Energy Vault Holdings, Inc.

Greetings and welcome to Energy Vault's third quarter 2024 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If you should require any operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. And as a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce to you Michael Beer, Chief Financial Officer. Thank you, Michael. You may begin.

Thank you. Hello and welcome to Energy Vault's third quarter 2024 financial results conference call. As a reminder, Energy Vault's third quarter earnings press release and presentation are available now on our investor website, and we'll be referring to the presentation during this call. A replay of this call will be available later today on the investor relations portion of our website. This call is now being recorded. If you object in any way, please disconnect now. Please note that Energy Vault's earnings release and this call contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risk and uncertainties. These forward-looking statements are only estimates and may differ materially from the actual future results, and they may vary due to a variety of factors. Please refer to our 10-Q filing for a list of factors that cause our results to differ from those anticipated in any forward-looking statements. We undertake no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements except as required by law. In addition, please note that we will be presenting and discussing certain non-GAAP information. Please refer to the safe harbor disclaimer and non-GAAP financial measures presented in our earnings release for more details, including a reconciliation to comparable GAAP measures. Joining me on the call today is Robert Picconi, our chair, chairman, and chief executive officer.

At this time, I'd like to hand the call over to Robert Picconi. Great. Thank you, Michael.

And good afternoon and morning and evening to everybody here on the call. Thanks for joining. I'm going to break precedent a little bit and start with how I normally finish my calls on our quarterly earnings, and that's starting with our people. And one word comes to mind, resiliency, not a new word or concept, working in the energy storage world. for us and generally storage solutions and grid resiliency. But in this case, we'd like to recognize it is a word that applies to our people here at Energy Vault. In the last 90 days in particular, we've seen tremendous change in volatility in the capital markets, in the geopolitical landscape, which continues to bring uncertainty, unprecedented energy demand to support what we see driven by data center expansions, and the resurgence of interest in any cleaner fossil power to meet it. We've seen a lot of the news on SMRs, even Microsoft taking its interest in the Two Mile Island nuclear plant, a gap in power that clearly needs to be closed in terms of an economical solution for 24-7 dispatchable renewable energy. So it seems the future has arrived a little earlier than planned, and it will take the most resilience of all of us and companies and leadership and courage and the people that make up the foundation here of Energy Vault that I'm so proud to work alongside. We've just had the U.S. elections complete last week. Always can be polarizing in some cases, as we've seen in the last elections, but in particular around our national commitment to renewable energy and to clean power and meeting that rising power demand, which I believe in any outcome of the election will still support a healthy clean energy transition, and it will prevail. Strong, tough, robust, flexible, these are all synonyms for resiliency. As I was writing some of my thoughts and comments, it actually came up in the spell check as synonyms. But really, these words represent the foundational core of my colleagues here at Energy Vault that I work with, And I'm humbled to support every day due to the impact that we can have and that we see, starting with our local communities that make up the global communities that our teams touch every day. I want to touch on a few examples from some recent travels on these things and sticking with this theme of resiliency. I just spent the last few days late last week in the community of Calistoga, California, where what we call our CRC, our California Resiliency Center, has achieved mechanical completion and beginning soft commission activities of what's the largest hybrid green hydrogen energy storage system in the world. Craig Horn, who leads our Advanced Energy Storage Technology Group, was there to host me along with Erwin Tantu. who's our head of commissioning and has been, by the way, to all of our initial sites in the United States for the first gigawatt hour across three projects that we turned over in 2023 and brought up in unprecedented timeframes. These timeframes, I would say not by accident, but through an approach we have taken due to the experience of our software development and team, that experience that while new as a company at Energy Vault brings people with 15 years plus experience in energy storage, during its infancy and its growth, in particular the last five to seven years, also on a multi-technology battery storage integration experience. And the ability to turn up these systems quickly and efficiently, not by any luck, of course, but through cell level monitoring, for example, to detect problems well before they're gonna manifest themselves. even pre-building digital twins of the site design and environment. So no stone is left unturned as we go from mechanical completion to system turn up. This planning enhances all of our execution in the field that our customers uniformly would speak to. Very happy other supporters to visit there, including interactions up in Calistoga with the local business owners and community advocates that are excited to have a sustainable solution to the noise and pollution from diesel generators that were a part of their past now, wheeled in every year for the fire season, for example, or to deal with what's called PSPS or public safety power shutdown events. But a healthy amount, too, of wait and see as I spent and interacted in the local community. Is it safe? Will it be noisy? And that 150-foot-long tank filled with green hydrogen, in the end, we're very excited, as is the local community, community there to bring up this system, be the first of a kind in a microgrid, first of a kind for green hydrogen energy storage and something that we'll be replicating. But it all starts here with the local communities and that impact. And as I reflect in particular on the last 12 to 18 months, Reed Gardner in Nevada was a large coal plant, one of the largest polluters in the state of Nevada. and us delivering a 440-megawatt-hour system there in a precedented timeframe from four months from taking control of the site. With a hybrid system delivered with Wellhead Electric in California, the local Stanton, Orange County, Southern California residential community, where our four-hour, 275-megawatt-hour system allows the gas speaker plant to operate less frequently, reducing GHDs by up to 70% to 90%. Hal Dittmer, for those of you that might have heard the name, a real pioneer in the state of California and the community. 84 years old, I hope he doesn't mind me saying that, but would not put him past the age of 55 if you see him on the street. All about the impact here, and I would really be remiss with not spending a few minutes, therefore, on my recent visit to Australia. And the team there, regionally led by Lucas Sadler on the commercial side, Aaron McCann on the execution side, We've talked about the Australian market and have made a few announcements here in the last couple of weeks. All of fairly large scale and given the size and importance of that market, the coexistence of many of our strategic investors, including Korea's Inc, the largest non-ferrous metals producer in the world, and their wholly owned subsidiary, Arc Energy, BHP, one of the largest mining and iron ore companies in the world, just to name a few, all investing in their own clean energy transition. But I was most fascinated by the local government support from the meetings in Melbourne, for example, with the Victorian Energy Minister, Lily D'Ambrosia, head of the State Electricity Grid, or called the SEC, and the longest tenured energy minister in all the Australian states, a woman of great vision, great passion, focused on what needs to be achieved, and ever cognizant of the how things are accomplished as more important necessarily than the final result that's achieved. We look forward to large partnerships and projects there and have built a tremendous pipeline well over the five gigawatt hour range now of projects that we'll be executing upon over the next 12 months in the coming years. While I was there, we announced the first of what we believe will be many project partnerships with Ross Warby and the team from Enervest. The first one gigawatt hour project at Stony Creek in New South Wales, for example. Excited about the potential given the development and the portfolio focus that we have is a core strategy in working earlier in the pipeline development with companies and people that bring the expertise to pinpoint the grid weak points and opportunities to support better grid resiliency. Anyway, it was a great week. Much of our core leadership team was there in person. We did a lot of planning. for the coming years for the Australian market, including immediate investments and doubling the size of that team in the very near term and tripling the size of our investment in Australia over the next year, given the opportunities we see in the projects that we have underway. Shifting a bit now to our results before turning it over to