Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Bloom Energy approach to the decarbonization of the marine transport industry. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Suzanne Schmidt with Investor Relations. Thank you. Please go ahead, Madam.
Thank you, Operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us on this call today to discuss Bloom Energy's approach to the decarbonization of the marine transport industry. To supplement this call, we have posted a presentation on the Investor Relations website that we will refer to during the prepared remarks. The matters we will be discussing today may include forward-looking statements regarding future events and the future financial performance of the company. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that we discuss in detail in our documents filed with the SEC, specifically the most recent reports on Forms 10-K and 10-Q, which identify important risk factors, including those related to the COVID-19 pandemic that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements.
These include statements about the effects of COVID-19 on the company's business results, financial position, liquidity, demand for our energy server and new applications, timing of new applications, and the supporting market ecosystem and outlook. We assume no obligation to revise any forward-looking statements made on today's call. During this call, we may also refer to GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP financial measures are not prepared in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles and are, in addition to, and not a substitute for, or superior to, measures of the financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP. A reconciliation between the GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures is included in our latest quarterly shareholder letter. Joining me on the call today are Greg Cameron, Bloom's Chief Financial Officer, and Preeti Pande, Vice President of Strategic Market Development. After the prepared remarks, we will take questions.
I would also like to note that we are all dialed into this call remotely, so we apologize in advance for any audio issues that may occur. I will now turn the call over to Greg.
Thank you, Suzanne, and thank you for everybody joining this afternoon. When I came to Bloom a little over six months ago, I made the decision to come to the company based on its technology, a very robust roadmap for that technology, and a real potential to impact the world we live in. I also said during the first conference call I was on, I was committed to driving transparency into the company. We'll continue to do that as part of our financial discussions, but I'm also committed with the team here to drive transparency into the people, the leadership, the ideas, and our plans, and we're really excited to do some of that today in what I hope is the first of many of these sessions. Today is meant to be a technical review about one of our real big ideas.
We'll go in a little bit more detail around specifically our growth pillar around marine. With me today, I have Preeti Pande, who is an exceptional leader within the company. She brings a robust global perspective to problem-solving and has a deep passion for our technology. It should be an exciting afternoon. Before I let Preeti share, I wanted to provide a little bit of context for the discussion today. If you have the chance to, I pulled the presentation down from the website. I'm on page three. We've talked about this before. Based upon the product, the Bloom server design, it can serve as a platform which to evolve into many different applications. We're very limited R&D or manufacturing investment. The core product, the platform, is essentially the same in each of these applications, but of course, will be optimized to that specific purpose that we have.
So it's the same manufacturing process, same supply chain, same group of engineers, same company that is putting the applications in each of the different situations we have there for our product. This is significant in our ability to leverage our operating model and expand our product across the spectrum that you see there. If you flip forward to the next page, this summer we announced our partnership with Samsung Heavy Industries, specifically around our marine initiative. That partnership had been in development over the course of the last couple of years, and we think it's a very powerful relationship to develop our technology jointly together. We're working very hard to do that, and we'll be expecting to present solutions to our customers within the course of 2022. And I'm very excited about it as not only an opportunity, but what each ship represents as an opportunity.
We have a tremendous relationship with an opportunity that we're very excited about. So we're more excited than ever about our ability to contribute to solve substantial challenges within this industry and provide value to our customers. So with that, I'm going to pass it over to Preeti and allow her to walk through a series of slides in an effort that she's been leading for the company.
Thank you, Greg. Good afternoon, everyone. I want to start by saying that Bloom Energy's mission at this point, and our team's mission, is to power ships with fuel cells. It's a very, very exciting opportunity for us due to its size and our ability to make an impact in this industry, so the maritime transport industry, it's a mature industry, but we're entering this market from a place of strength, so on slide six, you can see the scope and scale of what we have already accomplished: 500 MW of fuel cell deployments across 700 sites in four countries, experiencing a range of environmental, geographical, and certification requirements, and with all this experience behind us, today, our fuel cell solution offers unmatched maturity, stability, reliability, and very important for this industry, it offers scale.
So having this maturity and scale behind us gives us a really good start and very high credibility. With our maturity, our platform approach, and the inherent product attributes that the product has, we are simplifying how ship owners, operators, and shipyards think about powering their vessels. So the question that comes up is, why marine when there is plenty of opportunity on land? So two words. One is suitability, which essentially means product fit, and the second is impact. The fuel cells are a perfect fit for marine today, and even more so in the future, given where the emission requirements are headed. And many of our product attributes that are certainly very important on land take on even more significance on ocean-going vessels. And I'll add some color to this. Let's look at the product attributes on slide number seven.
