Thank you for standing by. My name is Krista, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Bloom Energy's First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. Thank you. I will now turn the conference over to Ed Vallejo, Head of Investor Relations. Ed, you may begin your conference.

Thank you, and good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for joining us for Bloom Energy's first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. To supplement this conference call, we furnished our first quarter 2024 earnings press release with the SEC on Form 8-K and have posted it along with supplemental financial information that we will reference throughout this call to our Investor Relations website. During this conference call, both in our prepared remarks and in answers to your questions, we may make forward-looking statements that represent our expectations regarding future events and our future financial performance. These include statements about the company's business results, products, new markets, strategy, financial position, liquidity and full year outlook for 2024. These statements are predictions based upon our expectations, estimates, and assumptions. However, as these statements deal with future events, they are subject to numerous known and unknown risks and uncertainties as discussed in detail in our documents filed with the SEC, including our most recently filed Forms 10-K and 10-Q. We assume no obligation to revise any forward-looking statements made on today's call. During this call and in our first quarter 2024 earnings press release, we refer to GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. The 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 financial performance prepared in accordance with GAAP. A reconciliation between the GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures is included in our first quarter 2024 earnings press release available on our Investor Relations website. Joining me on the call today are KR Sridhar, Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Greg Cameron, our outgoing President and Chief Financial Officer; and Dan Berenbaum, our Incoming Chief Financial Officer. KR will begin with an overview of our business, then Greg will review the operating and financial highlights of the quarter, and Dan will review outlook for the year. And after our prepared remarks, we will have time to take your questions. I will now turn the call over to KR.

Hello, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. We had a good start to the year, and we are seeing strong market interest, increasing momentum, and robust commercial activity across diverse end markets. Q1 results are as I expected. Importantly, our strong operational performance and commercial activity augurs well for the next three quarters. As I see it, our business is tracking to the plan we laid out for the year. Business leaders are increasingly recognizing the severity and circularity of the power challenges we face. They now understand that time to power is a business imperative and the grid cannot meet the growing power demands. They need to turn to distributed onsite power. There is increased recognition that natural gas is the only bridge fuel at scale and affordability for a decarbonized world. And for companies looking to reduce their carbon footprint and meet their emissions targets, Bloom offers the least carbon intensive way of converting natural gas to electricity with virtually zero air pollution. As grid prices keep rising steadily in the U.S., Bloom's value proposition is becoming attractive, even on a pure cost basis alone in more new markets. Such markets include regions of Ohio, Illinois, and Indiana that demand for power is growing, natural gas is available, and is a well-accepted fuel of choice, and our solutions are highly compelling for all electric and combined heat and power or CHP applications. The grid challenges and inadequacies are aggravated by a level of AI-related growth in data centers that is far beyond what anyone anticipated pre-ChatGPT. Bloom has a long track record of success in supporting data centers' power needs, with over 200 megawatts of contracted and deployed orders. In the earnings call last quarter, I talked about our healthy commercial pipeline for datacenter power. I also talked about our opportunities falling in two categories: power needs arising from the expansion of existing data centers and power for Greenfield data centers that are being built for future needs, primarily AI. From a deal flow perspective, the existing data centers can often be contracted and deployed relatively quickly as the supporting infrastructure is in place and generally has minor permitting and permission hurdles. In contrast, the Greenfield data center opportunities involve much bigger scale, permitting requirements, tenant and finance securement, grid interconnection queues, all leading to longer sales cycles, but much higher revenue potential. In this regard, Bloom's Be Flexible islanded power solution offers a Greenfield data center customer the ability to commence operation of their facilities without worrying about the need or delays of grid interconnection. Let me give you an example of a deal where we were able to close the contract faster because it's an expansion of an existing facility. We are thrilled to announce today a major win on an expansion data center opportunity. Intel has been a customer of Bloom since 2014, and we have been powering their data center in Santa Clara, California, and their mission-critical labs in Bangalore, India. In Santa Clara, California, Intel is adding to their existing Bloom server capacity significantly to make that location Silicon Valley's largest fuel cell-powered, high-performance computing data center. On the larger scale, Greenfield data center deals, we still expect conversion of some of these opportunities in the second half of the year. The sales pipeline is robust and growing. Bloom's opportunities from the AI revolution extend beyond the data centers. We can rapidly provide power to the AI supply chain, which has surging and growing energy needs. Since 2018, Bloom Energy has been providing clean, reliable power to Supermicro, a leading supplier of AI hardware for their rack integration facility in San Jose. Last year, Bloom Energy installed the first phase of a 10-megawatt contract for Unimicron of Taiwan, a leading developer of hardware solutions for the AI industry. We alleviated their time-to-power problem and enabled them to meet the rapidly growing AI-related demands. Just last month, we announced that we would power Quanta's new multi-megawatt manufacturing facility in Fremont, California. Quanta is a leading global supplier of high-powered compute servers for AI data centers. The local power utility could not meet its power needs in a timely manner. Bloom's power solution is a fully islanded microgrid, which will power Quanta Computers operations around the clock, 24/7, 365 days a year. By leveraging Bloom Energy's innovative and modular microgrid solution, Quanta is eliminating utility-dependent delays and taking control of its destiny to maintain its competitive edge in the fast-paced AI market. The AI revolution creates one more tailwind for Bloom. As AI-related players are able and prepared to pay a premium and use their leverage to procure and lock up merchant and utility power and solve their time-to-power issues, other industries are finding it harder and harder to get power for their growth needs. We have started seeing more customers inquiring about our products and solutions for this reason. As we look at international growth, our approach has been to find the right markets, the right partners, and then scale up with them. In Korea, we are seeing strength again after a temporary slowdown last year related to new policies being introduced. Our partner SK is confident about our future in Korea. We saw strong demand from SK in the first quarter. In Italy, we are very encouraged by the momentum we are building with Cefla, our partner for biogas-based CHP solutions. We are continuing to develop other opportunities in Europe and Asia. On the personal side, in April, we were very pleased to announce the appointment of Dan Berenbaum as Bloom's new Chief Financial Officer. Dan's financial and operational career spans more than three decades. A Naval Academy graduate, Dan held executive-level positions at publicly traded companies, including National Instruments, Micron, and Ever Spent, and before that, he spent 10 years on Wall Street as an analyst covering technology stocks. We are excited to have Dan on the team and know that he's the right person to help guide us in this next stage of our journey. With that, I'd also like to thank Greg Cameron for his service as Bloom's CFO. He has enabled a smooth transition as he promised, and all of us wish him great success in this new chapter, that he'll come in soon. And now I'll turn the call over to both Greg and Dan.

