FuelCell Energy, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. And welcome to Pure Cell Energy's Q1 2021 earnings 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 this session, you'll need to press star 1 on your telephone. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. And now let's hand the conference over to your speaker today, Tom Gilston, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Julian. Good morning, and thank you for joining us on today's call. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. This morning, Fuel Cell Energy released our financial results for the first quarter of fiscal year 2021, 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 plans and expectations regarding the continuing development, commercialization, and financing of its fuel cell technology and its business plans. These forward-looking statements are intended to qualify for safe harbor from liability established by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements made on this call today, other than statements of historical facts, 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 in the reports we file with the SEC regarding these risks and uncertainties, in particular those that are described in the risk factor statements of our annual report on Form 10-K and cautionary statements concerning forward-looking statements disclosed in our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. You should also review the section entitled Cautionary Statements Concerning Forward-Looking Statements in This Morning's Earnings Press Release. 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 the investor relations portion of our website. On our call today, I'm joined by Jason Pugh, 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. With that, I'll now hand the call over to Jason for opening remarks. Jason?

Thank you, Tom, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us on our call today. Each quarter, we include a brief overview of the company shown on slide three for our new investors. Taking a look at the full year fiscal 2020, which ended on October 31st, our total revenue grew by double digits to approximately $71 million. Our three largest categories, service and licenses, advanced technologies, and generation, represent diversified sources of recurring revenue under multi-year contracts with investment-grade customers. Consistent with our strategy, in future quarters, we expect the work we have done to rebuild our business development and go-to-market capabilities, recruit and onboard strategic talent, and reenter and build client relationships and target global markets to yield growth, including product sales. Consistent with our prior experience, in certain markets, such as Korea, the largest fuel cell market in the world, select countries across Europe, and other international markets, we expect some customers to choose to purchase our platform bundled with long-term service contracts that run coterminous with the platform's life should our marketing efforts be successful. We are optimistic about the momentum behind the global energy transition that we expect to be enabled by distributed generation, distributed hydrogen, long duration hydrogen energy storage, and carbon capture. At the top of the slide, we highlight many of our customers currently utilizing our multi-featured PLSL platforms. Many of these systems integrate combined power capabilities, creating very high energy efficiency levels, while others Installations form the backbone of microgrids enhancing resiliency and reliability and are utilized biofuel resulting in carbon neutral to carbon negative power. Our platforms also have the ability to leverage multiple fuel types, a feature many customers are interested in. In addition, our carbonate fuel cell platform has the ability to deliver hydrogen through our Trigen platform and we are developing a new capability of running our carbonate fuel cell in reverse or in electrolysis mode through a process known as reforming, electrolysis, and purification, or REP. We believe that the distributed nature of our hydrogen platform can enable the hydrogen economy in advance of midstream infrastructure availability. Fuel cell energy offers diversification across fuel cell technologies that enable solutions across multiple applications or jobs that need to be done. Additionally, as I will cover later in my remarks, we continue to advance the commercialization of our solid oxide fuel cell platform to produce hydrogen through highly efficient electrolysis, long-duration hydrogen-based energy storage, and zero carbon hydrogen power generation. We believe that these technologies can provide the firm capacity required to support intermittent renewable technologies such as wind and solar by converting the off-peak energy occasionally generated by renewables or excess energy produced in excess of demand into hydrogen that is stored and later sent back to the same fuel cell energy fuel cell stack to produce zero carbon power. Recently, The world watched the disruption and loss of life in Texas caused by unavailability of power. Deoso Energy is committed to delivering baseload power installation across our carbonate and solid oxide platforms that can and have demonstrated their ability to reduce the likelihood of similar events in the future. We stand ready to support customers around the world. Next, moving to slide four. I want to highlight our commitment to our purpose of enabling the world to live a life empowered by clean energy. We believe that all people around the world will increasingly need reliable always-on power. The electric grid continues to evolve, but grid reliability remains a critical issue. We believe that FeelSo Energy is uniquely positioned