Fluence Energy, Inc. (NASDAQ:FLNC) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Fluence Energy, Inc. (NASDAQ:FLNC) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript February 8, 2024

Fluence Energy, Inc. isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).

Operator: Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Fluence Energy, Inc. First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]. Please be advised that today’s call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to you Lexington May, Vice President Finance and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Lexington May: Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to Fluence Energy’s first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. A copy of our earnings presentation, press release, and supplementary metric sheet covering financial results, along with supporting statements and schedules, including reconciliations and disclosures regarding non-GAAP financial measures, are posted on the Investor Relations section of our website at Fluenceenergy.com. Joining me on this morning’s call are Julian Nebreda, our President and Chief Executive Officer; Ahmed Pasha, our Chief Financial Officer; and Rebecca Boll, Chief Products Officer. During the course of this call, Fluence’s management may make certain forward-looking statements regarding various matters relating to our business and company that are not historical facts.

Such statements are based upon the current expectations and certain assumptions, and are therefore subject to certain risks and uncertainties. Many factors could cause actual results to differ materially. Please refer to our SEC filings for our forward-looking statements and for more information regarding certain risks and uncertainties that could impact our future results. You are cautioned to not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of today. Also, please note that the company undertakes no duty to update or revise forward looking statements for new information. This call will also reference non-GAAP measures that we view as important in assessing the performance of our business. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measure is available in our earnings materials on the company’s investor relations website.

Following our prepared comments, we will conduct a question-and-answer session with our team. During this time, to give more participants an opportunity to speak on this call, please limit yourself to one initial question and one follow-up. Thank you very much. I’ll now turn the call over to Julian.

Julian Nebreda: Thank you, Lex. I would like to send and welcome to our investors, analysts, and employees participating on today’s call. I will provide a brief update on our business and then review progress on our strategic objectives. Ahmed will then give more details on our financial performance and outlook. Beginning on Slide 4 with the key highlights. I’m pleased to report that we are off to a good start for fiscal 2024 and continue to benefit from our robust energy storage market. In the first quarter, we recognized $364 million of revenue. Furthermore, we delivered our second consecutive quarter of double-digit gross margin. Our adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter was approximately negative $18 million, in line with our expectations and an improving from negative $26 million in the first Q of 2023.

Additionally, we recognized a record $1.1 billion of new orders. This is broken down by our solution business contracted 2.7 gigawatt hours. Our services business adding 2.3 gigawatt hours and our digital business adding 400 megawatt hours of new contracts. Furthermore, our signed contract backlog as of December 31st increased $800 million to $3.7 billion. The highest level in our history. Additionally, our pipeline increased $400 million to $13.4 billion which gives us confidence to achieve our growth goals in 2024 and beyond. Our service and digital businesses, which together represent our recurring revenue streams continue to gain traction. We ended the quarter with 3.3 gigawatts of service asset under management. Importantly, our deployed service attachment rate, which is based on our communitive active services contracts relative to our deployed storage remains above 90%.

We had a strong quarter in our digital business, adding 400 megawatts to our backlog. More importantly, our digital assets under management increased to 17 gigawatts as of December 31st, from 15.5 gigawatts at September 30th. In summary, our combined services and digital annual recurring revenue or ARR was approximately $64 million as of December 31st and is on track for our guidance of approximately $80 million by the end of fiscal year 2024. Turning to Slide 5, I’d like to discuss our progress on the five strategic objectives that guide our decisions and actions. They are also important markers for investors to monitor and measure our performance. First, on delivering profitable growth. This quarter, we continued to grow our backlog as we added $1.1 billion of projects that we expect to yield double digit gross margins.

Our discipline approach to offer competitive solutions to customers keeps us on track to deliver on our financial objectives. Second, we will continue to develop products and solutions that our customers need. As such, I’m pleased to report that we’re on track for our battery module manufacturing to begin production in the summer of 2024. Gradually ramping up over the subsequent quarters. This battery module manufacturing will enable us to provide a product that meets the U.S. domestic contact requirements for battery and e-storage, which I will touch on more in a moment. Third, to our scale and global outreach, we have established a supply change as one of our key strategic competitive advantage. Our diversity of suppliers is a key component of this and enables us to take advantage of favorable terms and battery price.

Which I will discuss in more detail shortly. Fourth, we will use Fluence Digital as a competitive differentiator and a margin driver. I am pleased to report that we have strong digital customer retention with 21 digital contracts renewed during the quarter and 0 customer attrition. And our fifth objective is to work better. I’m proud to state that in November, Fluence became an official signatory member of the UN Global Compact, ahead of the expected timeline outlined in our 2023 sustainability report. Turning to Slide 6. We continue to see strong growth in demand for utility scale and in storage systems. Over the past 12 months, we’ve seen lithium carbonate prices decline over 80%. This has in turn led to a decrease in battery prices, which has improved customer economics and allowed for more projects to be penciled in.

It has been reflected in the growth of our backlog, which now sits at a record level of $3.7 billion, which is an increase of approximately $800 million from the fourth quarter. This is also the ninth consecutive quarter in which we added more order intake to backlog than revenue that was recognized out of backlog further illustrating the growth in demand. Additionally, this $3.7 billion does not include some of our [Indiscernible] of the quarter, such as our 650-megawatt hour Mortlake project in Australia. More importantly, 100% of our backlog is at fixed battery prices with both suppliers and customers with no commodity price exposure, thus giving us strong visibility into revenue and margin for these projects. Additionally, approximately 80% of our fiscal 2024 revenue guidance midpoint is already covered by our current backlog attributable to fiscal 2024 plus revenue already recognizing the first quarter.

