Andy Marsh
Analyst · Craig Hallum. Please go ahead
Thank you, Teal. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining the Plug Power second quarter 2016 earnings call. I'm looking forward to share with you our results for the quarter, but also an update on our long-term strategy, which incorporates both new applications for our hybrid fuel cell solutions and how we see the market for hydrogen evolving in the coming year. Before I get started, I want to remind everyone about the terminology we'll be using during the call. As you recall, we adopted new methods to finance our PPA transactions in the first quarter, which changes the way we record revenues and costs. While we highlight GAAP, we will refer to adjusted revenues, adjusted gross margins, and adjusted earnings per share, which is based on previous financing models to allow for a meaningful year-over-year comparison, and more importantly, convey our overall progress in sales growth and cost-downs. Now let me share with you some of the highlights of the quarter. I'd like to start out by discussing our bookings, which came in at a very strong $63 million for the quarter, and $135 million year-to-date through Q2. We've set an aggressive target of 275 million in bookings for the year. And the results so far put us on track to achieve that goal. In terms of revenue, Plug Power recognized 20.5 million of GAAP revenue, with the adjusted equivalent of $37.9 million. When compared on an apples-to-apples basis with the same year in 2015, this shows 58% revenue growth. I'd also like to highlight that our recurring revenue increased by 99% on a year b year basis. In the quarter, we saw significant sales activity. Starting in Europe, we expanded our GenDrive installation with FM Logistics and added Carrefour as a new customer. FM Logistics, an important and growing logistic provider, is rolling out GenDrive in their new 90,000 square meter facility in France. Carrefour is the second largest retailer with more than 12,000 stores worldwide. 10,000 of those stores are in Europe. This is a significant win for Plug Power because Carrefour is well known throughout Europe as a leader in the industry. With the addition of Carrefour as a customer, Plug Power now provides improved performance, lower cost and reduced greenhouse gas emissions to the world's two top retailers, namely Wal Mart and Carrefour. Between these two customers we're working with in Europe, by year's end, we'll have more than 250 units installed. We're executing our European business plan and our progress reminds me of the early days in the U.S. when we started working closely with Wal Mart. And as many of you remember, once Wal Mart proved the results, others followed closely in their footsteps. In the second quarter, new customers represented more than 60% of bookings in the past quarter, driven by four new GenKey customer wins. In the U.S., this includes the sale of a GenKey system including 172 GenDrive units to Baldor Foods, a food distributor focused on fresh food and specialty items with a strong environmental ethos. This account marked our first in a New York City borough and provides a unique opportunity regarding hydrogen infrastructure and I'll discuss more soon. We also won the opportunity to work with a new leading North American retailer with global presence that has more site potential over the next 12 to 18 months. During the quarter, the gross margins continued to show improvement, led by strong performance of GenDrive, which had adjusted gross margins of 39%. One of the drivers of the increase in GenDrive margins is the number of internally developed stacks we're shipping. And this one, quite honestly really excites me because in the first half of the year, roughly 40% of GenDrive we shipped with a Plug Power stack. I think what's even more exciting in the second half, more than 75% of our stack due to ship will be with Plug Power stacks. I'd also like to add one more comment before we go to the next slide. At the end of the quarter, we had a GenDrive installed base of well over 11,000 units. This is a significant achievement. We power more electrical vehicles than anyone in the world with hydrogen fuel cell systems. Each one of these units provides us with more experience in how to meet customers' needs, make us a better partner for our customers, and enables the Plug Power team to make an impact in new markets. Moving on to our goals for 2016, we continue to execute against the plans we developed at the beginning of the year. Operational execution and shipments and cost downs, along with sales execution via expanding our present relationships with existing customers, and also adding on large important new logos, will not only help us achieve our 2016 goals, but we'll be well set for continual growth and profitability in 2017. I'd now like to just take a brief minute and talk about the investment tax credit. Along with a broad coalition of industry advocates, I spent time in Washington D.C. during the past quarters working with Congress to expand the current investment tax credit legislation to include fuel cells. As many of you know, late last year, Congress agreed to a spending bill that extended tax credits for wind and solar technologies. Fuel cells and other clean and efficient technologies were omitted from that year's end extension. Our message has been clear, that by extending [indiscernible] for some technology, and not others, Congress has, with the intention, effectively picked winners and losers. Now I could tell you, this message resonates on both sides of the aisle. They support our position that this is bad policy for the country and for American innovation. Working with our bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate, we've identified a number of potential legislative vehicles which can be used to enact an extension that would provide parity with the solar technologies. We're working closely and continually with Congress and our coalition partners to make the extension a priority in Congress when members return after the November election. So now, before handing off the call, let me finish this portion of the presentation with an update on technology advancements and business development efforts that we have underway. In a very short period of time, we have developed and put into production our air fuel and high power fuel cell stacks for use in GenDrive and other motive and stationary applications. Stack design is based on years of experience our teams have had in both Latham and Spokane. And has resulted in what we believe is industry leading performance and reliability. This results not only in advancing our GenDrive and GenSure business, but has also led to the closing of the stack supply agreement with Asian customers, worth over $2.5 million, that will integrate them into stationary power applications in their foreign market. For new markets, we've developed a second generation air fuel cell system for ground support equipment. We plan to launch this new design with our partner Fed Ex in the third quarter, and are engaged with other potential customers now. We've also made significant progress on our range extender program with FedEx, with a plan for us to test the first units in the fourth quarter. There are a number of different applications for this technology, and we're working with other companies that are interested in this application. One that's really excited me during the past quarter has been our relationship with Baldor Foods. They're a city owned business part business with several other food distributors' related business. There's tremendous demand on the local electrical grid, leading to a power quality issue for the entire complex. By potentially creating a central fueling infrastructure, not only the demand for grid electricity can be reduced, but an even stronger business case can be made for all the tenants when the cost of hydrogen infrastructure can be shared among a large number of GenDrive units. We'll share more of the details on this project as it develops, but it is a powerful example in how unique approaches to a GenFuel implementation can drive growth in the business. Thank you for your attention. Let me now turn the call over to our plug power CFO, Paul Middleton.