Fluence Energy, Inc.

Welcome to the Fluence second quarter conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. and you will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised to withdraw your question please press star 11 again please be advised that today's conference is being recorded i would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today lexington may vp finance and investor relations thank you good morning and welcome to fluent energy's third quarter 2024

earnings conference call. A copy of our earnings presentation, press release, and supplementary metric sheet covering financial results, along with supporting statements and schedules, including reconciliations and disclosures regarding our non-GAAP financial measures, are posted on the investor relations section of our website at FluenceEnergy.com. Joining me on this morning's call are Julian Nabreda, our President and Chief Executive Officer, Ahmed Pasha, our Chief Financial Officer, and Rebecca Boll, our Chief Products Officer. During the course of this call, Fluence Management may make certain forward-looking statements regarding various matters related to our business and company that are not historical facts. Such statements are based upon the current expectations and certain assumptions and are, therefore, subject to certain risks and uncertainties. Many factors could cause actual results to differ materially. Please refer to our SEC filings for our forward-looking statements and for more information regarding certain risks and uncertainties that could impact our future results. You are cautioned to not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements which speak only as of today. Also, please note that the company undertakes no duty to update or revise forward-looking statements for new information. This call will also reference non-GAAP measures that we view as important in assessing the performance of our business. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measure is available in our earnings materials on the company's investor relations website. Following our prepared comments, we will conduct a question and answer session with our team. During this time, to give more participants an opportunity to speak on this call, please limit yourself to one initial question and one follow-up. Thank you very much. I'll now turn the call over to Julian.