These two data points provide us with high confidence that we will be able to achieve our guidance ranges for revenue and adjusted EBITDA for fiscal 2024. Based on the conversations we’re having with our customers and potential customers, we’re expecting to see continued strong revenue growth in fiscal 2025 of approximately 35 to 40 from fiscal 2024. Our 2025 outlook is supported by our pipeline which sits at approximately $13.4 billion and grew $400 million from the last quarter. As we have communicated in prior calls, our expectations for pipeline conversion is at approximately 50% over the next 24 months. Turning to Slide 7. Over the past couple of years, we have taken major steps to diversify and improve the resilience of our supply change.

Our supply chain strategy centered around 4 key elements. The first is diversity of battery supplies. Currently, we utilize five battery suppliers located in China, South Korea, Sweden, and the United States. This ensures we have multiple geographies to pull from, which support our growth while mitigating disruptions. We will also note that building a stable and reliable U.S. supply chain is critical for the industry and as I will discuss, we are taking significant steps to establish a U.S. based supply change this year. Second, to capitalize on growing demand [Indiscernible], we have secured multiyear guarantee battery capacity from these suppliers. This covers our need for fiscal 2024 and fiscal 2025 and provides flexibility for upside in demand.

These capacity agreements are subject to market price adjustments. Additionally, we also use a price discovery mechanism involving multiple battery suppliers to ensure we are constantly delivering the most competitive prices to our customers. And finally, this capacity agreements come with minimal take or pay obligations. Third, to capture the incentives laid out by the IRA, we will be manufacturing our own battery models in the U.S., which represents two-thirds of our global business. It also enables us to introduce our proprietary battery management system. The software that runs the controls at the battery cell level and the initial point of control in a battery storage system. Additionally, it enables us to further commoditize our supply chain, by facilitating the integration of multiple battery vendors.

We’re currently on schedule for our battery module, manufacturing to begin this summer. In doing so, we expect to qualify for the domestic content tax credit on under section 45X. The fourth element of our strategy is an asset light regional supply chain. This involves using two major contract manufacturers system integration, one in Vietnam and one in Utah. We will look to continue to regionalize our asset light model in other areas such as Europe and India. This strategy provides us with enhanced flexibility and agility, particularly in scaling and positions Fluence for a high return on invested capital as we do not incur the capital costs associated with building or maintaining our own production facilities. When we look around the world, we’re using various shipping routes for our projects.

To that end, I would like to make a few comments in relation to the recent disruptions in the Red Sea. Only approximately 50% of our global shipments were expected to use the Red Sea route. The rerouting of these shipments adds around two weeks to our shipping schedule. That we have been able to accommodate without affecting customer delivery commitment. Finally, the incremental costs we’re experiencing in shipping, we are able to transfer to our customers in their entirety in accordance with our contracts. In any event, our logistics team is working very diligently to reduce as much as possible, this increases in costs. Overall, these four elements are the cornerstone of our supply chain strategy, which provides flexibility, competitiveness, and high certainty for our customers.

We will look to build on this as we continue to strengthen our global supply chain. Turning to Slide 8. We’re well positioned to recognize multiple benefits from the IRA, which is already boosting demand for energy storage. This benefit falls in two categories. Under the first category, our customers have the potential to receive up to a 50% tax credit for their project’s capital costs, which significantly improves project economics and attractiveness. These incentives to our customers include a base ITC or Investment Tax Credit, as well as bonus incentives for deploying in an energy community and using domestic content. The second category of incentives under the IRA includes those provisions that directly benefit Fluence. By producing battery models in the U.S., as I just discussed, we expect to qualify for our production tax credit of $10 per kilowatt hour of battery modules produced under Section 45X.

These two categories of incentives provide for our products to be more competitive and enables us to benefit from increased scale, more volumes and operating leverage. Turning to slide 9. I’m proud to report that in November, Fluence became an official signatory member of the United Nations Global Compact. Being accepted as a signatory member is an important step on our sustainability journey of building a strong ESG program based on a structure framework, data and active engagement. Fluence has joined more than 20,000 companies and organizations around the world that has signed the UN Global Company and are committed to responsible corporate citizenship and sustainability. We’re excited to collaborate with likeminded companies, non-governmental organizations, and other stakeholders to the global company network.

To exchange best practices and drive positive change. Now I would like to make a few remarks regarding the article publish in late December regarding the Diablo Project in California that highlighted a contract claim filed against us by the project owner, alleging that we did not have a valid construction license in California. This contract claim was filed in response to our claim for $37 million in non-pay amounts and related damages. As we have said already, we believe these contract claims are without merit. We intend to get paid on the projects. The legal proceedings are ongoing. In the meantime, I wanted to highlight that the Diablo Project is performing very well and has delivered availability or uptime above its contractual requirement during 2023.

In conclusion, I’m pleased with the achievements of the first quarter. Although we are mindful there’s still a work to be done, we will look to continue this momentum as we progress through 2024. I will now turn the call over to Ahmed.

