Ballard Power Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:BLDP) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Ballard Power Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:BLDP) Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript March 12, 2026

Ballard Power Systems Inc. beats earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $-0.05943, expectations were $-0.07937.

Operator: Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Ballard Power Systems Inc. Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Results Conference Call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. I would now like to turn the conference over to Sumit Kundu, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Sumit Kundu: Thank you, operator, and good morning. Welcome to Ballard Power Systems Inc.’s fourth quarter and full year financial and operating results conference call. With us on today’s call are Marty Neese, Ballard Power Systems Inc.’s CEO, and Kate Igbalode, Chief Financial Officer. We will be making forward-looking statements that are based on management’s current expectations, beliefs, and assumptions concerning future events. Actual results could be materially different. Please refer to our annual information form and other public filings for our complete disclaimer-related information. I will now turn the call over to Marty.

Marty Neese: Thank you, Sumit, and good morning, everyone. Today, I will review fourth quarter and full year results. Additionally, I would like to walk you through the structural changes underway at Ballard Power Systems Inc. and the foundations we are laying and building towards sustained positive cash flow over the next two years. Let me begin with last year’s performance. I am pleased with our results in Q4 and across the full year. In 2025, we delivered record engine shipments, approaching 800 engines and more than 75 megawatts of power. That represents 38% growth in megawatts shipped compared to 2024. The majority of these shipments were into Europe and North America, with particularly strong activity in Canada. These shipments translated into full year revenue of $99 million-plus, up 43% year over year.

We also secured our largest marine order to date, a 6.4-megawatt award from ECAP Marine and Samskip, and on Tuesday, announced our largest commercial agreement with New Flyer of 50 megawatts. But the real shift in 2025 was not just growth. It was structural progress toward our goal of becoming cash flow positive within the next two years. We have made decisive changes to align our cost structure with market realities and position Ballard Power Systems Inc. for durable, sustainable performance. We reduced our cash operating costs in Q4 by 41% compared to the same period last year, fundamentally resetting our cost base. We are now seeing the financial impact of that reset. In Q4, we achieved a positive 17% gross margin and a positive 5% for the full year, both representing meaningful improvement year over year.

While quarterly performance is not yet ratable due to seasonality, the margin profile of the business is strengthening and is foundational for us to achieve our profitability goals. Most notably in Q4, we generated $11 million in cash flow from operating activities, which underscores our structural actions are working, and we are making measurable progress towards our profitability targets. With significant improvements in our cost structure and operating discipline, the next phase is clear: expanding revenue and gross margins. Our plan centers on five near-term focus areas: improving commercial terms, product cost reductions, enhanced fleet service offerings, expanding product reach, and business model innovations. Let me briefly touch on each.

First, commercial terms. Throughout 2025, we strengthened our commercial foundation. Our newer agreements reflect more comprehensive pricing structures and balanced commercial terms, including protections against tariff exposure, exchange rates, inflation, and precious metal volatility. These changes improve transparency with our customers, enhance margin visibility, reduce earnings variability, and support stronger long-term partnerships. Our customers have been constructive in these discussions as they are navigating similar cost pressures with their customers. In some cases, finalizing these improved structures has shifted certain order announcements into 2026. But the result is higher quality agreements that better protect long-term value for both parties.

A recent example is the commercial agreement with New Flyer, their largest commitment to Ballard Power Systems Inc. to date, covering 500 FCmove-HD+ engines, or 50 megawatts. This is an exciting opportunity to support New Flyer as more and more U.S. transit agency customers adopt fuel cell buses. Increasingly, these customers are understanding the value proposition offered by fuel cells, including superior range, especially in cold weather, and lower infrastructure costs related to charging infrastructure. We also expect additional activity in stationary and rail markets in the coming months. Our second focus area is product cost reduction through a holistic approach. We are systematically cost-reducing our products using three key levers: negotiations, execution, and innovation.

Our supply chain and sourcing teams are securing and adding new alternative lower-cost suppliers, while our operations team continues to increase productivity and improve manufacturing process yields. We are also innovating in areas that increase performance, simplify our products, and design in more durable components. Nothing reflects this approach better than the FCmove SC. This platform achieves a 40% reduction in total part count while simultaneously improving power density, durability, and capability. Fewer parts translate directly into lower-cost materials, simplified assembly, and enhanced maintainability and serviceability. We are also advancing Project Forge, our high-volume bipolar plate automated manufacturing line, which is on track to begin serial production midyear.