I would like to send a warm welcome to our investors, analysts, and employees. who are participating on today's call. I will cover our Q3 results briefly and then provide an update on our business and the strong growth prospects we continue to see. Ahmed will then give more details on our financial results and outlook. Beginning on slide four, we deliver strong financial performance. More specifically, we recognize $483 million of revenue and earned 17.5% adjusted gross margin, which brings our year-to-day gross margin slightly ahead of the 10 to 12 target. Second, we recorded adjusted EBITDA of 15.6 million, which puts us on track to deliver profitable growth for our shareholders. Third, we added 1.3 billion of new contracts setting a new quarterly record for us and bringing our backlog to an all-time high level of $4.5 billion. Fourth, we finished the quarter with $80 million of annual recurring revenue for our services and digital business, reaching the level acquired earlier than our target. And finally, through our proactive approach to cost and working capital management, we generated $64 million free cash flow for the first nine months and ended the quarter with $513 million in cash. Turning to slide five, we continue to see improvements in our gross margin driven by our excellent performance on cost management and execution. We have had four consecutive quarters of double-digit gross margins. When looking at our gross margins on a trailing 12-month rolling basis, we advanced from a gross margin of about negative 5% to a positive 12% margin in the 12-month and the June 30th. This has been an outstanding transformation in less than two years. We expect this trend to continue to improve, putting us on a path to achieve sustainable growth margins in the 10 to 15 percent range. Turning to slide six for an update on our pipeline. As a reminder, our pipeline is a rolling 24-month view, thus giving us confidence in our ability to continue our growth trajectory. Our 20 billion pipeline has increased 65 percent from this time last year. which reflects rapid growth prospects for any storage flow. As I will discuss a bit more in a moment, all in all, we continue to see a very robust international market. We should further diversify our geographic mix in the coming years. Almost half of our $20 billion pipeline is in the Americas region, and the rest is in the international market. The strength of our pipeline is a key reason for our high confidence in our expected revenue growth. We are reaffirming our fiscal year 25 revenue outlook of 35 to 40 percent growth of our original fiscal 24 revenue guidance midpoint of 3B. Turning to slide seven, similar to our pipeline, we're also seeing remarkable growth in our The third quarter was our 11th consecutive quarter of order intake outpacing revenue recognized, showcasing the robust growth in utility-scale energy storage. Our backlog demonstrated our leading competitive position and the significant growth for utility-scale energy. I would like to provide an update on the most relevant markets we serve, beginning with the United States, which continues to be the largest market we operate in global. Recent regulatory developments in the US, as well as the progress we have made in strengthening our competitive position to an early-to-market domestic manufacturing strategy, puts us in a unique position to capitalize on this substantial growth opportunity. Turning to slide eight, since our last conference call, there have been a couple of favorable policy developments. First, the U.S. Treasury released guidelines on the 40% domestic content requirement under the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA. The Treasury provided an elective table that sets a percentage of value each battery storage component when manufactured in the U.S. can contribute towards the 40% threshold. As you can see, the highest category is battery cells at 38%, which favors our domestic strategy of securing battery cells manufactured in the U.S. As you may recall, we started the process of procuring U.S. cell capacity before the IRA came out and signed an agreement more than a year ago with ASC to purchase U.S. cells from the Tennessee facility. These U.S. manufacturer cells will go into our battery module, which I will touch on more in a moment. By combining U.S. cells and U.S. modules, we believe that we will easily meet the 40% domestic content threshold. Those enabling our customers to capture the incremental 10% investment tax credit on their projects. Our proactive approach to securing the U.S. sales from ASE has resulted in a first-moving advantage in delivering domestic content. The Biden administration issued a proclamation to increase Section 301 tariffs on batteries imported from China, which also applies to battery storage systems. Today, this higher tariff is set at 7.5%, and it will increase to 25% beginning in 2026. We believe this tariff regime could significantly affect the competitive landscape of the U.S. market to the benefit of domestic suppliers. I would like to touch briefly on the political environment and implications for fluid. The demand for battery storage systems in the U.S. is supported by the growing need for new capacity, rejectability, and resilience. It is well known that renewables plus storage is a fast and most economic way to serve these growing needs. None of this due to a potential change in administration. Our business model in the US should also be resilient to changes in the political landscape. Current industrial policy favors using tax credits to promote domestic production. However, we believe that our US business model will also work effectively if a new administration were to change the industrial policy away from tax incentives in favor of tariff. Turning to slide nine, I'm pleased to report that we're on track for initial production of the fluid battery module in late September of this year. The model production line was successfully tested in the manufacturer's facility. The production line is now in the final stages of installation and initial commissioning in our Utah facility. We anticipate starting production with a number of battery modules and gradually ramping up to serve our needs. Turning to additional discussions on the U.S. market on slide 10. Estimate for the size of U.S. utility scale market continues to show growing adoption of energy storage by adding roughly 40 gigawatts in 2025. The significant demand has been fueled by corporate customers seeking clean, low-cost, and reliable renewable energy. Part of this growth in the U.S. has been driven by the rise of GEN-AI, which requires a tremendous number of new data centers, which results in increases in electricity and capacity. We're seeing more and more opportunities coming to our pipeline associated with data centers, mostly in the form of storage for the renewable PPAs that large tech companies are procuring to meet their growing demand and carbon-free goals. Currently, about 40% of our U.S. pipeline is indirectly associated with that data sector. We will also note that the great majority of the clean energy investments associated with the IRA and the resulting job creation are occurring in Republican-led districts. Furthermore, energy storage is becoming a critical part of an increasing number of grids across the country, regardless of political means. For example, in the air-con market in Texas, a traditional red state, the expanding role that energy storage plays in the grid is evident when you consider the interconnection fuse. We chose nearly 132 gigawatts of battery storage projects of nearly 35% from this time last year. In sum, the U.S. market increasing demand for electricity and capacity. The James AI industry's growing need for renewable power and the resilience of our U.S. business model to policy changes makes us confident in our outlook for the U.S. market and its contribution to our growth plan. Turning to slide 11, alongside the attractiveness of the U.S. market in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa region, I'm happy to say we are seeing a growing number of opportunities in Germany and a resurgence in the U.K. and Ireland. Ireland intends to operate its electrical grid with 95 percent renewables. This level of renewable generation will require significant battery storage to provide a higher level of grid stability and reliability. For this region, 2024 annual utility scale capacity additions are expected to be north of 11 GWh, which is more than 100% increase from the 2024 forecasted value. We see a similar story of robust growth in other regions. In the Asia Pacific and Australia region, we have seen tremendous growth over the past few years, with annual utility scale capacity additions approaching nearly 8 gigawatts this year, driven largely by Australia, where the National Battery Strategy continues to provide opportunities for our products. Turning to slide 12. I'm pleased to report that we recently launched our new Digital Service Center in India, which will serve as a central hub for applying operational data intelligence to the global fleet of assets managed by Fluid, providing insight for the company's research and development and service function. We expect that these efforts will provide more value to our customers by optimizing the performance of their storage assets. The co-location in Bangalore, India of the service center with its new remote monitoring and diagnostics capability. And our technology centers, product development capability provides a platform that is intended to allow for efficiency and speedy response in both. I will now turn the call to Ahmed to discuss our financial results