Ahmed Pasha: Thank you, Julian, and good morning, everyone. Before we dive into the results, I am very pleased to be here at Fluence, and I would like to share my perspective on my first month at Fluence. On a macro level, Fluence is well positioned to capitalize on this once in a lifetime opportunity as energy storage benefit from declining input prices and an ever-increasing focus on grid stability. I have learned much about the company, the people and the culture. I have been impressed by the team’s laser focus on offering competitive solutions to customers, while adhering to a disciplined approach to growing our top and bottom lines. I am looking forward to maintaining this financial discipline and stewardship of our strong balance sheet while delivering attractive returns to our shareholders.

This morning, I will review our first quarter results and 2024 guidance, which we have reaffirmed across all metrics. Beginning with our first quarter 2024 results on Slide 11. We generated $364 million in revenue 70% of which was in the first in the U.S. and largely in line with our expectations. This was an increase of 17% from the first quarter last year. As we discussed on our previous quarterly call, we expect to realize 30% of fiscal 24 revenue in the first half and our first quarter results reflect this mix. Turning to adjusted gross profit. For the quarter, we generated approximately $38 million or an adjusted gross margin of approximately 10.5% versus 4.2% in the first quarter of last year. It also represents a second consecutive quarter in which we posted double digit gross margins.

Our operating expenses were $62 million in line with expectations and consistent with the first quarter of last year. Representing 17% of the quarterly revenue. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was negative $18 million, versus negative $26 million in the first quarter of last year. Negative adjusted EBITDA reflects our revenue weighting towards the second half and operating costs that are relatively flat on a quarterly basis, as I just discussed. Overall, we believe these results reflect our disciplined approach to grow our top line and improve our bottom line to deliver on our financial commitments. Turning Slide 12. I am pleased to report that we ended the 1st quarter with $477 million of cash. This represents an increase of $14 million, from the fourth quarter and is the third consecutive quarter that we increased our total cash position.

From a liquidity perspective, we are in excellent position to capitalize on the growing energy storage market. In addition to our cash position, we have access to approximately $130 million in credit facilities. This includes $75 million available under our recently signed $400 million asset backed lending facility or ABL facility. Availability in this ABL facility is dependent on the level of collateral available to secure, which is mostly our U.S. inventory. Thus, as our inventory balance increases, so should our borrowing capacity, which provides us another lever to manage our working capital needs. In summary, we have total liquidity of more than $600 million which is sufficient to meet our current business needs. Moving to Slide 13. As Julian noted, we are reaffirming our guidance for fiscal 2024 of revenue between $2.7 billion and $3.3 billion.

To that end, we have approximately 80% of the midpoint of our annual revenue guidance covered by our backlog plus revenue recognized in the first quarter. This provides us confidence that we are on the path to achieving our fiscal 2024 guidance range. From margin perspective, we continue to anticipate fiscal 2024 adjusted gross margins of between 10% and 12%, which is in line with our first quarter results. Additionally, we are reaffirming adjusted EBITDA guidance of $50 million to $80 million. Furthermore, we are on track to achieving ARR of approximately $80 million by the end of fiscal 2024. I would also remind that we continue to expect fiscal 2024 revenue split of 30% in the first half and 70% in the second half, which implies fiscal Q2 revenue of approximately $530 million.

For Q2, we expect adjusted EBITDA to be negative because annual operating costs have a more even rating by quarter than revenue. Consistent with our full year guidance, we expect second half 2024 adjusted EBITDA to improve significantly relative to the first half as we realized 70% of annual revenue during that time period. Finally, looking ahead to 2025, we continue to believe that we will achieve 35% to 40% year over year top line revenue growth, driven by our robust pipeline and record backlog of signed contracts. With that, let me turn the call back to Julian for his closing remarks.

Julian Nebreda: Thank you, Ahmed. Turning to slide 14 and in conclusion. I want to emphasize the key takeaways from this quarter results. First, we had a record setting order intake and a record backlog of $3.7 billion. We have locked in battery supply at fixed prices for all our projects in our backlog, thus providing us strong visibility to achieving our guidance. Second, we have a sustainable and resilient supply chain that is a key component of our competitiveness. Third, we are on track to begin our module manufacturing this summer. Together with our customers, we believe we are in a prime position to capitalize on various incentives under the IRA. Fourth, the falling battery price environment serves as a tailwind for us and it allows more energy storage projects to be pencil in by our customers.

All of these factors provide us confidence in our ability to successfully deliver on our fiscal 2024 and 2025 objectives. This concludes my prepared remarks, operator, we’re now ready to take questions.

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Q&A Session

Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions]. Our first question comes from the line of George Gianarikas with Canaccord Genuity. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Julian Nebreda: Good morning, George. How are you?

George Gianarikas: Good morning. I’m doing great. How about you?

Julian Nebreda: I am doing great.

George Gianarikas: Thanks for taking my question. So maybe just first, I’d like to ask about the orders, the $1.1 billion in orders. Can you help us understand sort of the geographic profile? And also, are those orders consistent with your gross margin profile of mid-teens over the long term?

Julian Nebreda: Yes. The geographic profile is in line with what we have said 2/3rd in the U.S. and one 1/3rd internationally. And they are, you know, at double digit margins for those – for that order intake. So in in line with what we have communicated to the market.

George Gianarikas: Right. And then, just as a follow-up here, as you look at, the M& A landscape, you know, we talked about, Wärtsilä in the past, they’re still undergoing their strategic review. Do you feel compelled at all to change the profile of Fluence you have a nice cash balance and if you look across the landscape, are you looking to potentially expand footprints for your software profile by making acquisitions? Thank you.

