Consolidated Water Co. Ltd. (NASDAQ:CWCO) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Consolidated Water Co. Ltd. (NASDAQ:CWCO) Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript May 12, 2026

Operator: Good morning. Thank you for joining us today to discuss Consolidated Water Company’s First Quarter of 2026 Operating and Financial Results. Hosting the call today is the Chief Executive Officer of Consolidated Water, Rick McTaggart; and the company’s Chief Financial Officer, David Sasnett. Following the remarks, we will open the call to your questions. Before we conclude today’s call, I will provide some important cautions regarding the forward-looking statements made by management during the call. I would like to remind everyone that today’s call is being recorded, and it will be made available for telecom replay. Please see the instruction in yesterday’s press release that has been posted to the Investor Relations section of the company’s website. Now I’d like to turn the call over to Consolidated Water’s CEO, Rick McTaggart. Sir, please go ahead.

Frederick McTaggart: Thanks, Danish, and good morning, everyone. In Q1, consolidated revenue declined due to revenue declines in our manufacturing and retail segments. Manufacturing revenue was lower due to the timing of receipt of new purchase orders for 2026 projects compared to last year. We had received a large purchase order in late 2024, which had favorably impacted our first quarter revenue last year. Retail revenue was impacted by much wetter weather conditions this past quarter, which reduced the water volume we sold in Grand Cayman by 10.2%. This decrease was partially offset by what turned out to be record-breaking tourism in the Cayman Islands during the quarter. However, revenue in our bulk and service segments continued to grow this past quarter, which partially offset the decline in our other two operating segments.

Gross profit and operating income in our bulk and services segments also increased, underscoring the stable recurring nature of our Caribbean-based bulk water business and the momentum in our O&M services. Our services segment revenue increase was mainly due to a 15% increase in revenue from O&M contracts. The O&M revenue increase was partially due to revenue from a new municipal client in Southern California, which is contracted with us in November last year under a 3-year contract that’s expected to generate approximately $4.5 million in revenue over the next 3 years. Now before getting into more recent developments and our outlook for the rest of the year and beyond, I’d like to turn the call over to our CFO, David Sasnett, who will take us through the financial details for the quarter.

David Sasnett: Our 2026 revenue totaled $30 million. This is down 11% from the first quarter of last year. This revenue decrease was due to declines of $4.4 million in our manufacturing segment revenue and $834,000 in our retail segment revenue. These decreases were partially offset by increases of $333,000 in the bulk segment and $1.2 million in the services segment. Our retail revenue decreased due to a 10.2% decrease in the volume of water sold. The decrease for the Q1 of this year resulted from significantly greater rainfall on Grand Cayman during the quarter, as Q1 2025 rainfall was well below historical norms for the island. The slight increase in our bulk revenue was primarily due to new revenue from CW-Bahama’s new island — Cat Island plant.

The increase in services revenue was primarily due to revenue generated under O&M contracts that totaled $8.9 million for the first quarter of 2026, an increase of 15% from the first quarter of ’25. A portion of the increase in O&M revenue was attributable to the new 3-year contract mentioned previously by Rick for a California municipality obtained by PERC in November of last year. In addition, about $500,000 of the O&M revenue increase was due to additional construction work and maintenance services, completed in 2026 for an O&M contract that expired at the end of March 2026. Our construction revenue remained relatively consistent at $2.1 million for the first quarter of ’26. Our manufacturing segment revenue decreased by $4.4 million or 76% to $1.4 million.

As Rick mentioned, the decrease was due to a decrease in the total dollar volume of new purchase orders and to a lesser extent, the timing of the receipt and commencement of work on new purchase orders. We feel it’s important to mention that based on our current projections, we believe that manufacturing revenue for the full 2026 fiscal year will be less than the manufacturing revenue generated for the 2025 fiscal year, which really was a record amount of revenue for our manufacturing segment. Gross profit for 2026, was $10.9 million or 36% of total revenue as compared to $12.3 million or 37% of total revenue in the first quarter of 2025. The decrease was due to the declines in retail revenue and manufacturing revenue, mentioned previously.

Net income from continuing operations attributable to Consolidated Water shareholders for the first quarter of ’26, was $3.8 million or $0.24 per diluted share. These numbers compare to net income of $4.9 million or $0.31 per diluted share in the first quarter of 2025. And including discontinued operations, net income attributable to Consolidated Water shareholders for the first quarter of 2026 was $3.8 million or $0.23 per diluted share as compared to net income of $4.8 million or $0.30 per diluted share in the first quarter of ’25. Turning to our balance sheet. During the quarter, CW-Bahamas accounts receivable balances increased to $23.9 million as of March 31, 2026, as compared to $20.7 million as of December 31, 2025, we continue to be in frequent contact with officials of The Bahamas government, who continue to express their intention to significantly reduce CW-Bahamas delinquent accounts receivable balances.

