Orion Energy Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:OESX) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Alex Rygiel: Thank you. Good morning, gentlemen.

Per Brodin: Good morning Alex.

Alex Rygiel: A couple of quick questions here, first G&A expense stepped up. Can you discuss this a little bit more? And is this the new sort of normal dollar level run rate that we should be modeling going forward?

Per Brodin: I’d say, it’s at a pretty normalized level understanding that, they’re included in the amount is $1.1 million of earn-out we would expect that will continue but that’s clearly unrelated to just the operations but based on the nature of the agreement it’s recorded through G&A.

Alex Rygiel: Helpful. And then, as it relates to Voltrek, can you just quantify the pipeline that they have today? And how that compares to maybe when you acquired them?

Mike Jenkins: The pipeline is as I mentioned it’s over double what it was. We’re looking at a pipeline that’s significantly growing. It’s – today, it’s going to be over $30 million and growing. So we’re very confident that we’ll be able to drive significant growth this year.

Per Brodin: Just to clarify that is total opportunities, that is pipeline not what we disclose as backlog.

Mike Jenkins: That’s correct. Yeah.

John Brodin: Those are opportunities. You’ll see in the 10-Q that our pipeline sits at $19 million total company — I’m sorry, now I’m getting a backlog at the end of Q1 is $19 million.

Alex Rygiel: That is helpful. And then regarding the $10 million LED retrofit in Europe was the — was there an abnormal amount of sort of front-end expenses that may be weighed on you in the fiscal first quarter that will obviously sort of be more of a tailwind moving forward?

Per Brodin: There’s some of that. I’m not sure, I’d call it significant. But if you think about the project we had prep work that we did back in fiscal 2023. And if you saw in the 10-K there was approximately 200,000 recognized for that contract in Q4 of 2023 we have no revenue associated with that contract in Q1, although we did have activity doing the final prep work and getting people in place. And then as we disclosed in the release last week the true installation activity began in July. So the rest of that revenue will get recognized here between July and March of next year. And there — there’s always some inherent — there’s just always some inherent say costs that don’t line up with associated revenue such as the auditing we do and some of the design work. So it’s tough to put a true number on that, Alex.

Alex Rygiel: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Shapiro with Lawndale Capital Management. Your line is now open.

Andrew Shapiro: Thank you. Good morning, guys. Yeah, the link wasn’t working, so I was a little late to your prepared comments. So please forgive, if my questions touched on something that was in your script. But two areas of questions, first on the maintenance and service sub-segment about what portion of this sub-segment business is with fixed pricing that carry the risk of declining and in some instances it appears negative margin?

Mike Jenkins: Well, a substantial piece of the overall maintenance business is contracted and therefore has defined rates for various types of things, whether they be preventative or reactive. We did mention in the call that, those contracted rates have been fixed in place. A lot of those with our acquisition from Staylight, and these typically are three-year incremental contracts. So some of those have been fixed for periods of three some longer, due to some of the inflationary pressures that we’ve seen primarily with subcontractors we have initiated price increases throughout the network to the contracts that require that to be profitable.

Andrew Shapiro: But on legacy — yes, go on.