Fluence Corporation Ltd

ASX:FLC

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Fluence Corporation Q1 FY 2025 Results. [Operator Instruction]

I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Tom Pokorsky, CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much. Hello, everyone and welcome and thank you for taking the time to join us for our Fluence Q1 2025 Results and Business Update Call. As the moderator said, I am Tom Pokorsky, CEO and MD of Fluence. And presenting with me today is Ben Fash, our CFO.

As usual, I will give a brief update and commentary on the quarter, and then I'll turn it over to Ben for detailed comments on the financials and finally, we will address your questions.

I think to start off, I want to say the key takeaway for this quarter is everything is pretty much on plan for the year. The first quarter financials are on plan. As always, first quarter is generally the slowest quarter of the year in the water business, and it's that case this year, but it's not as slow as it's been in previous years.

Unlike past years, we did get a better start this year, and that was because of 2 things: one, because of a reasonable backlog at year-end of newer projects and the Ivory Coast project was not stalled as it was last year. Ben will go through some of the details. But in general, the plan we had is going forward as we anticipated.

Our revenue for the quarter was just under USD 17 million, which was about $6.5 million higher than Q1 of 2024. Our EBITDA was slightly positive and $1.6 million higher than Q1 of 2024. Our gross margin was in line with the budget, but lower than last year due to the significant Q1 revenue from our lower-margin Ivory Coast Addendum project, which we anticipated.

We also continued to keep driving savings in our SG&A. And while we were under budget in SG&A, we were also lower than Q1 of 2024 by about $750,000. Again, our cost savings and our restructure are continuing to pay off. For the quarter, we had about $12-plus million of new orders, which is 22% higher than last year, but honestly, a bit behind our plan. We had expected to get more orders in.

However, in the last several weeks, as is always the case, when you hit the end of the quarter, the paperwork comes in a week later, we have been given orders or verbal commitments for finalizing orders for over $8 million of additional projects. So if you add that to the early first quarter, we had a pretty decent one.

As of the end of March, our backlog stood at about $83.5 million with the forecasted shippable backlog plus revenue year-to-date making up 77% of our annual forecast for the year. The additional $8 million of orders we're collecting after the end of the quarter only brings us that much closer to our target for the year.

The growth of these new orders are all coming from SPS and recurring revenue from the business unit where we emphasize we are going to continue to grow. So while we are not replacing the large Ivory Coast work with large contracts, we are replacing with smaller orders with much higher margin.

I will let Ben -- the cash flow was reasonable for the quarter. I'll let Ben go through that in a little more detail. But as in every year, there always are surprises like we had last year with Ivory Coast being stalled. The first quarter, the reason it's on plan is that we had little or no surprises in the first quarter, which is good news. However, one surprise for the year that is building up right now is the issue regarding tariffs and trade negotiations being pushed by the current U.S. administration.

Investors in all businesses around the world are concerned. And for that reason, we thought we would update you on our situation with the tariffs. The short-term effect of any of these tariff issues will be related to certain U.S. projects where we're shipping product from our other manufacturing sites around the world.

We -- but when we look at the potential impact, we are only seeing about $8 million worth of projects or less than 10% of our yearly forecast that would fall into the category of being potentially disrupted by these tariffs. This is made up of work primarily in our Municipal Water & Wastewater group in North America and a few projects that our Industrial Wastewater & Biogas group has in America.

Not all of the work will be significantly affected. But we are looking at steps to mitigate any possible margin erosion caused by higher tariffs on cost of goods we bring into the U.S. from other countries. The biggest single issue, of course, will be anything we build in China and bring in the U.S. because China appears to be the area where it's continually unclear what's going to happen with the tariffs.

In order to reduce the risk, we will be doing some changing of where we manufacture certain parts, maybe adding components in a different country before we bring it into the U.S. We have a number of options on the table to do it, and it should mitigate a significant amount of the potential headwind that these tariffs could cause.

Having said that, this does take a little extra time, and we would expect some of this work be delayed a bit within the calendar year. In other words, if we were going to ship it in Q2, it might be Q3 or Q4. So some of the breakdown of the quarterly revenues may be adjusted a bit. But we, at this point, do not foresee a significant amount being pushed out into next year.

So all in all, there is going to be a bit of margin erosion on a few orders for shipping into the U.S. but not a material amount for the year that we would anticipate at this time. We will keep you posted on that, however. And we're working hard to mitigate everything regarding that.