Michael, who will go over some of the details of the financials. Just very encouraged by what we've seen in the last three to four months and the progress. starting with probably one of our most important criteria and indicators of the future, which is our revenue backlog, which grew by over 33% in the quarter, supporting now as we look to the revenue ramp we have coming in 2025 plus. While Australia, of course, will play an important part, very happy to announce new projects in the United States. We recently announced the gridmatic offtake agreement, of our Texas site, a battery site that we'll be building, owning, and operating. Fairly quick turnaround, theirs will be COD in the second quarter of 2025, but also announced for the first time here on this call, a new project with Jupiter Power. And always nice to be announcing additional projects with prior customers. I think a great example of building the faith and the confidence and trust of customers that have built projects with us that we've delivered to and feel very good about what the team has earned there in delivering for the first project and now a second project with Jupyter. I also feel great about our execution on our strategy to not only build and deploy these systems, but also to own and operate these storage assets. With the right development partnerships and the knowledge we have in designing, commissioning, and maintaining these systems, That experience allows us to reduce the capital expenditure up front through optimal design, allows us to reduce the operating expense it takes to operate these systems and to maintain them, and at the end of the day, to ensure the availability of these systems and the uptime to ensure we're meeting customer needs, we're meeting the grid needs, and meeting the needs of our expectations of our investors on the returns on these investments, which of course bring long-term revenue streams at very attractive margins. From a revenue perspective, this was clearly a transitional quarter as we get into our Q4 ramp now underway, as we've previously guided, but now coming in Q4. But maintain the strong gross margins as we were finishing projects, gross margins achieved at 40 percent plus, and on a year-to-date basis, 28 percent, which obviously bodes well for our finish for the year and our guidance. of finishing the entire year at 15 to 20% unit economics and gross margins. Encouraged to continue to see our OPEX reduce both on a year-over-year basis, 13%, and 7% reduced on a quarter-over-quarter basis, This reflects some of the changes we made in our technology and business model as we looked at our licensing models back at the first half of the year and the areas we're going to be investing in and therefore adjustments we made to our organization and the team supporting that strategy. Mike will talk more about some of the project financing that we announced and kicked off working with Jefferies on some of our first fully owned projects in the United States, specifically in California and also in Texas. And while this reduced our revenue in terms of turning over projects and recognized revenue on the year, we've been very clear since we announced at our investor analyst meetings in May of why that strategy is so fundamental to the intermediate to the long-term and the growth and the interest of our shareholders in our long-term operating model. We believe this model will have a lot of dividends for the shareholders, but in particular, as we look into our planning as a company in the coming three to five years. We also have added more global assets for this new operating model, including what we are announcing in Australia in the development partnership we have with Enervest. But also, we announced three months ago the 100 megawatt system in Italy at their largest coal plant in Sardinia, Carbon Suchus. where we'll be installing and have just installed the first EV0 gravity system there in our beginning commissioning, and has a future for an integrated hybrid site with the coexistence of our gravity with batteries to deliver 100 megawatts of power to the local community. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention a few of our innovation milestones as well, already discussed. about the green hydrogen system in Calistoga and where that is and what's going to be the first of a kind and turned over here in the next two to three months. But also applying our gravity with what we announced with Skidmore Owings Merrill and integrating gravity energy storage in the future of superstructures. And in particular, using our modular pumped hydro approach with gravity and integrating these in these structures where for the first time, we'll be able to have a carbon payback in very short periods in the building sector. There's some very interesting statistics if you do study what creates most of our greenhouse gases. It may surprise you to know that almost 30% to 40% of the greenhouse gas emissions come from both the building and the operating of buildings. And because of that, we're very excited to work with Adam Semel, And the team, Bill Baker, Scott Duncan from Skidmore and Merrill, and the work they're doing jointly with our team and our gravity technology expertise, combining that together. And you'll be seeing more to come in the coming years as we look at the first projects for these superstructures across the world. Was also very excited to announce today, as hopefully some of you have seen, some of the performance data from our Rudong Gravity Energy Storage System, 25 megawatt, 100 megawatt hour in China. And with performance measures, as we previously guided, in the 80% to 85% range on initial data on the round-trip efficiency. This is massively significant, I think, for the world, and in particular, in the long-duration energy space, the first milestone achieved and one of the highest round trip efficiency measures in long duration energy storage in the world. Very excited what that means, not only for China and the other four gigawatt hours plus of projects that have already been announced there in China alone, but also what it means for some of the other regions where we've announced initial gravity projects and license agreements, for example, in the 16 states of South Africa and surrounding countries, as well as in other regions of the world where we're beginning development in the Middle East and even right here in the United States, starting with our Snyder Development Center. Very excited about what these initial performance measurements are telling us about the role that gravity can and will play as part of many solutions and technologies for the clean energy transition. Finally, it was just announced last week and excited to recognize the team by what Time Magazine recognized as one of the best inventions in 2024. And really a tribute, I'd like to mention Bill Gross, who was really the founder of Energy Vault. I know myself and Andrea Pedretti carry the titles of co-founder of the company, but it really started with Bill Gross, his vision, his passion, his never-give-up attitude to look at different ways to solve unique problems in energy storage. Really appreciated the role that Bill has played both in my career in renewables as well as as a co-founder, as the founder and energy volunteer with our gravity energy storage technology. Really just a tremendous motivation for our entire team. And I think these recognitions now that are coming as we begin to build out and people begin to see that some of the gravity energy storage take form on the planet and the recognition from Time magazine is a really good tribute to him, Andrea Pedrati, and now others that are carrying that on in different places and from different companies. Jose Andrade, for example, who is the chair of all the civil engineering structural studies at Caltech, who's been working with EnergyBuilt now for many years, since actually the very beginning of the company, and people like Bill Baker. Bill Baker from Skidmore Owens Merrill is the chief architect of the Burj Khalifa building, currently the largest building in the world at over 800 meters tall. Really excited to work with Bill and his practicality as you look at structures and design. And he's working pretty much full time now with Energy Vault as we look at building structures and optimizing design for different structures across the world. So a significant recognition to those individuals, plus all the teams at Energy Vault that have been championing, developing our gravity energy storage technology everything from the mechanical the civil side all the material science needed to avoid for example the production of concrete and all of these things have come together with the software that automates everything and makes it all cost effective and economical a big call out to all those folks for this recognition and finally before turning back to michael to go over some of the numbers i'm very happy to be reaffirming our annual guidance here as we've done all year we're tightening up that range a bit as we get into obviously this quarter and now we're within six and a half weeks of looking at the end of the year so we see the shipments on their way that's going to tie to the revenue recognition of course a lot happening here in this last six weeks as we look at that but feel very good about reaffirming that range and nearing that a bit here as we look forward and look forward to a strong quarter of delivery that's both on our recognition of some of our range guidance that we had given previously, but also in continuing to build our bookings cadence and building that revenue backlog as we look at a large revenue ramp into 2025 and beyond. And with that, I'll turn it back over to Michael Beer.

