FuelCell Energy, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to Fuel Cell Energy's first quarter fiscal year 2020 financial results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star 1 on your telephone. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Tom Galston, Senior Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations. Thank you. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Julian. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on the call today. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. This morning, Fuel Cell Energy released our financial results for the first quarter of fiscal year 2020, and the earnings press release is available on the investor relations section of our website at fuelcellenergy.com. Consistent with our practice, in addition to this call and our press release, we have posted a slide presentation on our website. This webcast is being recorded and will be available for replay on the company's website approximately two hours after we conclude the call. Before we begin our prepared comments, please direct your attention to the disclosure statement on slide two of the presentation and the disclaimers included in the press release related to forward-looking statements. The discussion today will contain forward-looking statements including, without limitation, statements with respect to the company's anticipated financial results, and statements regarding the company's plan and expectations regarding the continued development, commercialization and financing of its fuel cell technology and its business plans. These forward-looking statements are intended to qualify for the safe harbor from liability established by the Private Security Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements made on this call today, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements and include statements regarding our anticipated financial and operational performance. Forward-looking statements made on this call represent management's current expectations and are based on information available at the time such statements are made. Forward-looking statements involve numerous known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause our actual results to differ materially from any results predicted, assumed, or implied by the forward-looking statements. We strongly encourage you to review the information and the reports we file with the SEC regarding these risks and uncertainties, and in particular, those that are described in the risk factor section of our annual report on Form 10-K and the cautionary statements concerning forward-looking statements disclosures in our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. You should also review the section entitled Cautionary Statement Concerning Forward-Looking Statements in this morning's earnings press release. Lastly, during this call, we'll use non-GAAP financial measures when talking about the company's performance and financial condition. In accordance with SEC regulations, you can find a reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the comparable GAAP measures in this morning's earnings press release and the reconciliation document posted on our investor relations portion of our website. Now turning to slide three, I'd like to highlight some upcoming events on the Fuel Cell Energy's Investor Relations Calendar, which are reflective of our ongoing and broadening participation in public discussion regarding clean energy and the role fuel cell energy plays in the space included. In May, we plan to, on May 12th, we plan to present at the Oppenheimer Emerging Growth Conference in New York. On May 21st, we're scheduled to present at the B. Riley FBR Institutional Investor Conference in Beverly Hills, California. And on May 28th, we will present at the Cowen TMT Conference in New York. For our call today, I am joined by Jason Few, Fuel Cell Energy's President and Chief Executive Officer, and Mike Bishop, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, and Treasurer. Following our prepared remarks, we will be available to take your questions and be joined by other members of the leadership team.

Jason? Thank you, Tom. Before turning to slide four, Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on the call today. Before we get started, I would like to highlight how proud I am of the Fuel Cell Energy team. This last six months has been a transformational period for our company, and we have made significant progress on executing our plan driven by our focus on backlog project execution, revenue generation, cost containment, and disciplined capital allocation. I also want to take a moment to offer prayers of healing and support to any of our team members, shareholders, suppliers, fellow Americans, and citizens around the world impacted by the novel coronavirus known as COVID-19. We also offer support to those on the frontline working on all of our behalf. I will address the current impact of COVID-19 and our company's response in more detail later in my prepared remarks. As we refresh, or for those of you who may be less familiar with our business, we have included a company snapshot on slide four that depicts revenue for the most recent full-year period, fiscal year 2019. Last year, we recorded $60.8 million of total revenue with the three largest categories, service and licenses, advanced technologies, and Generation, providing diversified sources of recurring revenue to the company. Additionally, I would like to draw your attention to some of the customers illustrated on the slide. All of these customers have multi-year contracts with us. We believe our existing customer base offers growth opportunities for our company and that both current and future customers will benefit from the enhancements to our technology platform over the past few years. including our extended seven-year stack life, combined heat and power, microgrid applications, on-site hydrogen generation, and in the future with the commercialization of our solid oxide platform capabilities to deliver electrolysis and long-duration hydrogen-based energy storage. Turning to slide five. Steel Cell Energy's purpose is to enable the world to live a life empowered by clean energy. Our purpose guides our strategy, our people, and our work. It also guides how we allocate capital, the innovations we are focused on bringing to the market, and the solutions we deliver to our customers. Said simply, it is our collective DNA. Turning to the first quarter of fiscal 2020 on slide six. I am very pleased with our execution on several fronts, including an increase in revenue over the fourth quarter of fiscal 2019 and our continued disciplined management of operating expenses. Solid execution on both revenue and operating expenses helped us achieve a gross profit of $3.3 million for the quarter and improved gross margin, and we continue to make progress towards strengthening our balance sheet. We have also continued to execute on our powerhouse business strategy across our global operating model, which I will cover in more detail shortly. Along with executing on our project backlog, we have increased our sales presence in the marketplace and ramped up our sales efforts. Consistent with our purpose, we continue to demonstrate and extend our leadership in sustainability and environmental stewardship. We continue to believe that carbon capture is necessary to make significant progress in reducing the global carbon footprint without asking most of the world to forgo many of the modern-day comforts energy has brought to society, or asking the developing parts of the world to hit the pause button. Fuel cell energy's technology is currently the only known carbon capture technology that captures carbon while producing power at the same time. Together, With ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company, under our second joint development agreement, we continue to refine our fuel cell technology that concentrates CO2 in industrial applications, coal and gas fire power plants, while also generating power from the fuel cell stack. And finally, a few additional comments on how we are managing our business in the wake of the coronavirus. First and foremost, I am thankful that as of now, none of Fuel Cell team members around the world have reported having symptoms of the virus. We pray for the continued health and safety of our global team. We will continue to monitor the situation and our business practices daily. And of course, the health of our employees, customers, and suppliers is our number one priority. We appreciate the healthcare workers, local communities, and governments around the world We remain vigilant and are taking precautions to help our team members remain safe and are monitoring supply lines and the potential impact of the coronavirus on our operations. It goes without saying, however, that we are complying and will continue to comply with all state, federal, and international governmental rules that dictate how we must respond to the virus. Our improved performance as a company, our prudent management of our balance sheet, and positive feedback from our key stakeholders gives us confidence in our ability to deliver on our plan over the balance of 2020 and beyond. And now I'll turn the call over to Mike to discuss our financial results in more detail.