Thank you, Julian, and good morning, everyone. Today, I will review our third quarter financial results, our strong cash position, and our near-term outlook, beginning with third quarter 2024 results on slide 14. We generated $483 million in revenue, which was 20% higher than our expectations discussed on our last earnings call. This was primarily attributable to completing certain projects milestones ahead of schedule. Furthermore, we generated 85 million of adjusted gross profit, representing a 17.5% adjusted gross margin, which was the fourth consecutive quarter of double-digit gross profit margins. Including the third quarter results, we delivered year-to-date adjusted gross margin of 12.8%, We expect to achieve Q4 adjusted gross margin within our previously communicated range of 10 to 12% and for the full year to be at the high end of that range. This performance reflects our focus on achieving operational efficiencies that have been translated to improve profitability of projects. During Q3, After operating expenses, we generated $16 million of adjusted EBITDA, which puts our trailing 12-month EBITDA in positive territory for the first time. Overall, these results illustrate our commitment to delivering profitable growth to our shareholders. Before turning to a discussion of our liquidity and guidance, I will briefly review a disclosure included in our 10-Q that was filed yesterday. As you may know, a short salary report was published on us back in February of this year. In response to the allegations made in the short report, our board's audit committee conducted an investigation with the assistance of an outside counsel and forensic accountants. I am pleased to share that this investigation concluded that the allegations contained in the short report are without merit. Recently, however, the SEC notified us that they are investigating certain matters pertaining to the company. Based on the information the SEC has requested, we believe they are examining some of the topics raised in the short seller's report, such as revenue recognition policies and our previously disclosed material weakness. We are fully cooperating with the SEC Although we cannot predict the timing or the outcome based on the nature of these matters and information requested by the SEC, we do not expect it to have a material impact on our financial condition. Coming to slide 15, we then update on our liquidity. We continue to bolster our liquidity to support our industry-leading growth objectives. To that end, I am pleased to report that we ended the third quarter with nearly $600 million of total liquidity. I am also happy to share that this week we replaced our ABL credit facility with a traditional revolver to further enhance our liquidity. As you may recall, our $400 million of ABL facility was securitized by the level of our U.S. inventory, which has had a lower balance, thus limiting the availability under this facility to not more than $100 million since its inception. The new government-like revolving credit facility contributes $500 million of commitments from an expanded bank group. With this facility, on a pro forma basis, our total liquidity is now more than $1 billion, which puts us in an excellent position to capitalize on the growing energy storage market. Moving to slide 16, we have narrowed our full-year 24 revenue guidance range to $2.7 to $2.8 billion. With a midpoint of $2.75 billion, this is $250 million lower than our prior revenue guidance. This reduction is mostly due to two factors. There were two specific projects accounting for approximately $100 million of expected revenue that have been postponed by the customer for multiple years. And second, the signing of certain projects into our backlog was delayed for a variety of reasons that include site readiness, civil works, permitting, and customer decision process. None of these delays were related to interconnection issues. These projects were signed and moved into our backlog admittedly later than anticipated. Although disappointing, we expect to recognize the majority of this delayed revenue in fiscal 25. As Julian noted, our fiscal 24 guidance implies a Q4 reserve that would be the highest in our company's history. We have strong confidence in our ability to deliver on this goal as the majority of our Q4 project milestones are for production and delivery of cubes, which is within our control. To that end, we have secured the necessary batteries, manufacturing slots, and logistics. In fact, With respect to our expected Q4 revenue, in the first five weeks of the quarter, we have delivered or put in transit 46% of required cubes, thus securing our revenue for almost half of our expected Q4 revenue. In summary, our quarter-to-date performance and our outlook for the remaining two months of the year gives us confidence in our ability to deliver on our Q4 customer commitments and our revised full-year 24 revenue guidance. Turning to slide 17, I will briefly review our other guidance metrics. Lowering the midpoint of our full-year 24 revenue guidance by $250 million would be expected to have a cross-profit impact of at least $25 million. However, we have taken proactive actions to mitigate the impact on our profitability targets. To that end, we are expecting to achieve a gross profit margin at the upper end of 10% to 12% expected range for this year and deliver adjusted EBITDA of $55 to $65 million. This revised guidance midpoint of $60 million is only $5 million below our prior guidance. In terms of our long-term outlook, we continue to expect our gross profit margins to be in the 10 to 15 percent range. Furthermore, we are raising our ARR guidance and now expect to achieve ARR of approximately 100 million by the end of fiscal 24, up from our previous guidance of approximately 80 million. This increase is the result of the 30-year growth we are seeing from our services business. Finally, looking ahead to fiscal 25, We continue to expect strong growth, as Julian discussed. Using our original fiscal 24 revenue guidance midpoint of $3 billion as a base, we reaffirm our expected fiscal 25 revenue growth of 35% to 40%. With that, let me turn the call back to Julian for his closing remarks.

