Earnings Labs

FuelCell Energy, Inc. (FCEL)

Q1 2022 Earnings Call· Thu, Mar 10, 2022

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning. My name is Chantelle, and I’ll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the FuelCell Energy 2022 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks, there’ll be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. Tom Gelston, you may begin your conference.

Tom Gelston

Analyst

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on the call today. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. This morning FuelCell Energy released our financial results for the first quarter of fiscal year 2022, and our earnings press release and our quarterly report on Form 10-Q are available in the Investor section of our website at www.fuelcellenergy.com. Consistent with our practice, in addition to this call and our earnings press release, we have posted a slide presentation on our website. This webcast is being recorded and will be available for replay on our website, approximately 2 hours after we conclude the call. Before we begin, please note that some of the information that you will hear or will be provided with today will consist of forward-looking statements with the meaning of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Such statements express our expectations, beliefs and intentions regarding the future and include without limitation statements with respect to our anticipated financial results, our plans and expectations regarding the continuing development, commercialization, and financing of our fuel cell technology and our business plans and strategies. Our actual future results could differ materially from those described in or implied by such forward-looking statements because of a number of risks and uncertainties. More information regarding such risks and uncertainties is available in the Safe Harbor statement, in the slide presentation and in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, particularly the risk factor section of our most recently filed annual report on form 10-K and any subsequently filed quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. During the course of this call, we will be discussing certain non-GAAP financial measures and we refer you to our website and to our earnings press release and the appendix of the slide presentation for a reconciliation of those measures to GAAP financial measures. Our earnings press release and a copy of today’s webcast presentation are available on our website at www.fuelcellenergy.com under Investors. For our call today, I’m joined by Jason Few, FuelCell Energy’s President and Chief Executive Officer; and Mike Bishop, our Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer. Following our prepared remarks, we will be available to take your questions and be joined by other members of our leadership team. I will now hand the call over to Jason for opening remarks. Jason?

Jason Few

Analyst

Thank you, Tom, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us on our call today. I want to start by offering prayers and support to the people of Ukraine who are suffering. While we do not have operations in Ukraine, we are hoping for the restoration of peace in the face of the humanitarian crisis. We also launched a matching gift program in support of the overwhelming interest of the FuelCell Energy team members to support the citizens of Ukraine. In our first quarter, we made continued progress in executing our Powerhouse Business Strategy, including the publication of our first sustainability report, making clear our short-term net zero targets for Scope 1 and 2 emissions to be achieved by 2030 and our longer-term 2050 Scope 3 commitment, reimagining our global brand to better reinforce our agenda to decarbonize power and produce hydrogen; expanding our carbon capture product development in Canada, working with Canada’s Clean Resource Innovation Network, which included Chevron Canada, Shell Canada, Suncor Energy, and Canadian Natural Resources Limited, growing revenue by over 100% year-over-year and working to define our company as a global leader in decarbonizing power and producing hydrogen. Mike and I look forward to providing some insight around these activities and the other first quarter results in the coming slides. But as I always do on these calls, I’d first like to provide a brief overview of the company. As shown on Slide 3, FuelCell Energy achieved annual revenues for fiscal year 2021 of almost $70 million, which came from three revenue categories: service and license, advanced technologies and generation, all of which represent diversified sources of recurring revenue under multi-year contracts. Over the past two fiscal years, we’ve had no revenue from product sales. However, in the first quarter, product sales returned to our revenue…