Many thanks, Rob. As you noted, the company currently maintains a revenue backlog of $350 million, which increased 33% from the figure reported during our 2Q earnings results, reflecting an equipment contract with Jupiter for another 200-megawatt-hour battery energy storage project and a 10-year off-take agreement with Gridmatic for the 57-megawatt, 114-megawatt-hour cross-trails battery energy storage project in Snyder, Texas, the latter of which will remain on balance sheet as part of our build, own, and operate strategy. As part of this strategy, discussed during our investor and analyst day back in May, management expects to retain ownership of approximately $100 million in cash-generative storage assets, such as CrossTrails and the Calistoga Resiliency Center, rather than generate legacy EPC and equipment-related revenue through the one-time sale of those projects this year. While this will impact near-term revenue in exchange for long-term value creation for our shareholders, We are encouraged by the pace of this transition over the past two quarters. With construction of two battery storage projects in Texas and Nevada now complete and new projects ramping in the fourth quarter, the company reported minimal project revenue in 3Q and down notably year over year, with software and services contributing about $1.2 million in the period. As noted previously, we continue to expect revenue this year to be back and loaded due mainly to the timing of equipment deliveries for our new project in Texas and in support of the ASIN projects in Australia. Excluding the projects on our balance sheet, we expect full-year revenue to be at the lower end of the guidance range, with upside associated with the timing of revenue recognition from existing and potential license agreements within our gravity business in Southern Africa and Brazil, respectively. Our gross margin was 40.3% for the third quarter. up from 4.2% a year ago, reflecting favorable revenue mix largely associated with software and services, albeit on a significantly lower base of revenue. Through nine months of the year, gross margin is tracking at 28.3%, above the guided range of 15 to 25% for the full year 2024. However, given the anticipated back-end loaded mix of business in 4Q from equipment deliveries for a battery project in Texas, we expect the the full-year gross margin to normalize towards the low end of the guidance range, pending the timing of revenue recognition from high-margin license agreements within our Gravity business. Now on to adjusted OPEX and EBITDA. During the third quarter, our adjusted operating expense was $15.2 million, which improved 13% year-over-year and 7% sequentially quarter-over-quarter, reflecting the organizational realignment in the first half of 2024. 3Q adjusted EBITDA was negative $14.7 million, which improved 5% quarter over quarter, but weakened versus the year ago due to the timing of project completion and lower overall gross profit in the period. Other key non-cash items added back in Q3 were $10.2 million for stock-based compensation expense, $1.9 million provision for credit losses, $800,000 for a change in the fair value of a derivative asset conversion option, and $1.4 million in net interest income. Management continues to expect adjusted EBITDA within the range of negative 45 million and negative 60 million for the full year. On cash and project financings, as of September 30th, 2024, the company had $78 million in cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash, versus 113 million in total on June 30th. Restricted cash increased to 26 million associated with a letter of credit for a project that has since received final completion. Our primary uses of cash, Our cash operating expenses and working capital needs associated with equipment purchases for our energy storage projects and expenditures for those projects we have chosen to own and operate, which will likely be largely offset by anticipated project finance and monetization of tax credits. Year to date, use of cash from investing activities increased to $48.3 million, mainly from construction and progress associated with our build, own, and operate strategy. Management still expects our year-end cash balance to be within the range of $75 to $125 million, depending upon the timing of those project financings. And the company maintains bonding capacity in excess of $1 billion to facilitate additional growth for projects both in the U.S. and in Australia. With the project financings for Calistoga and CrossTrails now underway with Jefferies, we expect to bring $60 to $80 million in cash back onto the balance sheet once completed, including monetization of tax credits. We expect to return $30 million from the Calistoga project, anticipated to close by year end. Meanwhile, we expect to return another $40 million from the CrossJails project over the next two quarters. The company continues to execute on the build, own, and operate strategy and has identified a strong development pipeline for storage asset ownership and infrastructure projects in the U.S. and Australia, totaling over 30 gigawatt hours. We also see a host of advantages and synergies across our legacy business as we leverage our project management expertise, solutions-based approach, and diversified storage product portfolio. While inherently more capital-intensive than the EPC business, these accretive owned and operated projects enhance earnings visibility and our margin profile. Once completed, we expect these projects to deliver unlevered double-digit IRRs and project EBITDA margins in the 70% to 80% range. underpinned by long-term offtake agreements. We then look to optimize the capital structure of each project, depending on the nature of the offtake agreement, available tax credits, and use of project finance. With that, I'll hand the call back over to Rob.