Thank you, Ahmed. Turning to slide 18 and in conclusion. I want to emphasize the key takeaways from this quarter's results. First, our year-to-date performance demonstrates our ability to deliver profitable growth. Importantly, we are on track to deliver 12 percent growth margins and positive full-year adjusted EBITDA in fiscal year 24. Second, we have started to see the benefits of our U.S. domestic content strategy. were put in motion well before the IRA was enacted. We're seeing a strong customer interest, which is converted to initial orders. Third, we have ample liquidity to support our growth plan. We successfully amended and upsized our credit facility, which now puts our liquidity at more than a billion dollars. And fourth, the outlook for utility-scale storage is very robust. And we are well positioned to capitalize on this growing market global, as evidenced by the strong growth of our pipeline and our backlog. With that, I would like to open up the call for questions.

Thank you. Thank you. At this time, we will conduct a question and answer session.

As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press Star 1-1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press Star 1-1 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from Christine Cho at Barclays.

Good morning. Good morning, Christine. Over 60% of your revenues this quarter was from rest of world, which, you know, also coincided with the very high ASPs and high margins. Is this just a function of more of your projects outside the U.S. requiring EPC? Just any color on the geographic breakdown this quarter, how that correlates with top line margins and how we should think about, you know, how this should trend next year? Maybe also an update on the geographic breakdown of your current backlog. I know it was historically 70-30, but it sounds like you're diversifying more.

Good morning, Christine. Yes. Our international markets tend to have more EPCs. Our solutions, our offerings are a lot broader than what we do in the U.S. And second, as you know, we have been selling our ultra-stack offering in Europe, you know, our transmission assets. So you generally will see higher ASPs on the international markets. In terms of the composition of our backlog, I think that, you know, one-third, two-thirds is kind of where it's going right now. So we have seen a lot of progress in the international markets when you looked at the pipelines. more like 50-50. What I would say today when we looked at our backlog is essentially two-thirds, as we have been saying roughly, two-thirds in the US, one-third international. So that's the way you should look at it. And the last point is that this is one of the drivers of the lumpiness in terms of our margins and our ASPs as we move forward. What type of projects come into revenue for which type of project will recognize revenue on a quarterly basis. And that lumpiness will stay because not all projects are the same.

Okay. And then for my follow-up, is there a way to give us a sense of how much of your current backlog for U.S. projects require U.S. sales? I know you've mentioned that you could eventually supply all of U.S. demand with the AESC contract, but curious to know, If the majority of your U.S. customers were mandating that in the contract before the domestic content and Section 301 updates came out a couple of months ago, how those conversations have evolved since that update? And is there some sort of rule of thumb that we can use around how much higher the ASPs are, maybe percentage-wise, for your batteries that use domestic cells versus imported cells for your U.S. customers for bookings going forward?

I would say that you have seen a lot of interest come up as people have realized with the new IRA guidelines and the new tariffs. And I think that generally now everybody realizes this is the right move and we're ahead of everybody. So you see it a lot more than what we have seen before. I prefer not to go into... how that plays out, because then we'll get into a rabbit hole that I think will not help anybody. In terms of cost, what I can tell you, and this is very competitive information for us, so what I can tell you is that the costs are very competitive and very attractive, even though they include some additional costs by producing in the US. They are very, very competitive, and our customers do very, very well when they contract with us, the U.S. domestic contract. That's the best way I can tell you. But at this stage, I would prefer not to disclose information on the actual pricing the content offers.

Our next question comes from Dylan Asano at Wolf Research.

Hey, good morning, everybody. Good morning.

Thanks for taking my question. So just doing the math on the updated guidance here, it looks like you're taking $250 million out of the midpoint this year. You're holding 2025. $100 million of what came out of this year is delayed multiple years, so that seems to suggest up to $150 million shifted from this year to next year. So I guess if that math is correct, Did anything shift out of your prior 2025 outlook? Because if you're adding 150 this year, wouldn't that put you at the top end or above the 35% to 40% growth?

Well, I would say it's the final. We're working on a 25 budget for next year, and we'll give you more details on how 25 looks. But today what we can confirm is that we can confirm 35 to 40% growth out of our original target of midpoint of 3 billion. So that's what I will say. We'll give you more details when we, in our next earnings call in late November.

Okay. And then as a follow-up on the board investigation that you spoke about, can you just speak to kind of what was the scope of that investigation? Which specific claims from the short report were you guys looking into?

