Hello?
That was a green button. Yeah, green button. Oh, there you go. Perfect.
Thank you.
Did mine work? Yeah.
Yeah. Perfect. Awesome. So thank you everyone for joining us. Our next chat's going to be with José Luis from Plug Power. He's a Chief Revenue Officer. And really appreciate you coming in today and spending some time with us. Maybe just to get started, if you want to share a little bit about yourself, and then we can just jump into Q&A.
Perfect. That sounds good. My name is Jose Luis Crespo. I've been with Plug Power for the last 10 years. I joined the company as the head of sales when the company was about $20 million-$25 million in revenues. This year, we're going to be over $800 million in revenue. So we've grown a lot in a very short period of time. I'll talk a little bit also about Plug, just in case some of the people in the audience don't know what we do. Plug has been in the hydrogen business for the last 25 years or so. So we've been doing hydrogen solutions way before people started talking about hydrogen widely. As of today, Plug has the end-to-end ecosystem solutions for hydrogen, from the technology to generate hydrogen with electrolyzers.
So we can generate from electricity and water hydrogen, green hydrogen, to the technology to liquefy that hydrogen to be able to transport it efficiently, to the cryo technology to transport it and to store it. And then we have fuel cells that convert that hydrogen into electricity for any application. Our biggest application today is material handling, where we have more than 250 refueling stations for customers like Walmart, Amazon, Home Depot, BMW, and other customers. And we deliver to those customers around 50 tons of hydrogen per day. On top of that, because we have the technology to do all that, and because our customers consume hydrogen and hydrogen is an enabler for the fuel cell technologies, we also produce our own hydrogen. We have a plant in Tennessee that produces 10 tons a day.
We have a plant in Georgia that produces 15 tons a day using our electrolyzers, that plant in particular, and we are about to start a new plant in Q1 of next year in Louisiana that will produce another 15 tons per day, so I'll leave it at that.
Awesome. Thank you so much. So I think some of the big questions we have been getting, and just wanted to kind of talk on that. I know that you guys recently had your Plug Symposium. Maybe since then, could you share a little bit about just thoughts or the conversations you're having around, obviously, the DOE loan and this win, the new administration, the Trump administration. They've been kind of historically pushed back on the LPO program. What are your thoughts there? And how are you tackling that? Have you done any scenario analysis on what's going to happen? If you get the DOE loan, what happens if you don't? Maybe just thoughts there.
Okay. So obviously, that is another question that everybody has with the change of administration, what's going to happen. I do not have a crystal ball, but I'm going to give you my opinion on what we think is going to happen. Hydrogen has always been a bipartisan source of energy or molecule. We have had support from the Republican Party and the Democratic Party over the years. As I said, we've been working on this for the last 25 years for hydrogen in many different ways. We believe that a lot of the IRA investments are going to be benefiting many of the red states. As a matter of fact, some of our plants are located in red states, right?
So we do believe that there will be a support to keep critical parts of the IRA specifically associated to hydrogen, and that basically with that, we will get to some type of a good working solution going forward. The other part to take into consideration is that hydrogen also takes some of the main intentions that the new administration and any administration, because these are positive things for everyone, like, for example, creation of jobs. When you put plants or you start generating hydrogen in any of the states, you're going to be generating and creating jobs. Energy independence, hydrogen contributes to energy independence, and this is something that resonates with any administration, but with the new administration as well, and made in America. So all of our technology is made in America. We create jobs by manufacturing things here in the U.S.
So because of all of that, I think independently of one administration or the other, when things are positive and beneficial for the economy and the country, we should see some support for that.
Brilliant. And then maybe just kind of digging in a little bit on the DOE funding specifically. And then obviously, we'll kind of talk about the 45V, but any kind of thoughts on just the DOE funding, where you guys are in the process? I know that there was some permitting needed for the Texas plant, the NEPA permitting. Where are we on that? Just any color there.
On the NEPA permitting, I do believe that that has been already clarified. We are in contact with the DOE on a daily basis. Our teams are talking on a daily basis, and we are working very diligently to try to get this closed as soon as possible. You may see some prior announcements in the next few weeks, but right now, there is a lot of collaboration, like there has always been with the DOE and Plug Power in any administration. As a reminder, the DOE loan, we started talking about the DOE loan with the administration when it was still the Trump administration. So I believe that that will continue the discussion. With that said, we hope and we expect to try to close it in the next few weeks. And you asked me also before, what happens if we don't get the DOE loan?