to meet the reliability challenges with our broad product portfolio that can also assist with decarbonization goals. We don't subscribe to the notion that decarbonization has to mean de-industrialization or that developing countries around the world can't participate in industrialized society. This purpose drives our strategic focus and the work we do. Turning now to the quarter, I have three overarching messages. The first is that we are continuing to make progress against our $1.27 billion backlog as we execute our powerhouse business strategy by working to complete and thus add another 40.7 megawatts to our generation portfolio. Subsequent to quarter end, with the addition of our new 2.8 megawatt PPA for our second project in Derby, Connecticut, our backlog has increased to 43.5 megawatts. We have completed the majority of our scope of work on the 7.4 megawatt project at the U.S. Navy base in Groton, Connecticut. The company is currently awaiting the interconnection and other safety-related work to be completed prior to the commissioning and commercial operations. The interconnection agreement for this project is a four-party agreement and has taken longer than originally estimated to complete. Fuso Energy looks forward to fortifying the power infrastructure supporting base resiliency and the U.S. federal government's defense-critical electrical infrastructure objectives. Additionally, Construction activity has been substantially complete for our 1.4 megawatt project at the San Bernardino California wastewater treatment facility that will utilize onsite biofuel to produce carbon neutral power. We are working with the local utility on the interconnection process prior to commissioning and commencing commercial operation. I want to provide more color on interconnection for those less familiar with the process. Essentially, prior to being able to operate in parallel with a utility grid network, a series of studies such as a feasibility, system impact, and distribution studies are required to be performed by the appropriate local utility for distribution-level interconnects, or in some cases, by the regional transmission organization for larger or grid-connected projects before distributed electrical generation equipment is approved for connection to or operation in parallel with the grid, which is a requirement for commercial operation. These studies assess the addition of the power generation platform and its impact on the existing utility power system, as well as identify any interconnection facilities or network upgrades needed for interconnecting the platform to the utility grid. The lead time for this process can vary depending on a variety of factors, including the utility's ability to prioritize the studies, the technical complexity of the project site, and infrastructure work required by the utility prior to interconnection. We proactively manage every aspect of the interconnection process within our scope and responsibility to obtain interconnection as quickly as possible while ensuring compliance with all safety and reliability requirements. As noted in the case of Groton, this work is being managed by a third party. We have also commenced construction on 24.5 megawatts of projects, including the 2.3 megawatt Trigen Hydrogen Platform that will deliver carbon neutral electricity, green hydrogen, and produce water to Toyota at the Port of Long Beach. We believe our Trigen Hydrogen Platform is the only platform in the world that produces hydrogen and usable water in a single distributed platform. In addition, we are advancing our utility scale deployments in Yak Tank, Long Island, New York and Derby, Connecticut. We weren't able to resume manufacturing with necessary safety enhancements at our Torrington, Connecticut manufacturing facility in June of 2020. And we have established a phased in return to work schedule for those employees that have been working from home through this month. We continue to evaluate our abilities to operate in light of recent resurgence of COVID-19. and the advisability of continuing operations based on federal, state, and local jurisdiction requirements around the world, evolving data concerning the pandemic, the availability of vaccines, and the best interests of our employees, customers, and shareholders. The second key message I want to highlight is the progress we have made toward bolstering our financial foundation, strengthening our liquidity, and creating an opportunity to reduce our cost of capital. As we have previously disclosed during the quarter, we completed an additional equity offering resulting in net proceeds to the company of approximately $156 million. And third, I want to reiterate our goal of strengthening our leadership in sustainability and environmental stewardship. Customers around the world are increasingly looking for authentic, onsite, and sustainable decarbonized energy solutions to address climate challenges, enhance grid reliability, and enable them to continue to operate their businesses without intermittent disruptions. To meet the growing global need for clean, decarbonized energy, Fioso Energy remains focused on developing and deploying our product portfolio solutions for some of the largest global energy opportunities. A recent technology milestone has been the commencement of operation and testing of our prototype SOEC, or Solid Oxide Electrolysis Platform, in Danbury, Connecticut. Today, the platform is successfully and efficiently converting electricity and water into hydrogen. We also intend to continue to strengthen our leadership position in distributed generation, distributed hydrogen, and carbon capture. And now I will turn the call over to Mike to discuss our financial results in more detail. Mike? Thank you, Jason.