So let's start with the fact that we have the highest electrical efficiency of any generation device anywhere. The total efficiency is also boosted by the fact that we are going to essentially extract the heat, which is required on ships. This extraction of heat adds another 10%-15% of efficiency. And higher efficiency in the case of a vessel as opposed to on land also means a smaller fuel tank on board, which means they're now creating valuable space for cargo on the ship. The fuel cells are clean because they run on an electrochemical process. So there is no NOx, SOx, particulate matter, or black carbon. We have the lowest CO2 emissions of any generation device due to our inherently high efficiency and no methane loss or methane slip. So methane slip is the release of unburned methane from an engine.
This is a source of GHG emissions on ships today, and depending on the engine, could be anywhere from less than 1% to over 10%. Beyond the GHG implications of methane slip, it also means you're losing fuel, and this will impact the cost of operating the ship. Our design approach lends to simplicity of design. A modular design means the energy servers can be flexibly configured on the ship. Regarding operation and maintenance, our product does not have any moving parts other than blowers and fans and does not require the highly skilled manpower that's required on board today. By way of carrying out, we also think that we may require fewer people to maintain the equipment during the voyage. Our fuel cells also require very little water.
While this is a great feature to have on land, it is quite important on a ship at sea. It saves on equipment costs, saves on space, and the ongoing operation and energy consumption. We bring the same measurement of performance accountability to vessels as we do on land. In this market, it's a new and a different paradigm. Fuel compatibility or fuel flexibility is the key attribute that makes our platform, our technology, future-proof. Lastly, we deliver higher availability than any other energy source. Let's talk about the market dynamics in this industry, and let's go to slide eight. You may be aware that marine transport is a significant source of global pollution, but there is an urgency to decarbonize. Regulations are expected, and aggressive targets have already been set.
Current approaches, although, are incremental, and these improvements will take the industry only so far. A number of new fuels are being proposed with the intention of achieving decarbonization. So each new fuel requires substantial changes, of course. Changes in engines, material sets, lubricants, etc. This leads to a major concern in the industry about stranded assets. What technology should you specify that meets the sort of unclear efficiency and emission requirements is not entirely known, which now creates a significant opportunity for impact for Bloom. So let's focus in on the pollution problem. That's slide nine. The global trade is heavily reliant on shipping, of course. About 80% of everything that we buy has traveled on a very large ship that burns very dirty fuel. Many cargo ships use bunker fuel, which is one of the dirtiest products out of the petroleum refining process.
The industry's reliance on this kind of fuel is a major obstacle for global efforts to curb pollution. If nothing is done, shipping's carbon footprint will rise in the coming decades, even as emissions decline on land, negating the value of progress that's being made. Shipping's enormous scale means that it is a significant contributor of all kinds of emissions. CO2, NOx, SOx: CO2 2.2%, NOx 15%, and SOx 15% of total global emissions. In addition, black carbon and particulate matter is also emitted, and it is known to create serious health problems in port cities. Now, shipping is seen as one of the hard-to-abate industries, and for good reason. It is fair to say that this industry has been lately starting its efforts to reduce emissions, but these efforts are now gathering speed. This is mainly through the work of the IMO.
Let's go to slide 10. IMO is the International Maritime Organization. It's a specialized agency of the United Nations, and it is the global standard-setting authority for safety, security, and environmental performance of international shipping. The good news is it has already taken significant steps to regulate the industry. The measures are in line with UN's 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the core belief being that UN's 2030 Agenda can only be realized with sustainable transport supporting world trade. The IMO has taken action. The many actions taken in this direction are: one, it's placed limits on emissions of NOx. It has required a reduction of SOx emissions, required improvement of efficiency on new as well as existing ships, insisted on data collection, and has announced a strategy to reduce GHG emissions from ships.
Although IMO has set an ambition to cut emissions, as shown on the slide in 2018, it will publish a final plan and firm up its targets in 2023. While this is the current plan, the EU has been getting impatient with the pace of change. We are on slide 10 at this point. The European Parliament voted in September to include GHG emissions from large ships into the EU Emissions Trading System by 2022. The target of 40% reduction in annual average CO2 emissions by 2030 is in line with IMO's strategy. While this vote is yet to become law, EU's action puts shipping industry and IMO under tremendous pressure. Shipping industry sees this as another source of complexity, global versus local environmental rules and regulations. The industry is preparing for this to change.