Great. Thank you, Michael. I think one last thing I'll just emphasize there that you just went through. We've gotten some questions from investors asking to understand a bit how some of the own and operate projects will work and how the working capital flows, how the returns work. And Michael just walked through that. But just to highlight, these are projects and things as we look at building projects as well and understanding the dynamics of the CapEx and the OpEx for them. The returns on these projects that are our criteria for investing in them have been and will be and continue to be in this low double digit unlevered operating range. The EBITDA margins as they go forward then, especially with, as you add project financing, as we announced with Jeffrey's, just a few weeks back, something that is very attractive, we believe, for creating these long-term revenue predictable streams for our investors. And also, as we leverage our expertise, and this is the other, I think, fundamental point, with the experience we have on our team in designing and optimizing, and you can read that as reducing the capex associated with getting these projects built, We built, I think, a strong reputation on the execution side. As you've seen since the very beginning of our company, we've always maintained positive unit economics, positive growth margins. That's not something that's common in our industry for those of you that follow energy storage, and I think was one of the surprises as we came out and started to execute projects. So that is a strength that we will continue to leverage with the expertise with our team. And then as it comes to the commissioning of these projects, bringing them up, the experience and the way we've developed and designed our software platform, Shaheen Fakhar, who leads our EMS software development with his team, brings a lot of experience, by the way, across industry, not only from some energy storage, but also from the aerospace industry, and things that we do to ensure that when we do get to the field, we do not have surprises. I mentioned earlier on about creating digital twins in our own operating environment. Our cell-level technology for monitoring systems, so important when it comes to safety and dealing with lithium ion as a fundamental technology and things our customers have come to appreciate. And as we look at it and as we have brought up our systems on our first projects, done it very, very quickly, rapidly from mechanical completion to the uptick. Here as we look to manage and get to pool COD, on these battery projects. It's something that we see as an opportunity and uniquely positioned to leverage, whether that be positioning and doing that work for some of our customer sets where we deliver some of our product innovation or other projects where we will invest and own and operate over time. With that, again, I want to thank all the people at Energy Vault and thank all of our investors and all of our partners that have supported our company and as we've executed here just the last few years. And with that, I'd like to turn it back to the operator for questions.