Thanks, KR. As this will be my final earnings call with Bloom Energy, I'd like to say how much I appreciate KR, the Board, and the entire Bloom team for allowing me to be part of this amazing journey over the past four years. While we've accomplished a lot over that time, there remains more to do. While I will no longer be part of this journey, I remain excited for the opportunities for Bloom Energy and know the best days lie ahead. Now I'd like to talk about the first quarter financial performance. As we discussed in the last call, we had said that the timing of acceptances could impact our first quarter revenue. At the time, I said revenue for the quarter to be flat to down 20% on a tough comparable as we were up 40% in the first quarter of 2023. Our first quarter 2024 revenues were $235 million, down 14.5% versus the first quarter of 2023. A few acceptances that we thought could happen in the first quarter are now likely to occur in future quarters. The timing of these acceptances does not change our outlook for the full year. The product volume and mix of acceptances impacted our gross margins. The first quarter non-GAAP gross margins of 17.5% was down 370 basis points versus the first quarter last year. The lower volumes in the first quarter versus the prior quarter reduced manufacturing absorptions, which increased our product costs by over $160 a kilowatt, negatively impacting product margins by 500 basis points. If volumes had been similar to the fourth quarter 2023, adjusted first-quarter product costs would have been roughly the same per kilowatt as the prior quarter. As volumes grow throughout the year, and we continue to drive down material costs and increase power density, I would expect product costs to be reduced by the targeted 10% plus down. Also in the quarter, the majority of our acceptances were to Korea. While our volume and pricing to Korea in the first quarter were similar to the prior two quarters, the percentage of the total increased as we had fewer shipments elsewhere. Over the past several quarters, the projects in Korea are becoming more price-sensitive, resulting in a lower average selling price. Through our work on reducing product costs, we have maintained attractive product margins averaging about 30% in Korea, but the mix in the first quarter negatively affected our average selling price. I would expect an improvement in product margins as acceptances in the United States and the rest of our international business increase throughout the year. An area that improved our margins in the first quarter was our service business. As we continue to grow our revenues, reduce performance payments, and reduce our replacement power module costs. I would expect this trend to continue throughout the year, and we expect our service business to be profitable on a non-GAAP gross margin basis this year. And as we've previously said, we are targeting a 20% on the same basis in 2025. We maintained our strong diligence on cost control, as our operating expenses decreased approximately $21 million in the first quarter versus the same period last year. While we continue to invest in our future, we are very focused on improving our profitability. Even on lower revenue and margins, our operating costs allowed us to improve non-GAAP operating loss by $3 million versus the first quarter of 2023. We also significantly reduced our cash usage by over half versus the first quarter last year. We're holding working capital levels roughly flat to year-end. This allowed us to end the first quarter with $583 million in total cash. Now I’m going to turn the call over to Dan, to share with you a few thoughts and discuss guidance. Before I do that, I’m very glad Dan and I had time over the past few weeks for the transition. I believe he's a great addition to the team and he's already building meaningful connections with his experience and energy. He's joining Bloom in an exciting time with his partnership, and I expect Bloom to continue to grow to meet the demands in an evolving energy market. With that, welcome, Dan, and over to you.

