Stabilis Solutions, Inc. (SLNG) Q3 2026 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Welcome to the Stabilis Solutions Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the call over to Andy Puhala, Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Puhala, please go ahead.

Good morning and welcome to Stabilis Solutions Third Quarter 2026 Results Conference Call. I'm Andy Puhala, Senior Vice President and CFO of Stabilis. And joining me today is our Executive Chairman and Interim President and CEO, Casey Crenshaw. We issued a press release after the market closed yesterday detailing our third quarter operational and financial results. This release is publicly available in the Investor Relations section of our corporate website at stabilis-solutions.com. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that today's conference call will contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and other securities laws. These forward-looking statements are based on the company's expectations and beliefs as of today, November 5, 2026. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. The company undertakes no obligation to provide updates or revisions to the forward-looking statements made in today's call. Additional information concerning factors that could cause those differences is contained in our filings with the SEC and in the press release announcing our results. Investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements. Further, please note that we may refer to certain non-GAAP financial information on today's call. You can find reconciliations of the non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP measures in our earnings press release. Today's call is being recorded and will be available for replay. With that, I'll hand the call over to Casey Crenshaw for his remarks.

Thank you, Andy, and good morning to everyone joining us today. Our third quarter results were in line with our expectations and consistent with the outlook we provided on our call last quarter. Revenue improved 25% sequentially and adjusted EBITDA improved to $1.9 million. Following the conclusion of multiple large contracts at the end of 2025, we have now turned the corner with momentum continuing to build ahead of what we expect will be a record 2027 for Stabilis. The driver of the sequential improvement from the second quarter was the short-term behind-the-meter power generation contract we secured earlier this year to support the commissioning of a U.S. data center. We began delivering LNG under the agreement in August. As a result, data center-related revenue represented 17% of our total revenue in the third quarter compared to less than 1% in the second quarter. This project will conclude in the fourth quarter. Looking ahead, our focus is squarely on 2027. Our multiyear agreement to supply LNG for behind-the-meter bridge power at a U.S. data center expected to be the largest contract to date in our company's history remains on track to begin in the first quarter of 2027 and will ramp during the second and third quarters. We are progressing as planned on the pre-commissioning for the project with more than $15 million of specific project equipment on order and scheduled for delivery ahead of start-up. The investment required for the readiness is fully funded by customer advanced payments under the contract. We are also finalizing LNG supply agreements for the project, along with backup supply alternatives to support reliable delivery. Beyond the contracts in hand, demand for small-scale LNG to support behind-the-meter power at data centers remains robust. We think about these opportunities in 4 phases: construction, commissioning, bridge power and long-term backup. Our commercial team is bidding on additional work across multiple phases of data center demand. We believe we are well positioned to extend our growth runway well beyond 2027 and the contract that begins next year. Outside of the data center market, aerospace remains the other key growth engine of our business. Revenue from aerospace customers increased 49% year-over-year in the third quarter, driven by the increasing pace of launch and testing activity and a growing number of commercial space customers. These customers have demanding purity and delivery requirements and the operating track record we have built with them is difficult to replicate. We are currently in discussions with multiple space customers for long-term offtake agreements. Turning to Galveston. We continue to engage with prospective customers and financing partners, and we believe the project offers an attractive long-term growth opportunity for Stabilis. That said, we are not ready to commit to a time line for FID, which remains subject to arranging a final financing structure and securing sufficient commercial offtake. While we remain super excited about the long-term value of the project and what it could and we believe will create, our primary short-term and near-term growth opportunities remain in the aerospace and behind-the-meter data center power projects. To close, the third quarter marked the beginning of a transformational period for Stabilis. While fourth quarter revenues will reflect the conclusion of our short-term data center project, we expect meaningful revenue growth in 2027. We have returned to profitability on a net income basis. Our largest contract is funded and on schedule, and our growth end markets are expanding. We expect this momentum to build in 2027, and we remain committed to delivering value for our customers and our shareholders through disciplined capital allocation and focused execution. With that, I'll turn the call over to Andy for a detailed review of our financials.