Thank you, sir. At this time, we will be conducting the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press the star key followed by 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the queue. You may press star 2 to remove a question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. And the first question comes from the line of Justin Clare with Roth Capital Partners. Please proceed with your question.

Hi. Good afternoon.

Hey, Justin.

Hey, so first, I just wanted to ask about the different, you know, ownership opportunities that you're looking at here. And wanted to see if you could share, you know, how much capacity could you potentially be looking to add to your balance sheets in, you know, 2025 or 2026? Just trying to think of the volume and then also the capital that would be needed in order to finance these projects and how you're thinking about the funding sources.

Sure. Thanks, Justin. So, as we announced previously there with Jefferies, we're in the market and raising the funds associated with the attractive project opportunities. I think one of the things we see operating well in the market is the availability of capital for attractive and good returning high RRR projects. So we do not see really any shortages of capital there, and also attractively priced capital, given the market environment we see, and I would not restrict that only to the U.S. market. I mentioned Australia a bit, and from our perspective, I think we've mentioned some of the you know, multi-gigawatt hour, and in particular in Australia with some of the pipeline there and the types of projects we're looking at there that are all quite large. You know, we've announced a few that are in the multi-hundreds, including the last one we announced, which is a full gigawatt hour. So we don't see a shortage of opportunities to get capital deployed. We built a reputation here over the last two years in particular to be able to execute well, positive unit economics, and get projects turned over that are all operating well for our customers today. And that is attracting a lot of investor interest. And, you know, to answer the latter part of your question, you know, we don't really limit our our thinking there for attractive projects and the way we've already been able to scale the company. So looking at things in the hundreds of millions of dollar range in terms of putting capital to work, and especially given, if you look at our cap table and some of the strategic investors on it, we've got a lot of different sources and a lot of investors that are very interested in working with us on getting capital deployed, given the experience that we bring to the table.

Okay, got it. And then just to follow up, curious, you know, given that you could own projects or you could essentially deliver the batteries and do the EPC for a project and recognize revenue essentially immediately, wondering how you're thinking about the different approaches and how that might affect the outlook for 2025 and the targets that you've provided at this point.

Sure. By the way, it's a great question. In all cases, we're looking at, of course, the commitments that we made that came out of our first investor and analyst meeting, why we're happy to be reaffirming and tightening a bit that guidance here as we look at this year. But as we think about next year and the guidance that we've given and given the backlog that we've announced that has grown quarter-by-quarter and the opportunities that we see, we'll be making decisions essentially in what's going to be in the best long-term interest of the company and our customers and our shareholders. And we did that this year. And I know I think from an analyst perspective, You know, some folks were a little surprised that we, you know, had a year where we took our revenue down to a 50 to 100 million range as we did this year, but a lot of that was foregoing some immediate revenue we could have had at, say, I don't know, 10, 12% gross margin in return for, you know, nice lower double-digit unlevered IRRs and long-term streams and EBITDA streams that would be anywhere in the 60 to 75% range with the right project financing. So I would say to answer your question in terms of the guidance for next year, we're going to be cognizant of the commitments that we made. We take those things very seriously and we'll make decisions on whether we decide to build and turn over projects to customers or decide to keep them on our balance sheet. By the way, always cognizant also of ensuring we're going to be turning cash appropriately. So that may result in scenarios where we may decide to turn cash and deliver projects or otherwise, given the access to capital that we have, holding them for the long term.

Okay, great. Thank you.

And the next question comes from the line of Alex Scheibelhofer with Stifel. Please proceed with your question.

Thanks, everyone, and thanks for taking my question here. So I just want to focus in a little bit on the 24-year guidance here. Naturally, the quarterly revenue progression could be a little lumpy here, but I was just wondering if you could provide us a little benchmark with what you expect to hit in the fourth quarter, what you feel the most confident will, and just some of the timing on the projects that you have pending.

Sure. Sure. Yeah, this was formally in our announcement, I think, there in the specific guidance, and Michael referenced this as well, but we're tightening up the range a bit. I think we said to the mid to lower end of that range is based on how we see shipment coming in and revenue recognition in what we see today. So, we feel very good on that lower end of the range, and then You know, pending how things get delivered and installed and given the revenue recognition rules, we'll see how much, you know, closer to that mid part of that range we feel like we can hit. You know, I wouldn't rule out, you know, other things and good things that can happen in the quarters as they did in our 2022 year where we had about $80 million additional revenue come in just through, you know, shipments that we were able to expedite. So it remains a bit of a dynamic process. but feel very good on the visibility we have into getting to that low end of the range. And then, you know, depending on how other operational items and the shipping items go, we'll determine where we get into that mid part or upper part of that guidance range. Okay.