Michael Bishop

Analyst

Thank you, Jason, and thanks to those that joined our call today. You have heard from Jason about a number of significant developments that took place during our first quarter. And now I would like to spend a few minutes providing some details regarding our financial results for the first fiscal quarter of 2022. Please turn to financial highlights shown on Slide 7. In the first quarter of fiscal year 2022, we reported revenues of $31.8 million, compared to $14.9 million in the first quarter of fiscal year 2021, an increase of approximately 114%. Looking at revenue drivers by category, product revenues returned this quarter, totaling $18 million, reflecting the Ex Works’ delivery of six fuel cell modules to a subsidiary of POSCO Energy under the recent settlement agreement. Service agreement revenues decreased 56% to $2.2 million from $4.9 million. Revenue recognized in the first quarter of fiscal 2021 related to module exchanges at several plants and routine maintenance activities. The decrease in revenues for the first quarter of fiscal 2022 is primarily due to the fact there were no new module exchanges during the quarter compared to the prior year period. Revenue from service agreements is variable on a quarterly basis depending on the number of module exchanges in the period. Generation revenues increased 53% to $7.5 million from $4.9 million in part due to the inclusion of the 7.4 megawatt LIPA Yaphank project in January 2022, and the 1.4 megawatt San Bernardino Renewable Biofuels project in July of 2021. In addition, generation revenues increased due to the higher operating output of the generation fleet portfolio as a result of investments in maintenance activities made in the prior year. Advanced Technologies contract revenues decreased 19% to $4.1 million from $5.1 million. Compared to the first fiscal quarter of 2021,…

Jason Few

Analyst

Thanks, Mike. On Slide 11, I want to share some highlights of our recently updated Powerhouse Business Strategy to take us to the next phase of the company’s journey towardS long-term growth; grow, we want to pursue growth in markets and customer segments where we see significant opportunities; scale to achieve growth, we plan to scale our existing platforms by investing in extending and deepening our leadership and total human capital across the organization; and innovate, over our 50-year history, we have never stopped innovating. We plan to continue to innovate for the future to enable our participation in the growth of the hydrogen economy and carbon capture and to deliver on our purpose. Our Powerhouse Business Strategy has evolved to focus on growth, the energy transition is happening at an accelerated pace, and we believe our platform technologies will play a significant role in helping the global society achieve our collective sustainability goals. Thus, we are moving forward with making investments in capacity, capability and global talent, which we believe will enhance our ability to capture more of the market opportunity over the coming years and deliver enhanced shareholder returns over the long run. Looking at Slide 12. I’m proud of the progress we’re making as an organization, including the recent launch of our new brand identity. Evolving the FuelCell Energy brand is intended to be a signal to our customers, communities, team members and you our stockholders of our absolute commitment to enabling a safe, secure and practical approach to realize and the goals set forth in our inaugural sustainability report. Our brand encompasses our purpose, what we do and how we do it. We are focused on enabling a safe, secure and practical path to carbon zero. And we help to decarbonize power and design and build…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Jed Dorsheimer with Canaccord Genuity. Your line is open. Jed Dorsheimer, your line is open.

Jed Dorsheimer

Analyst

Sorry, I had it on mute. Hey, thanks for taking my question. The – just around ExxonMobil, that seems to be a – I was wondering if you could provide more details in substance to the breakthrough, is that clearly sounds like could be game changing between blue versus gray and green hydrogen? So that’s my first and then I have a follow-up.

Jason Few

Analyst

So, Jed, good morning. Thanks for joining the call. This is Jason. With respect to Exxon, the work that we’re doing with them is really focused on carbon capture. And our platform has the ability to capture carbon from an external source and also produce and deliver hydrogen. So the work that we’re doing, and our focus is on ensuring that we maintain optimal performance from a power output standpoint, as well as optimal performance in terms of our ability to concentrate carbon and capture that carbon for whatever the use may be, whether that be sequestration and or utilization. So as we’ve laid out the work plan with ExxonMobil Research and Engineering, we set a number of milestones that are really – you can think about them as mile markers. And those mile markers give clear indication that we’re progressing along the things that we think are most technically important to demonstrate that the technology will perform at a level that will do a few things: one, that we will efficiently concentrate capture and separate carbon; two, that we will maintain power, density, or power production; and three, that we can do that efficiently across a number of different blue streams, which give us the ability we believe to ultimately deliver a much lower cost of carbon capture as a result of being able to sell power and/or replace power that’s being used at that particular facility. And so this – achieving the milestone is just another mile marker along the way to demonstrate that our technology actually has the ability to be effective in carbon capture.