Julian Nebreda: No. Yeah. So we have said we we’re very – we’re very happy with our corporate business position, you know, in terms of strong – very, very strong sales channel and, you know, you can see it not only in our backlog, but also in our pipeline. Our technology, we have a very clear road map that is going well, and we’re very happy with and so, generally, I don’t see any need for acquisitions at this stage and we’re not looking at any. We’re clearly in the market to be sure to understand what the – how the environment looks, but there’s no need to any acquisitions in any of you know, to support any of our business structure at this stage.

Operator: Our next question is going to come from the line of Brian Lee with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Brian Lee: Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking the questions. I had two, sort of numbers related. First on legacy backlog, I think entering the year, you guys had talked about something like $150 million of still low margin, no margin legacy backlog you needed to work off this year. And I believe most of it was going to get deployed in Q1. So if that’s right, It implies the gross margins on the non-legacy business was mid to the high teens or something in that range since you reported 10.5% for the quarter. So I guess wondering if that’s right, if the backlog of legacy is all gone? And then how do you how should we be thinking about gross margin for the rest of the year given the it higher level for the non-legacy stuff? It seems like the 10% to 12% annual guide for gross margin seems a bit conservative.

Julian Nebreda: All the legacy has, you know, it it’s now gone. You know? For the actual number for the first quarter or the legacy contracts that we had in the or that we recognized revenue in the first quarter closer to $50 million not a $150 million. So I’ll give, you know, I think that we are in line with our 10 to 12, margins that we that we communicated for the year. And this this quarter proves that if you take into account the $50 million of legacy contract, which are essentially roughly breakeven. So but you’re at no more legacy going forward, and the actual number for this quarter was $50 million.

Brian Lee: Okay. That that’s fair. It seems like you’re, you’re sort of, closer to the mid-teens, but, still within that range. Understood and then there’s been a lot of questions Julian about lower battery prices, as we see what’s happening with lithium carbonate. I think you made a comment on slide 12 or 13 that your fiscal 2024 battery supply and prices are locked in. So does that mean I know, you know, there’s the index-based adjustments for your customers. Is there anything in your, I guess, fiscal 2024 backlog to be deployed that can still get adjusted on price, or is that all for future you know, outside of fiscal 2024, backlog that maybe still has some of those index linked adjustments that could take place. I’m just trying to understand how locked and loaded the backlog dollar value is for this year versus, you know, what potentially could maybe move around next year if battery prices keep going lower?

Julian Nebreda: Got good. So let me walk you through where we are. So we use RMI as you know. So as far, that’s an important part of how we manage our risk. The RMI supports our projects from the time we start negotiating with our customers to the point when we issue the purchase or know, when we buy the batteries and we make a down payment to our battery suppliers and get an actual commitment from the battery suppliers. So what do we have in our backlog today? So what we have said, what we have, you know, what we have in our backlog is that we had fixed all our battery prices in in all our backlog, all of it, you know, the $3.8 million. We already fixed it with our suppliers, and with our customers. So our current backlog does not have any commodity risk on either direction.

Any exposure to the suppliers moving up or down or the customer moving up or down. That means that for 2024, as we had said, also 80% of our revenue for 2024 is already in our backlog. So though that 80% is very much already fixed and you know battery prices will not move that 80%., however, we have 20% to hold, 20% that it will be subject to contracts that are in very late stage of negotiation that will be coming in the next couple of months and where the current offers we have outside or what we are negotiating with our customers is based on current price. So, you know, we feel very, very comfortable that, you know, and secured that we will meet our guide, you know, our guidance for the year. And then that gives us 2025, you know, that gives you 2025 in front of us.

And we have roughly a $1.5 billion of revenue of 2025 already in our backlog, that billion is roughly 40% of next year’s, you know, implied guidance which I have given you, that is already in our backlog, and it’s already also fixed. So when you looked at, you know, if you looked at it from a from a, you know, from the upside, 80% already in the backlog fixed, 20% for 2024, 20% subject to no contract, which are already very late stage on negotiations. We feel very confident which reflect current battery prices, and we feel very confident and as I said, It feels very, very confident that we’ll meet our numbers, we’re negotiating the numbers, we’re talking to our customers, we know where we are. Those will support our 2024 revenue guidance. And then for 2025, we’re still nearly working on this, 40% is already in the books.

The 60% to go. When we looked at, and then you can say, why do you feel confident about it? Looked at our pipeline. If you looked at our pipeline, I’m sorry for the long answer, maybe, If you look at our pipeline, we grew our pipeline by $400 million what that means that the $1.1 billion we converted from our pipeline to, to backlog, we also cover So in reality, our pipe we brought in into our pipeline, our current price is $1.5 billion of new contracts. So it gives us you know, very, very clear in one quarter that, you know, the demand we’re seeing in the market, the interest that is coming to this, the how much, you know, investors, customers, regulators feel comfortable with our technology, makes us, you know, very confident that we will meet the, you know, our commitments for 2425.

And I all do understand that it sometimes, you know, the financial markets are concerned about the potential downward pressure on revenue of battery prices. But maybe, this is a tremendous headwind for this industry. The elasticity of the money is tremendous, and that provides for a significant uptick in demand that significantly covers the potential downside of our that, you know, revenue prices. So, you know, very, very confident 2024, 80% on it already fixed. Clear line of sight within, you know, shooting range to use a, army, a concept and for 2024, for the other 20% and 40% in the book, 60% to go, and with tremendous pipeline coming in that will feel that we’ll more than cover all our problems, you know, all challenges.