Got it. Appreciate the color there. And then just kind of to follow up, you know, naturally during your investor conference in May, and as you've kind of highlighted during the call today, kind of building out that own and operate strategies, kind of a hallmark of just trying to enshrine some of the quarterly progression and get a little bit more visibility. I was just curious, when we think about 25, how is that going to progress on a quarterly basis? And just what would you expect to kind of fall into that 2020, 2025? for the timeframe versus slipping into maybe 26 or longer-term.

Michael Heaney Yeah. Yeah, I'll give you a little color on that. And obviously, we are going to be at our next quarterly for Q4, as usual, giving that full formal update to the 2025 guidance that we gave before. But as you're building and operating projects, it's just really math. If you're signing long-term 10- to 15-year agreements, obviously those are going to build over time. And the way we're going to start looking at that is this quarterly run rate of EBITDA that's going to be coming from those tolling agreements or those PPA agreements. And if you look at those on a quarterly basis times four and annualize them, you know, we want to be getting up to, you know, an annualized rate of EBITDA in the 50, 75, 100 million on a quarterly annualized basis. you know, here over the next 12 to 24 months. And that's just on those project sets. You know, we're still going to be, you know, executing around, you know, supporting some of the gravity license buildouts and the royalties that will be coming. We gave some guidance on that. And that is unique, I think, with us as an energy storage company that we have technology that we can actually monetize in long duration on licenses and royalties. So that's exciting. I think some of the things I mentioned earlier around gravity and the partnerships that we've built and formed in some regions of the world where gravity is going to play a role. So we're excited to have that continue to evolve. But we also have been innovating in new projects, leveraging our expertise that spans different technologies and different technology domains, leveraging our knowledge, for example, of civil and structural engineering and material science and using that to help optimize our battery projects, not only for core straight execution, but looking at new solutions to address energy density in a way that's been difficult to address before in tight spaces. And especially as we think about the data center build-out and what's unique about that. You know, not all data centers are built out in the middle of the desert or in the middle of, you know, large landscapes. There's a lot of places and places in the grid and where there are data centers and desires to have data centers that are in areas where energy density and space is at a premium. So thinking about our expertise we bring to the table across various technologies, bringing that creativity, I think Calistoga is a great example of an RFP that came out that didn't say, give me a green hydrogen microgrid solution. It said, we need a backup that's not diesel generation for the city for two days in case of a PSPS event. Uniquely, our team brought a solution together to sustainably design a system with green hydrogen, hybrid with lithium ion to address the grid forming needs and build that black start. That's expertise we have focused on solving a customer problem and not focused on shoving a product down a customer's throat because we happen to make it. I think that's unique to Energy Vault. I think with our software experience, we bring that expertise to the table. And I would say that that part of the business complementing what we're going to choose to own and operate is going to be quite formidable, I think, as a company and as an investment thesis for investors that are looking at really driving that innovation home with, you know, getting to a larger percentage of our revenue that's going to be predictable and recurring and high margins.

Excellent, that's great, Culler. I appreciate you taking my questions here, and I'll turn it back.

All right, thanks, Alex.

And the next question comes from the line of Chris Ellinghaus with Siebert Williams-Shank. Please proceed with your question.

Hey, good afternoon, everybody. Have you guys made any adjustments at all to the Snyder project in terms of capacity or your thoughts on... you know, capital costs or anything along those lines?

There's been some adjustments on that that I would say initially as we announced that project with Enel and working in cooperation with their R&D team, they had a series of apps of us of what they wanted to see in our gravity energy storage technology. We did end up buying that interconnect there. That's what we announced in the the Crosstails project. Chris, so that's one of the sites that we're going to own and operate because we bought the land and that interconnect out there. But we also did that in line with NL's request to not only look at our EBX technology and get it demonstrated at full scale, but also other applications of our gravity. And that includes the products we announced at our investor and analyst day. So the EBY, which is our slope-based technologies, which you can apply to different landscapes and pre-existing slopes, as well as what we announced in our, what we call our EV0, which is the modular pump hydro technology. So that equipment, for example, for EV0 arrived at the site about a month ago in Snyder. The EVY is going to be the first technology actually up and running, and we have customer visits planned and that'll all be up and running before the end of the year. And then EVX will be coming online just after EVY in Q1. So what we've built in Snyder now is a multi-asset, multi-technology site that will also represent all of our latest innovations with our software capabilities. So we put one of our bVault battery systems there that is doing energy storage, as well as that'll be taking the power generation from PV that we're building at the site, be charging those systems, orchestrating the discharging, and we'll be highlighting other capabilities of our software. So that center, we have essentially developed into more technologies on gravity than than just EVX, and that's been in collaboration with Enel. But in addition, we're using that site more broadly to demonstrate a lot of other capabilities and then using that interconnect as well to build out one of the assets we're going to own and operate. So very excited for that. In the next, I mean, essentially two to three months, we'll be bringing some of those systems up and would be excited to host you out at the site if you ever want Get into that area there. It's about a four hour drive outside of Dallas there in Snyder.

Okay, great. That's helpful. Do you have any insight that you can provide on the unannounced Australian 200 watt hour when that might be public?