Thanks, Greg, and thank you, KR, for your earlier comments as well. I'm excited to be here, and I appreciate the warm welcome I've received from across the company. I've been impressed with what I've seen so far at Bloom, the technology, the people, and the drive to succeed in our mission of making clean, reliable, and resilient energy available for everyone. As Greg mentioned, I've been working closely together over the last couple of weeks, and I appreciate his time and the attention of the entire team in getting up to speed on the financial and operating performance of the business. It's obvious to me what an important part of the Bloom story Greg has been. I want to thank him for that and for leaving a mature, confident team in place. As we move past earnings, I plan to spend time digging more deeply into the business. I'm also looking forward to meeting all of you. I'm committed to continuing to enhance our communications and our relationships with the entire financial community. I want to touch briefly on two things, our relationship with AWS and our outlook. As many of you know, in 2022, AWS entered into a power purchase agreement with Bloom to deploy 73 megawatts of capacity. We sold the energy servers for that project in 2022 and 2023 through our EPC partners. For state-specific reasons, AWS has decided not to proceed with the original deployment location. That said, we are pleased to share that Bloom and AWS are working to deploy the Bloom servers in other AWS locations under the terms of the agreement. Consistent with the PPA, AWS is commencing payments in the current quarter. We value our partnership with AWS and we look forward to serving them well on this and other potential future transactions. As it relates to our outlook, we are reaffirming our 2024 annual guidance for revenue, margins, and profitability. With our backlog, convertible pipeline, and product supply, we remain confident that we can deliver $1.4 billion to $1.6 billion of annual revenue at approximately 28% non-GAAP gross margin. Where we end up within the revenue range will be primarily dependent on the timing of project approvals and completion. As the year progresses, we will have greater clarity on these opportunities. Consistent with prior years, second-half revenue is expected to be greater than first-half revenue. Gross margins could improve each quarter as we move through the remainder of the year on lower product costs and improving service performance. At this revenue and gross margin profile for the year, we should be well-positioned to achieve non-GAAP operating profit of $75 million to $100 million. With that operator, please open the line for questions.

Your first question comes from Andrew Percoco with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks so much for taking the question here. And Dan, looking forward to meeting you over the coming weeks here. I guess to maybe start out with some datacenter questions. So first on this Intel announcement. It sounds like KR already mentioned it's a sizable increase to the existing capacity. Can you just give us any megawatt ranges and maybe timing in terms of when you expect to ship those units to Intel? And then second is just on the Greenfield opportunities that you're highlighting for the second half of the year. Can you just maybe give us some additional insight into how your product will be used at some of these larger hyperscaler sites? It seems like they could be upwards of several hundred megawatts in size each. Is it going to be solely your product? Or is it going to be more of a microgrid solution where it's tailored or coupled with other solutions as well. I’m just trying to get a sense of the total megawatt opportunity from some of these Greenfield sites. Thank you.