Jed Dorsheimer

Analyst

Got it. And then I guess there’s my follow-up and perhaps a bit of an extension here. So far in the U.S., it’s been – the commercialization has been slower, I guess, would probably be the right adjective. And you’re now looking at kind of a pivot or expansion, I guess, into the Korean markets. One of the issues in the U.S. has been the sort of an adoption of green hydrogen, or the use of electrolysis, and maybe you correct me if I’m wrong in that assumption. And I guess that’s why I was asking with respect to the ExxonMobil. And as you look at Korea, there seems to be sort of a broader understanding of the use of gray and blue. Is there something else that’s going on in terms of that expansion into Korea that seems to be – is that – do you see that as a more favorable nation, if you will, or region for your technology and/or do you see with what’s coming out of the ExxonMobil a rethink in the U.S. that may shift some things around?

Jason Few

Analyst

So Jed, no great question. So we believe that both Asia and Korea specifically, as well as Europe is ahead of where the U.S. today is today with respect to announcements on projects around hydrogen. However, that being said, we do think that the current infrastructure package and the $8-plus billion that have been announced in support of these hydrogen hub projects are a good indication of the U.S. intent to try to catch up, if you will. But in Korea, we are excited about the opportunity, because as you know, over the last six years, we’ve effectively been out of the largest fuel cell market in the world. Now with the settlement and our ability to be back in that market in a way in which we can actively pursue opportunities, we think that our platform, our existing carbonate platform is well positioned, because those projects in Korea tend to be large-scale utility projects that actually also have a need for the high-grade heat that our platform provides, which is also a differentiation between us and other fuel cell players. And so if you look at our one of our projects in Korea that exist today, it’s a 20 megawatt project that is grid connected and then also connected to the district heating system where we provide high-grade heat for that. And so on a core business platform, we’re excited about the opportunity, and we think we’re well positioned to go after market to more utility scale projects in that market. With respect to hydrogen, the government has announced a very robust set of objectives around hydrogen. And we think that gives us an opportunity not only on our trigen platform, but also the work that we’re doing to commercialize our solid oxide technology, because we think hydrogen is…

Jed Dorsheimer

Analyst

That’s helpful. I’ll jump back in queue and look forward to the Analyst Day.

Jason Few

Analyst

Okay, great. Thank you.

Michael Bishop

Analyst

Thanks, Jed.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Colin Rusch with Oppenheimer. Your line is open.

Colin Rusch

Analyst · Oppenheimer. Your line is open.

Thanks so much, guys. Can you quantify the exposure you have on natural gas prices relative to your PPAs? And how we should think about generation gross margins on a go-forward basis?

Michael Bishop

Analyst · Oppenheimer. Your line is open.

Good morning, Colin. This is Mike. So on our power purchase agreements, as far as natural gas goes, the way we think about that is kind of twofold. One, are – as you look at our portfolio today, for a large part of that portfolio, the off-taker is actually procuring natural gas. The – as we look at some of our larger projects, and for instance, the LIPA Yaphank project that came online this quarter, the company were – and there is fuel price exposure there, but what the company does in those examples is puts long-term contracts in place, so we actually have a seven-year fixed price agreement for that and and we’ll follow natural gas prices and continue to extend that when it makes sense in the future. So that’s really our strategy around mitigating increase in natural gas prices, Colin.

Jason Few

Analyst · Oppenheimer. Your line is open.

Yeah, Colin, just to add maybe a little bit to that, as a company where we do have gas exposure, right, we don’t take a fundamental view on gas prices. And so we work the hedge those risks off and we’ll continue to do that way and do that and we’ll leg in. As years pass, we’ll leg in more to limit that exposure. As you know, it’s challenging to go get a 20 -year long-term commitment on that gas, and may not even be a good decision to do that anyway. But we do have an active program around how we hedge to manage those risks.