However, we’re unable to determine if or when such reduction will occur. Our cash and cash equivalents totaled $126.3 million as of March 31, 2026. Our working capital grew to $144.3 million, and stockholders’ equity has now reached $223.6 million. These amounts represent an $18.5 million increase in cash and an $8.1 million increase in working capital from the year-ago quarter. Our balance sheet continues to have no significant outstanding debt. Our projected liquidity requirements for the balance of 2026 include capital expenditures for existing operations of approximately $8.6 million, we paid approximately $2.3 million in dividends in April 2026. Our liquidity requirements may also include future quarterly dividends if such dividends are declared by our Board, and we continue to evaluate how to best utilize our ample cash balance to increase shareholder value.

So this concludes our financial summary for the quarter, and I’ll turn the call back over to Rick.

Frederick McTaggart: Thanks, David. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, demand for our water in the Cayman Islands is affected by variations in the level of tourism and rainfall, the greater rainfall in Grand Cayman during the quarter, was partially offset by record-breaking tourism driven by strong air arrivals. In Q1, stay-over visitor arrivals in the Cayman Islands grew by 11.1% compared to the first quarter of 2025. March of 2026 marked the single best month for visitation in the island’s history. No official stay-over numbers for April have been reported yet, but the Ministry of Tourism stated in late April that the run of record-breaking news is set to continue, specifically predicting that April will be a really great month for stay-over numbers.

It’s interesting to also note that Cayman Airways is scheduled to inaugurate a new seasonal nonstop service between Grand Cayman and Austin, Texas on May 24, that’s aimed at capturing summer travel demand. The opening of two major hotels in Grand Cayman, including the Grand Hyatt Last week and the ONE GT at the end of this month, adds new room inventory in anticipation of greater stay-over visitors. We normally sell more water during the first half of the year when the number of tourists is greater and the weather is drier, indications so far are that tourism and business activity continue to grow in April and rainfall levels were lower in April this year than in 2025, which should support our retail water sales volumes in the second quarter.

Regarding our Cayman water utility license. In February last year, we received a new concession from the government that authorizes and maintains the terms of our 1990 license until the new license from OfReg is negotiated and enacted. Negotiations between Cayman Water and OfReg for this new license have been more active than in previous quarters, but remain ongoing. So looking at bulk, we’re also pleased that our Caribbean-based bulk business continued to generate long-term stable recurring revenue during the quarter. Our bulk segment revenue increase reflects contributions from one of two new desalination plants on Cat Island, The Bahamas, which supply potable water to the Water and Sewage Corporation of The Bahamas. The second plant is expected to be commissioned this quarter.

In our manufacturing business, while manufacturing segment revenue decreased compared to Q1 last year. We expect, based on current backlog that our manufacturing revenue for the rest of the year will improve. However, we also expect that manufacturing revenue for the full year will not be as high as we had last year in 2025, which David mentioned earlier, was a record year. Some of our production capacity in manufacturing this year will be used to manufacture seawater reverse osmosis units and piping for our Hawaii project. Accounting rules require that this Hawaii-related manufacturing revenue is eliminated in consolidation, although it will eventually be recognized through our services segment as the Hawaii project advances, and that has an impact on our outlook for the rest of the year, obviously.

For the remainder of this year and beyond, we are seeing a very active market for our manufacturing segment products and services, particularly for municipal water projects in Florida, which tend to have a longer lead time. A new market driver for our manufacturing business is a continued evolution of Florida water supply regulations and policies that are pushing utilities toward alternative sources including deeper, more brackish groundwater as more projects shift to these new sources, utilities often need membrane-based treatments such as reverse osmosis rather than traditional lime softening to reliably meet drinking water requirements. And this supports demand for our membrane-based water treatment products in our manufacturing segment.

We believe that our extensive experience manufacturing large-scale membrane-based water treatment systems as well as our location in Fort Pierce, Florida position us well to continue growing that part of the business in the Florida market. We believe all these factors will positively impact 2026 and 2027 revenues. As we previously announced last year, we were awarded through PERC 2 water treatment plant construction projects, including a $3.9 million drinking water plant expansion in Colorado and an $11.7 million wastewater recycling plant in Northern California. Both projects are progressing well, and the remaining revenue of more than $13 million attributable to these projects is expected to be realized primarily this year in 2026. The drinking water plant expansion in Colorado is a good start and helps us to pursue other design and/or build opportunities in Colorado.