Brian Lee: Alright. That’s great. I appreciate all that.

Julian Nebreda: Sorry for the very long answer, Brain.

Brian Lee: No, crystal clear. I think I got the message crystal clear. Thanks a lot guys. I appreciate it.

Operator: Thank you. And one moment as we move on to our next question. Our next question is going to come from the line of Christine Cho with Barclays. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Christine Cho: Good morning. Thank you for taking the question. I just wanted a clarification question on the backlog. As I understood it, if the customer had not issued notice proceed, but had booked, that was still subject to move and it sounded like you locked everything in as for the backlog that, as it stands today. But as you get incremental bookings, should we think that on a go forward basis, all of that will be locked in when it enters your backlog as well. Or same thing, you know, it’s subject to move until they issue notice to proceed?

Julian Nebreda: Yeah. Very good point. As I said, the RMI covers from the point we start negotiating with the customer to the point that the purchase order is issued, which is usually at the point of notice to proceed. So the new order intake that we will get, there will be a point between the moment we sign the contract to the point we issued a notice to proceed that where that where that, you know, where that potential risk is. However, what we have seen and what we cannot show you this time is that that time frame has collapsed significantly and that we are now issuing notice to proceed very close in most cases, very close to the point at which, we are, we’re signing the contract. So, you know, I will say that generally, the reefer item in our backlog will continue to be a small number as we move forward.

They might be one or two projects that come in where the customer wants to wait a little bit and maybe that that will happen but in general, I think most of the contracts we are signing the customer’s one secure batteries immediately, take advantage of the good price and move forward.

Christine Cho: Okay, got it. And then can you give us an idea of how much of your backlog has EPC services tied to it, maybe percentage of the contracted volumes and as demand goes up, should we think that this number, this percentage number moves up down consistent, with incremental bookings, and sorry, how different are the ASPs and margins today for new orders if you provide the EPC versus not?

Julian Nebreda: Yeah. The EPC are roughly around 30% and it’s very much market and project dependent, so we have this give you a sense. All our transmission projects, our UltraStack projects are EPC, very complex projects that require significant coordination between all the elements of that. Those are EPCs. So, you know, Australia is a market for EPC. The U.S. is less. So it depends a little bit where we’re working. As we see, we’re clearly working on improving continue moving forward in our UltraStack project, Australia as a market that we’re very excited with. You might see that as we bring more, Australia and UltraStack projects, those will be those will be EPC. But generally, if you want to model this going forward, I think with the 30% is a good proxy.

For it, as I said, it depends a little bit on the complexity of the projects and the markets we’re working on and in terms of returns, I mean, I think that within the 10% to 15%. They’ll not change clearly. The more complex projects where we take more risks are closer to the upper band, as we have always said, and the ones that simpler and less of a problem around the low lower side of that band, but and generally, you’ll see that most of the EPC projects are more complex, but, you know, I wouldn’t necessarily, it doesn’t take us out of the range of 10 to 15.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Justin Clare with Roth MKM. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Justin Clare: Good morning. Thanks for taking our questions here. So first, I wanted to ask about the demand that you’re seeing for batteries that would meet the domestic content requirements and have you signed contracts at this point for those domestic batteries and then is it possible to give us a sense for what the uplift in pricing might be? And then do you see potential for a margin uplift given that you’re going to be one of the first to supply domestically produced batteries. Could you get out of that 10% to 15% range?

Julian Nebreda: A strong demand. I’ll say that not only will our current customers, we’re also attracting new customers that have are talking to John, our America’s CEO or President. We see a lot of people interested in understanding and getting in. So that’s the first thing. Very strong demand. In terms of, margins. So we have said that, kind of what you implied, we believe we have a first mover advantage here and that that first mover advantage that you allow us to capture some additional margin. However, you know, it’s this is early in the game. We’re still negotiating with our customers, we have to wait. If I tell you here a number, my customers will use it against me. So, we are we are we’re working with our customers to sure that they can meet the higher returns, and then we can capture some additional margin because they’re doing much better than anybody else on those projects and that’s what we’re working with them on.

As these things settles down, and we see those projects and those contracts coming in and our customers secure about the returns are getting. I think we will communicate to you what potential upside we might get, but for now, I prefer not to talk about it. And then to up to date, we have not signed any domestic content contracts, even though they are very, very late stage. Just to give you a point, which I think is important, the domestic content projects are 2025 revenue. They’re not going to be supporting 2024 revenue. Our supply, our model manufacturer starts in in in the summer and then it will pick up during the quarter, and we will start receiving domestic manufacturer batteries in the last quarter of this year but we’ll need to integrate them and then move them into a, it delivered to our customer.

So we won’t see any revenue in this year from domestic content.

Justin Clare: Got it. Okay. And then just following up on that, just wondering how much of your Utah manufacturing capacity could be supplied with domestically produced cells given your agreement with AESC. Could you fully utilize that facility to produce, you know, domestic content or domestic cells that meet the requirements. How are you thinking about that?

Julian Nebreda: That that’s the idea that we will have, we could freely utilize our current capacity and I think we have communicated to you that capacity can be easily doubled if we need to.