Colin Rusch

Analyst · Oppenheimer. Your line is open.

Okay, great. I have a couple of other nuance questions. I will take offline on that. So moving forward towards the product backlog, with the existing finished goods inventory that you have, how much of that backlog can really be met with the existing configuration that you have in that finished goods back or inventory? Or there’s some developments that you guys need to bring forward on the technology to meet that backlog?

Jason Few

Analyst · Oppenheimer. Your line is open.

So Colin, you’re asking about our current backlog of projects, which equates to almost 34 megawatts in backlog is that you’re referring to?

Colin Rusch

Analyst · Oppenheimer. Your line is open.

With the product backlog that you guys have that you’re announcing the $60 million and – versus the existing inventory, if all of the inventory that you have on hand can actually be sold against that product backlog or if there’s product development that needs to happen to hit the spec for the orders that are in that backlog?

Colin Rusch

Analyst · Oppenheimer. Your line is open.

Colin, this is Mike. I’ll take that one. So as as you saw come through this quarter as a result of the settlement agreement that we put in place with POSCO Energy as part of that settlement agreement, POSCO Energy placed an order for 20 modules. We shipped Ex Works in the first quarter six modules that came out of finished goods inventory and recognized $18 million of revenue. So as – and that’s our current configuration – to answer your question around configuration. That’s our current configuration 1.4 megawatt modules. We will continue over the course of this year to build inventory to satisfy the balance of that commitment. So no, we don’t need to do any technology changes, no configuration changes. It’s our standard 1.4 megawatt modules to satisfy service needs of POSCO’s existing fleet in Korea.

Colin Rusch

Analyst · Oppenheimer. Your line is open.

Super helpful. Thanks so much, guys.

Michael Bishop

Analyst · Oppenheimer. Your line is open.

Yep.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Mark Strouse with JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Mark Strouse

Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Yeah, good morning. Thanks for taking our questions. Just a follow-up to Colin’s question there. And I’m sorry if I’m missing this, but can you help me reconcile the six modules that you’ve delivered to POSCO already and the eight that you’re expecting over the balance of the year? How do I tie that with the 20 modules that you’re expecting from POSCO?

Michael Bishop

Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Sure, Mark. Good morning. This is Mike again. So the way the agreement with POSCO was structured was there’s essentially two orders that POSCO committed to affirm order, which was placed in January for the initial modules, and then they committed to placing a second order for the balance of the 20 by the end of June of 2022. So we would expect to see that second order by the end of June of 2022, per the settlement agreement, and we’ll deliver against both of those this year.

Jason Few

Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Yeah. So mark the initial order is 12, right, and we’ve shipped via Ex Works – are delivered to be Ex Works six of those. So the remaining eight will be ordered in June. But the expectation is in calendar year 2022, we will deliver all 20 of those modules to POSCO Energy/Korean Fuel Cell company, which is their subsidiary, that that’s actually taken delivery of our modules. The other thing I would just point out about that as you think about the market for us in Korea, with the settlement, and you think about the installed base in Korea that we have with our technology, through that settlement, we are the only source of providing those replacement modules on a go-forward basis. And so we expect that that will create additional opportunity for us over time, just on that book of business, if you will, alone.

Mark Strouse

Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Okay, and that’s helpful And actually, Jason, you started to answer my follow-up question there, just the ability to open up the rest of the Korean market outside of POSCO. I know it’s still early, but just qualitatively speaking, can you talk about any kind of inbound requests that you’re getting from customers outside of POSCO in that region?

