John Hopkins
Analyst · Cowen
Thank you, Diane, and good afternoon, everyone. We're excited to be reporting second quarter results in inaugural quarterly report as a publicly-traded company. I will cover our accomplishments both in terms of business development and in spreading our message about nuclear energy's compelling role in a clean energy transition. I will also highlight recent business developments in the context of our five key near-term strategic objectives. Then my colleague, NuScale’s CFO, Chris Colbert, will provide a detailed update on our financial results and reaffirm our outlook. We are enthusiastic about the future of nuclear power and specifically the role NuScale will play in that future. We reached an important milestone on May 2 when we closed our merger with Spring Valley Acquisition Corp. becoming the first next-generation nuclear energy technology company to list our shares in the U.S. market. As a first publicly-traded SMR technology provider, we have even more opportunities in venues to make our case for nuclear, especially modern small scale nuclear as a safe, clean, and economic source of cost effective, 100% carbon-free base load power. We believe NuScale is a pure-play on a critical emerging trends in clean energy, specifically zero-carbon base load in next-generation nuclear technology. We appreciate the strong interest from investors. We intend to keep working aggressively to meet our operational and financial milestones, build our business and change the landscape of clean energy. Now more than ever, the world needs more clean energy sources and we believe NuScale is primed to fulfill this need in a disproportionate way. With the tripling of natural price, gas prices in some areas and the rising threat, the energy security around the world, the need is even more urgent for reliable, clean electricity produced from nuclear. Just let me give you some examples. Based with a fragile electrical grid in the prospect of summertime blackouts, California agreed to earmark hundreds of millions of dollars to buy power from fossil fuel plants that are scheduled to shut down as soon as next year. Tesla is telling its customers an ERCOT, the Texas’ grid operator to charge their cars only at night. Russia has reduced natural gas flowing to Europe in an Nord Stream 1 pipeline down to 20% of capacity. And Japan is facing brutal heat waves without efficient energy to meet demand. Renewable such as solar and wind are important to our energy future, but they're not the whole story. Every day more people are realized in the necessity of nuclear power. To combat climate change, we must replace greenhouse gas intensive fossil fuels with emissions free energy. Nuclear is the only base load solution. NuScale’s SMR can deliver base load power and load follow, better supporting grids that are reliant on intermittent solar and wind generation. Now I will discuss our Q2 accomplishments and what we foresee for the months ahead. Best way to do this is to use the context of our five key strategic objectives for 2022, which we shared on our June business update call. As a reminder, our five year near-term objectives are one, we intend to secure our next committed customer by year-end. Two, we intend to issue long lead material specifications for the nuclear reactor pressure vessel. Three, we intend to complete the reactor building design. Four, we intend to submit a standard design approval application to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the VOYGR-6 module power plant that UAMPS plans deploy. Five, we intend to complete our standard plan design, which will also refer to as SPD throughout my remarks. Now let's look at the progress you made in Q2 towards each of these goals. First, we continue to build a potential customer pipeline. The progress is solid at our anchor customer, UAMPS, in the U.S. and we continue to strengthen our six relationships around the world. Moreover, we have 18 signed and active MOUs in 11 countries and nine strategic relationships. Some of which I'll discuss in a moment, customer opportunities in a pipeline are now at over 100 and we are happy the level, the discussions we are having across the board. Looking overseas, we have highly concerted efforts in Romania. On June 26, the U.S. government committed $14 million towards a front end engineering design study, in Romania that could lead to the deployment of our VOYGR-6 nuclear power plant. This eight month effort, which is expected to cost $28 million in total will include contributions for Romania SA Nuclearelectrica and other industry participants. The project will provide to Romanians with key site specific data needed for the deployment of our power plant, such as cost, construction schedule and licensing details. Furthermore on May 23, the United States announced, it will provide Romania with a NuScale small module reactor, SMR simulator for Romania to establish an E2 Center at University Polytechnica in Bucharest. E-2 Center will further Romania's goals of becoming a leader in secure and safe SMR deployment and an SMR educational and training hub in the region. This project is already underway. We are working with the university and planning coordination and infrastructure needs. We're also currently working to organize a supplier day event in September to further support our efforts in Romania. During the quarter, we also made great progress in Poland. On July 8, our Polish partner, KGHM a leading copper and silver mining conglomerate and large industrial energy user submitted to their regulators at application to assess NuScale’s technology. Meanwhile, our proposal for the full scope of work has been issued to KGHM and is now under review. In early August, we expect to receive the tender offer and statement of commencement for the licensing work and start negotiations on the full scope. To support the licensing process, KGHM, intensely provide Polish regulators with updated licensing and safety reports by the end of October. To remain on track with this goal to choose a potential site for the end of the current year. All-in-all, we are pleased with our progress towards securing that second committed customer by year-end. Second is the long lead material specification for the reactor pressure vessel. One of the major components to the NuScale power module, which was completed in May. In addition to supporting our ability to place long lead material, our orders. This also represents early completion of another milestone in the DOE development program. In addition to material specs, we have initiated certain pre-manufacturing activities ensure that we can support client manufacturing schedules. We executed the upper RPV forging, die purchase with Doosan in April