FuelCell Energy, Inc.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Fuel Cell Energy Third Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. To withdraw your question, press the pound or hash key. If you require any further assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Tom Jelston, Senior Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Tom Jelston Thank you, Carol. Good morning, everyone, 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 third 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 will post slides 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 continued development, commercialization, and financing of its fuel cell technology and 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 operating performance. Forward-looking statements made on this call represent management's current expectations, and based on information available at such times, 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 section of our annual report on Form 10-K, and cautionary statement language concerning forward-looking statements disclosure in our quarterly report 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 will use non-GAAP financial measures when we talk about the company's performance and financial condition. In accordance with SEC regulations, you can find a reconciliation of the non-GAAP measures and the comparable GAAP measures in this morning's earnings release and the reconciliation document posted on the investor relations portion of our website. For our call today, I'm 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. I'll now like to 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. We had a number of successes during the third quarter as we continued executing against our powerhouse business strategy. Before getting into the business highlights, I will give a brief company overview shown on slide three. Looking at our last full fiscal year ended on October 31, 2020, we delivered revenues of approximately $71 million, comprised of our three largest revenue categories, service and licenses, advanced technologies, and generation. all of which represent diversified sources of recurring revenue under multi-year contracts. In addition to those three revenue categories just mentioned, we are confident that we will regain meaningful incremental revenue from product sales in the future. In the near term, we see opportunities developing in international markets, including Asia, Europe, and in target customer segments domestically. We have been taking steps to rebuild our business development and go-to-market capabilities as an essential step in the strength and pillar of our powerhouse business strategy to ultimately support growth. We have also been adding experienced strategic talent as we continue to focus on market segments that deliver long-term growth opportunities, which we believe will position us to re-enter targeted global markets, expand client relationships, and build new ones by focusing on customer segments. Our company headcount is currently 380 team members and growing. We've had many global customers who are utilizing our multi-feature fuel cell platforms. Many of these systems integrate combined heat and power capabilities, creating high energy efficiency levels. Other installations enable microgrids, enhancing grid resiliency and reliability. Some of our applications utilize biofuels, resulting in carbon neutral to carbon negative power and eliminating on-site flaring. Now turning to slide four. As a company, we are committed to our purpose of enabling the world to live a life empowered by clean energy. The world will always need reliable power created in an environmentally responsible manner. We are periodically and increasingly reminded by fires, hurricanes, and other extreme weather that grid reliability remains a critical issue that can't be taken for granted. We are committed to providing solutions that deliver on our commitment to addressing climate change and deliver clean baseload power ultimately around the world. Today, according to the WHO, more than 1 billion people are without access to reliable power. With our broad product portfolio, Fuel Cell Energy is uniquely positioned to assist customers with decarbonization goals, leverage a wide range of feedstock, and to meet the challenge of ensuring energy reliability and infrastructure resiliency. Our customers can and should be able to achieve each of these objectives. We believe the goal of decarbonization does not require deindustrialization and that developing countries around the world should also participate in economic development alongside industrialized nations. Instead of non-onsite solutions that rely heavily on credits or offsets, our technology provides authentic and local solutions for clean energy and has the future promise to decarbonize industries less suited for electrification. we believe strongly in the ability for customers to make a direct impact in the communities in which they operate, directly reducing the need to rely on offsets that can originate thousands of miles away. And as we look to the future, We plan to deploy our unique and differentiated energy solutions to generate hydrogen through electrolysis and our fuels, store that hydrogen, and utilize that hydrogen to firm up intermittent renewables, repower transportation, power existing combustion generation assets with hydrogen, and provide clean hydrogen as a source of energy to the industrial sector. We do this in a manner which supports high standards of living and economic growth while protecting the environment and adapting to new resource challenges. This purpose continuously drives our strategic focus and the work we are passionate about doing. Next, I would like to turn your attention to some key messages for the quarter shown on slide five. I am very pleased to announce that during the quarter we began commercial operations at the 1.4 megawatt biogas project at the San Bernardino, California, wastewater treatment facility. On the 7.4 megawatt project at the U.S. Navy submarine base in Groton, Connecticut, we have achieved mechanical