This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.
spk00: Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the STEM Inc fourth quarter and full year 2021 earnings conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in a listen only mode and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To join the question queue, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star and zero. I would now like to turn the conference over to Ted Durbin, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
spk02: Thank you, operator. This is Ted Durbin, Head of Investor Relations at STEM, and we welcome you to our fourth quarter and full year 2021 earnings call. Before we begin, please note that some of the statements we will be making today are forward-looking. These matters involve risks and uncertainties, that could cause our results to differ materially from those projected in these statements. We therefore refer you to our latest SEC filings. Our comments today also include non-GAAP financial measures. Additional details and reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures can be found in our earnings release. We will be using a slide presentation today. Our earnings release and presentation are on the investor relations portion of our website at www.stem.com. John Carrington, our CEO, Lars Johnson, CTO, and Bill Bush, CFO, will start the call today with prepared remarks. Rakesh Patel, Chief Strategy Officer, will also be available for the question and answer portion of the call. Now I will turn the call over to John.
spk12: Thanks, Ted. Starting with slide three in the agenda for our call, I will briefly review our fourth quarter and full year 2021 results and highlight some of our key accomplishments last year. Then I'll discuss the available power announcement that we made this morning. and update you on the also energy closing and integration strategy. As we have done each quarter, I'll provide an update on supply chain. I will then pass it to Larsh, who will discuss new initiatives on the Athena platform and the integration of the Powertrack platform. And then finally, Bill will discuss our financial results in more detail and review our 2022 guidance and a new metric we will track this year called contracted annual recurring revenue, to help you understand the value of our software contracts. Turning to slide four, today we reported fourth quarter 2021 revenue of $53 million, which was up 184% versus fourth quarter 2020. We more than tripled our revenues year over year, and at the midpoint of guidance, we expect to more than triple revenues again in 2022. Fourth quarter bookings were 217 million, two times higher than our previous record and we more than doubled the full year 2021 bookings plan as we've seen across the renewable industry we experienced permitting and interconnection constraints due to the omnicron surge which in our case resulted in three projects moving to a 2022 delivery that impacted our 4q revenue expectations but we expect to deliver these projects and have included the revenue associated with these projects in our 2022 guidance. We completed the acquisition of Also Energy earlier this month, which is immediately accretive and combines the leading solar monitoring software company with the leading storage optimization company. This is a transformative acquisition for both companies, and we'll share more details later in the call. We've continued to make excellent progress on securing our hardware needs for most of 2022. More importantly, We continue to extend our software lead and have added several new geographies and new verticals to our Athena platform. We have booked over $300 million in contracts during the second half of 2021. And based on our guidance, at the end of 2022, we expect to book over $1 billion in contracts in the course of 18 months. Based on our current mix of 60-40 hardware to software split, that represents over $400 million of long-dated, high-margin software contracts that will generate strong recurring revenues for years to come. We believe this high-margin, multi-year SaaS revenue provides significant operating leverage to our business and positions the company for highly visible, profitable growth. In November, we issued a $460 million contract green convertible bond, which was three times oversubscribed at a coupon of 50 basis points and was instrumental in the execution of our acquisition of also energy. Moving to slide five, today we announced an exciting series of projects in Texas with Available Power, a renewable developer where we will have exclusive rights to provide storage hardware and software for a portfolio of up to 100 sites. In total, This could become a one gigawatt, two gigawatt hour portfolio, which more than doubles our assets under management from current levels on the storage side. We expect the value of this award to exceed $500 million. We expect the first 20 systems or 180 megawatts of energy storage to be commissioned in early 2023. Texas. was a big driver of our bookings in the fourth quarter, and that momentum will continue with the available power deal. ERCOT now represents the largest market in our pipeline. We are proving how Athena Bidder maximizes the value of our customers' storage assets in this compelling wholesale market. ERCOT's market structure with no capacity market leads to big price swings by design. Storage is well suited to capture these price signals, and Athena enables our customers to participate both in energy and ancillary services markets. Additionally, ERCOT is the leading wind energy market in the U.S. and one of the fastest growing solar markets. Smart storage and Athena can help firm these resources to match generation with consumption. Net-net It is really about market volatility and storage's ability to manage and mitigate this volatility while providing a return to the asset owner. The available announcement is another example of our continued momentum in large-scale front-of-meter or FTM market and the success of our channel partner strategy. Developers value our ability to procure fit-for-purpose hardware at competitive prices. to integrate into their portfolio across multiple sites, and to deliver optimized wholesale market bidding and dispatch with our Athena Bidder application. Our sales in ERCOT follow the same formula we've used in other markets for storage. We deliver hardware up front and then sell a long-dated software contract that helps our customers optimize their assets for the life of the battery. We are not taking any merchant commodity exposures. just earning recurring software revenue over the contract period, which is typically 20 years for FTM. The available power wind further demonstrates our commercial diversity as our customers span multiple