Chris, I'm sorry, there was some breakup in the line. I'm getting some feedback here. I don't know if it's on my end, but would you mind repeating the question? I heard about Australia and projects, but I didn't get specifically the color you wanted. Can you repeat the question?

Yeah, the unannounced 200 megawatt hour project, do you have an insight into when that might be publicly announced?

Yeah, sure. We're expecting that announcement this quarter. So I was just there in Australia and met with some of the principals of that project But we expect that to be announced this quarter.

Okay. You know, as far as financing goes going forward, you're working on project financing and monetization of credits at the moment. Is that what you foresee for the foreseeable future as the paradigm, or do you see adding other things to the toolkit as well?

Yeah, I'd say it's a great question. So, we'll be continuing to do what I'll call is more standard project financing mechanisms. As I mentioned earlier, those models are quite well-proven, attractive, including there's a very liquid market on the tax equity and the ITC side. So, I think Michael referenced some of that already in what he just walked through. But we are also, as announced, working with Jefferies on other mechanisms in order so we're going to be creating abilities for us to be able to execute multiple projects that we see, and not only the U.S., you know, Australia, we mentioned the pipeline that we're working on there, which is quite large. So, this is not going to be the case going forward like it happened this past year where we're financing this off of our own balance sheet as we did the first two projects and then putting the cash back, as we mentioned. We've obviously, having no debt, we've had the flexibility to make the choices to go ahead and invest. off of our balance sheet. And while in parallel, we are getting the project financing done, but I would say going forward strategically, we're gonna be working, I think, in a little more thoughtful mode of creating ways and non-dilutive ways, okay, non-dilutive ways, for us to look at having sources of capital. That may include partners, for example, and, you know, that may include strategic partners, meaning people that have invested in the company, whether, you know, pre-IPO or closed.

Okay, that's great. You guys seem to gloss over the December 11th, 12th date. I was kind of curious if you had any Are there details for that? And since you're bringing up Snyder, are you thinking about doing some kind of event at Snyder next year?

Yeah, by the way, it's a great comment and question. We did not mean for sure to gloss over. I was going to finish with some of that, but we're excited about the event there in Calistoga and hosting folks, so there'll be more about that. You know, we chose there in Calistoga, given the uniqueness of the microgrid, I think the passion, and I don't know another word how to say it, of the local community, the excitement they have to have the system online, but we're choosing a time prior to the full hot commissioning. So actually it allows us to interact in and around the site there where we're in a soft commissioning mode. So it will be able to, I think, get a little closer to everything there at the site. So I think that just, that really fit given that's going to be a first of a kind and first of a kind online. And the first ultra long duration, meaning multi-day sustainable storage, type of project of its kind. And to your point on Snyder, absolutely, I think as we get some of the other and the full set of, it'll be three different gravity technologies between EVX, EVY, and the modular pumped hydro up and running in the next two to three months, combined with the software that's going to be orchestrating that, including the coexistence of the generation PV, in this case, with multiple storage technologies, we'll absolutely be planning something there. And I appreciate the proactive push and idea set there. We have not announced that yet, but I guess you're announcing that for us now, and we'll make sure it's on our action list here for the coming quarter and next. Thank you, Chris.

And the next question comes from the line of Noel Parks with TUI Brothers. Please proceed with your question. Please proceed.

Hi, good afternoon. Had a battery storage question and a gravity storage question. So you did mention applying your expertise to look at achieving greater energy density. And I was thinking about technology improvements in general on the battery storage side. And what would such advances say also something that could increase battery life, what would those do to project economics over time? I'm thinking if you have longer contracts, over time as you replace modules and so forth, maybe be able to upgrade them. What might that look like in terms of an impact?

Sure. Look, I think, first of all, we are looking at and will be announcing some very innovative things relative to new ways to achieve very high or ultra-high density relative to integrating, for example, structural options with our civil structural material science expertise combined with what I'll say broadly battery energy storage. So, think about that as any container-based energy storage that may be short-duration, you know, LFP type. It might be, you know, longer duration types of storage. And with a focus on low cost, which we've had a lot of experience in that optimization and, for example, reducing volume of concrete through eliminating rebar and steel. and the structural design of concrete and replacing it with fiber reinforcements, for example. That has benefits in safety, you know, for example, in looking at the impact if temperatures heat up and the impact of those materials. And so that's the second aspect around ensuring we're looking at safety and working with the right constituents there as we design new systems. That's, you know, again, fundamental and foremost, Noel, and And I'll go back to what I mentioned with Calistoga and other ways we approach customers. We think about solving the customer problem, okay? So if you look at areas in higher density cities, for example, or even on just the outskirts where that energy density is at a premium and where you could have a, you know, a light fit to function technology, that historically has not been able to achieve those energy densities and thinking about how we think about building and using structures to do that. These are things that are actively on our mind that customers are interested in. We're collaborating with a few customers with some new solutions there, and it's, you know, we're not ready to announce those yet. As you know, when we announce things, we announce them with customers, okay? You haven't seen you know, necessarily product announcements from us that aren't accompanied by some customer with it. And you can expect that to be the case here. I'm sorry, there's some feedback on the line. Hopefully you could hear me. But in any event, so that's what we're thinking about there on energy density. I will also tell you that You know, generally with what's happening in the battery world and pricing, we've seen at least 50% drops over the last year in fundamental, you know, LFP batteries and other technologies that are attempting to get to market and scale, potentially, you know, looking at longer duration. But generally, you know, we're not going to be someone that drives that innovation curve, meaning that there's plenty of people out there much bigger than us. that are going to be focusing on that. You know, you can consider some of that, you know, commodity technology that's about volume and getting price down. We're going to be focused on a lot of this around the value add, that wrapper, the ability to not only manage what's happening in and around those systems with safety, reliability, guaranteeing availability of power, but also something that's going to move up that stack for broader asset management and even getting the higher-level software functions in bidding, for example, and optimization around bidding platforms as we've built our software team the last two years in the expertise. So that's that area we're going to be playing in, and some of it will include some of our own product innovations. like you just asked about, which is around how do we achieve better energy density. So more to come there. I wish I could say more. I'm excited to. But we're going to have to wait just a little bit on that.