completion and executed the interconnect agreement. During the commissioning process, the final stage prior to commercial operation, a localized and contained elevated temperature was observed inside a component of one of the two installed plants, and as a result, the commissioning process was suspended. This has delayed the overall commissioning timeline for the platform as we repair the gasket seals and insulation. Our team has identified the root cause and is in the process of applying improvements and preventative upgrades, as well as implementing the necessary repairs to the plant. We expect to resume commissioning on this project in late September, but timing is dependent on non-fuel cell energy related activities on the Navy base. Our intent is to achieve commercial operations as expeditiously as possible. We are also continuing to make significant progress on other new projects in our backlog, totaling 24.5 megawatts. On-site civil construction activity has advanced on our 14.8 megawatt utility scale platform in Derby, Connecticut, and our 2.8 megawatt utility scale shared clean energy project is in early stage development. In addition, the construction of our 7.4 megawatt project in Yapank, Long Island, which is shown on the right-hand side of the slide, continues. Our 2.3 megawatt tri-gen hydrogen platform, which is being built at the Port of Long Beach in California, has advanced to early site civil construction. Upon its completion, This multi-feature platform will deliver carbon-neutral electricity, green hydrogen, and pure water, helping our customer, Toyota, avoid water consumption in a region experiencing extreme drought conditions and provide a central distributed hydrogen fueling infrastructure to enable the continued growth of hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicle transportation. We have further enhanced our balance sheet to achieve an overall lower cost of capital across our platform and subsidiaries. To strengthen our liquidity and financial flexibility, in June we commenced an at-the-market offering program with Jeffries and Barclays Capital to offer up to $500 million of our common stock. Through July 31, 2021, we sold approximately 44 million shares under the Open Market Sales Agreement, generating net proceeds to the company of approximately $369 million. We plan on using the net proceeds from this offering to accelerate the development and commercialization of our advanced technology products and for product financing, working capital support, and general corporate purposes. Additionally, we recently closed on two tax equity transactions. One is a tax equity sale leaseback financing transaction with Crestmark Equipment Finance for the 1.4 megawatt biofuels fuel cell project with the City of San Bernardino Municipal Water Department in California. This marks our second deal with Crestmark. The transaction total was $10.2 million through a 10-year sell-leaseback structure and demonstrates what we believe is a continued interest from the financial markets and fuel cell energy's differentiated technologies. And we closed on a tax equity partnership flip financing transaction with EastWest Bank for the 7.4 megawatt fuel cell project located on the U.S. Navy submarine base in Groton, Connecticut. EastWest Bank's tax equity commitment totals $15 million. The ability to utilize these financing solutions enables us to recycle capital for additional clean energy projects and commercialization initiatives. And the third key message today is our focus on strengthening our leadership and sustainability. We have increased our commitment to research and development focused on the commercialization of our solid oxide power generation, hydrogen storage, and hydrogen electrolysis platforms, as well as growing our commercial capabilities. Our DOE-supported programs continue to advance the design of our solid oxide stacks, stack modules, and balance of plant systems. We are also executing programs to develop reversible solid oxide systems for energy storage and very high efficiency solid oxide power generation systems. Through our technology portfolio, we are developing solutions intended to address major global issues as society looks for ways to address climate challenges while at the same time combating grid reliability issues. Fuel cell energy remains focused on developing and deploying our distributed generation, distributed hydrogen, electrolysis, hydrogen energy storage, and hydrogen power generation, and carbon capture product portfolio solutions for some of the largest global energy opportunities. Turning to slide six, fuel cell energy is positioned to deliver decarbonization solutions across the energy delivery value chain. We believe energy must be delivered in distributed networks where it is needed, which will decrease dependencies on less efficient and less environmentally friendly centralized resources, help to harden grid infrastructure around the world, and lower the dependence on costly long distance high voltage transmission. Our distributed platforms offer clean baseload alternatives to traditional generation sources, avoid more emissions on a 24 by 7 basis than wind and solar, and as we commercialize our hydrogen solutions, our platforms will offer the opportunity to extend the life of existing investments in traditional generation assets by repowering with hydrogen and or capturing carbon from those generating assets. At the local distribution level, we enhance grid resiliency by delivering microgrid applications, siting generation closer to where it is consumed, and providing onsite solutions for commercial applications ranging from power generation, hydrogen, thermal energy, and carbon as a product ingredient for utilization. The multi-feature capabilities of our product and proven ability to operate using a variety of fuel sources supports distributed base generation and growing demand for hydrogen, carbon capture, and energy storage. Fuel cell energy is ready to transition power delivery around the world. And now I will turn the call over to Mike to discuss our financial results in more detail. Mike?