geographies, customer types, and use cases, continuing to underscore the reach of our Athena platform. Let's go to slide six. Turning to also energy, we are pleased to close the transaction at the beginning of February. Also, Energy has the industry-leading SaaS platform with their PowerTrack software that monitors and controls 33 gigawatts of solar assets in over 50 countries. They install high-value edge controllers and synthesize data across heterogeneous solar portfolios for a variety of stakeholders, including solar asset owners, O&M contractors, field service providers, and EPCs. We believe the combination of also energy's power track software and stems Athena platform presents a compelling offering as the storage and solar industries converge together, we will be able to drive better economic outcomes for our customers projects and accelerate the energy transition. Bob Schaefer, the co-founder and CEO of also energy has joined my executive staff and will continue to lead the also team commercially. We're excited about Also Energy's assets under management, customer base, and technology. Most of Also Energy's customers are commercial and industrial or small to medium-sized front-of-meter customers, both of which are core markets for STEM smart energy storage solutions. Also Energy's AUM has extremely low storage penetration, and the two companies only have a 30% overlap in customer relationships. So we see excellent cross-selling opportunities, and our sales teams are working together on targeting these opportunities. Finally, from a financial standpoint, you'll recall that the also energy business generates approximately 60% gross margins overall and 80% plus gross margins on software with very low churn. In addition to the strong margin profile, they generate a significant amount of recurring revenue from their SaaS contracts. Please turn to slide seven. From an integration standpoint, we started to lay out the groundwork for the combination in January and have now rolled out what we call Tiger Teams across the companies to drive integration, cross-selling opportunities, and alignment. You can see on the right side of this page the guiding principles we've established to ensure we are retaining our people, driving operational excellence, while focusing on advancing the significant commercial synergies we've identified across the global install base and pipeline. I spent most of last week at the Also Energy headquarters in Boulder, Colorado, where we hosted our first product summit. I am really excited about the collective talent, opportunities, and roadmap we are building together, and the team's commitment to further extend our software leadership platforms. I believe it's critical to have a single point of leadership on any integration effort. Thus, we have hired a dedicated vice president of integration to ensure alignment, goal execution, and a seamless integration process. We expect to see incremental bookings and backlog growth as we bring the organizations together and execute on our growth initiatives. We will leverage the strength of our combined software offerings to add value for our customers, and customer centricity is a shared core value for both companies. L'Arche will spend some time on the software strategy shortly. Ultimately, our goal is to have every solar system Athena ready and every storage system power track ready. Please turn to slide eight. Before I turn it over to L'Arche, let me update you all on our supply chain status. We're pleased to announce we have contracted storage supply well into the fourth quarter of 2022, and expect to finalize our supply agreements by the end of the first quarter. We're confident that our hardware supply will be fully contracted for 2022 and in the process of matching the best solutions for our contracted backlog at this time. Our supply chain focus continues to be lowest cost, highest quality, and guaranteed supply. We believe this is differentiated, and our customers repeat business as a strong indicator of STEM being a trusted supplier that maximizes value for our customers. Outside of the supply chain, we have seen other constraints to system delivery and deployment as we discussed in prior quarters. In particular, permitting and interconnection issues have slowed the deployment of systems. In fact, three projects contributed to the variance from our expected revenue in the fourth quarter of 2021. These projects are now expected to be delivered in the early part of this year. I want to emphasize that these are delays and not cancellations and remain in a contracted backlog. We have observed project delays across our peers in the renewable industry, although we continue to see accelerating demand for our solutions as reflected in our forward expectations of bookings momentum. We have also seen commodity price inflation pressure in our battery supply agreements. And in many cases, we are seeing indexed pricing from OEMs, We are working closely with our suppliers and customers to ensure the project economics still work in this new pricing environment. We will stay disciplined in our margin requirements, and we will not be writing negative gross margin contracts as we have seen from some of our competitors. Lithium carbonate has been a focus for this new indexed pricing. You can see from the graph on the right that BNEF, expects prices for lithium carbonate to decrease in the coming quarters and longer term analysts similarly forecast declines in key metal inputs such as nickel and cobalt which gives us confidence in the long-term downward trajectory for battery prices we believe this should continue to improve the economics for storage in new geographies and support our commercial momentum Finally, I want to thank our team, customers, and channel partners for another strong quarter and a strong year, with revenue up 3x year over year. In addition to the Also Energy employees, we have hired over 100 people in the last year. This is exceptional talent across the organization with deep domain expertise and relevant functions. We remain focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion for our candidates and our employees, which is enhanced as we now have a worldwide footprint with employees on three continents as a result of the Also Energy acquisition. I'm energized by the purpose-driven organization we have built and the substantial competitive position with over 34 gigawatts of global assets and an unrivaled data advantage in our best-in-class AI software platform. We have numerous accomplishments to be proud of in 2021 and confidently Our talented employees will bring us even more success in 2022. With that, let me turn the call over to Lars Johnson, our chief technology officer, and I will come back with some closing comments.