Jason Few

Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Yeah, so if you think about our existing business in Korea and the business that POSCO had done in Korea, the customer in those markets are the GENCOs. So not really POSCO itself. They were – you can think about them as formerly a channel partner for us, if you will, in that market that had rights to sell and offer our solution across Asia. So those customers, the GENCOs, we are seeing interest from those GENCOs. And in fact our – we have a – we’ve been building out a sales team there now, which we didn’t have to have before because POSCO was our channel partner. And so we are actively engaged in real conversations about opportunity there. And because they tend to be larger projects, they are projects that take a little bit of time to develop. But you’re talking – the largest fuel cell platform in the world exists today, leveraging our technology in Korea, and it’s 59 megawatts, right? So these are large-scale projects. And so we feel pretty good about our technology to serve the GENCOs given megawatt scale, and the attractiveness of the high-grade heat that we can deliver off of our existing platform.

Mark Strouse

Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Great. Okay, that makes sense. Thank you very much.

Jason Few

Analyst · JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Laurence Alexander with Jefferies. Your line is open.

Laurence Alexander

Analyst · Jefferies. Your line is open.

Good morning. I may have missed this. Have you framed just how many megawatts of capacity are installed in Southeast Asia, where replacement modules could be needed in the next three, five years?

Jason Few

Analyst · Jefferies. Your line is open.

Yeah, so in Korea, with customers that were originally served, if you will, by POSCO Energy through our channel partnership, for lack of a better expression, there’s about 140 megawatts installed that fall into that category, that ultimately beyond what module replacement POSCO Energy may have already done, beyond the module replacement that the 20 modules that we are providing to POSCO Energy or Korean Fuel Cell company for a replacement. Ultimately, there will be most likely additional opportunity for module replacements for the rest of the installed base.

Laurence Alexander

Analyst · Jefferies. Your line is open.

And is the module replacement economics stable? That is can we use the POSCO agreement as a proxy for the future economics? Or is that – or how might that evolve over time?

Jason Few

Analyst · Jefferies. Your line is open.

I would think that over time, you could probably use that as a watermark. Because we would suspect that as time moves, you might see pricing move up or – but I would not suspect downward movement on pricing. But time will – time and market conditions will tell, but I would suggest maybe using that as a watermark today.

Laurence Alexander

Analyst · Jefferies. Your line is open.

Thank you.

Jason Few

Analyst · Jefferies. Your line is open.

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Leo Mariani with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Leo Mariani

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Hey, guys, I was hoping you could provide a little bit more information about the nature of the delays at the Toyota plant here. And then kind of what’s your best guess as to when you might be able to get this up and running? And then I guess, do you also have like an annualized revenue number, what you might see when that plant comes online?

Jason Few

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Leo, good morning, and thank you for your question. With respect to the Toyota project, in Long Beach, California, that project as we indicated a little bit earlier, is in construction today, as we speak. The – that project we suspect that we will be in – delivery of that project is targeted in 2023 for delivery of that project, but we’ll see substantial work completed around the construction of that project in this calendar year. And so we feel good about where we are on project development for that project. We’ve not put out long-term revenue numbers yet on what our expectations are around that, that Toyota project. But it is under a long-term power purchase agreement both for the hydrogen for that project as well as we are under a tariff in California for the power.

Leo Mariani

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Okay, that’s helpful for sure. And I guess just wanting to jump over to your 14 megawatt Derby Connecticut project that seems obviously very sizeable in the portfolio. Do you guys have a better sense of what roughly the in-service plan is there in terms of date, when that may come online?

Michael Lisowski

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Yeah, Leo, thank you for the question. This is Michael Lisowski, Chief Operating Officer with FuelCell Energy. We have mobilized and launched the construction phase and site civil construction, as well as mechanical assembly of our Derby project. And we have made significant progress in equipment deliveries and mechanical assembly this year. In parallel with that work, we’re continuing to advance the electrical interconnection process that’s required for this facility to come online. So both of those, I’ll call it key milestone activities are continuing to advance well, and we’re moving that project forward in advancing it towards commercial operation, I would say, you can expect to see continued advancement of the project through the balance of the calendar year, and looking ahead to commercial operation in 2023.