This line has fewer processing steps, higher volumes and throughput, improved quality, and process yields. Further, it combines enhanced in-line metrology and state-of-the-art automation, resulting in plate cost reductions of up to 70% at full volume. Together, these systemic approaches significantly improve our cost position, strengthen gross margin, and enhance the competitiveness of our products. Third, we are focused on leveraging our installed base through enhanced fleet services offerings enabled by product-level intelligence. We now have thousands of fuel cell engines operating globally, supported by a deeply experienced service organization and nearly 300 million kilometers of real-world operating experience. Every engine is equipped with a remote data unit, which transmits engine performance data.

Each product is smart and adds to the collective intelligence of our installed fleet. Today, our smart engines provide a trove of performance data, enable preventive and customer maintenance, and insights into enhanced customer uptime. In the near future, additional insights will provide the foundation for prognostic and enhanced maintenance services, both co-located with our customers and from our remote operations center in Canada. This installed footprint creates a significant opportunity to expand recurring revenue under Ballard Fleet Services, including long-term service agreements, parts supply, technical support, operational monitoring, customer technician training, and ongoing stack servicing. Ever-increasing fleet intelligence and added services will provide performance benefits to our customers while expanding our fleet services business over time.

This service-led approach increases revenue visibility, strengthens customer intimacy and retention, and adds a more stable recurring component to our business mix that scales with every unit and for years after initial delivery. Our installed base is becoming a compounding asset, supporting both customer success and sustained financial performance. We believe this is a significant source of long-term competitive advantage and differentiation, and we will continue to invest in our fleet services capabilities. Our fourth focus area is expanding in near-term markets. We are leveraging our technology platforms and durability expertise to expand into mature and rapidly growing market segments. One example is materials handling. This is a market where cost and durability are critical.

By applying our technical and operating experience gained in heavy-duty applications, we have developed a stack that delivers superior total cost of ownership due to its longer lifetime. Another example is stationary power. We are increasingly focused on replacing diesel gensets and powering data centers. While PEM fuel cells have traditionally been positioned as backup solutions, we believe our technology can also support peak power and, in certain applications, even primary power where hydrogen supply is available. We have deployed solutions for a wide variety of off-grid, microgrid, high-uptime, and critical infrastructure applications. These have ranged from historical telecom backup installations to peak shaving and, more recently, to powering TV and film productions and very large construction sites.

Our stationary power products have generated over 100,000 hours of power, which is nearly ten years equivalent of reliable service. This scalable, flexible power generation capability is now being deployed and evaluated for multi-megawatt data center applications in select target markets. Our engines provide clean, quiet, emissions-free power with very high reliability. These highly bankable features ease permitting and are welcomed in any jurisdiction. We look forward to continuing to advance our product offerings to address the growth in these exciting markets and will provide additional updates in the coming months. Finally, our fifth focus area is unlocking broader access to the hydrogen ecosystem. In addition to advancing our technology, we are innovating in commercial and operating models that lower both the financial and technical barriers to adoption.

As customers evaluate hydrogen solutions, upfront capital costs, infrastructure complexity, and long-term performance risk remain key considerations. We are addressing these through flexible commercial and financial structures, service-based offerings, and partnerships which simplify integration and reduce risk. Innovative business models will provide our customers with complete solutions, including financing models that will allow a win-win value proposition and simplified development. As part of these solutions, we are offering extended warranties based on our proven durability and comprehensive service capabilities. As adoption becomes easier and more predictable, our addressable market expands, creating a virtuous cycle of scale, cost reduction, and growth, while at the same time improving the full-solution value we deliver for our customers.

These five focus areas act as a one-two punch in tackling both the revenue and margin side of our cash flow equation, offering a realistic near-term path for achievement. Finally, let me close with a few thoughts. Over the past year, we have fundamentally strengthened the foundation of the business. We improved financial performance, reinforced our commercial discipline, delivered record volumes, reduced our cost structure, and expanded margins, all while navigating a complex market environment. We have a path to improve revenue and margins to build a business designed to generate sustainable positive cash flow within the next few years. With over $500 million of cash, and lower cash utilization, we have the additional flexibility to deploy capital strategically in support of this goal.