spk05: Thanks, John. On slide nine, we provide an overview of how we will converge the technology roadmap to the Athena and the also energy power track platform to grow our customer base and extend our joint capabilities. Today, these market-leading offerings support API-based integrations delivering value to our mutual customers who own hybrid solar plus storage sites. And in their term, we are focusing on enhancing the user experience and streamlining project time to value with integrated user management, consolidated edge equipment, and data integration to deliver our customers a single pane of glass that enriches their combined solar and storage portfolio management. As we execute this roadmap over the next couple years, Athena will emerge as a common platform, hosting an ecosystem of applications across vertical asset classes and markets, building on the world's largest repository of clean energy operations data acquired from a decade of experience across over 41,000 sites. We believe it would be difficult, if not impossible, to replicate the accumulated AI training data It sharpens our machine learning and software operations, covering a combined 34 gigawatts of solar and storage assets. Our shared vision is to empower clean energy asset owners and operators to scale their businesses by leveraging AI automated data driven operations enabled by Athena. And on slide 10, I want to highlight another example of a vertical offering that is extending the Athena platform into the fleet electric vehicle management space. In December, we announced a partnership with Engie, which involves deep integration of Athena software with their fleet electric vehicle charging infrastructure. This announcement builds on work we've been doing with partners and customers such as Penske, Amazon, and UPS, which is opening an additional $4 billion of addressable market for Athena solutions in the e-mobility sector. Our software offerings will enable superior energy cost and resiliency management, building on Athena's integration with fleet charging operations. Integrating the storage dispatch capabilities of Athena will seamlessly avoid peak utility charges while providing detailed data for corporate customers who score their GHG impact of their fleet electrification. From a financial perspective, this is an additional software as a service application at an additional fee, which is increasing our share of wallet. and expanding the distributed energy resources we will leverage for future upside market participation revenues. With that, I will hand it over to Bill to wrap up the financial section.
spk03: Thanks, Larsh. First, I will review the results of the fourth quarter and the full year 2021, and then I will discuss a new metric we are calling called contracted annual recurring revenue, or CAR. Lastly, I will review our 2022 financial guidance. Starting with our financial results on slide 11, which does not include the financial results of Also Energy, we recognize a record $53 million of revenue in the fourth quarter, which was up 184% versus the same quarter last year. The vast majority of the growth came from hardware sales on FTM and BTM partner projects with additional software and service revenue from our operating fleet. As John mentioned, some of our partners and customers experienced interconnection and permitting delays that negatively impacted our revenue in the fourth quarter. Importantly, these are not project cancellations, and we expect to realize the revenue in the coming quarters. While we have so far successfully managed the supply chain and logistics challenges, the Omnicron surge stopped project progress at several sites due to the unavailability of labor, in particular for permitting and interconnection approvals. Our operations teams use their experience and relationships in these markets to help partners advance their project timelines, and we see improvement as utilities and permitting agencies return to more normal operations in this quarter. Our GAAP gross margin was negative 1.6 million, or negative 3%, versus 0.9 million, or 5%, in the same quarter last year. Non-GAAP gross margin was $3.3 million, up from $2.5 million in the fourth quarter last year due to higher revenues. On a percentage basis, non-GAAP gross margin was 6% in the quarter versus 13% last year. Our margins were negatively impacted by a mixed shift due to project delays in the fourth quarter, but there was also impact from hardware gross margin specifically in the FTM segment. However, we expect these issues to subside as we move through the year and we drive more high-margin service revenue. As you'll see in our guidance, we expect total gross margin to be in the 15% to 20% range for 2022, reflecting the growing share of revenue from software and services. Net loss was $34 million versus a loss of $101 million in the same quarter last year. That swing is almost completely the result of a large non-cash charge in the fourth quarter of 2020 from the warrants issued as part of the convertible note financings from 2019 and 2020. We retired substantially all of those warrants in April of 2021, and we do not expect significant charges like that in the future. And lastly, Adjusted EBITDA was a negative $12.4 million versus a negative $5.1 million in the same quarter last year. Adjusted EBITDA fell because of higher operating costs from additional hiring, personnel related expenses, costs associated with public reporting and related expenses as we continue to build out our teams and advance our technology roadmap to take advantage of market opportunities. Moving from our financial results to our operating metrics on slide 12, our pipeline more than doubled year over year from 1.6 billion at the end of 2020 to 4 billion at the end of 2021 and grew 67% just between the third and fourth quarters of 2021. Our business development teams continue to develop multiple new markets and customers and deepen relationships with existing. Our contracted backlog grew counter seasonally to $449 million. That's up 44% from 312 million at the end of the third quarter and more than doubled the backlog at the end of last year. The biggest driver of the backlog increase was the $217 million of bookings in the quarter, offset by revenue recognized during the quarter, as well as some project cancellations and amendments, primarily driven by the early termination of a program in NYSERDA. It's important to recognize that this cancellation is a relatively unusual result of cancellations have not been frequent or substantial in our history, and we do not expect them to become so in the future. Our sales team, again, set a new quarterly bookings record, which is 58% more than was reported in all of 2020, a testament to our leading software and hardware solution. This backlog gives us excellent visibility