of 2022, to prepare for the start of manufacturing. We also completed physical testing of the steam generator tube installation, demonstrating progress on our manufacturing readiness. We have completed negotiations with PAR Systems on term sheet for manufacturing procurement of the reactor building crane. In late July, we announced an agreement with National Technical Systems to establish an equipment qualification test chamber, which will allow us to qualify components that meet U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and plant-specific requirements. The initial FXM-19 forging trial was completed this July and an additional forging manufacturing trial is currently underway. We also completed pressure sensor proof of concept testing. The key takeaway from all of this activity is that NuScale is extensively focused on readiness, by actively engaging with our manufacturing partners in completing fabrication tests for first of a kind components. I would go so far as to contend that no other Western SMR developer is better prepared to start plant construction than NuScale. Moving along to our third objective, we completed some key elements of reactor building design. We issued the revision zero reactor building structural design on July 1 and another milestone completion for a DOE development program. Fourth, we made progress on critical activities that support the standard design approval application for SDAA. This included delivery of reactor building crane design inputs, completion of reactor building sites inputs for fuels analysis, an emergency core cooling system, valve design deliverables. We also submitted Revision 3 a method by which the emergency planning zone size will be established. Testing support of the SDAA is ongoing at the NuScale Integral System facility in Oregon. I want to underscore an important facet of our test efforts. The fact that NuScale has reached test mode shows that our efforts are real and they’re removing quickly toward manufacturing and commercialization. This is a huge differentiator, vis-à-vis other advanced technology providers. Finally, the SPD is well underrway with completion still projected for year end. By completing the SPD in advance of any construction activities, our customers can be confident that we have thought through the challenges of deploying all aspects through a NuScale plant. Leading this SPD at our expense saves our customers money, that they can then allocate precise specific design changes, as opposed to helping put the build for the design of a plant. We are pleased with our progress on these near-term objectives. Furthermore, we attain important accomplishments outside of these five priorities. Let me elaborate. Most importantly, we form the new Voyager Service and Delivery business unit, or VSD. This unit will be comprised of services, supply chain and client management functions. The VSD will help us to more effectively deliver our Voyager plants and services, which in turn will help our customers more easily operate and maintain a Voyager plant. This unit is a key step in our maturation from an R&D organization to a product services and delivery enterprise. The VSD will be led by Tom Mundy, who previously served as Chief Commercial Officer, Managing Director for the United Kingdom and Europe and the Vice President of Program Management. Prior to joining NuScale, Tom served as founding CEO and President of Exelon Nuclear Partners, LLC. The operating and services arm of a well-established nuclear generating company. I believe Tom skill and expertise will lead VSD to a great success. During Q2, we also made some significant progress in partnerships. Most importantly is the license agreement with our partner Paragon, which will enable widespread use of our NRC-approved Highly Integrated Protection System or HIPS platform. Paragon is a great partner for us. For over 30 years, they have provided the nuclear sector with established technology solutions, such as instrumentation and control systems, sophisticated and repair programs. The HIPS platform is the latest iteration of this track record of success. HIPS platform is an efficient cost effective and cyber secure reactor protection solution. We develop the HIPS platform with Paragon’s Rock Creek Innovation subsidiary, which develops safety critical applications. Our objective is to make the HIPS technology available to the entire nuclear power industry, enhancing the safety of all nuclear plants improves public perception of nuclear power, thus supporting our own marketing efforts. We also announced a collaboration with Lightbridge Fuel an advanced nuclear fuel technology company. The DOE awarded MIT $800,000 to study the use of Accident Tolerant fuels in our SMR. By studying and simulating the usage and safety performance of their fuel, we have the potential to improve the safety profile of nuclear energy, even further beyond a substantial improvements offered by our SMR design. Now let’s move to the latest regulatory developments. Two weeks ago, the NRC voted unanimously to approve the design certification of our SMR. The vote represents the final NRC approval of our design. We are the only SMR vendor to submit an application design approval in the only SMR design approval so far by the NRC. We anticipated this approval in large part because the NRC had already issued a standard design approval for our 50 megawatt design back in 2020. Once an SDA is issued, the final rule is overwhelmingly likely to be awarded. To avoid confusion, keep in mind that our fourth near-term objective, the SDAA refers to our newer 77 megawatt 6 module design. The honest development, which applies directly to us, the general support for nuclear continues to grow. For example, at this year’s G7 Global Infrastructure Partnership Summit, President Biden reaffirmed our country’s pledge to combat climate change in part by supporting our SMR deployment in Romania. This is a key demonstration of the White House partnership for global infrastructure in investment and a major accomplishment for our business. Furthermore in Europe, member countries are advancing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions based on their nation’s energy portfolios and infrastructure. We applied the EU latest decision to rightfully include nuclear technologies a form of green investment under the EU taxonomy. The Europeans are starting to realize that nuclear is critical to their future. In fact, it’s somewhat surprisingly given their stated stance on nuclear, Germany recently decided not to retire the remaining three nuclear power plants due to the dire need for this clean source of power. Now I’d like to turn the call over to Chris Colbert to cover our financial results. Chris?