Andrew, it's very nice to hear from you. And I know that Dan's looking forward to meeting you. And on the datacenter opportunities, look, we only reveal customer actual loads and capacities when we have their permission to do so. And otherwise, we maintain their confidentiality. That's why we maintain it. Having said that, I think there is enough material there on how big they're building their servers and how many servers they're putting there that you all can figure numbers out and don't ask us to either confirm or deny that. But I think it's out there. So in terms of total contracted and deployed data centers, right, we are approaching 300 megawatts. And that's a significant portion of our opportunities. These datacenter opportunities will get deployed as fast as all the ecosystem conditions are available in terms of gas availability, and permits and permissions and all that, they're proceeding as quickly as possible. And you know this extremely well, we applaud you for all your reports on highlighting how power is the most critical thing for data centers to grow. So that's on the Intel. And as you know, our largest prior to this in Silicon Valley for a datacenter in a single site was somewhere north of 20 megawatts. This is the largest Silicon Valley datacenter. So now getting to your question on Greenfield. The answer is all of the above in terms of how people plan to deploy. Some of them plan to deploy purely Bloom on the Be Flexible kind of a model that we provide for you. Some of them will use the microgrid, and in that microgrid they have all sorts of options of all technology suspects. From combustion engines to batteries to using the grid as a backup. But in many cases as you would suspect, if it’s hundreds of megawatts, they’re willing and very seriously technology qualifying us for a standalone microgrid that’s not connected to the grid. Because getting in that interconnection queue and getting that done is hard. We bring in a unique solution where, because of our fault-tolerant architecture and high resiliency, availability, and reliability, we can be a standalone grid for them. That can be a game changer for people who value time to power and are willing to pay a premium for it. I think I covered your questions. In terms of deal flow, look, in most cases when we talk about our pipeline increasing and things moving within that funnel, with a velocity that is consistent with what you expect for a deal of this size. For example, if you’re doing a 100-megawatt Bloom datacenter over a 15-year period, the contracted value is well north of $1 billion. So it has to go through its own diligence process and governance process within the companies, and after they do that, they need to go seek secure both tenant and finance agreements. Once they have all that in place, they have to negotiate a contract with a hyperscaler for whom they’re purpose building it. If it's a hyperscaler, they can avoid that particular step. All these needs to fall into place. They do this in parallel, and when anything finally gets aligned and signed, the slowest step is going to be the rate-limiting step on it. This is the reason it's taking longer. And we still believe that we should be able to announce some Greenfield yields by the end of the year.

Your next question comes from the line of Manav Gupta with UBS. Please go ahead.

First, thank you Greg for all the help over the years. Welcome, Dan. My first question is on the service side. I think Greg you had expressed a lot of confidence that service margins would flip and they have flipped. So I’m trying to understand, can you give us some more details? What can ensure that these margins remain in positive territory, and then what could help you get towards that 20% service margin next year? And my quick follow-up question is more of a modeling question, I understand it. Very glad to hear that the situation has worked out with AWS. From the perspective of how we model this, should it just be modeled as a delay in terms of an order which was supposed to be implemented at a particular time and then it's delayed by a few quarters, or does that anything change with the way we are modeling this AWS so far in the financial statement? Thank you.

Hey, Manav. This is Greg. I'll start off and then pass it to Dan for the AWS discussion. Last year, we mentioned that we were slightly behind on our replacement power modules, and we anticipated a few quarters where we would face performance payments while continuing production. We indicated that the second quarter would be peak performance, and we expected to improve gradually each quarter, with a crossover point occurring early in 2024. The business has indeed followed the roadmap we set forth. The factors driving this growth are clear. From an installation perspective, achieving COO and starting to receive service payments indicates how revenue will increase, and you can see our overall gross revenues rising each quarter. We also anticipated that by ramping up our shipments of replacement power modules, our power output would rise, leading to a reduction in performance payments, which has occurred each quarter as expected. Additionally, we placed significant demands on the team to lower the costs of these replacement power modules, and they have succeeded through the combined efforts of the engineering, sourcing, and service teams, achieving cost reductions both individually and collectively. We believe the business has reached a breakeven point, and we expect continued improvement throughout 2024. We remain committed to achieving a 20% gross margin by 2025, as we outlined years ago, and the business has performed as anticipated. I want to commend the team for navigating a challenging situation and delivering on their commitments. Now, I'll turn it over to Dan for the AWS question.