Our audit committee hired an independent law firm and brought in a forensic auditor, a forensic accounting firm. And they looked at every comment, everything that was there. Irrelevant stuff that has no, you know, all the elements there and found that all of them had zero merit. There's no merit in any of it. So we feel we're clean bill of health. That was, you know, and that's what we can say. It was really, really a very detailed investigation, looking at all this, everything that there, even things that were implied that were not necessarily written. And both the independent law firm with the support of the accountants came out with, you know, that all of that stuff has zero merit.

Great. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Our next question comes from Andrew Prococo and Morgan Stanley.

Good morning. Thanks for taking the question. I want to come back to the domestic content piece for a second. Just curious, there's obviously strong demand for those products. How do you feel in terms of the capacity that you're getting from AESC? Do you see a need to expand that agreement anytime soon, just given the level of demand you're seeing? And just kind of curious on maybe how pricing conversations with AESC have shifted, just given, obviously, the higher demand for domestic sales over the last three months or so.

Very good question. So we contracted two lines with AESC, one that is coming, start producing in late 2024, so deliveries in early 25, and another one that will come into operation in 25. And we have a right of first refusal for any additional lines, for an additional line if they bring it up. So we have ample capacity to meet the demand that we see today and clearly to meet our commitments to the street. So we are very happy. In terms of the deal with ASC, we remember we promised We had to pay for this. We had to make that prepayment that we disclosed to all of you. So it's a firm deal with prices and we haven't seen any discussion on pricing or ASC is not requesting any additional price from the fact that this is becoming much more popular. What I will say is that You know, we were convinced that this was the way to go, and I think the reality and the reaction of our customers is proving us right, and we are very happy with that. And now our view is to accelerate this as possible and solidify our first moving advantage in domestic content.

Okay, perfect. And then maybe as a follow-up question, you mentioned AI and tech as a driver of demand. I'm just curious if there's any difference in attributes in terms of duration, sizing that you're seeing from maybe some of those conversations, and maybe how that's impacting your offering or the pricing that you're achieving in the market. Thank you.

No, not a real difference from a technical point of view. What I will say is a level of urgency. That's what I'll say, the need for speed, which is also something that we have invested on. We're also seeing that. That's becoming a need of the market. We need to do this faster. I think that's a little bit of a difference from the past where projects which are not necessarily data center related. Understood. Thanks so much. Andrew, thank you.

Our next question comes from Justin Clare at World Capital March Partners.

Hi, thanks for taking our questions. Yeah, good morning, Justin. Good morning. So I wanted to start off just asking about, you know, how do you expect the gross margins for your domestic supply chain using U.S. cells to compare to margins when you're using international cells? And then just curious, as you ramp the domestic supply chain, do you anticipate the margins to initially be lower and then increase as you scale up, or will you be kind of at full potential right away?

In terms of margins of our U.S. domestic offering, I prefer not to go into that detail. As I said, this is very competitive, especially today. But I will say that What I can say is that our U.S. domestic content makes us even more confident of our 10 to 15 margin guideline that we provided. If I can add up a little bit of publicity, we came from minus 5 to 12 today. I think that some people were not convinced that we could deliver the 10 to 15 we're telling you today well i think that today not only our territory but where we see coming out it makes us feel very very confident on that part and then in terms of of a our ability to realize margins on the initial offering we have put in a significant investments first we're bringing the line the module line earlier to ensure that it runs very well and we have put in investments in our lab to test our new products ahead of going publicly in a way to ensure that we can realize our margins from day one. So we feel very confident that both our U.S. domestic content with a new module line being fully tested for a period of time and our new labs give us the confidence that we're going to be able to monetize on the margins on U.S. domestic content, our new products from day one.

Okay, got it. That's really helpful. And then just on your backlog, curious how much of the backlog do you anticipate recognizing in fiscal 25 at this point? And if you could just comment on project timelines, how they're evolving, and then just the anticipated average timeline from when you book a project to when you're able to complete a project. And then maybe if you could comment on just the bottlenecks that you're seeing and whether you can pull timelines forward.

Great. In terms of our 25 revenue, what we have in our backlog for 25 revenue, it's roughly a third. So in line with what we had last year, we feel very well about it. Looks great. In terms of our projects, you know, our projects' timeline, we have invested a lot in accelerating our capability of delivering projects. You know, and that, I think, has given us a competitive position when customers are in a hurry. Or, you know, as Jason mentioned, data centers, they want things very, very quickly. That gives us a competitive position. However, you know, what has become... I mean, a little bit clearer now is that some of the time it is not necessarily set by us, but set by, you know, other external factors. However, our shortened project timelines allows a much more, from an economic point of view, a much more efficient project. In terms of project timelines, I think we should continue to use the 18 months that we told you. We brought it, we have been bringing it down, but I think that's a good guideline for, it's a good guideline for our financial projections and a good guideline for you to look at our backlog. We'll let you know if things, you know, improve, you know, change materially.

