrogen in the U.S. and I have to say the relationship grows stronger and stronger everyday and we’re really pleased with that. When the hydrogen strategy being steady, Jeff. I have not - where we are spending a good deal of times working behind the scenes on how to work through generation, distribution and infrastructure. And I think the first - not surprising, we are trying to make sure that the first efforts are really associated with reducing the cost of our hydrogen infrastructure, as well as making the products a higher quality. And that movement of the hydrogen infrastructure move most of the build in-house, gave us greater control over the product quality, greater controller over cost and really is the first step in building out our product offering for hydrogen infrastructure. We have a few small sites that we have a reduced version of our infrastructure that will be rolled out. So that’s in place. [indiscernible] and Tim Cortes had been spending extended period of time really serving the market, talking to potential partners for reformers, potential partners for items like compressors and really kind of refining what we should be doing ourselves, where should be partnering and how these decisions can help us grow immediately our material handing market, but also could help us to leverage into other markets. We are going to do in Dallas, I think its May 20 in Dallas, May 29 in Dallas, we’re actually going to present and there will be a call in number, Jeff. Where actually, Tim is going for actually for 25, 30 minutes really provide a greater detail on not only our hydrogen plans today but for the future.

Jeffrey Osborne

Analyst · Cowen & Company. Please state your question.

Excellent, I look forward to that. Just a couple other quick ones. One, Paul I was wondering if you could break out the SG&A and amortization in the past year, you had had a little bit more disclosure in the press release itself about the actually OpEx levels and I think on the call you just kind of lump those together. So is there a way you can split those up?

Paul B. Middleton

Analyst · Cowen & Company. Please state your question.

Absolutely and because we’re going to be following our Q here shortly, we tried to provide a little bit more crisp information in the press release to focus - to provide the information that where the questions tend to circle around, as well as the things that are highlights, but amortization is roughly 600,000 for the quarter and that will be delineated in the Q filing, and that’s pretty consistent from Q4.

Jeffrey Osborne

Analyst · Cowen & Company. Please state your question.

Excellent. And then any trends as it relates to ASP, you called out the mix of Class 3 units, how do we think about, just GenDrive ASP trends as a whole.

Andrew J. Marsh

Analyst · Cowen & Company. Please state your question.

They are holding in there, Jeff. And I think because so many of our customers have seen the value that pricing pressure has not been great at the moment. I think that the average selling price, if we don’t see any significant decline in the next year.

Jeffrey Osborne

Analyst · Cowen & Company. Please state your question.

Good to hear. And the last one I had is just with Hyster’s acquisition to get into the space, how is that impacting the sales funnel and discussion that you had or anyone taking a pause to investigate their offering overtime, as it’s introduced or is accelerating orders. Just given the tax credit expiration next year. I’m just trying to get a sense of what the moving factors are as you look at some of the pipeline of orders that you have.

Andrew J. Marsh

Analyst · Cowen & Company. Please state your question.

And look, we’ll be a tough competitor when the time comes, but you have to go through product offerings - to be quite frank Jeff we really haven’t heard much.

Jeffrey Osborne

Analyst · Cowen & Company. Please state your question.

I understand.

Andrew J. Marsh

Analyst · Cowen & Company. Please state your question.

Its market base from our customers and I think that whether it helps the acceleration, I can say it has been a prime focus of discussion, it’s got a lot of respect for the people there and I’m sure we will have out battles to come and for all of us what we are doing is making bigger and bigger pie.

Jeffrey Osborne

Analyst · Cowen & Company. Please state your question.

I understand. Just the last quick one, does the tax credit come into discussion with these customers, I mean it is only a couple of thousand dollars in the grand scheme of things but how important is that deadline for you in signing deals?

Paul B. Middleton

Analyst · Cowen & Company. Please state your question.

Jeffrey Osborne

Analyst · Cowen & Company. Please state your question.

Good to hear. Thanks much.

Andrew J. Marsh

Analyst · Cowen & Company. Please state your question.

Okay.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Matt Koranda with ROTH Capital Partners. Please state your question.

Matthew Koranda

Analyst · ROTH Capital Partners. Please state your question.

Hey guys just quick follow-up for me. I though heard you mentioned Home Depot as a customer Andy just wanted to clarify did you say six to seven sites potentially cut over the next two to three years, just could you kind of talk about the cadence of potential deliveries there, that would be great. Thank you.

Andrew J. Marsh

Analyst · ROTH Capital Partners. Please state your question.

Yes. There may been a little slip of the tongue, Matt. So what I said I probably maybe should been a little less straight forward with, but that is correct Matt. I would see six to seven over the next two to three years.

Matthew Koranda

Analyst · ROTH Capital Partners. Please state your question.

Okay, great. Thank you, Andy.

Andrew J. Marsh

Analyst · ROTH Capital Partners. Please state your question.

Okay. End of Q&A

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We have no further questions at this time. I will turn the conference back to Andrew Marsh for closing remarks.

Andrew J. Marsh

Analyst

Well I would like to thank everyone for joining the call today. I would like to finish up by inventing folks of Plug Power trip and we are excited about to visiting six cities in the coming weeks to speak directly with our investors. Hope our big investors come and small investors and everyone in between. Every presentation is going to be unique and just like I mentioned Chris and Jeff to dig more into hydrogen in Dallas, we’re going to have investor have a chance to really meet our management team to discuss important topics like gross margin, sales, hydrogen and policy. I think also I would like to mention everyone those of you especially who are close to Albany, New York, next Tuesday is going to be the first trip and we are offering people not only you will hear from myself and Keith to talk about gross margins, but together two of our facility, both our manufacturing line and R&D center and love to have you all there. So thank you for the time this morning. Bye now.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today’s conference. All parties may disconnect. Have a good day.