With a well-managed cost structure, improving gross margins, and a focused execution plan, Ballard Power Systems Inc. is entering its next phase with greater financial and operational clarity. We are very grateful for our long-term customer relationships and are deeply committed to continuing to deliver more and more solutions of value to serve them. Core to our progress are the people of Ballard Power Systems Inc. I want to thank them for their dedication and professionalism. The improvements we delivered in 2025 are a direct reflection of their expertise and commitment. We are confident in the path ahead, and we are committed to deliver fuel cell power for a sustainable planet. With that, I will now pass the call over to Kate to review the detailed financials.

Kate Igbalode: Thank you, Marty. 2025 delivered strong financial performance across revenue, margin, and cost structure. As Marty highlighted, fourth quarter revenue was approximately $34 million, up 37% year over year. Full year revenue exceeded $99 million, up 43% from 2024, based primarily on record engine sales approaching 800 units, or over 75 megawatts of delivered power. Our Q4 gross margin improved to 17%, a 30-point increase year over year. Our full year gross margin was positive 5%, up 37 points from 2024. The improvement in gross margin in 2025 as compared to 2024 is due primarily to a decline in onerous contract provisions, product cost reduction initiatives taking hold, and lower manufacturing overhead costs as a result of the global corporate restructuring.

Total operating expenses for the full year were approximately $109 million, 32% lower than the previous year due to the rightsizing of our cost structure. This was at the middle of our guidance range, which was between $100 million and $120 million. If we exclude restructuring and related expenses of $23 million, our total operating expenses in 2025 would have been approximately $86 million, below the lower end of the guidance range. In 2026, we expect total operating expenses to range between $65 million and $75 million. Our total capital expenditures in 2025 were $10.2 million, at the midrange of our revised outlook between $8 million and $12 million. In 2026, we expect capital expenditures to moderate further and be between $5 million and $10 million.

As Marty highlighted, we are absolutely thrilled with the cash flow progress we have achieved in the fourth quarter. While we have cyclicality in our revenue and do not expect this type of performance to be ratable yet, this is a huge milestone for us. Even more impressive is that this was achieved with nearly all of our revenue from fuel cell product sales. Another huge highlight is that our cash usage for the full year of 2025 was down nearly 50% from 2024, underpinning the improved foundation and financial stability of the organization. We ended the year with nearly $530 million in cash, up $1.4 million from Q3, no bank debt, and no near- or mid-term financing requirements. As we have emphasized on this call and on previous calls, we remain steadfast on disciplined spending, growing our top line revenue, expanding our margins, and maintaining our financial health.

With that, I will turn the call over to the operator for questions.

Operator: Thank you. We will now open for questions. The first question comes from Baltic Dejo with National Bank of Canada. Please go ahead.

Q&A Session

Baltic Dejo: Good morning, and thanks for taking my questions. So just on the restructuring side, as you alluded to in the prepared remarks, 2025 OpEx would have been around $86 million, and the midpoint of your guide would imply another $16 million of reduction relative to that. So would you say that the large items have been harvested? And just as a follow-up on that, what are the key drivers of the incremental cost contraction?

Kate Igbalode: Thanks for the question, Baltic. So I think that if we are looking at the year-over-year changes, we do not anticipate any additional major restructuring that we saw in 2025 or 2024 to be in the cards for 2026. So I think that the midpoint of our guidance range is a reasonable expectation for our overall cost structure in 2026. And if you could just repeat and clarify the second part of your question, that would be helpful.

Baltic Dejo: Yes, just the cost drivers of the incremental contraction. And the first part was are the large items already been harvested, which I think you have touched on?

Kate Igbalode: Yes, I would say that they have been, and I would say that the key pieces that we are focusing on, I think that we have really right-sized our overall cost structure at an organizational level. And now it is continuing to drive cost out of our products through additional innovation initiatives, manufacturing efficiencies, and product scaling. So I think you are going to start to see cost reduction show up more on the product side relative to the overall OpEx side. I do not know if you have any other comments on that, Marty.

Marty Neese: I would just say that it is really a combination of looking for every penny structurally from the bottom up of the company. Essentially in 2025, kind of a zero-based budgeting approach and re-baseline everything we spend money on. And so that work is starting to pay off in our structural approach, specifically around some of the operating expenses that are variable in nature.