Operator: Our next question is going to come from the line of Andrew Crocco with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Andrew Crocco: Good morning. Thanks so much for taking the question. I did just want to go back to some of your commentary on the Red Sea, sounds like you haven’t seen an impact to margins from the freight rates yet, but I’m just curious, do all of your contracts, kind of exposed to the Red Sea have freight adjusters or could there be some potential margin risk if freight rates don’t come back down?

Julian Nebreda: All our contracts, irrespective of them going through the Red Sea or any other route, freight adjustments, logistic adjustments, all these costs are passed on. So, we should not see any effect on our margins coming out of the Red Sea issues.

Andrew Crocco: Okay. That’s super helpful. And then my second question is a little bit more sematic but there’s been a lot of attention paid to AI data center power needs and it’s a big theme right now. And I think the view is energy storage is a pretty critical component when thinking about powering that load with reliable clean electricity. So can you maybe just provide some insights into your conversations that you’re having with maybe some of these customers and what the timeline might look like for Fluence for this opportunity?

Julian Nebreda: I mean, yeah, this is something we have looked at. We work with Google on a project. However, to be very sincere today, we’re so busy with utility scale projects that we are not – we haven’t really worked a lot on it recently. But we did have a project to test it with them. It went well but it’s something that we have not actually, in the recent quarters, something that we have not worked on. One of those opportunities were going to a point on battery cost reductions where these lowering of prices will start making these projects very attractive. It will make it a lot more attractive than what they were when we looked at it, I think, roughly a year ago. So I think this is kind of the type of things that that when we talked about the on demand elasticity.

Sorry for that, that you come that comes in. And it becomes this one off. You know, you, you put the price sets a point and turn, you turn the lights on and all this demand comes in those exist. And that’s a kind of my point to all of you on the tremendous head with – tremendous, tremendous tailwind of battery prices in our technology and how business cases start getting being pencil in and it becomes very, very attractive.

Andrew Crocco: Got it. That’s helpful. And I guess maybe just one more follow-up on that. When you had that pilot project or you did that demonstration with Google, was there anything on the software side or battery chemistry side that they were looking for to be changed versus your traditional utility customer?

Rebecca Boll: On the battery side, no, the chemistry same, the physical delivery of the product was the same based on the size of what we’re delivering for Google. There were some changes on the software side for the application space that that was working.

Operator: Our next question is going to come from the line of Julien Dumoulin-Smith Bank of America. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Julien Dumoulin-Smith: Good morning, Julian. Team, good. Congrats again. I’m just coming back to the top of the Q&A roster here on the gross margin piece, I just want to come back to this a little bit. I mean, you guys obviously have this 10 to 15 and then 10 to 12 here in the near term. Starting off the year the way that you did with revenues really poised to scale through the year, again, I get there’s not an OpEx operating leverage piece here, but I mean to what extent can we expand to expect those gross margins to scale as revenues and the size of these projects conceivably continue to expand into the bulk of the year here? I mean, is there an argument to be trending higher within even that 10 to 12 range?

Ahmed Pasha: Julian, thanks for your complements. I think in terms of the gross margin, I think our, guidance was 10% to 12%. I think we feel pretty good about that range going through rest of the year. So I think it will be north of where we had realized in the first quarter, but I think we feel pretty good where, we will end up in terms of our range for the full year.

Julien Dumoulin-Smith: Got it. Excellent. And then, Julian, you mentioned this earlier on the domestic content. Your ability to potentially, I think, you said something like double AESC contributions here potentially if need be. I mean, just looking at the trade backdrop here, can you comment a little bit about like what the your ability to pivot is depending on any future shift in trade policy landscape here. I’m really curious about your ability shift even more so back to domestic product, especially if the ESS market demands it, what is your ability to bring that to market as you think about providing further disclosures to the year in scaling up, if you will.

Julian Nebreda: Yeah. I mean, this is a 2025 issue more than 2024. This line will come back will come online, or if these cells were coming up online, we are working with our suppliers to ensure that we have access to their additional demand – to additional production capabilities, and have a first right of refusal on the production that we move forward. This is a multiyear contract. So, this is what I can tell you. We haven’t really disclosed the volumes and stuff that we’re working with. But the way we, envision this project is a long-term relationship where we are able to take advantage of their increasing production as it continues moving forward. That’s the way I will put. So in case, I guess your questions indirectly, maybe I’m sorry that I’m implying is that what happens is that trade issues and then this production becomes even more value.

We, you know, we believe that we are putting to that into consideration the way we, at least for a period of time, to be able to scale up if this becomes a lot more attractive than what it is today due to potential trade disruptions.

Julien Dumoulin-Smith: Right. And your point is the 10% to 15% as it stands today, there’s fundamentally sort of upside as you disclose what that domestic content, sort of ASP is.

Julian Nebreda: That’s right. That’s our current view. We’ll talk more as we move forward and we sign these contracts and the competitive environment settles. But essentially, just going back, it is, our customers need to feel comfortable with their business cases. That they can capture more than what they usually capture and that we will capture part of what they that upside that we’re giving them. So that that’s kind of how all this works out. And we’re working with them on that process. And as soon as that settles down in a way that we’re comfortable is the way it’s going to work for a period of time. We’ll communicate to the financial markets what it what it is.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Kashy Harrison with Piper Sandler. Your line is open.