The DOE loan guarantee is mainly, it is designed to allow us to put into production up to six green hydrogen plants in the next 10 years. One of them, and the first one is, as you mentioned, the plant in Texas, and in the plant in Texas, Plug has already spent about $250 million-$300 million in the creation of that plant. If the DOE loan were not to happen, we have already started even a process to find strategic investors for the Texas plant and any other plants that we may be thinking of in the future, DOE loan or not, because even if the DOE loan happens, we're going to have to, the DOE loan covers up to 80% of the cost of the plant, so we're going to have to find another 20% for that.
With that, we're looking, as I said, we have a very active process right now to look at potential investors for the Texas plant to finalize whatever is left to do there and many other plans that we have in mind.
Got it. So in terms of the conversations with these strategic partners, is it more are they relying more on the DOE loan coming through, or is that kind of a separate conversation? I think, are they comfortable with, because I guess to fund the 20%, you'll have to get the 80% kind of DOE. So yeah, how do you kind of think about maybe in a scenario where, how would Plug look like if, because you have three operational plants right now, and I think 15, 10, 15, I believe, right? Like in terms of capacity, I think it's going to be.
Oh, in terms of capacity, 10, 15, and then the third plant will be 15 as well.
40 tons.
Yeah, 40 tons.
By Q1 of next year.
Yeah. And it's 40 tons. But then next year, I think a total consumption or sales to your customers is roughly 50-60 tons?
50.
50.
50.
50 today. It keeps on growing as we install the fuel cells.
Yeah. So I mean, in terms of, I guess, the question being is that if we are base case today, and if the DOE loan doesn't come through, then how would that kind of impact, let's say, the rest of the Plug business?
Obviously, strategic investors are looking at is the project going to be a project that ticks all their financial requirements? Different investors look at different things, right? But in general, if you look at the Texas plant, as I said, we have already spent $300 million in the plant. There's another probably $200 or $250 million or $300 that need to be spent. We'll have to kind of see that as we finalize the plant. We have an extremely competitive PPA for electricity in the Texas plant that is going to make that plant have the lowest cost of hydrogen of all the plants that we have. We are, as we probably have mentioned in other forums, we have been increasing pricing of hydrogen to our customers over the last year to try to get to margin positive in hydrogen.
If you take those two things together, the higher prices of hydrogen and the low cost that the hydrogen is going to have in Texas, it is an attractive investment case. And that's what our investors, potential investors, are looking for. Is it a DOE loan or no DOE loan? Is this a project that I can invest? Obviously, the DOE loan makes it more attractive. But at the end of the day, I think we can make it quite attractive even without the DOE loan. Regarding other plants, we'll have to see, right? And we'll have to see. If we do Texas, we will be adding 45 tons a day to the 40 that we have. By that time, we will be at 85. This is probably in the 2027 time range.
Hopefully, we have grown our fuel cell business to get to that consumption level or close to it. And whatever we don't use ourselves, we will be selling it in the market. The market is now also affording fairly high prices of hydrogen because the production of hydrogen is limited in the U.S. So as I said, I believe that at the end of the day, what they will look for is the investment a good investment?
Got it. Got it. That's helpful. Maybe I think in the Plug Symposium, you guys talked about the energy business and then the applications business. So maybe if we can kind of dive a little bit into the energy business. We started off with kind of the green hydrogen. So maybe kind of let's stick with that part. Maybe if you can give us an update on just the LA or the Louisiana plant commissioning, how that's coming along. Is the expectation still Q1? And historically, there have been some delays with Georgia. What have you learned from there that you're kind of applying to Louisiana so that you can kind of make sure that it ramps up on time?
Yeah. So confirming what you just said, yes, the plant in Louisiana, we are expecting it to come online in Q1. It may come as the other plants not at 100% of the nameplate capacity. It will be a ramp-up, but we're expecting it to be online in Q1 of 2025. It will be a 15-ton-per-day plant, nameplate capacity again. One of the things that is fundamentally different in this plant is that this plant doesn't use electrolyzers to generate the hydrogen. This is using a byproduct from Olin, our partner in that plant. So basically, hydrogen is already there, and what we're doing is liquefying the hydrogen. So it's a little bit simpler of a plant than what we have in Georgia, which makes us feel like we will be able to maintain the schedule that we are talking about. And basically, that is kind of the plan.
If you really think about it, once we have Louisiana online, we're going to have a nameplate capacity of about 40 tons a day. If you think about 90% of that to be the run rate on a daily basis, it's a net of around 35 tons a day. Our customers today are already consuming 50 tons a day. Even with Louisiana, we will still have to go to a third party to buy hydrogen for the applications.