Thank you, Casey. I'll begin with a discussion of our third quarter performance, followed by an update on our cash flow, balance sheet, liquidity and capital spending. Third quarter revenue was $14.8 million, a decrease of 27% compared to the third quarter of 2025. Similar to the first 2 quarters of the year, the year-over-year decline reflects the completion of large marine and power generation contracts in the fourth quarter of 2025, partially offset by continued growth in aerospace, where revenue increased 49% compared to the prior year period as well as growth in our legacy industrial business. On a sequential basis, revenue increased $2.9 million or 25% from $11.9 million in the second quarter. That increase was primarily driven by the short-term data center contract that began deliveries in August, which took data center-related revenue from less than 1% of the total in the second quarter to 17% in the third. Adjusted EBITDA was $1.9 million in the third quarter compared to $2.9 million in the prior year period, with the decrease attributable to the completion of the 2 large multiyear contracts in the fourth quarter of 2025. Sequentially, adjusted EBITDA increased to $1.9 million from $0.1 million in the second quarter, primarily due to the higher revenues. Net income was $0.2 million or $0.01 per diluted share compared to net income of $1.1 million in the third quarter of 2025 and a net loss of $4.6 million in the second quarter. I would also note that SG&A was $2.5 million in the quarter, essentially flat with the second quarter and down from $2.8 million a year ago. Turning to cash flow. Operating cash flow was $3.9 million in the third quarter compared to $2.4 million a year ago and included a $5 million customer advance payment for our 2027 data center contract. Second quarter operating cash flow was $7.1 million, which also included a $5 million advance payment. So the sequential decline primarily reflects changes in working capital. Year-to-date, cash flow from operations totaled $23.4 million, reflecting the full $25 million of advanced payments we've now received under the contract. At quarter end, cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash totaled $18.4 million compared to $18.9 million at the end of the second quarter. Of the $18.4 million, $16.8 million is restricted to support equipment purchases and other preparations for the 2027 data center contract and $1.5 million is unrestricted. Capital expenditures totaled $4 million during the quarter compared to $2.3 million in the second quarter, bringing year-to-date capital spending to $11.5 million. These expenditures were primarily related to equipment and infrastructure for the upcoming data center contract. Looking ahead, we expect to continue investing to secure equipment and guaranteed supply ahead of the first quarter 2027 start, and we expect those investments to continue to be funded by the advanced payments already received. Before I close, a brief reminder on the points we made last quarter about the earnings profile of the business as we continue to scale. Nothing here is new, and we're not providing 2027 guidance, but with the third quarter now behind us, they're worth keeping in mind. First, our fixed cost base is largely in place, and we do not expect those costs to grow in proportion to revenue as the 2027 contract comes online, which should drive meaningful operating leverage. Second, we'll service much of the incremental power generation demand with third-party LNG, so it requires limited incremental capital and preserves our plant capacity to support continued growth with our aerospace and other existing customers. The equipment for the 2027 contract is being funded by advanced payments already received. And third, our contracts pass through all commodity price risk. Taken together and in the context of a materially larger revenue base in 2027, this should translate into meaningful growth in adjusted EBITDA dollars and margin expansion into the high-teens as execution accelerates. That concludes our prepared remarks. Operator, please open the line for the Q&A session.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is coming from Martin Malloy with Johnson Rice.

First question, I just wanted to ask about the aerospace market, and it sounded -- in your prepared remarks sounded incrementally positive on what's going on there. Could you maybe talk a little bit more about the volumes involved with these discussions with customers for long-term offtake contracts versus your current business and perhaps could this lead to investments in additional liquefaction capacity?

Yes. Let me start, Marty. And again, thanks for joining the call today and covering the company. And I'll take it from a high level and then let Andy try to come in and answer anything additional. But look, we just -- if we didn't -- if we weren't clear, we believe Stabilis has 3 really dynamic markets that we operate in. One is the behind-the-meter power business that works in hyperscaler data centers, just distributed power markets, like all types of different end markets. Second is this giant marine bunkering infrastructure opportunity. And finally, it's the aerospace business that we've been heavily involved with since, I guess, 2018, 2019, quite some time. And we provide high purity, reliable supply to people in the aerospace, primarily related to rockets and launching rockets primarily for telecommunications, satellites, different things of the nature. We don't know exactly everything they do, but mainly those end markets. And we are just seeing the maturing of the business with both additional customers, so more clients that are real clients that buy product and need product and the expansion and increasing the launching and testing by all of those clients. And so that both expansion of the customer base and maturing of the customer base and the increased activity of all the customers across that industry is driving the growth and our historic performance is leading us to be successful in some of the market. We certainly don't have all of anything, but we have proximity to some clients and historical relationships with others, and we expect it to be a meaningful growth area for us. One of the challenges with the customers is due to the newness of some of the programs, you have anomalies, you have changes in timing, you have regulatory stuff that everybody is going through. So that changes some of the visibility of cadence of everything, but we're starting to see clients ask for multiyear offtake arrangements, and we're having multiple customers that were involved with that. At the same time, there's conversations out there about some of the clients wanting to vertically integrate. So you have a lot of noise out there, but the growth is kind of beyond any of the negative noise out there. So I touched it from a high, high level, and then I'll let Andy add to it if there's anything to add. But we expect it to continue to grow, to continue to grow as a -- in volume and revenue. As a percentage of the overall company, when you see the new behind-the-meter activity that's contracted, that may grow -- as you look at percentages, that may just outgrow that growth rate next year, but we're seeing some tremendous growth rate and multiyear contracting happening in the aerospace industry. Your last question was, will we have enough demand or term contracts to add capacity? And we think we hope to and if they want to contract that, we're in some discussions to add infrastructure and capacity. We've talked about contracting with -- even in the Galveston facility to bring it inbound in land from there. We've talked about additional expansion opportunities with infrastructure. So we're actively involved with that, but we don't have anything to give you any forward guidance on that other than multiple customers now, multiple term contracting negotiations going on. So real positive overall market movement.