Okay, appreciate it. Thank you. Our next question comes from Leanne Hayden at Kennecourt Genuity.

Morning, everyone. Congrats on the quarter, and thanks so much for taking my question. To start, I know you reiterated 2025 revenue growth expectations. I was just wondering if you still expect to see the same profitability as previously guided. I believe it was a 10% to 15% gross margin.

Yes, we do expect the same profitability of 10% to 15%, and I will tell you that performance this year gives us even more confidence that we will be able to deliver in the 10% to 15% range. We are very happy. This was our transformation when we took over the company to today. From minus five to now being able to feel very confident in the 10 to 15. We are all very proud of the work that we have done here.

Great, thanks. And then just one more from me on increasing data center demand. Are your data center discussions focused mostly on hyperscalers or small providers as well? Any color you could provide on that would be great.

As you know, we work with top-tier developers in the U.S., so it's mostly hyperscalers. You know, there might be one or two that are midsize, but generally hyperscalers. That's what I'll say.

Understood. Great. Thanks so much. I'll jump back in queue.

Thank you. Thank you, Leanne.

Our next question comes from Jordan Levy at Truist Securities.

uh morning all and appreciate you taking my questions uh i just wanted to get a sense of what you're seeing uh specifically in the international market from a from a competition perspective with a large entrant kind of into that market earlier this year i think in particularly in europe yes a you know that each market is different i'm being very clear there are markets are but some of the players we see in the us do not are not active however

I'll say about the European market, it tends to be, especially the UK, more than Europe, let's talk about the UK. The UK is probably the most competitive market. And it's a market we are very, very happy that we can win and we continue progressing a lot because it is a very competitive market because it is very open to a lot of entrants. And it's also a market that requires... you know, very good capabilities in terms of delivery. So, you know, that combination makes it an interesting market to work. The rest of Europe, I would say the intensity of competition in Europe is also a little bit higher. However, because it's a, you know, new market, it has one hour, you know, and not all players offer one hour. It tends to be not that, you know, a little bit less than the UK.

Appreciate that. And then maybe just kind of a follow-up on your prior question on the data center market. I know you all have had probably a lot of conversations in this space with key players, and I'm just curious if those conversations from your commentary last quarter, if those conversations have evolved at all in terms of what customers might be looking for for a more direct storage solution as it relates to duration or anything like that.

Most of our data center demand comes indirectly. We support PPAs that the big top-tier developers offer data centers and large tech companies. I would say the great majority, it is indirectly. There's very little that we do directly, and that doesn't seem to be a market that is opening up. We believe that most of our sales to that connected to data centers will go through large, through PPAs, you know, with the large tech companies.

Thanks so much. Our next question comes from David Sacker at BMO Capital Markets.

Hi, good morning. Good morning. Just real quick, it looked like the implied ASPs this quarter were, I think, like around $430 at KWH. I was just wondering if you could kind of speak to were there any kind of one-off factors that kind of drove that, or are we looking at it maybe not, perhaps not the right way? Thanks. Thanks.

Hey, Amit. This is Amit. So, yes, I think if you're looking just for the quarter, you're right. And I think that is more to do with the mix of the contracts because we have more international during the quarter where we have EPC elements embedded in those contracts. But I think if you look at for the year, year-to-date versus year-to-date, ESPs are roughly 25% less, and that reflects the pricing, you know, what we have seen in the commodity prices. So that is the right way to think about, you know, year-to-date basis is pretty – is declining, but that reflects, you know, the lithium-ion prices.

Great. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Cassie Harrison at Piper Sandler.

Good morning, Cassie. Good morning. Hey, good morning, Julian, and thanks for taking my questions. Congrats on the impressive bookings backlog and also the execution. So I wanted to focus on the backlog and bookings. You know, I noticed that the total backlog increased significantly in 3Q. But the implied 12 months from the Q is, you know, flat quarter of a quarter around, you know, 2.3 billion. It is a 12 month look. So, you know, it's only good through June 30 of next year. And I was just wondering if you were to extend that to September, can you give us a sense of, you know, what would happen to that, you know, implied 2.3 billion estimate? I'm just wondering if there's another big jump in 4Q of next year just because of the general 4Q weighting of the business.