Leo Mariani

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Okay, so some kind of 2023 startup. Okay. That’s helpful. And then just on your Exxon JV, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that was maybe scheduled to expire sometime in April, obviously, you hit a milestone recently. Is that in process of like being extended or reupped here? Can you tell us about that?

Jason Few

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Yeah, so the current JDA 2, as we call it, is set to expire at the end of April. However, we are in discussions with Exxon about the next phase of what we do from both the development work that we’re doing, in addition to the prospects around the demonstration project in Rotterdam, which Exxonhas publicly talked about. So the way that you could think about it is the milestone that we hit, like I indicated earlier, is a mile marker that indicates that the technology can do the things that we need to be able to demonstrate that we can be effective in capturing carbon, as well as producing power at the same time. As a result of hitting that milestone, that gives us more confidence around the extended nature or opportunity that exists between us and Exxon. And as you know, I can’t speak for Exxon, but Exxon has created through their reorganization a separate business unit that’s called their low carbon business unit. And one of the aspects of that business unit is delivering carbon capture as a solution for their company. And so we will work very collaboratively with Exxon as we have done over the last, I believe, 10 years, we’ve worked together. And so we’re in the process of negotiating with the next phase of our development relationship looks like.

Leo Mariani

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Okay, that’s helpful color. And then just lastly, you all did talk about expectations for other revenues outside of POSCO in South Korea. Would you expect those to be significant here in fiscal year 2022, or you think that’s more of a fiscal year 23 item?

Jason Few

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Just in terms of the time it takes on these projects, and even if you get an order of 60 days from now, right, to be able to put that order into our production schedule, ship a project, do all the permitting, all the things that you need to do the construction around that project, you should probably think about that more as a 2023 than 2022 in terms of actually being able to realize revenues around that.

Leo Mariani

Analyst · KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Okay. Thank you, guys.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Chris Souther with B Riley. Your line is open.

Christopher Souther

Analyst · B Riley. Your line is open.

Hey, guys, thanks for taking my question here. Can we maybe talk a little bit about the Scotford project in Canada? Maybe just of those three joint owners you’re working with, who you’re working with the most in development there? I want to get a sense of how this could develop more future opportunities to collaborate with any of – any or all of Canadian Natural Resources, Chevron or Shell, would be great?

Jason Few

Analyst · B Riley. Your line is open.

Chris, good morning, and thank you for your question. I’ll ask Tony Leo, our Chief Technology Officer to speak about the project and the work that we’re doing with all of the partners that are engaged on this opportunity.

Anthony Leo

Analyst · B Riley. Your line is open.

Yeah, you’re right, it is a consortium of different oil sands companies, including some support from some Canadian government entities. The lead for the project is Canadian Natural, CNRL. And so there our principal contact there, it is a Shell Upgrader that is jointly owned between Shell and CNRL, and a few others, but it’s operated by Shell. But our prime – the leader of that consortium is CNRL.

Christopher Souther

Analyst · B Riley. Your line is open.

And maybe Tony, you can just very quickly describe the carbon capture that will actually demonstrate from the upgrade facility itself.

Anthony Leo

Analyst · B Riley. Your line is open.

Yeah. And so one way to think about that is that as we work on optimizing the performance of our – of ourselves in our stacks for carbon capture with ExxonMobil, and just improving the technology, in general, we do have a technology, the units that we make today in our Torrington factory are capable of doing carbon capture. And those units can be suitable to do certain projects that have a very high CO2 value or power value, or demonstration projects. And this is a demonstration of capture from some of the process heaters in that upgrade facility, which will be capturing CO2 from these process heaters as opposed to, say, a power plant or something like that. It’s a good demonstration opportunity. There are a variety of different options that they’re looking at, for what to do with the caption CO2. Also, there will be more to come on that, but it just happens to be a – it’s a prime focus, decarbonizing the oil sands industry in general, and they view this as a really attractive way to do that.