into our expected 2022 revenues. Long-term software revenue is the backbone of the backlog and represents approximately 40% of the total booking and importantly does not include the impact of market participation. These bookings represent the foundation for predictable high margin service revenue. Our contracted AUM grew from 1 gigawatt at the end of 2020 to 1.6 gigawatt at the end of 2021, where 60% and sequentially grew almost 14%, again driven by our strong bookings momentum. We ended the year with $921 million in cash on the balance sheet before the cash payment associated with the also energy transaction. We financed the $695 million purchase price with 75% cash and 25% stock. Next, I want to spend a few minutes talking about the new software metric, which we think will showcase the importance of the Athena network and services that we offer our customers that drive long-term value. Please turn to slide 13. Starting with the STEM energy storage business, our software drives exceptional economics for our customers. Athena automates everything, including reducing costs, increasing revenues, complying with regulatory incentives and constraints, and minimizing greenhouse gas emissions. Our broad market reach and scope allows us to co-optimize multiple value streams in real time, no overtime, to maximize economic value for our customers. We also provide exceptional customer support for the lifetime of the renewable asset, from development, monitoring, and control, to performance reporting and troubleshooting. As these markets evolve, we can roll out additional services to enhance our customers' economics for additional fee. Also, Energy brings the same expanding revenue opportunity and value add to the solar side of the business, which is why they have been so successful in growing their market share and recurring software revenues over time. While we enter 10 to 20-year contracts, For STEM energy storage optimization services, the real value comes from the historically low churn across the Athena and Powertrack platforms, which is in the low single digits. Today, we are introducing a new metric, contracted annual recurring revenues, or CAR, which captures that dynamic. CAR represents the annualized contracted software and services revenue at a point in time, and CAR will grow as we sign additional software contracts. We generate 80% plus gross margins on software for both SENA and Powertrack. We expect those margins to continue as we add more assets. You mentioned in our third quarter call that our mix had started to shift between software and hardware and the value of our contracts on the storage side. From 70% hardware and 30% software a couple years ago to 60-40 hardware software split currently. The big driver for margin improvement is the incremental fees that we were able to charge for software and the additional value added services that we're bringing to customers. Power markets are becoming more complex. Our customers need us to optimize additional value streams, and we are able to charge higher fees for those services. Similarly, also energy has been able to increase its annual fees as it becomes more embedded with its customers. Lastly, remember that our storage contracts contain clauses where we can earn additional market participation or grid services revenue as opportunities arise. This is pure upside optionality for us. We have assumed a middle of that market participation in our revenue guidances As market conditions have continued to favor distributed assets, we could see meaningful upside to our numbers. For example, in Massachusetts, we are already outperforming our initial expectations by 16%. Key message here is that we believe this high margin multi-year SAS revenue provides significant operating leverage to our business and positions the company for highly visible profitable growth. Lastly, I will discuss our guidance. Turning to slide 14. First, we are introducing 2022 revenue guidance of $350 to $425 million. All of our guidance reflects 11 months of also energy operations as we close that transaction on February 1st. At the midpoint of the range, there's a 200% increase in revenue year over year. As John mentioned, we have had tremendous commercial momentum, which drove significantly higher bookings than we expected in 2021. We expected much of that hardware component of the bookings will translate to revenue in 2022 and the software thereafter. Second, we are introducing a new guidance metric, bookings, which we have historically reported on but not guided on. We expect to contract between $650 and $750 million in bookings this year, representing another significant 50-plus percent growth year over year. At the midpoint, that translates to approximately $325 million of long-term service contracts all carrying 80% plus gross margins. Bookings and backlog are key leading indicators of revenue. And if we are able to meet our bookings goals for next year, it will set us up well for 2023 revenue and build on a substantial base of long-term reoccurring SAS revenue. Third, we are introducing our adjusted EBITDA guidance between negative 20 and negative $60 million. We expect to generate strong gross margins in the 15% to 20% range in 2022, but we are seeing some cost inflation impacting our storage hardware margins. Importantly, we are investing in our growth through expanded software offerings and markets, which is reflected in the more than $1 billion in bookings over the period July 21 to December 22. While we are currently looking to improve our operational efficiency and margins, we believe the long-term margin profile of the company will reflect the accretive effects of our long-dated and low-churn software contracts. We will also continue to invest for growth in the business, and so you'll see our operating costs increase this year as we open up new markets and add new features to the Athena and PowerTrack platforms as Lars detailed earlier. We are also introducing seasonality guidance for revenue and bookings. Similar to previous years, we expect approximately 75% of the revenue in the back half of the year, while we expect a flatter booking trajectory across this year as compared to last year. And last, we are introducing guidance for our new metric, CAR, where we expect to exit 2022 at a run rate between $60 and $80 million. That represents a minimum 200% increase year-over-year and 80-plus percent high-margin service contracts. For modeling purposes, you should assume some lag between CAR and the actual revenue recognition on the P&L because of the timing between contract signing and system commissioning when the software goes live. We think CAR, along with our low churn, is a good indicator of long-term strength and operating leverage of the business. We turn the call back to John for some closing remarks.