Got it. And then I guess within that segment, how do you think about just margin progression turning to the positive margins going forward? I know that previously you've talked about, I think you guys are already taking advantage or already baking in some of the 45V credits in, right? So maybe if you can, yeah, share the progression there in terms of margin for fuel, and then we can take it from there.
If you look at our margins for fuel in 2023 compared to 2024, we have already seen a drastic progression. So that's already happening. And why is that happening? For two reasons. One of them is, as I mentioned before, we went and we did a big push in the market to increase price to our customers. So in 2024, it was an adjustment year in terms of price for hydrogen. We increased the price of hydrogen to all of our major customers, and therefore the top line grew, which helps with the margin and the bottom line. The other part is that instead of buying hydrogen, all of our hydrogen from third parties, from the IGCs, we now produce 10 plus 15 tons, which is 25 tons out of the 50 tons that we need. But we still need to buy hydrogen from IGCs, right?
As time goes by, we'll start buying less and less hydrogen from the IGCs. Another thing to take into consideration is that when you buy hydrogen and you buy it on the spot, the cost is very high. When you buy it and you do a contract for five years, the cost drops, right? Our contracts with our customers, especially for material handling, are usually for five years. So when we engage with one customer, we do a contract for a full five years. In the last couple of years, we signed very little new contracts, but we still have contracts that we signed two, three years ago that are going to last until 2026 or so. So you're still going to see a little bit of the pressure in margin for the next few months, a couple of quarters.
We're expecting, and this is the goal that we have right now, to try to get hydrogen to a margin positive sometime in 2025. Now, when we get Texas up and running with the cost of hydrogen from Texas, that is a total game changer in terms of margins.
Understood. And then I guess maybe specific to, I guess, Georgia, that's kind of where you're able to recognize that 45V. Maybe could we kind of dive into that a little bit as well? I know you talked about the DOE, and you touched on the IRA a little bit. So what are you hearing on your end based on the conversations you're having in terms of guidelines being finalized? I think what we have heard has been mixed messages. We've heard that hydrogen property credits will be, along with EV credits, offshore wind will probably be the first to go. And some are saying that, no, 45V will actually be less stringent. So maybe just wanted to get your views there.
So I think this is everybody probably has seen this. The Treasury has announced that they are intending to clarify or do the final guidelines for 45V before the end of the year. So we're hoping to see that before the end of the year. And what we are expecting or hoping that will happen, again, no crystal balls here. Otherwise, I would be probably on an island in the Caribbean. But the expectation is that it will be less stringent than what we have right now in terms of additionality. We're expecting that it will be less stringent in terms of temporality and regionality. So all of that, we believe that especially additionality, I think maybe retouch, right, to a positive side, so a beneficial side for the market.
Now, also something to remember here is that those pillars, the three pillars that I just mentioned, were never in the IRA itself. So there's always going to be a question, is that something that should have been there or not? And there could be challenges if these pillars come to be as restricting as they were before. So our expectation is that it will be relaxed, and it will be good for the market and good for the hydrogen economy and good for Plug.
Awesome. I know I have a bunch of questions, but I want everyone to open it up to the floor as well to see if anybody has questions before jumping in. All right. Cool. Then maybe kind of talking about specifically, again, the 30% CAGR that you've talked about for the energy business. Does that include Texas, New York as well when you kind of initially gave that guidance?
In the outer years, yes. So our plan is to have Texas up and running in the 2027 time frame. So yes, we have included some assumptions on being able to produce hydrogen in Texas to the tune of 45 tons per day. And with, as I said, the cost of hydrogen being extremely low due to mainly, number one, we have been able to improve the cost of the technology itself, but also the feedstock, in this case, is electricity. And we had a very, very, very competitive price per kilowatt that makes the price for hydrogen quite competitive as well.
How long is that EPFR in Texas?
I don't want to quote you a date that I don't remember, so I can get back to you and let you know about that.
No worries at all. No worries at all.
I believe it was 10 years, but don't quote me on that.
Okay. Fair enough. And then could you maybe talk a little bit about some of the assumptions that were kind of baked in? Because even you guys have provided some margin profile guidance as well in the symposium. So specifically, in terms of electrolyzer sales and some of the other possible businesses that you guys have talked about, how do we think about that margin profile for those businesses?
Right. In general, so we provided some guidance and explanations during the symposium on why we think our margins are going to improve. So in general, if you think about it, we have made a huge investment over the last couple of years to set up the company to have the capacity to face demand that we were expecting. So what's happening right now is that we are consolidating some of our manufacturing rooftops. And given the lower volumes that we have seen in 2024, what you see right now is the absorption of labor and overhead is not optimal. What we're going to see in 2025 and beyond is that because of higher volumes and because of operational efficiencies that we are going through, you're going to see that absorption to be much better, which is going to impact greatly the gross margins.