Kashy Harrison: First question is for 2024 guidance. You indicated that you have 80% already locked in and you should be able to 100% shortly, but I was just wondering if you could give a sense of how of where you were at this point last year, were you 80% booked last year as well, or were you 100% booked at this point for the prior year. And then just in general, how should we conceptually think about the amount of revenues that can be booked and captured within a year.

Julian Nebreda: Yeah. So last year, if you looked at our order, what we had in the backlog last year at the end of the first quarter, compare against where we ended in revenue, not where we were guiding. As you remember, we guided up over the years, so that gives a little bit of I’ll get we were roughly at 90%. So 90% of our revenue for 2023 was in our backlog, at this stage. So we’re a little bit behind compared to last year from that point of view. However, you know, looking at the late stage of development of our contracts and how we’re going to, – how we’re going to how we’re going – where these contracts are we have very, very high confidence that we will be able to secure the contracts we need to meet our guidance. That’s the way it is and that’s it. We feel very, very good. We have there are several contracts. They’re all we’re very positive in all of them, and it should allow us to be at a point that we’ll meet our guidance for the year.

Ahmed Pasha: Yes, Kashy, this is Ahmed. And I think your second part of your question was on the profile for rest of the year. I think as I discussed in my comments, you know, I mean, 70% of our revenue – annual revenue is in the second half. And it’s more back end loaded, but that is frankly all, based on our current contracts that we have, which are when we execute, it’s a timing when we are delivering those contracts. So it’s more driven by the timing of the projects that we have in our pipeline or backlog.

Kashy Harrison: Thanks for both of those responses. And my follow-up question is just around the order intake. You know, $1.1 billion clearly very impressive. If we look at last year in the prior year, it seems like your order – there was some type of order seasonality where the second quarter orders look about the same as the first quarter, then you have like a dip into 3Q and then somewhat of a recovery into 4Q. Is that directionally how we should, without giving, you know, super explicit order guidance, I’m just wondering if that’s how we should think about seasonality for orders in your in your business moving forward?

Julian Nebreda: I mean, if you look back every year it is very different. So I don’t think there is a strong seasonality in our order intake. So it moves around. So, it’s more of how things worked out and something that can be signed on December 15 or January 15 is quite nothing to do with season. It’s more of whether people want to take vacation to give you a sense of this quarter. We are cannot give you a view on seasonality product orders.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Mark Strouse with JP Morgan. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Mark Strouse: Good morning, everybody. Thanks for taking our questions. I appreciate the color that you were giving earlier about no margin risk from changes in pricing because your contracts with your suppliers and your customers are locked in. Can you talk about the ability though of our customers to potentially cancel in order? I mean, especially if pricing goes lower enough, and if so, can you kind of give us what your average deposits that you’re collecting on those on those contracts? And then on the other side, do you then have the ability to turn around and cancel any orders with suppliers?

Julian Nebreda: Yeah, what we’re bringing our back log, our binding contracts that the customer cannot get out with making us hold on any on any cancellation. To this day, we have never seen a cancellation of our contract in our backlog. There’s a reason for it. We are very, very strict of what comes in. Even though we have contracts that we have signed, which are not in our backlog until they meet the conditions to ensure that the if there’s a cancellation, everybody’s covered. So, you know, haven’t seen a cancellation. Nobody has turned down. So that’s never been a risk and the contract will make it difficult for the customer to get out if they – if they will have significant financial penalties to ensure they meet and make us whole. But as I said, that has never happened. And your second question, sorry, can you mind reminding me?

Mark Strouse: Well, maybe it’s not a risk now, but, the second question was if your customer canceled on you, would you have the ability to cancel with your suppliers?

Julian Nebreda: Yeah. I mean, we put purchase orders. We’ll have penalties if we cancel with our suppliers. But as I said, our customers will more compensate for that. So that’s the way we should be.

Ahmed Pasha: So the only thing I would add to that is Mark. I think our con when we sign the contract, our counterparties sign the contract at the price that makes sense for them at that time. So they look into – take into account the economics of the project. So I think that is what really drives their decision to continue. And then they make advanced payments, because we generally get anywhere from 10% to 30% advanced payments. And I think those are the things and, that, you have to take into account I think, but overall, as, Julian mentioned, you know, we have never seen any contract getting canceled for the same reasons.

Mark Strouse: Yeah. That makes sense. Okay. Thank you both. One quick follow-up, Ahmed. On the last call, Manu gave some color about the timing of down payments to AESC. Was there any update there? I’m sorry if I just?

Ahmed Pasha: No, nothing changed. I think we basically are on track. No, nothing to report beyond what we discussed.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Thomas Curran with Seaport Research Partners. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Thomas Curran: Good morning. So under the EU climate law, the European Commission is working on an updated version of its National Energy and Climate Plan that will establish decarbonization targets for 2040. Between an early draft that leaked into the media and then a subsequent official communication, the commission has proposed a target for the power gen mix of 90% renewables complemented by nuclear and referred to grid scale energy storage as a key element in their words for achieving that. You know, this news following last year’s adoption of accelerated permitting for standalone storage suggests the EU really is placing increasing emphasis on storage support when it comes to policy. What are you guys most excited about? That either is gestating and it seems to have good odds of becoming part of law or a new rule or incentive. What are you most excited about that you have visibility on over either this year or let’s say by the end of fiscal 2025?