spk12: Thanks, Bill. Wrapping up here on slide 15 and our key takeaways, our significant momentum on bookings and Athena expansion will drive momentum in 2022 and expect continued strong growth as we saw in 2021. We will maintain our focus of delivering high-value software and services to our customers, which will drive higher margins and higher mix of software revenues. We will continue to build a substantial contracted backlog with an expectation of over $1 billion in bookings across 2021 and 2022. Over the years, we have invested purposefully in our software, our people, and extending our leadership positions. We will allocate capital in 2022 to extend that leadership. With the addition of also energy, we have built the leading clean energy intelligence platform across over 34 gigawatts in 50 countries. And you will see us monetize the value of the platform as we offer the most tested, most comprehensive solution in the industry. We will continue to add features and functionality to Athena as we enter new markets in the U.S. and internationally, and as we move into new verticals like EV charging and GHG optimization. But we will also remain prudent on our capital allocation to generate the highest return on investment. As we scale up, our revenue mix will shift from hardware to software, which will increase our margins and cash flows. Bottom line, we expect strong operating leverage as we amortize our fixed costs over a growing revenue stream of long-term high margin SAS revenue. We are focused on tracking our progress on this front through reporting on the contracted annual recurring revenue metric that Bill outlined. We are very bullish on the growth of this industry and our competitive positioning, and we will execute in 2022 to deliver on our commitments. 2022 will be another exceptional year and set up our growth trajectory for 2023 and beyond. With that, let's open the line for questions, please.
spk00: We will now begin the question and answer session. To join the question queue, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. You will hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you are using your speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. We will pause for a moment as callers join the queue. The first question comes from Brian Lee with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
spk01: Hey guys, good afternoon. Thanks for taking the questions. Kudos on the nice bookings and revenue outlook here. I wanted to ask the first question, I guess, on the margins here. Maybe if you could give us a bit more bridge. I think you said also Energy is doing 60% gross margin overall. At the midpoint of guidance, it implies there are about half your gross profit dollars for 2022, and that means Core STEM is doing maybe about a 10% gross margin. I think you guys originally had a target to do mid-20s in 2022, and you were also 10% to 20% throughout all of 2021 before 4Q. I'm trying to reconcile the sharp drop-off here. I know you mentioned a number of different moving parts, but can you maybe help bridge a bit and maybe quantify, if you can, kind of where we were targeting before for core STEM and kind of where we're ending up here with, if my math is right, an implied kind of 10% margin?
spk12: Yeah, thanks, Brian. Good to have you on the call. Appreciate the question. I'd say first, and I'll turn it over to Bill, but we're really not providing consolidated or separated guidance, it's all consolidated, and we don't want to break it out for each company's performance. But, Bill, if you want to address some of those points, we can maybe tackle a few of those items that Brian asked.
spk03: Yeah, no, so thanks, John. Brian, appreciate the question. So I think, you know, as John said, I think the, you know, in the future we won't be breaking out the two divisions of the company that way. But I think the basic math is pretty correct. I think the issue that we're focused on is the continued bookings of the company. And the focus there is making sure that the software is what's driving the long-term value of the company. So it's possible that we'll see lower margins in the near term. But ultimately, and that's why we rolled out the car metric. I mean, that's the... You know, we've said pretty consistently in the past that we think backlog is a great short to medium term reflection of what the revenues will be. A car is going to be a great reflection of what software is going to be, you know, as we mature. And so I think, you know, what we're thinking about is the growth in the car. So it's going to be, you know, depending on, you know, you take the midpoint, it's about a three and a half times growth from what we experienced in 2021. that's what's really going to lay the foundation for long-term in terms of really positive gross margins. So I think that's the way that we think about it more than anything, you know, to the extent that we're going to invest in the near term to get those sales. And so, you know, I'll remind you that, you know, we did more than 2X the bookings in 21 as what was, you know, potentially even thought of. And again, we're talking about another 50% year. And, you know, we've got projects like the available power deal that we talked about today that's going to be worth almost five or should exceed $500 million in booking. So, you know, it's really kind of setting ourselves up for not just this year, but 23 and beyond.