Christopher Souther

Analyst · B Riley. Your line is open.

Got it. That’s great to hear from all of you. Thanks, guys.

Jason Few

Analyst · B Riley. Your line is open.

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Praneeth Satish with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Praneeth Satish

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Thanks. Good morning. Just want to give us an update on your gross margin expectations for the year. I guess how much of the gross margin in Q1 was kind of weighed down by the inflationary pressures that we’re seeing? And I guess, when do you expect gross margin to turn positive? Just any commentary around margins would be helpful?

Praneeth Satish

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Sure, this is Mike. Thank you. Good morning, and thanks for joining the call. So I’ll provide a couple of comments around gross margin. And really in the first quarter, it really wasn’t weighed down by supply chain issues or cost pressures. We generally have long-term contracts in place for our materials. But a couple of things coming through gross margin that I would highlight. On the product side of the business, we did have a $1 million impairment charge, as well as about $2 million of variances and absorption costs when you back that out of product. And these are disclosed in our 10-Q and you back that out of product, you’d see around a 16% margin on the sales of those modules. Also on generation, we have non-recoverable costs coming through related to the Toyota projects of about $3 million. And there’s, as we disclosed, there’s also depreciation expense that comes through the generation portfolio. So we like to look at the generation portfolio on an EBITDA basis. And when you take those two numbers out, you’re looking at about a 45% EBITDA margin on the generation portfolio. And we’ve said historically, that we target 45% to 50% EBITDA margins there. So those are the comments that I’d make around our Q1 margins, and we do not put out annual targets around margins or guidance.

Praneeth Satish

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Got it. No, that’s helpful. And then, just my second question here is just if you could give us an update on your solid oxide commercialization progress, I guess, where’s that stand today? And then, and where do you expect that to be most meaningful in terms of industries applications? I mean, you mentioned in South Korea, it’s more going to be your carbonate platform. So where do you expect the most success on the solid oxide side?

Jason Few

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Praneeth, hi, this is Jason, and then I’ll also ask Tony maybe to comment on this as well. We’ve now demonstrated a couple of different things with our solid oxide technology. We’ve demonstrated the ability to have an efficiency, electrical efficiency of 92-plus percent. So in other words converting electricity and water and into hydrogen. We are working on a project and we’ll do another demonstration where we’ll show this year in working with Idaho National Labs from a nuclear application standpoint to show leveraging nuclear power and waste heat to be at 100% electrical efficiency. And so we are very actively advancing the commercialization of that platform. And as we’ve indicated, even on our last quarter call, we now, given the strengthening of our balance sheet, we are making more investments in that commercialization effort than we have historically. We think that the efficiency that we have, given that we’re a high temperature fuel cell, the architecture that we’ve chosen to leverage in our design, gives us some advantages, as it relates to efficiency. So as we think that as you look to long duration energy storage applications, the efficiency of our platform will play quite well in that type of an application. Given the size and distributed nature of the platform, we believe, whether you’re talking about producing hydrogen, that’s gray, blue or green, the ability to deploy our platform with high efficiency can be used in a number of different industrial applications, including things like manufacturing of steel, or cement, provide the heat values that you need. So we believe, overall, that hydrogen has the ability to be either a replacement or additive to all of the work that’s going on around clean fuels, in particularly around the hard to electrify heavy industrial type opportunities. And we think that will play quite favorably there, given the efficiency of our platform. And, Tony, I don’t know if you would add anything else.