Your next question comes from the line of Barry Haimes with Sage Asset Management.

Congrats on the quarter. I had a couple of questions. One is the new data center contract that's starting up in the first quarter, is there an end date to that or just a little bit more feel for the term there? That's the first question. I have a couple of others, but that's the first one.

Well, first of all, thanks for being on the call. It's a multiyear contract. I'll let Andy give the details of what we can go over on that.

Yes, Barry. What we've disclosed publicly is that it's roughly a $200 million contract over 2 years, and it will ramp starting at beginning of of next year. Now it's bridge power, so a lot of these bridge power contracts depend on when the data center gets their permanent connection. So the initial contracts for 2 years, I think it is possible that, that gets extended depending on the timing of grid connections and that sort of thing, but we just don't know yet.

Got it. Okay. Second question, could you give a little more of an update on the marine market? And do you still have the cruise customer you used to have? And just a little bit more color on that market.

Yes. So I'll take it from a high level and then let Andy come in after that. But the cruise or I should say, marine bunkering business is something we've been doing. We've talked about it a lot. We have a specific project that we've talked a lot about in the Houston Ship Channel, specifically Galveston related to a couple of different cruise customer opportunities. We have one contract in hand with a long-term customer relationship. And when you look at the macro right now and you look at the alternatives of our really strong, high creditworthy cruise customers, they can either use marine gas oil, which is kind of a diesel-based product or LNG and their ships have switching capability. And because of the disruptions globally and the increased cost around those alternatives, there need for a fit-for-purpose asset to make LNG molecules and then have fit-for-purpose delivery capability and bunkering vessel is high. And the macro is better than it's ever been for us to get an asset financed with enough adequate offtake to help that process happen. And one of the challenges with this offtake agreements to get the project financing is the duration of contracting and how the contracting works to make the project financing work. This project is a $350 million total project, and it requires significant committed offtake over a significant amount of time to make the project financing work for everybody. And so we're just working through those processes, but the macro is really strong on moving that project forward. And Stabilis' project is the furthest along and we believe the most efficiently cost process in the Gulf Coast region. And so we believe we're the leader of the pack in that area, but we still haven't gotten the project to final FID.

Okay. Great. And just one quick follow-up on that. Is the -- in terms of how much offtake is committed, I mean, just ballpark it, is it 1/3 committed half, 2/3? Like just where are you in that process? What inning are we in, if you will?

Yes. Well, right now, we've got about 25% of the committed offtake that we -- of that facility, the 350,000 gallons a day production. We don't need 100% offtake, but we need more than what we have now.

Got it. Fair enough. And then just last question. The 3 key markets you mentioned, behind-the-meter, the marine bunkering and the aerospace, could you give a rough sense of what percent of revenues each of those were? And where do you think it's most representative, either the third quarter just reported, year-to-date estimate for '27, what -- I'm not looking for precision. I'm just looking for a ballpark.

Yes. Let me give you the ballpark real quick. I think the best thing to do is to think about '27 and '28 where we have booked and contracted right now. So we've already disclosed that we're assuming -- we have one contract that's a $200 million contract, plus or minus, think about $100 million in revenue a year. We have other behind-the-meter power opportunities that we are bidding and actively working on and intend to execute on. And then we have the aerospace market, which is growing really fast, but a lower base when you think about percentages of growth rate. And then you talk about marine, where we really see marine being very strong for Stabilis is out past not next year, but hopefully getting some real revenue and earnings back during 2028. And when you look at the 10 years past there, we're really excited about that being an anchor term duration while we have up and downs from both aerospace and behind-the-meter projects. So that is not perfectly clear explanation, but we see short term, those kind of percentages happening. And then when you look 3 years out and further and you start talking about how that backup power on behind-the-meter demand starts happening where you need like peaking opportunities with LNG around large behind-the-meter projects, and you continue to see the aerospace growing, those can be major, major long-term contributors consistent. And -- but obviously, once we get the asset in on the -- an FID the marine project, that will be a meaningful percentage of revenue at that point in time. But that's not in our kind of next year plan, which we expect to be a record year for Stabilis.