Thanks, Greg. So Manav, we're not going to give specific guidance on how to model individual deals or individual customers. I think the important thing to focus on is we're reiterating our guidance for the full year that $1.4 billion to $1.6 billion, that approximately 28% growth, non-GAAP gross margin to give you a little bit of thought about how to model that. Obviously, understand where we came in. For Q1, if you look at sort of the last five years, the split between first half and second half has been somewhere between 40, 60, one-third, two-thirds. So I think just overall, that might be a good way to think about modeling. But to be clear, we're not going to guide specific deals on how to think about them. We're not providing specific revenue guidance on a quarterly basis. We're just focused on that year and just an idea of how that year might shape out.

Your next question comes from the line of Chris Dendrinos with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Yes, good afternoon, and congratulations on the Intel announcement. I guess maybe just to start out here, I want to focus a little bit on permitting. Are the permits in hand for this datacenter expansion, I guess, both for Quanta and Intel? And then how are you guys navigating this with your customer to hopefully, I guess, keep things out of the public that might cause disruption. Thanks.

Look, again, we don't get into specifics of customer permits and permissions because it's their applications and what they do. But we absolutely see no issues with us deploying for Quanta this year, their systems, and showing the speed at which we can solve a problem for them. There are no interconnection issues for Quanta, because it's a completely islanded system that is not connected to the grid. And so they were able to eliminate any delays that could potentially cause by choosing a better solution of keeping it islanded. Similarly, for the facility in Santa Clara, you've heard us speak about it before. We have a very cooperative local government that works with us, and we are confident that we will be able to get these systems installed, and we don’t see an issue with it. Thank you.

Got it. Understood. And then I guess, maybe just shifting gears here and I wanted to touch on the hydrogen opportunity here. So it looks like the project with World Energy is on track for FID, early 2025. And I recognize that, in the past, you haven't wanted to comment too much on this just given that it's not your project. But I guess could you just provide any incremental color that you might have in terms of expectations kind of moving forward there? What type of things should we be on the lookout for? Thank you.

Nothing has changed with how we talk about projects. So if we have a contract, we will let you know. But until then, we don't comment on our potential customers' processes. Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Sherif Elmaghrabi with BTIG. Please go ahead.

Hey, good afternoon, and thanks for taking my question. Sticking with Quanta for a second. Did I hear correctly that you're saying that you're thinking and you'll start deploying that this year? And then more generally, because I thought owned solutions took a longer time. How long after receiving an island order does Bloom recognize revenue?

Well, our goal, again we announced this a week, two weeks ago, like I go, it's all blurring for me. But you can look at the date. So don't quote me on the date. But we just announced that a few days ago. And we are confident that the customer will have the entire multi-megawatt power available to them before you, you all ring the bell in Times Square for 2025.

So no, we're not going to provide guidance on the backlog. We will only provide guidance on the backlog or will provide the backlog once a year, as has been our practice. Look, and I'll just take the opportunity to say, as a relative newcomer to the company, as I've dug in, I feel very confident in the commercial pipeline that we have. That's why we're comfortable with reiterating the guidance that we previously provided. So we're not going to provide any specifics other than to say that I feel pretty comfortable with the commercial pipeline as KR discussed. Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Ameet Thakkar with BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to come back to some additional disclosure you had around the AWS facility in Oregon and your 10-Q. It refers to the distributor, and the distributor making PPA payments. Is that SK or is that Amazon?

So in this case, it is our PPA agreement with Amazon. Starting in April, Amazon will start making the monthly payments for the PPA to Bloom as per the agreement. So that's the clarification I think you're seeking.

Okay. And just one follow-up then the 10-K, the 10-Q does mention that the shooter has the ability to kind of reduce future orders or cancel existing orders until the, I guess, the energy servers are redeployed. That is non-Amazon. Correct? And how does that like since you guys book that revenue last year, I was just wondering if you could give us a sense of what sort of cash flow impact we can expect from that this year?

Yes, it's Greg. I'll take that. It is clear that the payments on the power purchase agreement will be made as per the contract with Amazon. At the close of 2022, we sold 73 megawatts to our partner SK, who will be the EPC unit for that project. We expect that as both we and Amazon identify new sites, SK will deploy their units accordingly. That is our expectation and preference. We wanted to ensure that we fully disclosed in our quarterly and annual reports that if, for any reason, SK is unable to proceed, possibly due to Amazon not wanting the unit and any disagreements arising from that, we would likely work with our partner, not through contract but in collaboration, to help them place their units in the future. However, we believe that Amazon will find more opportunities for SK to utilize their inventory.