spk01: Okay. I mean, that's fair enough. I know you guys, you know, have a makeshift story here, medium to longer term is more, you know, software, Athena software. gets embedded at these higher margins, you're obviously going to see some margin expansion, but just in the near term, there's still going to be a relatively high hardware mix. And, you know, I think you guys had talked about a 10 to 30% hardware gross margin. I mean, if you're doing 10, Is there something here to suggest that maybe we should structurally be thinking about a lower hardware gross margin and eventually you see the mix shift help you get consolidated margins up, but you're not going to see the 10% to 30% gross margins on hardware anymore? Just try to figure out if this is a temporary supply chain logistics issue or if this is maybe more structural on the hardware side.
spk03: No, I guess I'm not sure I would use the word structural, but, I mean, I think we have consistently said that the larger FTM projects carry a lower gross margin. You know, when you think about those larger developers, you know, versus the, you know, say the quote-unquote smaller ones, you know, the primary difference is integration, and the integration being, you know, does that company have a supply chain relationship or procurement department? It makes sense that they have that, and you're doing, you know, deals that, you know, kind of come into the, multi-hundred millions of dollars gigawatt size range, they tend to have relationships, which means that some of the value-added services that we would normally bring to, say, maybe a BTM project just isn't required. And so, as a result of that, you're going to see lower gross margins on the hardware. That's just what it is. However, the more important thing is you're still signing a software contract, which is that super high gross margin contract, which is going to layer in over a long period of time. irrespective of what the hardware margin is, I think one of the things that we really thought about and which frankly drove the decision to acquire also energy was the gross margin profile on the software and services. And so that's really where we're focused long-term. I mean, to the extent that the hardware suffers in the near term, well, then that's, you know, we think that's a great trade-off for a, you know, 10 to 20-year contract with super low churn. Yeah, so it even goes beyond that. And so that's really kind of what we always thought that way. We're starting to do more software-only deals as well, which is kind of along that same path. And so we think that the software continues to differentiate itself from other competitors in the marketplace, and I think that's really where, you know, in the end where we're going to be.
spk12: Yeah, I mean, I think in the opening months, as Bill mentioned, Brian, I think it's important to underscript that the $1 billion of bookings does represent $400 million of software, you know, total contracted value. So there's just exciting leverage around the hardware piece, even if that gross margin is somewhat minimal. And as Bill mentioned, you know, we've focused or we've actually modeled the, you know, decline in margins around the hardware piece and much more of a software lift, which we continue to see.
spk01: Yep, makes sense. I know the medium to long-term path is there, and you guys have laid it out. I just, you know, I do want to be cognizant that in this market take, the near term, you know, tactically speaking, does matter a lot to investors. So I just want to be cognizant of kind of how the path forward is on the overall margin profile. You know, maybe just switching gears, and then I'll pass it on to you. The available power deal sounds like a great win for you guys. I just wanted to dig in and understand the dynamics to make sure we're on the same page. The $500 million opportunity, that is just for STEM, or does that include what AP would also be potentially earning from this? Just wanting to know that. What's your split versus their split? And then if we assume the 180 megawatts of the one gigawatt opportunity, early 2023 commissioning, I suppose that means it's $90 million of revenue. Do you see all of that in 2023? And is it all software or is there some hardware embedded in that 500 million? Sorry, I know there's a lot going on in that question.
spk12: I'll take a run at it, Brian. Yeah, so it's the number that you mentioned of the 500 plus is STEM. From a perspective of how we're thinking about this, you know, we have on the bookings line assumed in 2022 approximately $100 million. And, you know, we're trying to unpack a little bit how quickly we can get this executed. We would expect the majority of it to be in 2023. And I think the best answer is as we proceed and start to get more clarity on the plan tranches, we'll obviously update you and everyone on on how that's coming together. What I do like about it is the ERCOT market tends to be a little bit higher throughput than some other markets related to installation. So we've talked about permanent interconnection issues. That's probably the highest velocity market we're in, which is great because it's our largest pipeline market, as well as kind of what, as we talked about even last quarter. So I think there's a lot of value we can bring with our solution to
spk10: coupled with probably a higher velocity on installations.
spk11: All right. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.
spk10: Thank you, Brian.
spk00: The next question comes from Mahid Madloi with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
spk08: Hey, hi. Good evening. Thanks for taking the questions. Nice looking as well. Maybe just one question. On 2022 revenue guidance to begin with, just wanted to understand how much of the revenue guidance is from also energy. I know you guys talked about like 53 million plus run rate last year and growing 20, 25% of that range year over year. Is that kind of a right framework to think about that split between core, STEM, and also energy?