Your next question comes from the line of Matt Dhane with Tieton Capital Management.

I had a couple of questions here. First one, the data center contract that starts here in Q1 of '27. Just was looking for a little bit more detail. Does that start January time frame? Does it start later in the quarter? And then secondarily, please confirm I heard correctly, so it ramps over Q2, Q3. So does that imply that Q4 is finally the full run rate for that contract?

Yes. Matt, I appreciate you joining the call today. So second question first, it will ramp over the first 3 quarters of the year. And so by the fourth quarter of next year, yes, we expect that to be kind of at the full run rate. In terms of start-up, it will start middle of the first quarter. It will start with mobilization of equipment and testing and some things like that. And then the deliveries will start to -- the LNG deliveries will start to ramp from there. So that's kind of the schedule and really the level of detail that we can go into at this point.

Okay. Great. Appreciate that, Andy. Then also I want to get a little bit more color, if I could, on the pipeline of data center opportunities. I know you talked about the 4 different buckets that they fall in. Just was curious, how would you -- I guess first off, classify the overall pipeline. Does it continue to grow or is it pretty much stable with what you saw last quarter? And then what is the largest bucket where a lot of those opportunities fall into? I assume bridge would be the largest just because of the size of the contract. But just yes, if you could add more color where things tend to fall within the pipeline, that would be helpful.

I'll try to give a little color. I don't know that we can give just all the detail around our kind of sales funnel. But I would say the first 3 categories are the biggest. That's the construction where they're trying -- to try to get wean themselves off diesel. That's a really good opportunity where we're doing the customer education and trying to show them how that's working. The commissioning has become kind of a new and now robust area where they're like we need to get the construction and the projects commissioned even before they get permanent power solutions in. And bridge is becoming -- the size of bridge is pretty extreme, and it's not something that the customers are kind of anticipating. So it's becoming kind of a more and more needed area when they have disruptions on their time schedules on getting their grid connections or pipeline interconnections into the facility. So that's becoming a more and more needed issue as you see delays or unexpected things happen. The one that we're probably most -- seeing the most activity in the last quarter, and we think in the future is going to be this backup area where we're providing kind of backup solutions long term for our clients that are active in behind-the-meter activity around data centers. And so that's the newest area that we're starting to see ramped up activity and questions around. Super excited about that. So I'd say if you talk about like increased activity, that's the most -- that's the one increasing the most. And then I'd say next increasing is just the bridge activity due to delays and so many projects coming online and having connection delays. So I hope I answered it without giving the specifics. All 4 of those areas are active and exciting to us. And obviously, with the price of diesel and the intent on having environmental compliance with construction being a focus of communities, having LNG and a better environmental footprint on construction is important to the owners of the facilities.

Okay. That is helpful. The overall size of the pipeline as of the end of the quarter or here today relative to, say, what it was like 3 to 6 months ago, let's say, 3 months ago, how would you say that? Does it just continue to increase the opportunities that you are bidding and talking to people about?

Correct, substantially. I mean, a pipeline, you don't get to do -- you don't get to bill against a pipeline. The pipeline is a pipeline. So I'm talking -- there's significant projects out there. We do not have to land all of the -- very many of the opportunities to be super successful in this area, this growth area of our company. So that's the way we're kind of looking at this area. The opportunities are pretty, pretty extreme. There's a broad, deep need for infrastructure and execution in this space. I'd say we're a little bit more tighter focused in marine, where we're much more focused on a specific project in a specific region where this area is pulling us into just where they're having issues on behind-the-meter or where they think they have a cost advantage.

Understood. I hope you win more than your fair share.

We are hoping to win enough to make our shareholders happy.

This concludes the Q&A portion of today's call. I would now like to turn the floor over to Andy Puhala for closing remarks.

Well, thank you, everyone, for joining the call today. We appreciate your time and your continued interest and support of Stabilis. If you'd like to learn more, please reach out to me at our Investor Relations contact numbers, and we'll be happy to talk further. Thank you.

Thank you. This concludes today's Stabilis Solutions Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Please disconnect your line at this time, and have a wonderful day.