In a recent survey, shipping executives have identified decarbonization as a top impact issue other than COVID and lack of preparedness as a top concern. What slide 11 here shows is a result of an IMO study that indicates that carbon emissions from shipping can shoot up by up to 250% by 2050 from population growth and economic growth. And shipping, in that case, would be contributing 17% to total global emissions up from the current 2%-3% levels if nothing is done. So let's go to slide 12. So we're now in a time of some uncertainty. The maritime transport ecosystem is very diverse. It's not just really large companies, but it's made up of companies of many different sizes, the different application categories of ships, and more importantly, different financial needs. And all of these companies will have to comply with the coming regulations.
The coming changes add complexity to an already complex environment. Solutions have to be realistic, proven, and ready for adoption, economic, available, and have to have demonstrated scale to be truly viable. There are multiple fuels in contention: hydrogen, ammonia, methanol, and we have little ability to declare a winner at this point. The amount of work that goes into developing, maturing, and scaling the technology and associated materials, lubricants, etc., for a given fuel is quite tremendous. And having to invest in a generation technology on a ship without knowing which fuel is going to win presents a challenge to everyone. The level of sophistication required to maintain these increasingly complex technologies on a ship is also going to be high. And then there is the question of scaling the fueling infrastructure of all the ports, and it's no small accomplishment.
In the meantime, you have to make a decision about assets that have a service life of, let's say, 10 to 30 to 40 years. You layer in other requirements, such as efficiency-related improvements, and things just get harder. So there's no panacea and no easy solutions available today. Which brings us to Bloom's platform technology. I'm on slide 13 now. Let's think about our current Bloom Energy product. Inside the Energy Server is the fuel cell and the stack, where the electrochemical reaction occurs using hydrogen gas and oxygen ions to produce electricity. The hydrogen source could be LNG, as it is today, or hydrogen from electrolysis or other sources, which could come from reformation of another hydrogen carrier, such as ammonia. Marine transport presents an ideal opportunity to fully leverage this platform capability that our technology offers.
So moving to slide 14, the product that is available today, that we're manufacturing today and that is in operation, has been in operation for several years, in fact, already meets the IMO target from 2040 using LNG as fuel today. It's already capable of reducing CO2 emission intensity by 40% over 2008 levels. This product can also run on a 50% blend of hydrogen and LNG or natural gas or biogas, which further improves the emissions profile. With this fuel mix, a solution can achieve the IMO 2040 reduction target of CO2 emissions intensity by 70% from 2008 levels. We will also be demonstrating at the end of the year systems that can run on 100% hydrogen. This demonstration will be happening in Korea. This offers a zero-emission pathway with hydrogen as a fuel.
Also note that we have announced our electrolyzer product that can generate green hydrogen through electrolysis. The key point here is that Bloom Energy Server has the potential to offer practical and rapid decarbonization pathways that will ensure that ship owners will not face the risk of stranded assets. You can buy the LNG fuel cells today with an inbuilt assurance of meeting IMO emissions requirements. And the fuel cells can be upgraded to hydrogen power modules when the ship has the fuel available on board. The availability of our flexible platform today presents a viable solution to the shipping decarbonization problem. Now, the blended fuel approach that I talked about also presents a practical way to tune and optimize for the right economics and emissions profile. We can go to slide 15 now. Here we're showing the ship with the fuel cell powered by LNG during its voyage.
Let's say it arrives at a port that has a source of hydrogen, and by the way, hydrogen will be first available on port before it is put on board a ship, so using the current generation of fuel cells, you can feed a 50% blend of hydrogen and LNG to achieve the desired emissions profile, so a fuel-flexible platform is key to our go-to-market strategy. Another key element to our strategy is entering the market. To enter the market is to form the right kinds of partnerships, so as Greg said, we've announced our partnership with Samsung in the merchant vessel space, and Bloom Energy and Samsung share the same innovation DNA, and our work on integrating the marine fuel cell is moving forward quite well, and although our fuel cells are quite robust, the marine environment is unique.