So, yes, you're right. I think this is the nature of our business where the revenues are lumpy. And frankly, that is partly driven by the nature of the contracts that we have and the customers who want their deliveries during the summer peak months. So, yes, I think we I mean, I think probably 60, 70 percent of our revenue is second half back unloaded this year. And we think probably that would be the case next next year as well.

Scott, so the $2.3 billion is probably significantly higher if you were to include 4Q next year.

Yeah, but I think that the key there is the percentage of completion. I think as we sign more contracts, as we execute on those contracts, we will continue to realize. But net-net, you will see more back-end loaded. That's the lumpiness that we have in our business.

Got it. I appreciate that. And then for my follow-up question, I know it's tough to guide the forward bookings, but I wanted to try to ask this question anyway. Do you think you can hold that $4 billion or $5 billion flat exiting the year? I only ask since next quarter is a very big revenue quarter, and so I was just trying to get a sense of if you can hold $4 billion or $5 billion through year-end. Thank you.

Yeah, I think that is the expectations like we did last year. You know, I mean, I think we are pretty much in the same position where we were last year at this stage. Q3 call, we were about one third of our revenue for 24 locked in in our backlog. And we are at the same place and expectation is as we sign more and more contracts, I think we will be in a similar situation. I mean, this last quarter, we signed five gigawatt hours, as you saw. And frankly, that is equivalent to the full year 23 deliveries. So we are seeing significant growth in volume, and hopefully that trend will continue.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Ben Kendall at Baird.

Hey, good morning, guys. Thank you for taking my question. My first question Thank you. My first question was just on pricing environment. You guys talked about the ASPs and where they've trended this year. As you look out to next year, could you just maybe talk to us about how we square the 12% to 15% gross margin? with pricing, if you expect it to continue to go down, maybe what your levers for decreasing costs, I know as you transition to U.S. manufacturing. So if I put all that together, maybe just the levers on bringing down costs so you can keep up with price declines. And then my second question is just what you're seeing in competition in the U.S. in terms of international players and specifically Chinese, Korean players coming to the U.S. to produce in the U.S. and how competitive they are in pricing right now and if that's impacting any of your business as you look out into next year. Thank you. Great.

Thank you, Ben. On the pricing, what do we see today? Maybe go back one step. Lithium carbonate, which has been stable up to May, came down around 10 to 15, around 20, let's say, since May. So it is getting softer. That gives you a sign that somehow the battery storage market is getting softer. Lithium or the price of lithium has become a lot less relevant in terms of how this is priced. So that's an important point to add. Having said that, we do believe that we will continue seeing some price reductions going forward, and we plan for it, and we work for it. And our guidance takes into consideration the fact that our pricing will continue coming down. We see strong elasticity of demand in this market, strong. You see it in our pipeline, 65% growth in less than a year. See it in our backlog. just looked at our orders this year, this year, we were able to contract the same volume we recognized last year, just in a quarter. So that tells you the tremendous elasticity of demand. So we're, you know, as I said, the prices are not, we're not going to see a repetition of 24. We will see prices continue to soften, you know, and we're ready for it. We have a view of what, how it will work. And we, we can commit to our 35 to 40% growth out of our 3 billion, uh, midpoint, you know, our prior midpoint with that information. In terms of competition, this has always been a very competitive market. It is not getting more competitive. It is essentially, you know, maybe the names change, you know, because people realize that they cannot deliver what they say they can deliver and they cannot go away. But the competition has not given down. I haven't seen, you know, there are a lot of players that are talking about stuff But when we talk to our customers, these are mirages. There's nothing behind it. We're going to do this in Dallas, in Arizona. Clearly, a lot of these competitors, I do not get the information. But when I talk to my customers, I say, we went there. There's nothing. You cannot touch it. It all sounds very, very good. It does not exist. So, hey, we do expect more competition in the U.S. market, and we are ready for it, and we love competition. You know, we're ready for that, but I do not think that it will take a while for a lot of these, you know, dreams to become reality, you know, from their part of it.

Great. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Our next question comes from Joseph Osha, Ever Behind Partners.

Good morning, everybody. Congratulations. Good morning, Joe. My first question relates to domestic cell supply. I was at an industry event a while ago. Saw some numbers suggesting that, you know, by 2026, when this 301 terror comes into effect, the industry is only going to be able to meet maybe a quarter to a third of demand with domestically sourced cells. I'm wondering if you have a reaction to that and if you're seeing kind of the same numbers.