spk04: I'm sorry, Maheep, you broke up there a little bit towards the end. Could you say that again?
spk08: Yeah, no, sure. I just want to try to understand the breakup of also energy revenues and STEM revenues for just looking at the guidance you guys gave during the also energy acquisition. It ran at around $53 million in revenues right in 2021 and drawing off that base. Could we assume like somewhere around $65, $70 million of revenues from also energy in 2020? Yeah, I think that's about right.
spk04: I think that's certainly in the ballpark.
spk08: Gotcha. And thanks for the clarification.
spk03: And just to clear that up, too, you'll see within the Qs and the Ks, there will be some segment reporting around that, too. So you'll be able to track that going forward on the revenue line item.
spk08: Got it. Looks like majority of that recurring revenue guidance which you're giving is also energy and probably around $15, $20 million of the software services business, right?
spk04: In terms of the car projections, you mean, or something else?
spk03: Yeah, this is a car breakdown. I wouldn't characterize it that way. I mean, so we're guiding to a $60 to $80 million exit rate in 2022. I think a lot of that is going to come from the STEM side of the house or what we would describe as the older side. So we love the also business. It's not growing quite as quick as, say, the storage side of the business. So still very profitable, creative, like we've always talked about, but not likely going to see the kind of growth that you'll see. And that's really driven by the front of the meter side of the storage business. I mean, that's really... What is the fastest-growing piece? I mean, you know, I think neither, you know, say the behind-the-meter segment on, you know, the storage side nor the solar plus storage or the solar side, you're going to see $500 million deals getting signed. So that, you know, you just think about, you know, sign a couple more of those, and, you know, the growth numbers kind of change pretty dramatically.
spk08: Gotcha. That makes sense. And then the other question just on the guidance here for revenues. Can you talk about, like, what drives the lower end and higher end of that range? Is it, like, some specific customer projects you're waiting on or any color on that would be helpful?
spk12: Yeah, I mean, I think that's why it is. We're kind of jumping, though. We're really building a margin of safety, I think, kind of given the global macro environment. But I would highlight the fact, Rahif, that, You know, even at the midpoint, it's 3x growth year over year, but Bill, go ahead and jump in.
spk03: Yeah, and I was going to say that, you know, we have, as you know, we have pretty good visibility to projects. And so, there's a number of big projects, you know, just like this year, there's a number of big projects that we're looking at having a PTO for 2022. And so, we took a, you know, a conservative view as to what we thought could happen. And we, of course, you know, there's a lot of question marks around the supply changes generally. and, you know, we'll see how that rolls out, but we'll definitely continue to update you guys over time as the year goes on. I mean, as we sign other large deals like the one we announced today, those are going to have a, you know, we kind of talked about the lumpiness of the business, and those sorts of deals, as nice as they are, I mean, as John mentioned, it's $200 million of long-dated software contracts. That hardware piece, I mean, that $300 million in hardware is going to naturally drive some lumpy results within the business.
spk04: So we'll keep a close eye on that and keep you updated.
spk07: Gotcha. And this last one for me, and then I'll jump back in the queue.
spk08: So on adjusted EBITDA margins, I just want to understand, like, when should we expect to return to that break-even or back to that kind of target which you guys had laid out previously for 2022-23. I understand some of that using some of the operating expenses increased because of expansion, but when do you expect kind of a return on that expansion investment?
spk10: Bill, you want to take that? Sure.
spk03: So I think it's important to note that The EBITDA or EBITDA and obviously the OPEX investments are really generating some pretty interesting results. So if we wanted to solve for a EBITDA number, we could pare back the OPEX. And you can see that, like, right? I mean, we're guiding, you know, the kind of on a combined basis, OPEX is going to be around 100 million this year in 2022. And we're guiding to a minus 20 to minus 60 EBIT. So if we were trying to solve for EBITDA, we could pare that back and have a positive number. But I think what that wouldn't do though is position us for those types of contracts that are like we announced today. And that's really, so when you see the growth in the business this year, that came from investments in new markets. And that has a number of touchstones throughout the business. There's salespeople, there's data science, there's understanding the market structure there. So there's a lot of work that goes into those sorts of things. And so it's definitely a little bit more complicated, you know, than you might expect. And so as a result, you know, we kind of feel like, hey, there is an interesting market opportunity ahead of us in a number of markets, some of which, you know, we've talked about Texas a little bit. And I think that's really where, you know, we're going to continue to invest to be able to generate those long-dated service contracts. I mean, when you, you know, John mentioned, you know, the bookings trajectory, $2 billion or $1 billion over 18 months starting in July of 2021 through the end of next year, that's $400 million of software contracts. And so that, but that comes with an investment to be able to get to that. And, you know, that's really where, you know, we think, you know, to the extent that we have to invest in this near term, that's going to pay off in the long.