So when we look at the quarter, we look at our backlog, which is robust and the issues on the table like the tariffs, we still see our way clear to maintain our guidance for the year.

And with that, I will turn it over to Ben to talk some of the details behind the numbers and perhaps comment a little more on the cash flow. Ben?

Yes. Thank you, Tom. Good morning, everyone. As always, I'm pleased to present the 2025 first quarter financial and operating update on behalf of Fluence.

I encourage everyone to take a look at our quarterly business update, which was just filed this morning. And Q1, as Tom talked about, was a solid first quarter overall. Revenue was in line with expectations, coming in at $16.6 million. That was almost 65% higher than Q1 of 2024. And while SPS plus recurring revenue continued to show strong growth of 13.4%, the biggest contribution was from the Ivory Coast Addendum project, which was $5.3 million higher than Q1 of 2024.

As we've mentioned previously and Tom mentioned earlier, the first quarter has historically been slower for the company with Q3 and Q4 typically being the strongest. This trend is expected again in fiscal 2025. So revenue for Q2 through Q4 of 2025 is expected to show solid growth relative to Q1 and continue to get better over the course of the year.

As a result of the growth in revenue in Q1, EBITDA was just above breakeven at $0.1 million, an increase of $1.6 million compared to the prior year. In addition to the revenue growth the company experienced in Q1 of 2025, we were also able to reduce our cost by about $750,000, as Tom noted. And that obviously contributed positively to the quarterly EBITDA.

Q1 2025 revenue and EBITDA increased across all business units other than our Industrial Water & Reuse business and our Southeast Asia and China business unit. Industrial Wastewater & Biogas led the way with an EBITDA increase of $0.7 million on strong revenue growth of over $2 million. The Ivory Coast Addendum project obviously had a strong contributing factor as well with $0.6 million of EBITDA compared to a loss of about $100,000 in Q1 of 2024.

Lastly, our Municipal business unit saw revenue growth of about $700,000, while EBITDA was effectively flat due to some large onetime chemical sales on the new Mansoura project as well as some onetime reversals both in Q1 of 2024. 

New orders in Q1 2025 also showed substantial growth of over 20% compared to the same quarter last year, with Municipal, Industrial Water & Reuse and our Industrial Wastewater & Biogas business units combining for growth of 18.9%. Additionally, Industrial Water & Reuse and Industrial Wastewater & Biogas have an additional $8 million in verbal orders, which, of course, are not guaranteed, but are expected to be booked in the next few weeks.

Backlog currently sits at $83.5 million, and our core Municipal, Industrial Water & Reuse and Industrial Wastewater & Biogas business units have seen backlog growth of over $6 million or almost 24% since Q1 of 2024. So as Tom mentioned, as a result of the strong revenue, the order growth, the lower SG&A and R&D fixed costs across the company, we are maintaining our 2025 guidance of $80 million to $95 million of revenue and $3 million to $5 million of EBITDA. 

Tom did touch on the impact of tariffs on our business going forward. And I think the only thing I will add to that is that the impact of that fluctuating U.S. tariff policy on Fluence is expected to be minor, limited to U.S. SPS revenue where the manufacturing origin is outside of the U.S. Within our 2025 forecast, U.S. revenue from Municipal and Industrial Wastewater & Biogas is currently forecasted to be less than $8 million or under 10% of our revenue guidance.

The company is, as Tom mentioned, currently evaluating alternative manufacturing strategies to mitigate and minimize the impact on project margins and time lines. However, there is some risk with a few projects that are already in process that have the potential of some limited margin erosion and project delays.

As the company has communicated, management was already in the process of setting up manufacturing in the U.S., particularly with respect to our MABR membranes. This process is ongoing and will potentially accelerate in response to the ongoing global trade disputes. 

On the cash flow side, the company ended the quarter with $8.5 million in cash and $3.7 million in security deposits. Operating cash flow used in the quarter was $257,000, and the company also made capital investments totaling $293,000 in Q1.

Company received the first milestone payment of $8.5 million on the Addendum project in Q1 of 2025. And in Q2, the company is expected to collect 2 additional milestone payments on the Addendum project, which would account for more than $10 million in cash payments, although it is possible that one of those milestone payments may not arrive until early Q3.