Great things are ahead. I want to emphasize that I understand the questions being raised. As I've reviewed our projected cash flows and profit and loss statements, I feel very confident about our balance sheet and our receivables, as well as our ability to collect them. We won't be diving into specifics regarding individual customers or partners, as that may not align with their preferences. However, I want to reassure you that when reviewing the balance sheet and receivables, we feel very secure in our current position.

Your next question comes from a line of Biju Perincheril from Susquehanna. Please go ahead.

Thanks for taking my questions. Well, first of all, there's been some reports in industry publications about a sizable datacenter project in California that will be using solid oxide fuel cells. Can you confirm? That's one of your projects. It doesn't sound like either. That's Quanta or the Intel projects you're talking about today?

I'm sorry, Biju, I don't have specific information on this, so I can't comment. To my knowledge, I am not aware of how many other suppliers there are for solid oxide fuel cells that can provide megawatts worth of these cells to any data center. As far as I know, we are the only ones, but there might be others that I'm not aware of. However, we don't know of anyone else. If someone is referring to us, without more details, I can't address it.

Got it. And my follow-up is on your manufacturing capacity. Obviously, the demand here seems to be accelerating. So how are you positioned on the capacity front? Do you need to fast track sort of the build-out that you've talked about in the past.

We are extremely comfortable with being able to meet the surge demands as they come forward with our Fremont factory and our delivery factory and our facilities. And I think we have talked about it in the past, with very modest investments, to even further upgrades, we can keep up with the capacity as we go. Our speed to catch up 200 megawatts, 300 megawatts will be faster than the cycle time it takes for all the other systems to be in place for a Greenfield data center. So we feel like we are well situated to be able to meet the demands as they arise from a capacity perspective. And today, we know that we don't have a capacity constraint meeting this year. We will make sure, by the time the new year comes, we can make the same statement about what our capacity needs are for 2025. All within the cash balance and everything that Greg talked about. There are a couple of important points there. I think I mentioned in the prepared remarks, the puts and takes in that $1.4 billion to $1.6 billion revenue guidance for '24 is really about timing. We have the commercial pipeline, we have the manufacturing capacity that we need, we have the supply chain preparedness that we need to be within that range. Really, where we end up within that range is going to depend on things like the timing of acceptances. And then, of course, one of my priorities coming here is, as we grow the company, we need to grow it profitably and we need to invest at the right time, and ensure that we're investing in our manufacturing capacity so that we have the capacity to meet demand, which again for '24 clearly, that's not a problem. And as we move beyond that, and as we grow the company, there's going to be a focus on using our cash wisely at the right time and growing the company profitably.

Your next question comes from the line of Martin Malloy with Johnson Rice. Please go ahead.

Thank you for taking my question. And Greg, best of luck in your future endeavors. First question, I just want to ask about progress in terms of the development of the carbon capture technology. Could you maybe give us an update on that in conjunction with the field service?

Yes. So look, if you look at our pipeline, both domestically and internationally, we are working with several partners, and where we are at the stage is technology qualification. We have developed great partners who can take our gas and process it to the specifications required to put that in a pipeline to meet their standards for it to be used. Number two is, we are talking to large utilities that have been playing in this field already in the U.S., who have tried other techniques and now believe that we have the better mousetrap that we are working with, with a number of states figuring out who has domain dominance issues to getting classic wells approved, pipelines coming on board, to everything else that needs to happen. This also has a longer sales cycle. I would characterize where we are on that as most people are getting extremely comfortable with our technology and saying that we would like to baseline your technology. Now it's about the next step. It will take time, but this is a huge opportunity. And thanks for asking that question, Marty, because I want to emphasize something to you. This world cannot decarbonize by 2050 without carbon sequestration. There is no possible way that we can decarbonize. This is huge, and we have one of the best available technologies that anybody has shown to take natural gas and create a concentrated stream of carbon dioxide to sequester. This means we have the dual issues of needing more power and to decarbonize; we are about as good as it comes as a solution.