There are two key elements that we're working on to adapt our fuel cells to this unique marine environment. The first is marine-compliant safety features around having LNG on board. The second is demonstrating tolerance for motion and vibration that comes from a ship's motion when it's at sea. There will be other smaller modifications that may be required, but these are really the key ones. We're working very closely with our partners on this. This brings me to our last slide, which nets out our message that we have been delivering to the market that is very concerned about regulatory environment and about having possession of stranded assets. It is possible today to achieve immediate reductions with our platform, our technology, while the global infrastructure for sustainable fuel is under development.
You can swap our power modules for hydrogen power modules when it's available on board, but this is perhaps several years out. But today we have a proven technology, a highest efficiency technology, and we have delivered concrete and measurable results for all to see. So our message is being well received by our partners and by the industry. And note that the fact that we're bringing clean power to a sector that is using the dirtiest of fuels available and contributing significantly to warming the atmosphere and changing climate patterns, this makes us very excited to be contributing to solving the problem and making a dent in the emissions that come from this sector. And with that, that's the end of my prepared talk, and we can open up to questions. Thank you.
As a reminder to ask a question, you will need to press star and then 1 on your telephone. To withdraw your question, press the pound key. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster.
Hey, Preeti, as we pulled the Q&A together, you talked a little bit about the concept of the stranded asset and that being very important in the industry. For someone like me who doesn't spend a lot of time in the shipping industry, can you expand a little bit on that concept of why that's so important?
Right. I think the key factor here is that when you're buying a ship, it's going to have a service life of 15-40 years. So if you specify a generation technology today, you are now stuck with a technology that may or may not meet the requirements as they're emerging.
That's essentially the challenge that the ship owners are facing today. And we've also heard that sort of uncertainty has led to a reduction in order placement while the industry is sort of waiting it out to understand where things are headed.
So it's an interesting point. Yeah. Thank you.
Your first question comes from the line of Michael Weinstein from Credit Suisse. Your line is open.
Hi, guys. Thanks for the time. Very interesting discussion. Can you lay out the timeline of exactly when do you expect to have the first prototypes exactly built, launched? When will investors be able to see results of the partnership? And then also, what is the timeline for full production, I think getting up to 12-14 ships a year potential that was discussed earlier? And then beyond that, what's the potential for doing more ships than 14 a year?
Yeah. Let me start on the timeline, and then I'll pass it over to Preeti on the other applications more broadly. I think we had a slide in the front where we kind of give a lay of the land. Listen, on the timeline here and how to think about it, this is a large asset. I think we were just talking about the timeframe in which the asset exists. We're doing a ton of technical work now with our partners on bringing out what the drawings are, understanding the engineering process of it. And really, probably, I think on the slide that you showed on the Samsung, we expect to be presenting customer solutions in the 2022 timeframe. As you think about, okay, when does that mean is do we start shipping units? When does it ramp from there?
It's going to be part of it is going to be on the technical adoption. Part of it will be on when the customers want those assets on it. So I would say from a timeframe, it's not something that's going to impact our financials in the next 12-24 months in a way expectation, but it is something that you build over time, and you'd expect that to increase as we begin to establish it as a solution in the market. Preeti, you want to handle the other opportunities for that?
Sure. Outside of the merchant class, a part of the market, we are also engaged in looking at the cruise industry as well. There is a tremendous amount of pressure to make these ships more green. And in that effort, we have been engaged with multiple parties to see how the technology integrates with the ship.
So those are not just the merchant ships, but also on the cruise side of things.
And Greg, are you expecting to see similar gross margins for this joint venture that you would be seeing with your land-based sales? And I don't know if you're willing to talk about ASPs with Samsung or if that's still proprietary, but yeah.
Yeah. No, listen, it's still early, right? I think in any of these situations, the product itself will be essentially very similar. So it would have very similar cost aspects to it. I think as you think about pricing and the capture on that, it's a different market than what we're in today. And one of the things we'll be very curious on is the value creation for the customers and understanding where our value platform and value pricing fits in on that.
We wouldn't be undertaking it as an opportunity if we didn't think it fit our long-term horizons, but where it bounces on either side versus our expectations. It's not clear yet, but I think it'll be an attractive source of capital for us going forward.
I'll have one more question, and I'll just let it go for other people. What about retrofitting existing ships? I mean, with the stranded asset problem being a concern in the industry, I'm wondering how difficult is it to actually go back to older ships and retrofit?
Yeah. And this one, I'll get back to Preeti on it. I know it is far easier to provide the solution with the introduction of this ship and as we build it.