So overall, in conclusion, Q1 was in line with our expectations, and we are expecting to see continued growth throughout the course of fiscal 2025. Management remains encouraged by the outlook for the rest of this year and beyond as our pipeline continues to build and convert new orders.

Combined with a lower cost base and better cash management practices, excuse me, we are optimistic about the opportunity to continue to build sustained profitability and positive cash flow.

At this time, I'll turn it back over to you, Tom, for any parting comments and to take questions from the webcast participants. Thank you again for your time and continued interest in Fluence.

Thank you, Ben. So we can go right to the questions. There are a few.

The first question is, any comments on the share price?

No, not really. I just think we have to keep working at performing. And as the numbers come in, we'll let the share price take care of itself with our positive numbers as we go forward.

Next question is, what is the completion date for the U.S. production facility? And there's one follow-up question. I'll answer them both together.

The U.S. is a big focus for future growth. The tariffs are a big negative. If we don't open the production line in the U.S. -- well, we should be opening more production in the U.S. when you think?

The answer is yes. The production facility is currently scheduled to be online mid-June, late June in that area. It's close. The membrane machine is on the ground at the facility. It just needs to be assembled, and we have to do some test tank assembly there. So we are working hard to get it done by late June at this point in time. 

I should point out to you, however, that, that production facility is only for the MABR membranes, which we recently could build in Israel, and we are now building in China. It will not be a complete production facility as we will likely outsource most of the steel manufacturer, the tank fabrication, the control panels, things like that, which is very typical of our industry. We can do that now.

And currently, the project that we talked about for Terra have very small amounts of membranes in. So it's not a big issue for the current project. But you're absolutely right for the future, it is critical and it's important. But there's never been a plan not to do the production in the U.S. because when we get into the Municipal projects that are federally funded, there's a Buy American clause in the funding that says steel manufacturer has to be a certain percent U.S. made and the production facilities have to have U.S. labor, things like that.

So we always had plans to do as much production in the U.S. as we can. And we certainly can do like NIROBOX, we can build those in the U.S. already, no problem. We build wastewater treatment tanks in the U.S., no problem. So the only thing we're talking about not in place right now is the membrane facility itself, which is highly specialized. So good question. We will be dealing with that, and it is very important for the North American work.

There was a follow-up question on the manufacturing facility and asking, will there be supply chain issues?

Yes, I was just getting to that. Yes. I just saw it. And that's an interesting question.

In other words, other products coming into the U.S. that we need to complete a project. We don't currently anticipate any because, quite honestly, a lot of them, other than steel and membranes, what we're dealing with is electrical components and pumps and things like that. And a good deal of that equipment does not come from China. It comes from other - a lot of European suppliers - so if there are tariffs increase, the cost will go up on the production like everything else.

But we're if you're doing a $1 million job, these are maybe $30,000 parts and things like that. So I don't think you're going to see a mass increase. But I guess time will tell if supply chain issues develop because of tariffs, but they will develop for everybody in the business. 

Next one is, can you give some color around any progress or struggles on winning new BOO projects?

I can tell you that the struggles for new BOO projects are related to, first and foremost, cash. If we have a lot more cash, we could very easily go after some of these, but it's got to be the right one with the cash situation we're in. We got to go with smaller ones or we got to go on a big one, we have to partner with someone. So I would say the first and the biggest struggle is the cash part of it. 

The second thing is in North America, in particular, DOOs for municipal projects are still not in vogue and they're still not used that much. You have to deal with private entities. And some of the industrial facilities are starting to realize that it's better to outsource all that, but many of them don't want to do it.

So the secondary struggles are convincing people to give up control of their own facility to do a BOO. In other words, they'd rather have their own sewage plant or water treatment facility as part of their production than to have someone else own it and run it.

And then, when you go outside of some of these countries, the real problem is securing the financial payments down the road. Many of these countries just stop paying. So you've got to be very careful. So the BOO market is a bit of a struggle for a smaller company like us, and you got to start small and take a little piece at a time. 

The next question is, which year is forecast to be profitable, 2025?

I can't say anymore. We're forecasting a profitable year this year. So that has not changed.

Next question is, during the first quarter, there were no contract wins announced to the market. And I believe only the Ivory Coast Addendum was announced in the last 6 months. Does this justify an adjustment to the minimum value for contract announcement?