Hey, we heard, you know, that all... There are people who said there was going to be a surplus, and there are people who say, if you looked at all the projects that are around and people that have the views you have, that this market is going to have a huge deficit. Probably somewhere in the middle. It's going to be a tight market, I believe, but I think that there will be enough to cover. I don't know about 26. That's a little bit. But over time, we'll have enough to cover the demand in the U.S. This is very important, and it will happen. We will work to meet. that demand from our part. So I think that there will be more players. We don't expect a market where we'll be so tight as you probably have read some of the reports around.

Okay, thanks. And then my follow-up, I'm just wondering, lots of chatter out there about project timing. I'm wondering if you look at if your storage-only business relative to your storage plus solar business if you're seeing perhaps any greater level of volatility or movement and uncertainty in the solar plus storage business, because it certainly seems like we're picking up those signals from some of the other folks in solar world. Thank you.

I mean, the reality is we haven't seen anything get any worse or deteriorate in any way. Normal projects, When we get involved, no normal project delays that a transformer is late. It's all counted in weeks, you know, or, you know, not in years or in months. You know, it is the normal delays you get in a project that permit to move things through a street or things of that sort. So we do not, we haven't seen, and it's not any different between the projects that we do, batteries, standalone, which is mostly in our international markets than the ones we do. batteries and solar. It's the same type of delay. But as we have said, we get into this project a lot later. So when we're there, our customers have signed PPAs, they have financing, they have all the permits in place. So the stuff that gets these things delayed are things that delays by weeks, never mind months.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Brian Lee at Goldman Sachs.

Hey, guys. This is Tyler Bissett. I'm for Brian. Thank you for taking our questions, and congrats on the solid results here. Your pipeline appears to have grown the strongest in APAC and EMEA, but I guess I would have expected to see continued strength in the Americas, given growth from data centers as well as domestic content. I see the CAGR growth is higher in both regions, but from a lower base. You called out growth in Germany and Australia. So are you seeing certain products getting better than expected traction there, or are there any other markets where you're seeing outsized growth?

I think the ones we talked about, Germany is a new nascent market that is very, very attractive. You know, Australia has been growing, and we see big prospects for continuous growth. So, you know, as you said, We have seen the growth rate out of a much lower base, but the growth rate in our international market, you know, growing more strongly. And the thing is that because our international markets are a mix, things move here or there differently and they're not affected. So, you know, very, very, you know, very, very happy with our global strategy. I think that's kind of what I would like maybe highlight. This concentrating globally and working with, you know, globally gives us an ability to manage headwinds that you might get here or there much more effectively than if we were only a company working in a few markets or only a couple of markets.

And then you guys called out 40% of your U.S. pipeline data centers. How do you expect that number to trend going forward?

I think it will continue to grow. I think it will continue to grow and It's difficult to know. As you know, we get this demand indirectly. So we're not involved with the data centers. We're involved with the developers who talk to the data centers. But talking leeches, as we listen to the calls of all our customers and we know what they're doing, they are talking about a game in the data center, all of them, about a game in the data center market that I think it will be a multiple of what we have seen up to date. So I expect that number to grow. Perfect, thank you very much.

Our last call comes from Biju Peranchero at Susquehanna Financial Group.

Hey Biju, good morning.

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to ask about the opportunities to use batteries for transmission applications in the U.S., sort of especially coupling that with DLR technologies. And also I want to see if there is sort of any regulatory changes that need to take place for that to be deployed here.

Good point. We continue, this is a great technology that has been very successful in Europe. We are promoting that technology in the U.S. I will say that the main, and as you know, or you probably know, FERC allows batteries to be a transmission asset. So, you know, that's good. A lot of the system operators are allowing it in their systems. You know, MISO came up with the rules in the Northeastern system allowed. So there are some rules. However, what we see is that there are restrictions on the ownership of the batteries by the owners of the transmission assets. You know, you can put them but they cannot be owned by the same person, by the same entity. And that, I think, is a restriction that needs to be, and that comes out of the view that a transmission operator or owner cannot dispatch the generation or call in demand. And that's what, you know, Navatory essentially does that. So that creates a regulatory hurdle that we've been trying to, you know, explain to regulators that you need to allow the same owners the same owner of the transmission asset to own the batteries in order for this to work. And we're working on it, and I think that as this becomes more and more of a success in Europe, we'll see it happening in the U.S., so we're confident that it will happen.

Okay, thanks.

This concludes the question and answer session. I will now turn it back to Lexington for closing remarks.

Thank you for participating on today's call. If you have any additional questions, feel free to reach out to me. We look forward to speaking with you again when we report our fourth quarter results. Have a good day.

This does conclude the program.

You may now disconnect.