Ballard Power Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:BLDP) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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So I think bus will be the lion’s share of the order inflow, but the bus market typically are smaller engines compared to rail and marine and stationary. So those are markets that could be very lumpy and could really in any one quarter be a higher portion of revenue than we’ve seen historically.

Jordan Levy: That’s super helpful. And then just as a quick follow-up, you mentioned stationary. I know that it’s kind of early in the progression there, but certainly a big market. Maybe if we could just get an update on what you’re seeing there and how you’re thinking about that segment?

Randy MacEwen: Yes. I think this is a market we’re still learning quite a bit about. I personally have spent a lot of time learning about the data center market with our team as well as the market for what I’d call temporary power applications where you have filming sites or construction sites, et cetera. What I would say is that the data center market is one of those secular growth trends that we think could be very compelling and open a market opportunity that we, a few years ago, hadn’t really seen. The data center market is just growing exponentially. You’re seeing now what, 20, 40 megawatts and now 200, 400 megawatts for data center sites. So what we’re looking at here is standby power. And I visited a customer recently that is demonstrating their solution for a complete standby power application for data centers.

They’re one of the leaders in the data center market. And they have at their headquarters an installation that they’re showing to their end-users, companies like Amazon and Microsoft as illustrative examples, that are increasingly looking at challenges of getting permitting for data centers in cities. And that challenge from permitting is coming from the use of diesel engines in their standby power applications. So we do see this opportunity. It’s still to be proven out, but this opportunity for fuel cells to enable permitting for large data centers, including standby power. So this is a very interesting market opportunity. And again, this is strong secular growth. These data centers need now gigawatts of power moving forward in aggregate and this is going to be a pretty significant market opportunity and we’re looking to validate fuel cells and the value proposition from a TCO perspective for fuel cells in this market.

The other market in stationary that we’re seeing these, I’ll call it, temporary use applications. That’s an emerging market opportunity. Just visiting one of our customers, GeoPura and saw them at their site where Siemens Energy is — they’re a contract manufacturer building a number of units for deployment of their — what’s called their HPU, their hydrogen power units. And they have a number of different exciting opportunities you can see on their website, some of the opportunities they profile there. And then we’re seeing also opportunities for challenges where you have grids that don’t have resiliency or don’t have the power that they need to supply basically recharging for electric vehicles, battery electric vehicles. And so ironically, where we see these markets where battery electric or fuel cell electric might win, if battery electric wins, perhaps we still get the fuel cells for providing backup power.

So there’s some opportunities there as well.

Operator: The next question comes from Manav Gupta with UBS.

Manav Gupta: I just had one question. Can you help us understand over a longer term how the development of hydrogen hubs in the U.S. can be a tailwind for your business?

Randy MacEwen: Yes. It’s really about the availability of low-cost, low-carbon hydrogen in the marketplace. So these hydrogen hubs paired with the production tax credit — and we should be getting guidance from Treasury on the interpretation of the production tax credit by the end of this year. Those two measures together, the hydrogen hubs plus the $3 per kilogram for emissions that are less than 0.45 kilograms of CO2 per kilogram of hydrogen really are the enablers and unlockers for the hydrogen market broadly, including fuel cell mobility applications and fuel cell stationary applications.

Operator: This concludes the question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Randy MacEwen for any closing remarks.

Randy MacEwen: Thank you for joining us today. Paul, Kate and I look forward to speaking with you next quarter. Thank you.

Operator: This concludes today’s conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating and have a pleasant day.

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