Your next question comes from the line of Noel Parks with Tuohy Brothers. Please go ahead.

Hi, good afternoon. Just had a couple. I wondered and as generally, specifically, as you feel comfortable. The Intel relationship is such a long-standing one. And I was wondering to talk a little bit about the evolution of the relationship. And I'm curious even sort of what model of the BEF they originally run and just kind of what it's been like, as far as it's going through upgrade cycles and so on with such an established customer?

Sure, Noel. That's a very good question. Look, we have always prided ourselves that if you look at historically, about two-thirds of our business comes from repeat orders from customers, multi-million dollar orders. To us, there is no better validation of us taking care of a customer's pain. At the end of the day, you're solving their problems. And if you solve them well, they come back to you. There's no better indication. I would like to grow even more new customers, but it's always the land and expand strategy that we have. Intel would be a very good example of that. Our first installations for Intel were in California, important in the Bay Area and in Folsom for their facilities, where they wanted to try us out. This was in 2014. I remember vividly, the CEO at that time sitting in my conference room evaluating whether we could really solve their pain for their Bangalore facility. We were building a new building, and we had no power for it. The old building we had lost power three times a day, and I could not run the kind of labs and data centers I wanted to run in Bangalore. If I lose power three times a day. I said, you've for the long relationships we want with you, and we are happy to go try. We had never installed anything in India at that time. We had to run three kilometers of gas pipelines for them, working with the Gas Authority of India to bring the gas, and we had power for them before they finished the building. I'm proud to say that that 2014 system has been upgraded along the way with field replacement units. We don't drop load for them. They never have to worry about losing power. So we have a long established and proven relationship with them. We are extremely grateful that they took that early step, and we applaud them for being a leader. A huge thanks to them for again, trusting us and trusting us with the expansion of their data center in Santa Clara.

Your next question comes from the line of Pavel Molchanov with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Thanks for taking the question up. Let me start with a conceptual one. When you speak with data centers, and they want to reconcile base load generation and sustainability targets, how often do you hear hydrogen and RNG feedstock entering that conversation?

Pavel, this is a very good question. Look, they, and us, and everybody on the planet would love to have a zero-carbon fuel and be able to power the datacenter. We all know that that's aspirational for the foreseeable future in the short term. We all also believe that definitely in the future, that renewable molecule, whether it is green ammonia, green hydrogen, FRNG, biogas, all of the above should become available so our children and grandchildren can have a great planet. But don't forget, one additional option is large-scale power generation from natural gas with carbon capture because Mother Nature does not care about renewable sources. Fossil, it cares about the carbon dioxide molecules in the atmosphere; they have the same effect. So with our solution, what they see is it's the best available option of anything that they can do. In real terms for the atmosphere, yes, they can go and buy green credits and racks and build solar farms; that is not displacing the dirty, highly power-intensive power that they use wherever they use it. Whereas here, they are actually producing power with the least amount of carbon footprint and no air pollution. Then, as these green molecules become available, from zero to small blends to 100% pure green fuel, they can use our same existing systems without stranding it. So we are future-proofing them, and if as a country we figured out carbon capture and have pipelines, or sequestration available, they can use natural gas until such time to be able to do it. With all those, they are convinced that this is a great option.

Your next question comes from the line of Andre Adams with Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.

Hi there. This is Andre Adams on for Colin. As you're quoting microgrid opportunities, can you just speak again to those customers' desire for zero emissions versus natural gas solutions? And whether you're trying to integrate additional solar wind or chemical storage on-site?

So yes, the answer is, we believe in all of the above, we are big fans of solar, we're big fans of wind, and as they grow, they are going to need to store it; hydrogen is one option, and we have a play on both sides of hydrogen. Both hydrogen electrolyzer as well as using hydrogen as fuel in our fuel cells. So, we encourage people to do all of the above. Obviously, our customers will in their mix have as much solar investment because the data center industry and the information industry is in the leading edge of any other industry in terms of reducing their carbon footprint. The great thing about Bloom is we integrate beautifully with any of those microgrids. We are firming up that base load without dirty diesel and all the air pollution associated with that.

Your next question comes from the line of Ben Kallo with Baird. Please go ahead.