I'm not sure if that's completely accurate. I believe we had some announcements in the fourth quarter. Did we Ben?

Nothing that rose to be disclosable on the ASX. And maybe if I could comment on this one as well. I think the reality is a lot of this is set by kind of a threshold of materiality.

It's also, I think, reflective of a change in the business strategy, which is historically, this company counted on large CES projects, these big balloon-type projects, and we're heavily reliant on them. And our strategy has, frankly, on purpose, focused more on small to mid-sized contracts, more sustainable and more regular.

So I think it's actually perhaps a positive that we continue to grow our orders, continue to grow our backlog, but doing so under the threshold of what I would call an announceable contract.

Yes. Currently, our rules are we can't announce anything under $3 million, okay? That's our guidelines right now. Can that be changed? Yes, we probably could. And quite honestly, the jobs we go after, there's not that many above $3 million. They're all $1.5 million to $2.5 million. That's a good contract for us.

Having said that, I think the last couple of $5 million plus or minus orders we got, we ended up announcing them as part of the end of the quarter a couple of times, too. So you didn't see a separate press release. 

Having said all that, we are making an attempt if it's not an ASX announcement, we are announcing it on our newsletter and our website. And we're trying to be a little more proactive in getting the words out. I mean we have multiple $2 million to $3 million contracts that just don't get announced. And so we do put those on our website. But I don't think there will be a change soon in the rules as to what we announce and don't announce at this point anyway. I don't anticipate one.

Question is, has there been further opportunities identified from the Ohio pond contract, and how is the demo plant performing? Is there a scenario or a particular opportunity your team is working on where the guidance could be exceeded? 

Well, it's 2 different questions. But the first question, I believe, this question meant the Iowa pond contract, the wastewater treatment lagoon retrofit. It's in Iowa, not Ohio, and it is performing quite well. In fact, one of the major tests of the performance was how does it do in cold weather because cold weather affects the nitrification capabilities. And it did very well throughout the winter, and we're now coming to the end of that. We are very pleased with that facility, and we believe it's going to get us some significant opportunities down the road. 

Is there a scenario in particular opportunity your team is working on where the guidance could be exceeded?

I guess I'll just say to that, there always is. There's always some opportunities that if they come through, they change the year. And believe me, you'll be the first to know if we secure one of those projects.

Very good question coming up next. Is there any new shareholder engagement initiatives planned?

As a matter of fact, we are working on one now. Sometime in June or thereabouts, we are hoping to have a virtual Investor Day where we have presentations to investors virtually, and we will have the business unit leaders from each of our business units present what they do and give you some more insight into the individual business units. So we're looking to do that hopefully in June, and you'll hear more on that. 

Will the reduction in regulations in USA regarding water quality reduce your market?

No. When they talk about reducing regulations, it's not on the existing regulations that are in place for water treatment. It's more on administrative regulations and things hoops you have to jump through to get to secure approvals and funding.

In fact, the federal regulations for water, any of the new ones, are now being done by each individual state. The federal regulations are pretty well locked in place, and they don't -- the states are the one driving the updates and the adjustments in the future regulations. So that will be 50 different possibilities going forward.

Next question is, could there be more regular announcements monthly with a summary of what has been signed in the past month?

That goes back to the previous statement I said we are going to try -- there are rules on what we can announce on ASX and that this will not increase any ASX announcement. But we are working hard to come up with a format to announce these wins monthly for sure, if not right when they come in on our website.

I don't know, Ben, do we still -- are we sending out an outside newsletter on with this stuff in now? Or is that just on the website?

For the list of shareholders that we do have, we are trying to send that out, yes. But we also -- it is also available -- we are posting it on our website as well.

Okay. The next question was not a question. It was a thank you for our efforts. I appreciate that. Thank you for saying that.

I don't -- is there more here, Ben?

I don't see any more.

Okay. With that, of course, you're always welcome to send a note and ask a question if you miss one. We'll try and accommodate you.

But I think the next -- we have an AGM coming up in May, where you'll hear from us. And in June, like I said, we're planning that virtual Investor Day, which could be really nice because you could learn about the Industrial Wastewater & Biogas unit, what they do, you can learn about the Industrial Water & Reuse unit, what they do, all by the business unit managers that are performing the work. So we're kind of excited about that.

So with that, I thank you very much for your interest and attentiveness, and I'll bid you farewell.

That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.