Great. Thanks. And then I was just thinking about Rudong. And you mentioned the additional data that's becoming available and so forth. And, you know, it's not a new project anymore since it's been up and running. so it maybe doesn't come up as top of mind. But with all the experience now of having built the first gravity storage project out there, I wonder if you have any thoughts at this point about how subsequent iterations might see better efficiency, might see... reduce timelines and so forth. I'm just wondering if there's anything that stands out for you that you know you can look forward to in future China Gravity Storage projects.

That's a great question and let me share a few things here because it's been a real learning there and as we license technology, okay, When you do that, you're allowing a certain level of flexibility for that region or country to customize the technology to its own individual needs. So, for example, in China, while we licensed the core technology there, we had a lot of innovation that we licensed, for example, in and around fiber-reinforced concrete, which serves to take out some of the volume you would ever have in pure cast in place. So we have a lot of innovation in the pre-casting, for example, that we've proven out in Snyder and at our R&D site in Switzerland. In China, they chose to go with cast in place because That's what they do. That's how they've always done it. That's how they do it very low cost. For example, due to the cost of labor being so low there, we had a lot of automation even in construction that in some cases they chose to use labor because, again, it was cheaper and known. So I think, first of all, it's a great question. The iterations of our gravity technology will look different dependent on how it's going to be customized locally and that's one of the beauties of gravity energy storage and the way we've designed it because in countries like china like india like for example in the region in south africa there where they can basically source 100 of all the components and build it locally it gives them the flexibility to to choose you know where they want to maximize their efficiency and performance and cost. Sticking with China, for example, too, on an efficiency basis, they made changes to the design just based on their own local safety standards. And in some cases, that involved increasing the weight of the cage that carries the block and therefore increasing the counterweight, for example. And all of these things you know, may have an impact on the scope of the, let's say, the full innovation design that we did. But all of that doesn't have a large impact in terms of performance, which is why I was very excited to share what I shared, which even with those changes I just mentioned, okay, the changes of increasing that safety factor a bit, increasing the weight, that increases the thickness, for example, of this innovative ribbon system which they did choose to implement okay they chose to implement the most innovative uh new ribbon lifting system but the the belt itself on that ribbon that's in steel um because of the the the weight increase in the size that's thicker uh and therefore there's a slight impact around trip efficiency but you know the fact that they're achieving 82 83 from some of the initial data that we have there is um unprecedented in any thermodynamic process, any, you know, type of compressed air, liquid air, any other mechanical storage, any pumped hydro, it's the largest, it's the most efficient data point in the world that's not lithium ion. Okay. And that's exciting. And so just to close on your question, we've learned a lot in both core design, but also the practicality of how it's built. Andrea Pedretti, our CTO, and our software team, and Chris Weesey, who runs our engineering and our labs group, they were just in China the last 10 days. That's where this data actually came out. We had our partners, Hebeling, which is a software engineering group out of Switzerland. They're as well as a third party with us. And really interesting, I think, their implementation and how they're developing it and will be different and customized, I think, by region. And all of that, I'll finish with, all this experience is helping us think through how to apply these designs and the innovations in civil and structural engineering, working with, for example, Bill Baker from the Skidmore, Owings, Merrill, and Jose Andrade, who's from Caltech that spends, let's say, a good chunk of his time with us from his research and academic side and has been with us. So all of that innovation is what we're putting into where you started your last question, which is new innovations achieving energy density, and we're excited about sharing more about that in the future.

And ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we have reached the end of the question and answer session. And I would like to turn the floor back over to Robert Piconi for any closing comments.

Great. Well, look, I, again, want to thank everybody for their time. And I'm sorry we didn't get to all the questions here, but we'll be following up with folks as normal post the call. We're excited, hopefully, as you get a sense of in the progress we're making and going in here to a Definitely an exciting finish on the year, but I think more importantly, seeing the execution of our strategy for the long term and how that's getting built out and manifests itself, I think, in now what you're seeing in a lot of the recent announcements and more to come there. And finally, just to thank again all the people and employees at Energy Vault and their support and all of our investors, partners, and the customers that keep us doing what we do. So thank you, everyone, very much.

And ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.