But Preeti, can you give us a sense of the scope of opportunity that's available on ships that are on the water today to utilize our technology?
So I would say we're still trying to determine how that would work. We certainly have interest from some large operators with some very large ships that are looking to decarbonize aggressively and are excited about retrofitting. But I suppose it depends on the category of ship and if that sort of retrofitting investment that retrofitting actually takes is worth it. All depends on the value of the ship and the category of the ship category we're talking about. But we're still in the middle of determining how that would actually work across the industry.
Thank you.
Thanks, Michael.
Your next question comes from the line of Stephen Byrd from Morgan Stanley. Your line is open. Hey, good afternoon.
Thanks so much for some really helpful presentation. Thank you. I wanted to go to slide 10 where you talk about the EU sort of emissions allowance system. And I wondered if you could just go back and touch on how to think about the benefit economics from being included in the emissions trading system. I'm just not very familiar with how that works and how that might be beneficial here.
I think the point of, oh, sorry.
No, I was just asking you, so go ahead, sir.
Okay. So I think the point is how that changes the EU making that declaration, how it changes the dynamic is that essentially there is an impatience that's being demonstrated by the EU, suggesting that, well, the IMO needs to do something and needs to do something soon.
That's kind of how that lent to the concern that the severity and timing acceleration of the timing of these targets might be increased because of the pressure that's coming from the EU. The impact it has on the dynamic is what's concerning everybody. This happened just this last month, so this is fairly new. It's a declaration of their intent.
Understood. Okay. Then I guess just thinking about the physical operational requirements here, including you've mentioned sort of tolerance to vibrations at sea. Could you just talk a little bit more about sort of solutions to ensure that your solution can really operate in any maritime condition that could be foreseen?
Yeah. It's a matter of, so we do a lot of testing on vibration already. This is not unfamiliar to us at all. It's a matter of, and we're in the process of doing that.
What is the location of the fuel cell on the ship? What sort of vibration is it going to experience in that location? What's the profile? And running the system with that profile. So it's standard work that we already do. It's just that we'll probably be looking at slightly different vibration profiles for our product. And we do this in conjunction with our partners. And they essentially provide us with the information, and we work jointly with them sharing results and that sort of thing.
Okay. Understood. Maybe just one last quick one on the cruise industry. Looks like an interesting opportunity. You mentioned briefly sort of the opportunity set there. Are there kind of formal regulatory pressures there? Is it more sort of the desire to be green to the customer base or desire to have as clean as possible propulsion for these ships?
I think it's coming from both places. Definitely the pressures from clients and customers. And of course, having to meet the regulatory requirements. The cruise industry is purchasing a very large number of LNG fuel ships, so this becomes a very natural fit for us in this environment.
Yep. Makes sense. That's all I had. Thank you so much.
Thanks, Stephen.
Your next question comes from the line of Paul Costel from JPMorgan. Your line is open. Yeah.
Thanks. I've got three questions, actually. The first one is I think this solid oxide fuel cells are known for their kind of always-on property, but not for their stop-and-start kind of speed. Perhaps you can talk about that a little bit. Second is there's also alternative technologies out there. Presumably, PEM is the obvious one. How does solid oxide stack up against that? And why is this the way forward?
And then third is you talk about different sort of fuels, and different fuel cells might require different mixes or different specifications of fuels. How do we sort of end up with an interoperable international system with a single fuel standard? Thanks.
Yeah. Actually, yeah, go ahead, Preeti.
Let me go ahead, Greg. Why don't you start? Yeah, yeah.
I think we can talk about PEM versus solid oxide. I think as you see some of the applications that are out there, the different technologies that are presented are going to find themselves for different use cases. And as I think about the solid oxide and the high temperature there, it lends itself very well to long-haul shipping in keeping that temperature constant versus maybe something on a short haul, a ferry, or something else going back and forth with PEM.
And I think you're starting to see that as different folks in the market are presenting those. I think the solid oxide as well presents an opportunity. And Preeti talked about this in the presentation around its ability to act as a power plant while in port and export some of that power. So you're not in a position where you need to fire up or fire down the temperature of the fuel cell, which creates tremendous opportunity and applicability for our technology versus others. But for sure, this will be a big opportunity which technology can lend itself to the best use cases where I would see those use cases getting leveraged by the customers on that.
And then back to Preeti, which will for sure correct me on one or two of the things I said wrong there, as well as how we think about the different types of fuels.