Julian Nebreda: I’ll tell you what, the things we have seen in the last quarters clearly demand is very strong. Also, I don’t know if you saw the announcements, supply chain moving into Germany or into Europe, let’s put it, Northwell announcing a big factory in Germany other players announcing factors all around Europe. So our localization of supply chain coming out with a better environment for it. So good – that’s a good sign. And then our pipeline moving very strongly. Especially Germany becoming a cost to a market that’s very active. The UK has always been market, but then markets that have not been that active now becoming more, Italy came out with a 6-hour capacity. They’re few things happening around that makes us very, very excited.

I would tell you if you ask me what I’m excited about, all of the above, everything. I’m excited about the fact that we have the supply chain starting in see good, the fact so that we believe that the realization supply chain, so that’s great. And now there’s a lot more players and regulators supporting the regulator – supporting it, so great. We see these changes in Italy and in some of the Nordic Countries as well and then a lot of customers in German, in the UK that we have been working on contacting us to move forward. So All of the above, I will say, Europe is a fertile ground for battery storage.

Thomas Curran: That’s helpful. It makes sense. And then Ahmed, on the balance sheet, you saw a big sequential increase inventory, which more than doubled to $564 million. Given the steep ramp in shipment and installation activity that you’re preparing for as part of recognizing roughly 70% of fiscal 2024 revenue over the second half, I suppose that is at least partly self-explanatory, but could you just expound on that inventory surge and then give us an idea of how working capital as a source or use of CFFO should evolve quarter by quarter over fiscal 2024?

Ahmed Pasha: So, sure. I think in terms of yes, you’re right. I think our inventory balance has increased by a couple of $100 million. I mean, this year – I think this quarter and that is primarily, I think, as we are ramping up our growth in revenue, because as I discussed, I mean, our revenue next quarter – second quarter will be about $550 million. So that inventory balance is largely, I think, is will be deployed to serve our – or recognize our revenue in Q2. In terms of where capital needs, I think we discussed on our Q4 call, I think, in 2024, there will be, I think, about $100 million or so of additional capital needs. But that is part of the plan. I think, that we will be funding through our, existing liquidity. So nothing changed from that perspective, what we discussed, Q4 call feel pretty good, given our liquidity is north of $600 million, so we can manage any short term working capital needs if we have to.

Operator: Our last question is going to come from the line of Ben Kallo with Robert W. Baird. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Ben Kallo: Hey, thanks for fitting me in guys. Just two quick ones. First, maybe this relates to those to proceed, but could you talk about any risk in project or sales timing based on interconnection delays or shortage of electricians or labor shortages? And then my second question is just your appetite for offering your software to other battery providers, whether lithium ion or other types of storage providers?

Julian Nebreda: In terms of the rates of the of the of the delays is interconnection. Essentially, it is acute problem in the U.S. less of a problem generally, you know, in in the other market. It’s important to make that point. The second one is that what we have in our backlog already has, the queue has been resolved our customer has a clear line of sight of when they’re going to connect what they need to do and by when. So, you know, there could be delays, but the delays are usually weeks because you know, something didn’t get to a sign on time or, you know, things like that. So not the delays we talked about. So generally, I would say that our backlog is the risk on transmission delays in general, except for more of a civil war step type of delays.

Then you do see clearly our pipeline – the our ability to convert our pipeline into backlog, it is subject to our customers. In the U.S. insurance that they can get on the queue and get those problems resolved. Just see what happened this quarter, you know, we are not seeing a significantly – when we look – when we build a pipeline, we set days when we see the projects are going to be, I see, our projects that we believe they’re going to be able to sign them. And we haven’t seen a significant delays of that in any way affect our results or ability to meet our financial metrics, our projects, Here are the ones that surprise you by how fast they move and ones that surprise you because they’re a little late, but I’ll say in when you put them in balance they’re generally not the same.

In terms of digital solutions, I think I I will have to make to – we have – our operating – our BMS, our operating systems, which are integral to our, you know, our hardware solutions. And those are not that we’re not going to sell that to anybody. We’re not we don’t offer to third parties. This is ours. We use it for ourselves, and it makes us different. And it’s one of our competitive barriers and our competitive capacity. However, we do have our Fluence Digital offering, our Mosaic offering, which is a billing app, an hourly spare offer, which is a performance management tool. Those we do sell to third party- to 3rd party technology. So there are competitors of us who, their owners of their technology prefers to use our billing app and prefer to use our performance management tools.

Rather than whatever the other competitor is offering. But I’ll say that only on those two points. On the OS, and on the operating system. And the BMS, it is integral to what we do, and we don’t offer that to anyone else.

Operator: Thank you. And I would now like to hand the conference back over to Julian for any further remarks.

Julian Nebreda: Great. Well, Thank you so much, everybody, for your interest and questions. And we had a great quarter, great order intake, revenue we knew from, you know, that in line with what we expected. Well, this is what kind of in line with what we were going. I think an important point and something that you all brought to me last year that, as a main point is, you know, the double digit, gross margins, this was the main discussion during 2023, whether we were going to be able to do it. Now we have two quarters of bringing double digit gross margins think this is a this is the basis of which as we ramp up on revenue, the basis of which we will be able to become, you know, to reach profitability for this quarter again. So we’re very confident on our 2024 guidance and our ability to meet our, $3 billion middle of the range, earnings, revenue, guideline, and a are 50 to 80 in terms of, adjusted So very happy for what’s going on. Thank you so much and talk to you.

Operator: Thank you. [Operator Closing Remarks].