Baltic Dejo: That is great color. Thank you. And just one more if I may. Just with these magnitude of reductions, there are always trade-offs in scope prioritization or the pace for it. These actions materially altered your R&D roadmap or the timing of the mission of key initiatives just as you aim to accelerate now? Value from your bus vertical as evidenced with the announcement a few days back.

Marty Neese: Materially, we have taken the approach that we are leveraging our product portfolio and prior investments to get as much out of them as we can. So you think about material handling, we had a very long history of material handling and we extended our know-how in that segment to create a new product that we are getting very good feedback that that extended durability product is going to be well received. A similar approach can be taken when you think about heavy-duty applications that can be used for stationary power, if you will. Some of our prior investments in heavy-duty applications can be transferred, if you will, from, let us say, a heavy-duty trucking environment, and the core technology is extensible to a stationary power application when packaging is done differently or configurations are done differently.

So that is a way to say the R&D is more focused on how to extract as much value as possible from innovations that have already been materially realized and have been reduced to practice. The longer-term innovations is a different aspect, and I would put that as more in the three- to five-year kind of range of outlook before we need to do something significantly different in our approach. We have a good runway of product portfolio and existing innovations that we can commercialize, and we are getting really, really strong feedback that these products are going to hit the market well.

Baltic Dejo: Thanks. Great color. I will leave it there and turn over the line. Thank you. The next question comes from Rob Brown with Lake Street Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Robert Duncan Brown: Good morning. Just wanted to follow up on the New Flyer contract. Great news there. What is the sort of duration of that contract or potential? And how do you see that ramping?

Marty Neese: The contract itself is for 500 units, and we are not discussing the duration of the contract. We are more focused on the actual megawatts and unit volumes. And then, of course, we have a long-standing partnership and relationship with New Flyer. It is not really predicated on a quarter here or a quarter there. We have flexibility to work strategically with them to realize their growth ambitions as well as our own, and that is the way we have characterized the relationship. Realize that also includes a long-term service tail that goes with everything we are doing. So that is part of the compounding set of assets. The bigger the New Flyer fleet gets, the more that service tail grows, and the deeper we get in the relationship with them, which is proving to be extraordinarily helpful and valuable for both of us.

Robert Duncan Brown: Okay. Great. Okay. That is good color and helps you—I mean, that visibility helps you plan your operations, I am sure. And then second, on the stationary market, how much of a kind of new product portfolio do you need to enter that market? Or can you take what you have and really expand there? And maybe a sense of just the opportunity in the stationary market at this point for you?

Marty Neese: Yes, I will just say it in general. We have an XD product, and that XD product and HD products that preceded it or are in conjunction with it—both of those products can address the stationary market, depending on how they are configured and packaged. So really the work is the configuration and packaging. When I say packaging, it is the arraying of multiple engines to do different quantums of work, if you will. Whether that is a single unit that is for a mobile diesel genset replacement or whether that is an array of units that is scaled up to 20-plus megawatts, up to 50 megawatts. The packaging and the numbering up of those core engines, that HD or XD capability, is really being well received. At the same time, we are also making additional innovations so that we can get more kilowatts out of each one of those stacks.

So think of that as, if you could imagine getting from 100 kilowatts to 120 kilowatts, up to 135 or 150 kilowatts per engine, and then numbering that up. So that helps drive both performance and cost down and starts making the numbering up more and more attractive from a total cost of ownership and deployment level.

Robert Duncan Brown: Okay, great. Thanks for the color. Congrats on all the progress. I will turn it over.

Operator: The next question comes from Dushyant Ailani with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Dushyant Ailani: Hi. Thank you for taking my question. I just wanted to touch on one piece real quick. I wanted to dig in on stationary, if that is okay. Could you maybe talk a little bit more in terms of the opportunities, the timing that you are seeing, and also how does the XD and HD compare with other competing offerings that you are seeing or the conversations that you are having with your customers?

Marty Neese: Yes. So let us see if we can unpack that a little bit. So the stationary power market—known to all on this call for sure—everyone understands the time-to-power mandate, if you will. So when you see constraints in the global landscape of where data centers are being promulgated, there is a very strong opportunity for us to have a ready-now product to address those needs for power now. So we are seeing more and more interest in that regard. And when I think of that, that is really supporting a thesis along the behind-the-meter side of things in stationary power for now. And then over time, as constraints ameliorate, you might see those transition from behind the meter to be grid-connected, but this is seven to ten years from now.