Anthony Leo

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Yeah, the one thing I would add is that our focus has been developing a solid oxide platform that is versatile, and that can address power generation applications, electrolysis applications in energy storage, and we demonstrated the power generation application a couple of years ago, actually, in a field trial that we did in Pittsburgh. We demonstrated the electrolysis, as Jason mentioned, that our labs in Danbury and later this year at INL. And if you think about this high-efficiency electrolysis, the high-efficiency power generation, combine those together with stored hydrogen, and then you’ve got a really effective energy storage system. So we’re pretty happy with where we are in the technology facade side right now.

Jason Few

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

And then Praneeth, I’d like to just go back to one thing that you also said. As it relates to Korea, beyond our carbonate platform, which we see as a more immediate opportunity, right, we also believe that our solid oxide technology has an opportunity to compete very effectively in that market as well as we commercialize that technology. So today, if we look at things that are on this shelf, that’s our carbonate platform, but we absolutely see opportunity for our solid oxide business in Korea as well. The government has a very strong commitment, publicly stated commitment to making hydrogen a big part of the energy economy there.

Praneeth Satish

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Got it. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Eric Stine with Craig-Hallum. Your line is open.

Eric Stine

Analyst · Craig-Hallum. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning. I’ll just sneak one in here at the end. I might have missed it. Just curious if you maybe this is something you wait for the Investor Day next week. But just curious if you would update to the targeted breakeven megawatt level for the generation portfolio?

Michael Bishop

Analyst · Craig-Hallum. Your line is open.

Good morning, Eric. This is Mike. So a little bit of color on the generation portfolio. This quarter, we finished commercial – or we finished construction and entered commercial operation for the LIPA Yaphank project, that brings the operating portfolio to 41.4 megawatts. If you look at what we have in backlog for the balance of the portfolio, it’s another 33.9 megawatts, all up and running when these projects are built over the medium-term, that’ll bring the total portfolio to 75 megawatts. As far as revenues, last year, we had about approximately $24 million of revenues come through the financial statements related to the generation portfolio that will obviously grow with the life of project coming online and other assets as they come online. We haven’t really put out a breakeven target. But what we’ve – what we said, as I said in one of my earlier responses, is we do target EBITDA margins for the portfolio in the 45% to 50% range is really what the company targets.

Eric Stine

Analyst · Craig-Hallum. Your line is open.

Got it. I think in the past, you’d given a 50 megawatt kind of level. I mean, and I know that there was some dependence on what your level of product sales would be as well. But I guess it seems like that’s a number that probably is fairly appropriate, all things considered?

Michael Bishop

Analyst · Craig-Hallum. Your line is open.

So yeah, I see where you’re going with the questioner. So one of the reasons why the company strategically went down the path of building out this portfolio was to have a portfolio of long-term contracts. And if you look at the average life of these contracts, it’s over 15 years, right? With Tier 1 customers, that will be producing recurring revenues and cash flows for a long period of time, which obviously helps the the EBITDA profile of the company. Now with product sales online – coming back online as well, that improves the profile, obviously, because we’ll get gross margin from those sales. So we really haven’t put out a target that says okay, if we do 50 megawatts a year of production, the company is either gross margin or EBITDA, EBITDA positive. But as we continue to grow mature, have a larger backlog, we’ll look at putting out some of those guideposts again in the future.

Eric Stine

Analyst · Craig-Hallum. Your line is open.

Okay, thank you.

Jason Few

Analyst · Craig-Hallum. Your line is open.

Yep.

Operator

Operator

We have run out of time for Q&A on today’s call. I’ll turn the call back over to Jason Few for closing remarks.

Jason Few

Analyst

Chantelle, thank you. Thank you again for joining us today. We will continue to execute on our Powerhouse Business Strategy, working to deliver growth and optimize returns. The FuelCell Energy team is excited about our work to deliver on our purpose of enabling a world empowered by clean energy. And we are excited to deepen the understanding of the company’s platforms, opportunities and priorities next week during our Investor Day. Finally, I again want to offer our prayers and support to the people of Ukraine and all of those impacted. Thank you for joining and have a great day.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today’s conference call. You may now disconnect.