On top of that, we have specific programs after each one of the business lines to reduce cost and improve reliability, which both of them are going to end up allowing us to have better margins. On the electrolyzer specifically, we are reducing cost on the cost of the stack, which is the main component on the electrolyzer, trying to reduce the use of precious materials and trying to reduce the cost of the balance of plant. And again, as volume goes up, all these costs are going to go down, and the labor cost and overhead will be better absorbed. In the case of the fuel cells, what we're doing right now is we have a program to improve the reliability of the fuel cells, which is going to allow us to provide much better, much better, and much more efficient support of the fuel cells in the field.
And if you really look at our financials, you will see that in services right now, we need to provide better improvements to get to those margins. And right now, what we're doing is concentrating on that, which is going to have two effects. One of them is the margins that we just talked about, but also customer satisfaction. A more reliable product is going to provide a better experience for customers and lead to more sales as well.
So how much of that, of the margin growth, is kind of driven by, say, volume growth versus the cost downs that you've talked about?
I don't know that I'm going to venture to give you an exact number, but I think if you really think about it right now, probably we can improve the labor and overhead absorption by at least 50% when we have the factories already completely fully loaded. So you're going to see a good reduction on labor and overhead absorption. But the improvements in the technology and the cost downs in the technology, I think, is what's going to drive the majority of the cost reductions in the long term.
Got it. Got it. And then maybe kind of jumping to electrolyzers a little bit, I think you've talked about your BEDP contracts in the symposium. Could you talk a little bit about how do we think about that conversion, how the conversations are coming along there, and maybe timelines for that, if possible?
Yeah. So we've been working with many customers or potential customers in the last 24 months or so, working on providing them with a service, which is the BEDP service, which is the basic engineering proposal type of services. We have right now, over last time that we looked, was about eight gigawatts of BEDP contracts that we have provided to customers so they can go out there to the market and start looking for financing for their projects to get to reach FID. These types of projects usually get to reach FID in a 12- to 24-month period, and not all of them are going to convert into actual projects. Some of them may not find the funding to convert into projects. But if you really think about it, there are two things here.
Once you do the BEDP and the company goes out to the market to look for financing based on the BEDP provided by Plug, that's sticky. The probability that that will be a Plug project is fairly high. Two, if you think about even if just one quarter of the eight gigawatts will be converted into projects, this could be upwards of $1 billion for Plug in revenues. In terms of time frame, 12 to 24 months for those projects to either happen or not happen. In terms of revenues, one quarter of that could be over $1 billion in revenue. If you think about it, if you went to the symposium or you listened to the symposium last week, we had a Allied Green in the symposium. The CEO of the company came to talk to us. This is a three-GW project. Obviously, we've done the BEDP.
Plug is the selective vendor for the electrolyzer project. We are designed into the project. Now they're going to look for FID, and if that project happens, it's probably going to be converted into an actual project by end of 2025, beginning of 2026, and it's a three-GW project that will be upwards of the $1 billion that I'm talking about. Just one project.
And how is that conversation? So now are they looking? So what's the process for them to go FID in that? What are they looking for? Is it financing? What's there for them to kind of get them over that hurdle?
One of the main things that drive potential ELS customers to Plug are, one, we're not just a vendor of an electrolyzer. We use our own electrolyzers. We've installed them, and we have a plant in Georgia running 15 tons a day. So when you go to talk to a vendor that is selling you a technology, if they haven't used it, they haven't gone through the process of installing it, and they are not basically utilizing it every day, it's very different than you have a company that is actually living it, and we are living it. And as you said, we learned a lot of things. There were delays on the Georgia project. All those were learnings.
Those are things that we can put in our BEDPs, and we can work with our customers to help them to be successful when they go through this type of project. That's one thing that drives them to us. The other thing is the capability to actually deliver. Now, we've made those investments that I told you before to have a Gigafactory in Rochester that will allow us to produce a very large amount of stacks. We have fabricators all around the world that will be able to put together the balance of plant. When you go and talk about a project like the one in Australia and you're talking about three GW and you're looking for financing, the companies that are looking into financing the project, they want to understand that your technology partner is going to be able to deliver.