So there is a very strong value proposition for our fuel cells to help solve that time to power if packaged and arrayed correctly. At the same time, our costs and the products were designed to go into largely heavy-duty trucking. So if you can compete at the engine level in heavy-duty trucking, it suggests a very strong capability on a cost-per-kilowatt basis relative to other solutions that are out there that are not PEM fuel cells, but maybe other kinds of fuel cells. And on a cost per kilowatt or a total installed cost of ownership, we feel like we have got a really good value proposition emerging, which will help significantly address the market.

Dushyant Ailani: Understood. Thank you. I will turn it over.

Operator: The next question comes from Jeffrey David Osborne with TD Cowen. Please go ahead.

Jeffrey David Osborne: Thank you. Good morning. Kate, maybe for you. I saw that the year should be back-end loaded, but any hints on the first half versus the second half relative to the makeup of 2025, or sequentially how we should think about Q1 versus a year ago or the prior quarter?

Kate Igbalode: I think, as we have discussed and we have seen historically, a 40/60 split H1/H2 is a reasonable expectation for 2026. And I think, as Marty commented in his remarks, we are also really looking into how we can further level-load and smooth out our quarter-over-quarter variability and seasonality across the board in terms of operations, our cost structure, etc. But I think a reasonable planning assumption for this year would be that 40/60 split.

Jeffrey David Osborne: That is helpful. Thank you. Marty, maybe for you, just with the refined focus that you have had—you have highlighted stationary this time around, a couple of analysts have asked about that—but if you look back prior to you joining Ballard Power Systems Inc., I think FCWave, ClearGen 2, you had a test with Vertiv and others. Can you just further elaborate on what is so unique about the XD and HD combined with new packaging relative to Ballard Power Systems Inc.’s—I do not want to say failed attempts, but challenged attempts—four or five, six years ago in the stationary power market? I am just trying to understand what is new in light of, at least in many parts of the world, hydrogen availability is still challenged.

Marty Neese: Yes. So if you historically rewind the clock a little bit, you have to think about the product wins that we had in 2023, 2024 that were more scaled products like the ones you referenced. Those would have been conceived in the 2020, 2021 timeframe. All of this is the pre-ChatGPT moment. So everything went vertical once the AI moment happened. So the products that we designed prior to the AI boom, if you will, were more designed for off-grid, for microgrids, for island power, things of that nature. And the customers at the time had perspectives that they were doing very similar types of products: “Hey, can we do a one-megawatt microgrid to be deployed in an island-type application?” Things have changed. That is not what the customers want today.

So we have had a number of workshops—and I say multi-day workshops with large technical team engagement—with customers who are serving hyperscalers and others, and we are getting a much clearer view of what people care about today and what our product needs to enable. And I have already alluded to a significant portion of it, which is not surprising. It has got to be speed and cost. And speed and cost are front and center with what we are doing. And that is unlocking a significant amount of interest and, taken together with the bridge power requirements that are out there with some of the gap in the market, with some of the delays and constraints and bottlenecks across the AI landscape. It is power that is the problem, as everyone on the call knows, of where the stationary market is going.

So we have a role to play in that. We do not know exactly what size or what quantum or what level, but we definitely have a product that meets the market and we will have a role to play in that. And then we have to fight for our share after that based on delivered performance and delivered cost and the ability to really listen deeply to what the customer cares about and package a solution that meets what they want, more capably than the examples you provided from 2021, 2022, and the pre-ChatGPT moment, if you will.

Jeffrey David Osborne: Got it. Maybe just one quick follow-up on that. Would the focus be on Europe and Canada, given greater availability of hydrogen as a fuel relative to natural gas? I am just trying to understand where the commercialization efforts would be placed.

Marty Neese: Yes, that stands to reason. Those are our home markets. And the number of products or projects progressing to FID—I think the Hydrogen Council referenced some $35 billion in year-over-year projects advancing to FID. All of those projects cannot just feed the refinery business or the industrial application. They are keenly looking for offtake partners such as the kinds of partners that would be associated with integrating fuel cell power or others with data centers of all stripes.

Operator: This concludes the question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Marty for any closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Marty Neese: Thank you for joining us today. It has been a pleasure speaking with all of you. Kate, Sumit, and I look forward to speaking with you next quarter, and thanks again, everyone.

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