We recently bid a smaller project with the same Colorado customer for work on their wastewater plant, and we are awaiting the results of this bidding process. In California, although the number of new O&M opportunities is less than in the previous 2 years, there are a few interesting O&M as well as design-build opportunities that PERC Water is following, and we have a pipeline of potential projects for which we are in the process of submitting our qualifications and experience. PERC Water’s Customized Design Report or CDR, delivers comprehensive project-specific plans for water infrastructure, incorporating life cycle cost, schedule and performance metrics. These reports ensure cost, schedule and water quality certainty utilizing PERC Water’s trademark CDR approach to minimize risk and optimize plant performance for clients.

In Arizona, PERC continues to use the CDR program to pursue several design-build opportunities for developers in the Phoenix Metropolitan area. As was the case with the Liberty Utilities project in Arizona a few years ago, we believe that some or all of these CDRs will ultimately lead to a design-build contract for these important wastewater treatment facilities. We’ve received very positive feedback on outstanding CDRs as well as continued positive feedback from the developer market in general. We’re optimistic that these will lead to new projects. In Hawaii, our construction service segment revenue is anticipated to remain below the record achieved in 2023 until the initiation of the construction of the 1.7 million gallon per day desalination plant in Kalaeloa, Hawaii for the Honolulu Board of Water Supply.

We continue to focus on the permitting process and respond to regulatory inquiries and coordinate with the Honolulu Board of Water Supply to mitigate schedule impacts. Although we’re still unable to provide a firm construction start date for the project, we made some progress to obtain a key permit for the project and are encouraged by recent meetings with the responsible governmental authority. The deferral of construction activities has shifted anticipated revenue recognition and associated cash flows related to this Hawaii project into future periods. We continue to anticipate that construction of the project will commence later this year, and we see the construction phase of this major project substantially adding to our revenue and earnings growth in later reporting periods.

So looking ahead, we remain excited about CWCO’s future for many reasons. At the macro level, growing water scarcity continues to build interest in advanced treatment and reuse and desalination solutions to utilize impaired water sources such as wastewater and brackish groundwater. As water supply challenges increase, there is a rising demand for our specialized capabilities. We expect our diversified business to continue to deliver strong year-over-year results to shareholders, supported by our Grand Cayman retail operations, stable recurring revenue from our Caribbean bulk water business, and growth opportunities in our U.S. manufacturing and design-build and O&M businesses. With global demand for clean water rising, our strong balance sheet positions us to act quickly on desalination and water infrastructure opportunities in the Caribbean and North America as well as potential strategic acquisitions or partnerships.

In particular, we are actively looking at acquisitions to help us replicate PERC’s very successful design-build business in the Florida market. As we move forward in 2026 and beyond, we anticipate that all of these factors will continue to support our long-term growth enhance future profitability and further strengthen shareholder value. Now with that, Danish, I’d like to open the call up for questions.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Gerry Sweeney from ROTH Capital.

Q&A Session

Gerard Sweeney: On the Hawaii desalinization plant, as much as you can discuss, delays, I’m assuming it’s around some of the permitting that you discussed previously. I just wanted to see if that is still the case, and this is just general friction that occurs in some of these permitting processes or if there’s anything else we should be aware of that may be slowing things down?

Frederick McTaggart: So I wouldn’t say there’s any friction. It’s just taken a painfully long time to get through this process with one particular permit. And there’s other — that permit is a prerequisite for a number of other important permits. We don’t see any like problems other than the delay. I mean they haven’t come back to us and said that we have to make changes to the project or anything like that at this point. So I mean that’s all I got for you, Gerry. I mean it’s just taken a long time to get through this one agency.

Gerard Sweeney: Yes. And I apologize. I didn’t mean the friction with anybody. It’s just generally the permitting process sometimes is just slow in general. So I apologize for my use of words there. On the manufacturing side, you expanded the facility. You talked a little bit about a burgeoning or growing opportunity in Florida. How should we look at that as an opportunity and maybe going forward? And with some of the Hawaii plant being manufactured there? Is there more capacity that you can grow into and grow this business? Or will it be a little bit capacity constrained because of the Hawaii opportunity?

Frederick McTaggart: Well, I mean, we try to plan out when we build these units. Just to give you a little background, we needed the expansion because of the — we diversified our business over the last few years, away from manufacturing these repetitive number of products for the nuclear industry, which don’t — I mean they take up some room, but not the amount of room on the manufacturing floor that these municipal projects take when we’re assembling large [ RO sys ] and that sort of thing. So we think that we have sufficient capacity to certainly grow beyond the revenues that we achieved last year. And the Hawaii project is — I mean that’s just part of the deal, I mean we have to program that in. And unfortunately, we can’t recognize those revenues in the manufacturing segment, but they will be recognized on the Hawaii project eventually. So does that answer your question?