spk08: Should we expect similar OPEX trend rate in 23 as well then?
spk03: Similar in terms of the growth from 21 to 22 or, I mean, I don't know.
spk08: Either the 100 million or that growth from 21 to 22, yeah, yeah.
spk03: Yeah, I think we would expect so because most of our OPEX is headcount related. So it's not, you know, we're not doing non-personnel related investment, really, on the OPEX line.
spk07: Gotcha. All right.
spk03: Thanks. Yeah, I think what you will have in 2023, though, is a much larger base of car as a result of those investments.
spk07: Right, some operating leverage kicking in, right? That's right.
spk04: Exactly. That's exactly what we're thinking.
spk00: The next question comes from Bijou Peranchero with Susquehanna. Please go ahead.
spk06: Thank you, Astine. Thanks for taking my question. Maybe one more on the margin side. I understand, at least to some extent, the hardware business is a means to end for you, which is really growing the software business. Can you talk a little bit more about, on the hardware side, what is your margin threshold? And also, current environment, how much of the the higher input costs on the hardware side, are you able to pass along to your customers?
spk12: Yeah, and thanks for the call, Vijay. Good to hear from you. I'd say a couple things on the supply chain piece. You know, number one, we have seen some softening around the shipping costs. They're moderating. And as we talked about in the last call, that oversee kind of freight fees, we were able to pass those on. I think what we're seeing now is some index pricing ideas that we outlined in the opening remarks, and we're working through that with our suppliers, primarily focused on lithium carbonate, and that represents a little over half of the build. So obviously that's why they're focused on that. So we'll have to kind of play through as far as do these projects continue to pencil? ESS supplier opt to pass on the volume. And, you know, we've kind of got a standing invite from our suppliers that if projects fall away to give us a call because we think that, you know, our momentum and bookings and everything else we've been talking about today will continue. So being long hardware may be a good spot to be. But, again, we feel very good about where we are today. We're confident we'll get our total 2022 supply contracted. and um you know as these um commodity index pricing come forward we'll we'll see how it plays out i mean that that chart in the deck that we put together you know bnef feels like you know from kind of today to 2020 2025 there's this peak to trough of you know down 65 as an example on that lithium carbonate side so they're forecasting some reduction in raws and i think that's um accurate, and we believe that it helps us open up more markets and potentially drives higher hardware margins. But I think as Bill's outlined pretty clearly all during the call, our focus is really on driving more and more software and recurring revenue at high gross margin.
spk11: I think that's helpful.
spk06: Anything you can say about the margin threshold you have on the hardware side for new business?
spk12: We have a pretty thorough process that we go through on any large deals. Our sales team has a threshold. If it goes below that, they've got to come to me and Bill, and then we decide what we want to do. We haven't really outlined that publicly, but rest assured, our interest is not to take negative margin deals. as we've seen from some of the competition out there, and that's not a focus for us. But, you know, I would also say that it's a very tight process that goes on on a weekly basis and as needed if it's more than weekly. So we're all over it, much like we were on the hardware piece in assuring our 2021 supply and as we feel like in 2022. Oh, Bill, if you have anything else to add on that front, but.
spk03: Yeah, I think one of the things that's important to note is we are more, ever more leaning towards the FTM side of the house. I mean, we've talked about 80-20. That number is getting higher on the FTM side. And if you go back to the guidance of, gosh, almost two years ago now, we talked about margins in the 10% to 30% range more closer to 10% on the FTM side, and that's kind of what we're seeing. So I think that... though it's a long-dated plan we're still kind of operating somewhat close to it um you know other than you know the kind of the the mix percentages that we we talked about that we're leaning more heavily towards ftm i don't think we could have predicted you know way back then that texas would become the market that it has but the good news is that we're there in force and you know we're happy to be so I think on the BTM side, still growing, good margins, but definitely maybe more impacted by the pandemic because that tends to be more on the Fortune 500 side of the house.
spk06: Got it. So the good news is even with FDM, the increase in FDM mix, you're still getting the software business that has the same margins, whether it's FDM or BTM.
spk03: Exactly. I mean, you know, ultimately, you know, I think as we've always said, and I think most have agreed, this is a software story. It's not a sale of somebody else's hardware story. It's really what, you know, the differentiating component of STEM is the Athena platform. That's always been true, and I think that's going to continue to be true in the future.
spk11: That's very helpful. Thank you.
spk00: This is all the time that we have for questions today, and I would like to turn the conference back over to John Carrington for any closing remarks.
spk12: Thank you, Charisse, and thank you all for joining us on our fourth quarter and full year 2021 earnings call. We are very pleased with the strong execution in the fourth quarter and our full year 2021 and the momentum that we have carried into 2022. So we look forward to speaking with you again
spk10: during our first quarter earnings call. And again, thank you all for joining.
spk00: This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating and have a pleasant day.
Disclaimer