If you have the technology, but you cannot deliver three gigawatts of equipment in the next couple of years, that's a difficult thing to sell to anyone, right? Plug has that capability. So we not only do the BEDPs with our customers. One of the things that I feel that we have also as a mandate with our customers, we help them to get there, right? We help them to get to FID. It's one of the things that we need to try to help them to do that because everybody benefits, right? So looking at the capabilities that Plug has is something that really helps them to get this through the financing.
Understood. That's fair. And then maybe kind of talking a little bit about just the applications business a little bit. I think you've also talked about raising pricing there as well, right, for your customers on the fuel side of the business as well as on the application side. So how do we kind of see that start to flow through to the business and then into the margins? I don't think that's actually realizing yet.
So it has, as I mentioned before, when I was talking about increasing prices to customers. It's mainly our customers that use hydrogen today are our applications customers. So we sell them fuel cells, and they use hydrogen to produce electricity. We have seen the margins in hydrogen in the last three, four quarters to improve substantially. We've seen probably close to 100 points improvement in margin. It's still negative today, but we've gone from - 150% to 50%, right? Still, obviously, we want to go to margin positive. What I was saying before is that for those customers, for the applications customers, usually our contracts are about five-year contracts. So we need to get out of those contracts with the IGCs to start being able to use our own hydrogen. On top of that, our customers today use an aggregate of 50 tons a day.
And even with Louisiana at the end of Q1, we're going to be at nameplate capacity of 40 tons, which is going to allow me to put out there about 35 tons a day, right? So two things are going to happen in the next couple of quarters. One of them is I'm going to have more hydrogen that I can supply to my customers. So that's going to improve margins. I'm still going to have some contracts that are hung over from the IGC contracts over the last five years that are not going to end until probably the end of 2026, beginning of 2027. So with all of that, we do expect that the mix will allow us to be margin positive for hydrogen somewhere in the middle of 2025.
Got it. That's helpful. And then I guess you also talked about in the symposium some opportunities on a middle market expansion for applications. Can you elaborate some more over there?
Yeah. So the material handling market for Plug has always been a market where we provide our customers with operational efficiencies. Then also is a sustainable solution. But mainly what has driven the success of that market and converted it into an actual commercial market with 50,000 fuel cells running and 50 tons of hydrogen a day being consumed is that what we give to our customers, to Amazon, to Walmart, to Home Depot, is that by using fuel cells, their operations are much more efficient. And basically, when the source of deficiencies usually come from a volume of forklifts that you have on site, because you have to justify an investment of an infrastructure to be able to pay for the infrastructure based on having 200, 300 forklifts on site.
What we've been trying to do in the last couple of years is to find and design a much smaller infrastructure that will require a much smaller investment that will allow us to have a positive business case with a smaller number of trucks. So that solution is being already tested this year in a few customers. And we're going to have it basically even more prevalent in our mix of cells in 2025 and 2026. The thing to think about is distribution centers and sites where you use forklifts that have 200-plus forklifts are limited. It's about 10%-15% of the total market, right? When you talk about 40-100, you're talking about another 60% of the market.
Being able to reach that 60% of the market with a solution that is better tailored to that market will allow us to have a much bigger opportunity for growth, and that's what we have mixed in the plan.
Got it. Now, what percentage, I guess, if you can kind of talk about that, how much of your sales are in that middle market portion versus in the higher part of the market?
What is the percentage today? Today, probably we are at out of the entire material handling market, we're probably at 20%-30% on the middle market. So that's going to keep on growing as we introduce that solution.
Got it. Got it. That's helpful. I know we're going to be closing in on time. Just wanted to open up for questions if anybody has any. Sure.
Any questions with that? How do you look at other technologies like solid oxide, for example?
For electrolyzers, for example? So any electrolyzer technology will have pros and cons, right? Solid oxide requires constant power, higher temperatures. So the ramp-up to turn on the technology takes a longer time. If you're really thinking about the plants that we put together that basically use, in many of the cases, renewables, you're going to have and the balance or the demand may be fluctuating. You're going to have to have a technology, from our point of view, that allows you to have a good capability to follow the load, right? And again, the other part associated to that is the ramp-up period on solid oxide, right? I'm not sure about size. I know the alkaline technology is a much larger footprint than the PEM technology. With solid oxide, I'm not sure about what would be the size of the technology. But again, every technology has pros and cons.
We've been working in PEM for the last 25 years. We are experts on that, and this is the technology that we chose for our electrolyzers. And it was not a stupid question. It was a very good question.
Any other questions? Brilliant. Okay. So I think we're closing time. So I just want to thank you, José, for coming in today and just answering your questions.
Thank you so much. Thank you, everyone.
Thank you.