BWX Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:BWXT) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Robb LeMasters: Yes. Just a little bit of information on specific ‘23 and ‘24 and ‘25 and ‘26. The way I’m looking at that, that’s almost about a 3-year term for that contract. And as we mentioned, that’s about $200 million. So if you just think about that ratably, it’s going to take a while even this year to kind of get it ramping. So maybe think about kind of one quarter of 1 year hitting kind of this maybe a little bit more as we kind of ramp into the second half of 2023, but it’s going to be only a little bite of it. And then we kind of hit a full, call it, third of that contract next year in ‘24 and ‘25 and then a little bit as it tapers off in ‘26.

Peter Skibitski: Okay, thanks for the color, guys. Congrats.

Rex Geveden: Thanks.

Operator: Your next question comes from Bob Labick with CJS Securities. Your line is now open.

Bob Labick: Good afternoon. Thanks for taking our questions. And Congratulations on the DRACO win and also on the FDA Darlington news you just mentioned.

Rex Geveden: Thank you, Bob.

Bob Labick: So I just wanted to start with that, with the Darlington radiation news, could you give us a sense of how this impacts the time frame for potential approval? What additional information they have given you? And then once assuming approval goes forward, just describe how that – how Darlington generator compares to existing and versus which seems like you can lead broadcast right now.

Rex Geveden: Yes, Bob. That was pretty exciting and an interesting development for us because, we miss there are certain questions about the final product, such as what is the – what are the radio impurities that exist in the target after you radiate that you really can’t answer unless you’re in your final solution, which is, in our case, the Darlington reactor using our target delivery system. And so I think we’ve been trying to – we’ve been urging the FDA to take that view that as we go through this last targeted radiation campaign. It just doesn’t make sense to go back through MER. So we’ve got informal consent to go and pivot to Darlington, which means that we can offer that, as you’re well aware, that full suite of Tech-99 generator options, all the way up from the small sizes all the way up to the very largest sizes that are on the market today and whereas with MER, we had a pretty modest offering of small curie generators.

So, it’s externally important to us and I think on the timeline I don’t want to get into the guessing game on the regulatory approval process. But suffice it to say, we have very high confidence of getting into the market in 2024 with that full suite of products and so quite a positive beta for us.

Bob Labick: Absolutely. Now congratulations. That is exciting. And just a brief follow-up, just so I don’t know you next quarter on. Is there – are there any more milestone until kind of approval or any other events where we are just playing that waiting game over the next few months quarters until the FDA? You guys will go back and forth with them. But will there be any other announcements, or is that kind of the next announcement over the x period of time?

Rex Geveden: Yes, not anticipating any milestones to be published. We do – we certainly do need to go through back to our campaign to irradiate the material and get that delivered to the FDA. But really no milestones, I think we will be calling out.

Bob Labick: Okay. Super. Well, congratulations again. Thank you.

Rex Geveden: Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Bob.

Operator: Your next question comes from Peter Arment with Baird. Your line is now open.

Peter Arment: Yes. Good afternoon Rex and Robb. Rex, thanks for all the color on the SMR kind of updates. I was curious though, when you made some comments about not needing a lot of capacity additions. It just seems like there is a lot of things coming your way on the SMR front and small micro reactors. Maybe you could just give us a little more color on your ability to kind of weave in some of these new contracts and opportunities from your existing capacity? Thanks.

Rex Geveden: Yes. Maybe that was misunderstood, Peter. We are examining what capacity we need to step into this volume of demand that we see. I mean I was in our Cambridge plant a couple of weeks ago. And its chock full of steam generators that we are building for Bruce. The feeders are in there for both Bruce and for Darlington still finishing up the Darlington project. And it is at the very large heat exchangers running through that plant right now. So, it’s pretty well jammed up. And when you think about putting a reactor pressure vessel for that first small modular reactor, the BWRX-300, add the other three to it. This fall, we are certainly going to get – I certainly believe the Ontario Province will approve formally the Pickering refurbishment.

There is 48 steam generators to build for that project, all the feeders, all the refurbishment waste containers, which are additive to all of the above. And then you have got potential build that CBA for Clinch River on that same BWRX-300. And then the Bruce side is looking at 4.8 gigawatts of capacity, that’s almost certainly going to be a large plant build. So, that ends up being either can do our AP1000 or something. And so there is just a tremendous amount of opportunity and volume ahead of us. And so we need to look at what our plant capacity is and whether or not we need to build out additional capacity, and I certainly expect us to need to do that in the coming year because it’s just a lot.