Gerard Sweeney: No, it does. I just — it was a back way of just sort of asking, can you continue to grow that business and et cetera. And I think the answer is yes. And I think there’s just some little bit of variability in some of these purchase orders that may impact the revenue. Is that also fair?

Frederick McTaggart: Well. Absolutely, yes. I mean, these are the municipal projects, they’re much more — it’s a much longer lead time, I guess, to get those projects into manufacture and then start recognizing revenues. We get — they tend to be larger purchase orders, so when we get them and we start building the contractors are ready for us to deliver the equipment and that sort of thing over maybe a 2- or 3-year project window, then you’re going to see those revenues hit. But it’s a longer lead type business, I think, but there’s a lot of opportunities, as I mentioned on the call, Gerry, I mean Florida is really doing very well now in the market. The market is very good for us. So you should — investors should be satisfied over the medium term on how the manufacturing business performs.

Gerard Sweeney: Got it. That’s very helpful. And then just one more question on the retail side. Was this year more representative in terms of rainfall and last year was low rainfall or last year was low rainfall and this year was maybe a little bit more higher rainfall. I’m just trying to gauge what is sort of baseline?

Frederick McTaggart: Yes. I think this year is closer to representative, yes. I think last year was incredibly dry. It was like a 30-year sort of drought there. So there is more rain this year. You can’t really predict…

Gerard Sweeney: No. I just want to make sure it didn’t swing the other way, too, right? Got it. And then, I mean, you talked about just the overnight days are quite — are going up. And I think in the past, you talked about maybe there were — my words not yours, maybe tearing down some like 4-story hotels and putting up much larger ones. Is that development still going on? I mean, I know you just mentioned the opening of a new hotel last week. But just in general, is there still opportunity to maybe expand some of the hotel stock by going up?

Frederick McTaggart: It’s not the hotels. It’s the old condominium projects that were built in the ’70s and the ’80s and even in the early ’90s, I mean they were all 3 stories, and now they have a 10-story limit there. So they’re all being redeveloped. I mean, even some of the ones that are quite nice. I mean they’re just — they’re redeveloping and knocking them down and then building these 10-story buildings there and utilizing that space more efficiently. So there’s ongoing projects all the time. And one of our directors is in that industry? And is it indications are that it’s going to continue.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] It appears we have no further question at this time. I would like to turn the call back over to Rick McTaggart for any further comments or closing remarks. Over to you, sir.

Frederick McTaggart: Thank you, Danish. I’d just like to thank everybody for joining us today, and I look forward to speaking with you all in August again when we release our Q2 results. Take care, everybody.

Operator: The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect. Ladies and gentlemen, please wait. We need to read some disclaimer. I would like to remind everyone today’s call was being recorded. Before we conclude today’s call, I will provide some important caution regarding the forward-looking statements made by management during the call. I would like to remind everyone that today’s call is being recorded and will be made available for telecom replay. Please see the instruction in yesterday’s press release that has been posted to the Investor Relations section of the company’s website. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you. Before we conclude today’s call, I would like to provide the company’s safe harbor statement that includes cautions regarding forward-looking statements made during today’s call.

The information that we have provided in the conference call includes forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including, but not limited to statements regarding the company’s future revenue, future plan object. Any forward-looking statements made during the conference call are not guarantee of future performance and involve certain risks and uncertainties and assumptions which are difficult to predict. Actual outcomes and results may differ materially from what is expressed in such forward-looking statements. Factors that would cause or contribute to such differences included political and social conditions of each country in which we — political and social conditions of each country in which we conduct or plan to conduct business, our relationship with the government entities and other customers we serve, regulatory matters, including resolution of the negotiation of the renewal of our retail license on Grand Cayman, our ability to successfully enter new markets and various other risks as detailed in the company’s periodical export filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

For more information about risks and uncertainties associated with the company business, please refer to the management discussion and analysis of financial condition or results of operations and Risk Factors section of the company’s section filing, including, but not limited to, annual report of the Form 10-K and quarterly report of Form 10-Q. Any forward-looking statements made during the conference call speak of today’s date. The company expressly disclaims any obligation or undertaking to update or revise any forward-looking statements made during the conference call to reflect any changes it is in expectation with regard to or any changes in this event, conditions or circumstances of which any forward-looking statement is based, except as required by law.

I would like to remind everyone that this call will be available for replay starting later this evening. Please refer to yesterday’s earnings release for dial-in replay instruction available via the company website at cwco.com. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. This concludes our conference call. You may now disconnect.