Sure. So let's talk about comparison with PEM. And as Greg said, all the technologies have a role to play. It's a broad set of applications here. We are focused on sort of the trans-ocean type applications. And from a fuel perspective, the benefit of our fuel cell technology is the ability to use LNG today and make an impact today, reduce emissions today, provide the efficiency right away. And as the fuel set evolves and emerges, and whoever the winner is, whichever fuel ends up being the winner, if it's hydrogen, we can certainly use hydrogen.
If it's ammonia, reforming the ammonia and extracting hydrogen is how we would leverage that fuel as well. So we feel that we're offering the benefits of a flexible fuel platform that I don't think we have enough technology that offers that to the customers today.
Okay. Thank you.
Great. Thanks, Paul.
Again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and the number one on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from the line of Eric Lee from Bank of America. Your line is open.
Hi. Appreciate all the detail today. Just a quick question here around just a follow-up on Paul's question there on competitive backdrop. Can you talk about what the typical process for procuring ships might look like? Would it be similar to how utility-scale projects are procured in, call it the Korean market, with competitive RFPs?
And how do you view your SOFC maritime solution relative to others that are being developed, such as by Ballard and Doosan? Thank you. So yeah.
Sure. Sure. So again, I think the PEM fuel cells will just be a different set of fuels. And if we compare ourselves with other technologies, as I said in the beginning, the fact that we are—I would go as far as to say the most stable, reliable platform that uses LNG, really is very important in how the technology selection is very important to technology selection. So it all boils down to efficiency, stability, and maturity of the platform. And I think we deliver all of that. And that's our advantage in this market.
And then what about, Preeti, on how will customers choose our product?
What will be the process? I don't think it's along with the acquisition of the ship where they would choose our solution for that, correct?
Yeah. And Greg, you mentioned this already. Our intention this year is to essentially modernize the product and do design work and present designs in 2022. That's where the customers will start to express their interest in deploying this technology on the ship. And that's how the process starts.
Great. Maybe just to clarify there, on the procurement process, is it just direct negotiations with the shipping company, or would the shipping company put out a request for proposals saying, "Show us what you could provide based on this is what we're looking for," and then they'll pick from there? Or if you could just clarify there.
Yeah. Our whole objective right now is just to get the technology ready and start meeting with customers.
And the interest there, all I can say is the interest there is very high. And that, I see, is a very good thing.
Okay. No problem. Thank you.
Great. Thanks, Eric.
Your next question comes from the line of Michael Weinstein from Credit Suisse. Your line is open.
All right. Just a follow-up. And this is a dumb question, but what about alternative technologies such as the gas turbines that might burn hydrogen? Does that just not meet up with the same efficiency levels, the energy efficiency levels of a fuel cell? Or how would that compete? How does that stack up?
So there is some amount of work that's been done to investigate installing turbines on ships and running hydrogen, 100% hydrogen through these devices. That's still, I would say, I would guess, is still in development.
So that's just, it's probably too early to say where that leads us.
Okay. And is the JV between Bloom and Samsung exclusive? Can Bloom go ahead and do a similar JV with another shipbuilder? Is that possible?
So it's a joint development agreement. We expect to be working with Samsung over the next few years with that. And we've pledged to work with them over that period. But as the technology develops and we move forward, we won't be exclusive with Samsung over the long term.
Okay. Thank you.
Thanks, Michael. So listen, I'll wrap it. We'll let Preeti get back to the growth plan here and let everybody get back. Hopefully, this is helpful. I'll reach out and get some feedback, if you have some, about how we make these more valuable going forward.
I'd like the opportunity to talk about the technology, talk about the customers, and do that away from kind of the normal rhythm that we do. With that said, we've announced third-quarter earnings will take place. Our earnings call will take place on Thursday, October 29th. So I look forward to sharing the results at that time. And you'll have KR and myself for that. Listen, with closing on this, I would say on our effort for Marine, I think it fits well in our strategy as a Bloom server, as a platform. It's a application that we can use with our current technology. I like the industrial nature of it, the scale of it, just not on its per-ship application, but just on the enormous opportunity of the industry on it.
I really think it's going to be one of the growth accelerators going forward for us at attractive returns and very accretive to the company. So we're real excited about the opportunity. Preeti, thank you so much for taking the time. I know this was outside of your day job. The slides you had and your presentation of it was very clear. So thank you for that. With that, Suzanne, we'll end the call. Thank you, everybody, for their time. Bye-bye.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.