Thank you for answering my question. Dan, welcome aboard. I know you have many questions to address, and I appreciate you taking the time to engage with us so early. I'm not focusing on the guidance you provided just yet, but I wanted to ask about your visibility since you've started. It appears to be positive for this year. However, there was guidance out previously regarding 2026. I'm curious about your thoughts on that.

Yes, Ben, thank you for your question. It's a bit challenging for me to provide a complete comment without having the full context. However, I want to emphasize that I quickly became comfortable with our commercial pipeline and our projected revenue for this year as we work towards increasing profitability, as we previously discussed. I won't delve into matters beyond that. My main focus is ensuring we are prepared to scale profitably, which is one of my immediate priorities. We're examining the balance sheet and addressing some concerns that have been raised by investors in the past regarding receivables and cash flow. We have options on the convertible debt due in August 2025. That's where my immediate attention has been, developing confidence in these areas. The commercial pipeline provides me with a strong sense of assurance. You may need to give me around 90 days to comment on anything beyond that.

Your next question comes from the line of Jordan Levy with Truist Securities. Please go ahead.

Hi all. Thanks for squeezing me in. Congratulations, Greg and Dan for joining the team. Just a quick one. As we look to the rest of the year, can you help provide some detail on the walk from this quarter to hitting that operating income guidance for the remainder of the year? And what we should kind of be looking at as the quarters progress.

So the only real comment we made, I talked a little bit about, in general terms, how to think about maybe a revenue profile first half, second half. I would just say that I would expect gross margin to improve sequentially every quarter as we move through the year.

Your next question comes from the line of Chris with Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.

Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to just clarify in the prepared remarks on the part of ASPs being weighed down from international sales. Are those the sales to SK and should we expect the rest of the sales under that preferred distributor agreement to reflect the ASP?

Hey, it's Greg. The ASPs that we're getting from our partners in Korea this quarter are very consistent with the prior quarter. So as you look at our mix of ASP during 2023, and you think about them for the quarter, and you think about as they go forward, yes, mix worked against us a little bit on timing from the quarter not because those were down materially versus where they been, but just other shipments weren't there. I would expect ASPs to continue to increase in the course of the year as we have other sources of volume moving in. That's consistent with the way we thought about putting the brain work together for the year.

That concludes our question and answer session. I will now turn the conference back over to KR for closing remarks.

Thank you. Thanks, everyone for your participation on the call and for your support of Bloom Energy. As I close, I just think there are three things I want to emphasize. The first one is I think we laid it out to you even in the last call and we want to confirm this again to you that we are reaffirming our guidance for the year. Reminding you that we said it's going to be a heavy load in the second half of the year and not the first half of the year. And that's how it's going to turn out. And that's just the rhythm of the business as we say, based on the orders we have at hand and how we can prosecute. Second, on that issue, again, what we have within that guidance where we will be on those numbers, as Dan pointed out, I want to reiterate. We have the sites, we have the orders, we have the customers, we have the products we can make; it is purely about the timing of when those things fall here or there that's going to decide where on that range we fall. We'll know more as the year progresses. We're working hard to see what we can pull. On the second point, the Intel agreement, the Quanta agreement, continuing orders from existing customers, and a strong commercial pipeline, they all are showing that we have the right product at the right time for a market that very badly needs the solution. This is what we are offering is not a product for somebody to buy; it is a solution that enables them to protect their business and take care of their business and grow. The market dynamics are very clearly in our favor. People want low carbon solutions right now, and they know that there is no miracle switch to a zero carbon solution overnight. Our low carbon solution has the right market dynamic from that perspective. People want power now, and the utilities are not moving at the speed. The data center industry and the utility industry are operating on two different timescales. That helps us provide either to the utility or to the customer. We are agnostic in front of the mirror, or behind the mirror, a solution so we can help businesses, the local economy, and everybody. Clearly, the data center and AI space not only has opened up an opportunity for us in the data center space but the entire AI ecosystem space as you saw with supply chain. With all that opportunity, we have to execute, and hopefully, you're seeing quarter-over-quarter, what we say and what we do. I'll let you be the judge of figuring out are we doing what we say? I feel very good that our entire team is functioning as one team at a very high level. We are adding quality people into our leadership team as well as in our employee base. They're deeply committed to the mission, and I feel very good about where we are as a company. I'm excited about our future and I'm confident about our future. Thank you.

This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect.