Bloom Energy - Q2 2024

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Thank you for standing by. My name is Mandeep, and I'll be your operator today. At this time, I'd like to welcome everyone to the Bloom Energy Q2 2024 earnings conference call. All lines will be placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there'll be a question-and-answer session. If you'd like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, press star one again. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Ed Vallejo, Vice President, Investor Relations. You may begin.

Ed Vallejo (VP of Investor Relations)

Thank you, and good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for joining us for Bloom Energy's second quarter 2024 earnings call. To supplement this conference call, we furnished our second 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 second 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 preferred in accordance with GAAP. A reconciliation between the GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures is included in our second 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, and Dan Berenbaum, our CFO. KR will begin with an overview of our progress, and then Dan will review financial highlights for the quarter. And after our prepared remarks, we will have time to take your questions. I will now turn the call over to KR.

K.R. Sridhar (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)

Hello, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. We executed the first half of 2024 to plan with strong financial discipline. We are on track to meet our yearly guidance. We expect to end the year in a strong financial position and continue to advance our technology, operations, and team for robust future growth. It is now widely understood that demand for electricity is expected to far exceed available supply through the grid. It is presenting Bloom with a huge opportunity. We are seeing high levels of commercial interest in our products and solutions. We have not experienced anything like this in the past two decades. As I see it, this trend is here to stay for at least another decade, and if anything, will gain further momentum in the coming months and years.

While there is concern about the ability to meet growing power needs, I believe it's possible to close the gap in power production in 5-10 years by adding a combination of utility-scale renewable and gas-based generation. But it will not solve the time-to-power issues for an end customer who requires electricity to be delivered reliably at their specific location of use. As I see it, even assuming massive coordinated investments and clearing of all regulatory and permitting hurdles, it would take well over a decade to make the necessary transmission and distribution upgrades that bring power from generation sites to the customer location. Most of the demand for power growth will come from data centers and vehicle and building electrification. In my view, most of this load growth will be location-specific. Let me highlight a few.

To minimize latency, AI and other data centers need to be close to the customer. Edge data centers will be the dominant users of power. They will be in economic nerve centers that are already power-constrained. Dense and power-scarce population centers will have the greatest need for power to charge their mass transit EV systems and delivery fleets. Populous cities with distribution constraints will need the most additional power to electrify residences and commercial buildings. As you can see from these three examples, the markets where the grid is already constrained is also where future stress from increased demand is going to come. The grid's ability to supply more power for timely business growth is going to be severely challenged. Delays will ensue. In a competitive business environment, every delay means lost revenue and opportunity.

So what do you do if you're a data center, a manufacturer, a fulfillment center, a mission-critical hospital, or a retail chain that needs power now? Rather than wait for the grid and forgo revenue growth, it'll be important for companies to take control of their own destiny by procuring distributed power generation at the point of use that is dedicated for them. If you want to generate 24/7 power reliably at the point of use, without air pollution and no noise, and you need it now, there is no better solution in the market than the Bloom Energy Servers. Our energy servers can be grid-tied or completely islanded, no grid interconnection needed. Last year, our average fleet availability at over our 850 installation sites was 99.995%.

Let me repeat, our annual availability of all our energy servers at all our sites, that is over 850 sites, was 99.995%, a metric that cannot be matched by any other commercial solution in the market today. The Bloom Energy Solution, which is zero emissions when operated with net zero fuels, also offers the lowest carbon footprint on-site power when operated with natural gas. Today, even the utilities themselves are aware that they need help, and Bloom is an excellent alternative and supplement. They have a choice: either force developers to wait 5+ years for power or embrace Bloom's technology and help their customer and communities grow. We see two paths to serving an end user. First, we can work with the end customer directly, as you have seen with our existing behind-the-meter solutions.

We continue to see a strong pipeline and large project sizes, both in the U.S. and internationally. CoreWeave, a leader in AI, recently purchased Bloom Servers. This is further validation of our technology's importance to artificial intelligence. Second, we can serve the end customer with front-of-the-meter solutions. Silicon Valley Power just received city council approval for up to 100 MW of new generation to be served with front-of-the-meter generation that will be sleeved to specific customers in dedicated MW increments. As part of the 100 MW, 20 MW was approved using Bloom Energy Servers for AWS. Bloom is working with SVP to support the needs of its customers, like AWS. Bloom is excited to support SVP's fuel cell development once it finalizes terms with AWS. Under the planned structure, SVP will resell the power generated by Bloom's Energy Server directly to customers under a dedicated rate structure or tariff.

This fulfills SVP's growth needs without impacting other SVP ratepayers. SVP is currently working on procuring the additional 80 MW to serve its customers, mainly data centers, using the same model. We applaud Silicon Valley Power for being a leader in providing power choice to its customers. We thank them for embracing Bloom's solution. I believe that other utilities should and will follow suit. It is obvious that rather than losing local jobs and tax dollars, such a solution is a win for the local economy, the ratepayers, the customer, the utility, and Bloom. Now, switching to technology development, we continue to innovate and further strengthen our leadership position. Earlier this week, we announced that we have achieved 60% electrical efficiency and 90% high-temperature combined heat and power efficiency while using 100% hydrogen in our fuel cells.

These are record efficiencies using hydrogen as a fuel in our energy servers. Also, I see our CHP offering as a key benefit to customers for heating and cooling. We can achieve 90% fuel efficiency with this option. The first U.S. installation of our CHP solution is at the Energy and Innovation Park in New Britain, Connecticut, for 20 MW and is ready for commissioning. In this case, the Bloom solution will be leveraged for the park's development of a high-performance computing and data center corridor. These examples speak to the capability and speed with which our team executes on innovating and implementing new technology, as well as the versatility of our solid oxide platform.... I'll be back to take your questions shortly, but for now, I'll turn it over to Dan.

Dan Berenbaum (CFO)

Thank you, KR, and good afternoon, everyone. During last quarter's earnings call, which was only two weeks after I joined Bloom, I mentioned that I was already impressed by what I'd seen: the technology, the people, and the drive to succeed in our mission. Now, having had the chance to gain an even better understanding of the depth of the team's expertise, the technology, our manufacturing operations, our commercial pipeline, and our product roadmap, I can tell you that I'm even more excited to have joined this team at an inflection point for our solutions. My top priority is to make sure that we're ready to scale profitably as our solution to the problems of delivering power at the point of use becomes more widely adopted. We have strong commercial and operational leadership.

Our Chief Commercial Officer, Aman Joshi, and our Chief Operations Officer, Satish Chittoori, are strong partners in this effort, and they are leveraging the innovations and products developed by our engineering team. Looking at our Q2 results, revenue for the quarter was $335.8 million, an increase of 11.5% over the second quarter of 2023. Product and service revenue was $278.8 million, an increase of 8.5% year-over-year, slightly trailing the increase in total revenue due to certain higher ASP projects that we booked in Q2 2023. Service revenue increased by 24.1% to $52.5 million, while electricity revenue continues to decline as expected. Data centers are becoming a larger part of our mix.

In addition to projects like the previously announced Intel data center expansion, we're executing on opportunities to support the broader ecosystem by providing power solutions to critical manufacturers that support the data center build-outs. An example of this is our recently announced deal with Quanta, a large manufacturer of data center hardware, which is looking to grow with its customers, but is facing the same time-to-power problems as the data centers they serve. Non-GAAP gross margin was 21.8% for the second quarter, an improvement of approximately 140 basis points over the second quarter of 2023. Our service business results have continued to improve as planned, and we expect service to be profitable for the full year 2024, which will be a first for us.

Our product cost reduction efforts continue, supported by our technology roadmap, manufacturing efficiencies, and the benefits of scale. We continue to expect a 10% year-over-year cost reduction in our core energy servers, consistent with what we have communicated in the past. Non-GAAP operating loss for the second quarter was $3.2 million, an improvement of almost $22.7 million from a loss of $25.9 million in the second quarter of 2023. Turning to cash flow, cash from operating activities was an outflow of $175.5 million in the second quarter, due almost entirely to an increase in receivables. It is common for us to have a meaningful cash outflow in the first half of the year and make it up in the second half of the year as we monetize inventory and collect on receivables.

We expect cash flow from operations to be positive for the second half of the year. Turning to the balance sheet, we ended the quarter with $637.8 million of total cash, including the $402 million gross proceeds of the financing we completed in May, net of repurchasing $142 million of our 2025 convertible debt. We're reaffirming our 2024 annual guidance for revenue, margins, and profitability. With our backlog and commercial pipeline, we remain confident that we can deliver $1.4 billion-$1.6 billion of annual revenue at approximately 28% Non-GAAP gross margin. As stated before, where we land within the guidance range will be determined by the timing of projects that are in the pipeline. Consistent with prior years, revenue is expected to be significantly weighted towards Q4.

Gross margins should improve as we move through the remainder of the year on lower product costs and improving service performance. As we have noted previously, there is significant volume leverage in the financial model. With this annual revenue and gross margin profile, we should be well positioned to achieve non-GAAP operating profit of $75 million-$100 million. As we look beyond 2024, we are conscious that changes in our product mix are changing the way we use certain metrics to forecast our business. We plan to closely evaluate the effectiveness and relevance of certain of our metrics, as well as potentially introducing new metrics, to give investors the clearest possible picture of how we operate and assess the performance of our business.

To conclude, we're pleased with the momentum we're seeing in our commercial pipeline, and I believe we're on a strong financial footing to continue delivering on these projects and to scale our business further. Our product suite is the perfect fit for the energy challenges that companies around the world are facing, and we are laser focused on positioning Bloom to scale profitably and continue to provide the most efficient and reliable solutions for the world's evolving energy needs. Before I conclude my remarks, I'd like to note that this will be Ed Vallejo's final earnings call with Bloom as he moves on to other opportunities. I want to thank Ed for everything that he's done for Bloom over the course of the past three years, and we all wish him well in his future endeavors.

I'd also like to introduce Michael Tierney, who has just joined Bloom as our new VP of Investor Relations. With over 20 years of buy-side experience, I'm sure that Michael will be able to continue and enhance the investor communications program that Ed has ramped up. With that, operator, please open the line for questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you dialed in and would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. If you'd like to withdraw your question, simply press star one again. If you're called upon to ask your question and are listening via loudspeaker on your device, please pick up your handset and ensure that your phone is not on mute when asking your question. For today's session, we ask that you please limit yourself to one question. Again, press star one to join the queue. Our first question comes from the line of Andrew Percoco with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Andrew Percoco (Equity Analyst)

Great. Thanks so much, and good evening, everyone. Thanks for taking the question. I do want to start on the data center side here. Great to see you guys make some progress on that front with the CoreWeave announcement this quarter. So congrats on that. But I guess as we think about the evolution of this opportunity, how should we be thinking about the sizing of these deals? The CoreWeave deal looked to be about 15 MW. Is that the sweet spot for you guys, or should we start to expect some larger deals? You know, we're starting to see some data centers obviously, well in excess of 100 megawatts. I'm just wondering if we should be expecting those types of deals to be announced from you guys at some point this year.

Thank you.

K.R. Sridhar (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)

Hey, Andrew. You know, thank you for the call, and great question. So I think what you should expect is an entire spectrum. You should expect a spectrum from anywhere in the few single-digit megawatts all the way to hundreds of megawatts, and they're all in our mix right now as we speak. And here's the reason why: There are data centers with additional white space or switching from CPU to GPU that requires more power in the same white space and are not able to get their power right away. There are small edge data centers being built wherever they have excess land and other infrastructure, for which they need smaller size data centers, and I say smaller size in the single to, you know, 15 MW, 20 MW, 25 MW. Then you're looking at data centers on the edge.

This is in densities all the way to 100+ MW that are custom-built for the hyperscalers, and those will be in the 100-MW range. So as we see it, both from data center operators that purpose-built hyperscalers as well as edge data centers, we are seeing a spectrum from five all the way to hundreds of MW. Obviously, the smaller the size of the deal, the quicker the velocity on getting that transaction done. I've illustrated many times that these large deals are fairly complex and big size orders and take a little bit longer to come. So expect the entire spectrum.

Operator (participant)

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

Speaker 17

Hi, all. It's Henry on for Jordan here. Congrats on the quarter. Just on the remaining Amazon volumes that are yet to be deployed, I just want to ask on kind of what the outlook or timeline we should be expecting for those. If you can say anything at this point on that. Thank you.

K.R. Sridhar (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)

Yeah. So I think there are two, like, references there if you, like, look at it. One is with Silicon Valley Power, Amazon, you know, like AWS, is negotiating with Silicon Valley Power separately to get into a contract, and that contract of 20 MW will be fulfilled by Bloom by having a contract with Silicon Valley Power. This is in front of the meter. It is. Our customer is the municipal utility, Silicon Valley Power, and their customer is AWS, but it is dedicated and sleeved to them at a rate that they negotiate specifically for them, and it doesn't impact any other ratepayer. I think this model is a phenomenal model, and that'll grow as we go forward. Separately, you're aware that AWS halted working on the 73-MW contract they had with us in Oregon.

They have separately submitted a relocation request to us for all of 73 MW to Ohio. We are currently working with AWS on those details. Both these deals are being worked in parallel, and there'll be many other opportunities, hopefully, given our strong working relationship between AWS and Bloom. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from the line of Dushyant Ailani with Jefferies. Please go ahead. Hi, thank you for taking my questions.

Dushyant Ailani (SVP)

Just wanted to get an understanding of the guide, the $1.4-$1.6 billion. Does that include any potential near-term data center orders, or what, what are the inputs and takes, you know, whether it's data centers or whether it's from SK? Thank you.

Dan Berenbaum (CFO)

We've talked about the $1.4-$1.6 billion. We talked about where we end up within that range being dependent on timing of projects. We haven't talked specifically about what those projects are, and you know, we don't talk specifically about sizes of projects with specific customers. We try to avoid providing those details on specific customers. All we can say is that, you know, we have between our backlog and our commercial pipeline, we are confident in being within that range of $1.4 billion-$1.6 billion for the year. Where we wind up within that range is dependent on timing of projects.

K.R. Sridhar (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)

Dan, to add to that, this is KR Sridhar. What I would say is, given how strong the data center market is for us in our segment, you should assume that some amount of our installations will be in the data center space, but it's our - it's up to our customers to speak to that size and not up to us.

Operator (participant)

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

Manav Gupta (Executive Director)

Guys, congrats on the new orders. My quick back-of-the-envelope math is indicating to hit about 28% gross margin, you'll have to be around 32% gross margin, a significant improvement from one year from the first half. You guys are known to hit the guidance, so help us understand all the factors that will help drive a materially better gross margin in the second half of this year. Thank you.

Dan Berenbaum (CFO)

Well, I may not talk through all of the factors, if you don't mind, Manav, but look, as we've discussed, there's significant volume leverage in our model. As we ramp volume, we expect to see the benefits of that. And I mean, look, to the point, you know, we reiterate our guidance. We are confident in our commercial pipeline. We are confident in the margin leverage that comes with that growing volume. And so that's what will get us 28%. You know, your math is correct. I do understand that, we need to have very strong gross margins in the back half of the year to hit that 28% for the full year, and we're confident in doing so.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from the line of James West with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.

James West (Senior Managing Director)

Hey, good afternoon, guys. So KR, we certainly agree with your view of the role of the next 5 to 10 years, with electrification and the need for gases, electrification, especially. And we've heard from a number of the traditional energy companies already, especially the pipeline companies, that are being asked to pipe their natural gas directly to, to data centers. I was curious, you know, how that works between Bloom, the data center, the maybe traditional energy companies. Are you all in a consortium? Is it all run by the data center producer? I mean, how does it all come together?

K.R. Sridhar (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)

So the way, James, that's a very good question. So, there is not a specific model, is the first thing that I would say.

James West (Senior Managing Director)

Right.

K.R. Sridhar (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)

It just varies from place to place and state to state. That's the first answer. The second answer is the following: When a data center deal is being put together, assuming it's a purpose-built data center, they would first negotiate their deal with their hyperscaler, who is their customer. They will have an LOI with them, and that's, you know, that's the process. Even for them to have an LOI, they need to have a fairly good handle on their overall cost, their partners, and how much that compute is going to cost in order to have the LOI. So these things, to some extent, are happening in parallel. So, they will-

James West (Senior Managing Director)

Okay

K.R. Sridhar (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)

... engage with us as a technology provider. We will be working with them to assess, is there an upgrade to the gas system? Does the gas system already exist? Are they going to procure the gas, wholesale, retail? You know, how is it going to play out? What the local regulations are. So, you know, this is how it all comes together. So in a way, it's a multiparty negotiation happening together. So, I'm glad you asked the question because I've mentioned multiple times how this deal is fairly complex.

But now, if you think about a 100+ MW deal, that is, you know, well north of $1 billion in total value, and now you look at the number of parties that have to be engaged and working together, that's what gives you that longer duration or, or a long cycle sale, but it's a very sticky, good sale, and you will see these things happen.

James West (Senior Managing Director)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from the line of Colin Rusch with Oppenheimer. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Dan Berenbaum (CFO)

Are you there, Colin? We'll, we'll come back to Colin then.

Operator (participant)

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

Chris Dendrinos (VP)

Yeah, thank you. So I think South Korea is hosting one of its hydrogen power options, and I guess just in light of the announcement on your fuel cell with hydrogen and the efficiency improvement, can you maybe speak to your overall competitiveness in that market and how, you know, maybe this fuel cell helps position you all there? Thanks.

K.R. Sridhar (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)

Hey, Chris, that's a very good question. You're absolutely right. As Korea has modified the auction process and has a pretty strong emphasis on hydrogen as a possible fuel, you would have noticed, you know, we are not reactive, we are proactive. The press release that we put out is work in progress of our engineering team and our product development team for the last many years. And I just want to emphasize, 60% electrical efficiency and a 90% overall efficiency, and that other 30% of that heat coming at high temperature steam, there is not a technology in the world that can match that. So we are extremely well-positioned in that market, both for the natural gas systems as well as the hydrogen systems.

Our job is to make sure it is up to the customer to figure out when they transition from one fuel to another. But irrespective of what that fuel is, we provide our really good partner, SK, with the best technology option, and if they were on the call, I would assume they would say Bloom has given them the best technology option. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

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

Martin Malloy (Director of Equity Research and Partner)

Good afternoon. I just wanted to try to maybe get a better idea around the economics of the Bloom server. I was wondering if maybe you could speak to the heat rate for one of your servers, or just give us... I'm trying to get a sense for how much it would cost with a behind-the-meter situation, say, $2.50 gas on a cents per kilowatt-hour basis.

K.R. Sridhar (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)

Hey, Martin, this is KR. You're asking a question that's all over the map, and we may need to spend the rest of the call if I were to explain that. So here's what we will do. I'll have our team work with you separately to provide you that, because we have provided that in multiple other places. But look, I think this is the way you got to think about our business. At the end of the day, we are serving an end customer, specifically sleeved in, for whom the option of buying from us or not buying from us is based on their cost of electricity buying from us compared to their alternative. In every case, the customer buys from us because we are equal to or better than the grid in terms of price, along with all the other attributes, reliability, sustainability, you name it.

When we are in front of the meter, the reason the customer will transact sleeved in with us is because there is no other way. Let me emphasize, no other way for that customer to get reliable power on site in a time-to-power fashion, where the price of not having power is significantly larger than the cost of power. So that's the calculation they do. That's how they do it. So the heat rate and all that is interesting thermodynamically, it's not interesting to the customer. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

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

Speaker 18

Hi, KR, Dan, thanks for taking my question. I noticed in the Q, there's an electrolyzer agreement to sell to a European buyer. Are you able to expand on that a bit, just in terms of size, timing of sales? Thanks.

K.R. Sridhar (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)

So, look, there is a lot of things in the pipeline, in various stages of our pipeline, and our policy with talking about any commercial agreement with any customer is when we have the permission of that customer to speak so. So we are pursuing electrolyzers. You know that we have the world's best, most efficient electrolyzer. There are many markets where we are engaged in conversations. Please stay tuned. When we have the proper permissions and the proper timing, we will let you know. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

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

Noel Parks (Managing Director)

Hi, good afternoon. One thing I was interested in, of course, the most attention-getting situation is a brand-new customer with a specific need and coming to you, and, you know, what sort of deal on economics can you work out? I wonder, could you talk a bit about trends you're seeing with your repeat customers, maybe some of your long-time existing customers, because they, of course, are also at the door wanting product, wanting expansion. So you can maybe, what comes to mind is maybe just sales cycle being much compressed with those. And how much, when you're just looking at the year's guidance, how much of that really can be accomplished just on the backs of your well-established customers looking to expand?

K.R. Sridhar (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)

That's a very good question. Look, without getting into particular quarters in the year, you know, as you very well know, our policy to talk about the year's bookings is at the end of the year. So without referring to this year, traditionally, I can tell you, roughly two-thirds of our business comes from repeat business, okay? In terms of volume. In terms of volume from dollar amounts. Obviously, from the numbers, we used to have a lot more newer customers, and the reason is they pilot, and then they scale with us. So land and expand has been our strategy. However, what we are seeing now is some first-time customers, especially in the data center space and other spaces, given that we are a well-established technology for this particular segment, like data centers, are coming in with very large stamp sizes.

So that dynamic could change this year, potentially, depending on when we land those big deals, and you will see more and more of that happen as we go forward. So that's the dynamic, but very clearly, our existing customer base is a strong base. We have a good share of their wallet, but we can get a lot more share of their wallet, and we continue to grow that.

Noel Parks (Managing Director)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

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

Ameet Thakkar (Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Hi, thanks for taking my question. I know, I think since the last time we had an earnings call with you all, the IRS, I guess, proposed initial guidance for the 48E investment tax credit. I think last week, you guys filed some comments with the IRS and Department of the Treasury on that. I think kind of something to the effect that the credit would be rendered useless as it's proposed. I was just wondering how you could kind of maybe talk to us about how that would kind of necessitate more cost downs if the guidelines stayed as it is. Thanks.

K.R. Sridhar (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)

Yeah. So look, I can't remember in our couple of decades commercial history, policy and policy uncertainty ever not being a looming issue for the company. And, there have been even times when, that, policy has been revoked for a while and then brought back on. Even in those early days when our cost structure was significantly higher than where it was, and the need for power and the lack of availability of power was not an issue, we showed the resilience as a company to be able to operate. It is that same discipline we're going to adopt out here. We clearly are going to advocate for and try to get the you know, best policies for our customers and for the environment. However, should that not happen, we will find ways to still work with our customers and be profitable.

So that's how the company is being built. We not just sell resilient products, we're trying to build a resilient business.

Dan Berenbaum (CFO)

Yeah, I'll just add, you know, we operate in jurisdictions with government support. We operate in jurisdictions that have no government support. We're successful with customers in all of those cases, and we will make sure that, you know, we're working towards setting up a company that is going to be profitable under any of those circumstances, and successful for the long term.

Ameet Thakkar (Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Thanks, Dan.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from the line of Alex Kania with Marathon Capital. Please go ahead.

Alex Kania (Managing Director)

Hi there. Good afternoon. Maybe a broader question just on demand, if you could definitely help characterize maybe just the sense of customers that are interested in the fuel cell solutions, even beyond data centers. You know, I'm just thinking about the, you know, the PJM auction that happened a couple of weeks ago as to whether, you know, that ends up serving as a bit of a wake-up call for a broader range of customers that might be more willing to explore, you know, behind the meter, let's say solutions. Thanks.

K.R. Sridhar (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)

Alex, that's a very good, very good question. And look, the electrification of everything, charging, no matter where you look, from automation of warehouses, from the amount of power per square foot, a warehouse will start consuming when all this automation comes in place. A warming planet means that more cooling electricity is needed in more places. You put all that together, the demand is not just from the data centers, but the size, scale, and velocity with which the data centers grow in the next year will be faster than these other sectors. But notwithstanding that, you will see equal or more, everything else put together, the demand, drivers coming from everything else.

So we are focused, as you know, on multiple sectors, but, today we talk more about the data centers just because that is at the top, and it's catching everybody's attention. But we agree with you, our business is a lot broader and a lot stronger. And in each of these places, even with utilities, right? The Silicon Valley Power model is a wonderful model. If a utility is not able to serve its customers because of grid congestion, what prevents them from still keeping that end customer as their customer and using our technology to provide power to their customer using our solution? After all, they don't build nuclear power plants, they don't build coal power plants, they don't build Bloom boxes either. That didn't stop them from using that power to provide power for their customer. Same thing here. So great question.

We expect to see this trend pick up, and we applaud Silicon Valley Power for being a leader in this space to create that model.

Operator (participant)

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

Ben Kallo (Senior Research Analyst)

Hey, good afternoon, guys. Just a short-term question on product costs. It ticked up by, I guess, year over year. But then the longer-term question is just, you know, the, the targets you gave at your analyst day. You know, sometimes we-- I think that we don't know the visibility you have, but just wanted to kind of understand, you know, your thoughts around those targets from where you sit now, you know, a couple years closer from when you first gave them. Thank you.

Dan Berenbaum (CFO)

Yeah. So, a couple of questions in there, but, but good questions, and, and let me take them one at a time a little bit. So again, like, this is my first full quarter at the company. We're continuing to look at the business, identify ways to simplify our reporting. Most importantly, we want to ensure that the reporting that we do, what we tell investors, really reflects the underlying fundamentals that we look at when we make decisions, how we operate the business, and how we judge the business performance. On the cost side, as you look at our business today, a number of things are changing. So, metrics that were very relevant are becoming a little bit less relevant. For example, when we talk about the cost per kilowatt that we publish, we're adding new countries, and our geographic mix is changing.

We're looking at solutions in front of the meter and behind the meter. We're looking at new solutions like combined heat and power, carbon capture, microgrid. All of those things add cost per kilowatt if you look at it from a very high level, but it's because the flexibility of our product, the configurations around our core product, continue to expand. And so some of those metrics that we've used in the past are maybe becoming a little bit less relevant. It's a little bit more difficult to compare things, apples to apples, to prior periods.

So again, and this ties into the question you asked about our longer-term model, you know, we still have a little bit of thinking to do about how we want to communicate, what additional metrics we're going to start to provide, what metrics we're going to simplify, and how we're going to talk about it.

K.R. Sridhar (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)

And one additional thing, Dan, that I would add to, you know, your response here, is, Dan, on an apples-to-apples basis, the company, as we promised in the beginning of the year, will meet a double-digit cost reduction. So we are on track to meeting cost reductions on that old basis, but you are seeing the numbers being reported based on what Dan told you. And that's the beauty and versatility of our platform. But when the cost changes, so will we be able to command on the, you know, like, price side. So at the end of the day, you should be looking at our revenues and our margins, and that's the true measure of our business.

Dan Berenbaum (CFO)

Absolutely. And the measure we look at is our profitability and our growth.

Ben Kallo (Senior Research Analyst)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

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

Pavel Molchanov (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Thanks for taking the question. Can we get a quick update on Baker Hughes and the microgrid initiative?

K.R. Sridhar (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)

So, look, again, instead of talking about a customer, let me tell you the microgrid initiative that we started. We roughly operate north of 150 microgrids today. So for you to know where we are, that's where we are as a business, okay? And number one. And number two, given how you can turn your TV on and find out every single day in some part of the country there's a natural disaster, and the grid has gone out, we have done it, we've done thousands of saves for our customers, through those 150-plus microgrids. What is more important, we are graduating even past the microgrid right now.

For many of our customers who have time-to-power issues, it is not only being able to provide them power quickly, but do so without being connected to the grid, completely islanded, because the interconnection is the hardest. Most technologies cannot do that. I don't know of anyone that can do that reliably other than us. That's why that 99.995% availability that we had on our 850+ sites is important. So, we will not only continue to do microgrids, but we will do islanded grids, which are also microgrids plus, if you want to call it that way, okay? And that business is strong, and we expect it to grow as time goes by.

A recent announcement that we made in the AI space for Quanta is an islanded microgrid, which is not connected to the grid.

Pavel Molchanov (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from Skye Landon with Redburn Atlantic. Please go ahead.

Skye Landon (VP of Utilities and Renewables Equity Research)

Hi, thanks for taking my question. I wanted to circle back on data centers, and specifically revenue mix. Are you able to provide us with some color around the historical mix of Bloom's revenues, which can be, attributed to, to data center deployments? How this has developed over time, and then, looking forward, are you able to provide some detail around what percentage of the mix you're currently anticipating that, that could be associated with data center deployments in, in the short or medium term? Thank you.

Dan Berenbaum (CFO)

So we haven't broken that out as a percentage of our mix. I will tell you, you know, again, relative to some of the questions that were asked a bit earlier about our geographic mix. You know, obviously, we are very strong in Korea. We have a strong partner in SK Ecoplant. We really like doing business in Korea. But if you look at our targets, and if you look at the business that we have in front of us, you might expect the U.S. and other geographies, where there's significant data center activity, to grow even faster. So we don't break those out as a specific part of the mix, but given the commercial opportunity that we've talked about, you would expect data center to become a larger portion of our business.

K.R. Sridhar (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)

That's right, Dan, and I would add two things to what Dan just told you, right? We can tell you that the booked and deployed data center business for us is more than 300 MW, right? That should give you a sense of the history, number one. Number two, you should expect, given the issues the U.S. is facing in terms of both the growth as well as the shortage, you know, growth on demand and the shortage of supply of power, that our U.S. business is growing much more robustly today than the rest of the world, and the rest of the world will catch up. So you will see that kind of back and forth go as time goes on, and that's the beauty of having diversification, and our goal is to diversify more and more as we go forward. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from the line of Colin Rusch with Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.

Colin Rusch (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Thanks so much, guys, and apologies for the, the trouble earlier. You know, I just had two quick questions on the, the cash flow statement. You know, the receivables were up $175 million, and the, the contract assets, you know, were, were written down. Just want to understand both those dynamics and, and how we should think about cash flow, on the balance of the year, if you're gonna get some of those receivables back, or if we should be thinking about this as a more normalized level here on receivables.

Dan Berenbaum (CFO)

Yeah. So, a couple of points I said in my prepared remarks, that we expect cash flow from operating activities to be positive in the second half of the year. On the receivable side, I mean, you're right, that's just the math. There's nothing strange there. We just had timing of sales, and that means that use of cash went to receivables. It's quite common for Bloom in its history to see a use of cash in the first half of the year, and then for cash to come back in more positive in the second half of the year. So I think we're, you know, following that kind of normal pattern. You know, recall that the largest piece of our receivables currently is the SK receivables, the related party receivable. SK is a great partner. We are confident in collecting that receivable.

I think that's all I have to say on that. Operator, next question, please. And thanks for figuring out the technical problems, Colin.

K.R. Sridhar (Founder, Chairman, and CEO)

I think, you know, I think we are out of time, so let's keep, you know, Colin's question as the last question. I want to thank you all for joining this call. At a high level, this is the way I see it, right? I don't have to convince any one of you today that energy demand, driven by AI, electrification, all the other growth vectors in the country, is creating a demand that simply cannot be met by the grid in many places. And Bloom, as a power being provided at the point of use with the right attributes of reliability and clean, is becoming the best alternative option in this scenario. Gas, for the many years to come, is here to stay, and you don't have to take my word for it.

Look at the hyperscalers, who have been the leaders in adopting renewable power, telling you that they'll continue to grow their renewable power portfolio, which is the right thing to do, but simply cannot operate without gas. And under those circumstances, there is no better technology to convert it reliably for them and solve their time-to-power problems than Bloom. This scenario of supply, demand, and what needs to happen couldn't come at a better time for Bloom, because we have clearly shown through the last few quarters and our numbers, that we have a business model that can operate profitably. And if you ask us what we are seeing, we are seeing that very clearly from the amount of customer engagement and amount of contract negotiations that's going on, if I go to my commercial desk.

For that reason, we are continuing to strengthen our commercial team and keep growing it and adding to that because of that enthusiasm that we see on the customer side, which we think is secular and structural and is here to stay for a long time. We are well placed in it, and our team is executing and firing on all cylinders. Thank you for joining us.

Operator (participant)

That concludes today's call. You may now disconnect.