ClearSign Technologies - Earnings Call - Q1 2025
May 21, 2025
Executive Summary
- Q1 2025 revenue was $0.401MM, down 63.6% YoY and down sequentially vs Q4 2024 ($0.590MM); EPS was -$0.04 vs -$0.03 YoY, driven by lower process burner shipments and $0.581MM in legal expenses tied to an SEC inquiry (2020 trading) and board special committee work.
- Versus S&P Global consensus, revenue missed ($0.401MM vs $0.574MM; -30%) and EPS missed (-$0.04 vs -$0.03); there was only one covering estimate, limiting conviction in the consensus. Bolded below as significant misses.*
- Balance sheet remained solid: cash was $12.866MM and shares outstanding were 52.422MM at quarter end, supporting operations and customer confidence.
- Strategic catalysts: launch of co-branded Zeeco CS5/Hydrogen CS5 burners, debut of M Series (M1) with SCR-level NOx and efficiency gains, and first ClearSign Eye sensor installation commitments at a supermajor refinery—each expanding channels and TAM.
What Went Well and What Went Wrong
What Went Well
- Zeeco co-branding launched in March (CS5 and Hydrogen CS5), enabling 100% natural gas or hydrogen firing with sub-5 ppm NOx and global sales collaboration, expanding reach and credibility.
- M Series (M1) debut achieved sub-2 ppm NOx at ~15% excess air (≈3% efficiency improvement vs market sub-10 ppm burners); installed at a Gulf Coast chemical customer through Tulsa Heaters Midstream—strong early validation and midstream traction.
- ClearSign Eye sensors gained first commercial installation commitments at a supermajor U.S. Gulf Coast refinery (four sensors on a multi-burner heater), with additional quotation activity signaling pipeline development.
What Went Wrong
- Revenue declined sharply YoY (to $0.401MM from $1.102MM) as process burner shipments slipped; quarterly sales skewed to spare parts, compressing scale benefits.
- Legal costs of $0.581MM (SEC inquiry legal fees: $0.131MM; stockholder nomination/special committee: $0.450MM) increased the net loss to -$2.076MM (vs -$1.108MM YoY) and pressured G&A.
- Consensus misses: revenue -30% and EPS -$0.01 vs S&P Global mean; with only one estimate, models may lag order timing lumpiness and backlog conversion cadence.*
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Good afternoon and welcome to the ClearSign Technologies First Quarter 2025 Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then the number one on your touchstone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then the number two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Matthew Selinger of Firm IR Group. Please go ahead.
Matthew Selinger (Principal and Founder)
Good afternoon and thank you, Operator. Welcome everyone to the ClearSign Technologies Corporation First Quarter 2025 Results Conference Call. During this conference call, the company will make forward-looking statements. Any statement that is not a statement of historical fact is a forward-looking statement. This includes remarks about the company's projections, expectations, plans, beliefs, and prospects. These statements are based on judgments and analysis as of the date of this conference call and are subject to numerous important risks and uncertainties that can cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements.
The risks and uncertainties associated with the forward-looking statements made in this conference call include, but are not limited to, whether field testing and sales of ClearSign products will be successfully completed, whether ClearSign will be successful in expanding the market for its products, and other risks that are described in ClearSign's filings with the SEC, including those discussed under the risk factors section of the annual report on Form 10-K for the period ended December 31, 2024. Except as required by law, ClearSign assumes no responsibility to update these forward-looking statements to reflect future events or actual outcomes and is not intended to do so. On the call with me today are Jim Deller, ClearSign's Chief Executive Officer, and Brent Hinds, ClearSign's Chief Financial Officer. At this point in the call, I would like to turn the call over to Brent Hinds. With that, Brent, please go ahead.
Brent Hinds (CFO)
Thank you, Matthew. Thank you to everyone joining us here today. Before I begin, I'd like to note that our financial results on Form 10-Q were filed with the SEC on May 15th. With that, I'd like to give an overview of the financials for the first quarter of 2025. For the first quarter of 2025, the company recognized approximately $400,000 in revenues, compared to $1.1 million for the same comparable period in 2024. The year-over-year decrease in revenues was driven in large part by a decrease in process burner shipments. Now, recall, last year we shipped multiple process burners to a California refinery, whereas this year's quarterly revenue consisted predominantly of spare parts orders. Now I'd like to look at the full income statement. Our net loss increased by approximately one million dollars compared to the same quarter in 2024.
This year-over-year increase was predominantly due to a decrease in our sales volume as compared to the same period last year and $581,000 in legal fees for two separate unrelated activities. One activity incurred $131,000 in legal fees that pertained to work performed in connection with a regulatory inquiry by the SEC into the trading of our securities back in the year 2020. For the second activity, we incurred legal costs of $450,000 during the first quarter of 2025 related to work performed for a board special committee in response to submissions of several stockholders for director nominations.
Now, for some background, during the first quarter of 2025, the company's board of directors formed a special committee of all its independent directors for the purpose of responding to, managing, and otherwise addressing attempts by several stockholders to submit director nomination notices in connection with the company's 2025 annual meeting of stockholders. We believe, based on recent information provided by the special committee, that this activity is near completion. Now I'd like to shift the focus to cash. Our net cash used in operations was relatively flat compared to the same period in 2024. For the first quarter of 2025, we used approximately $1.1 million in operating activities compared to approximately one dollars million for the first quarter of 2024. We ended the first quarter of 2025 with approximately $12.8 million in cash and cash equivalents. Our outstanding share count as of March 31, 2025, was approximately 52.4 million.From an overall financial perspective, we believe our current working capital positions us well to scale our business, and we believe it also gives our customers and suppliers confidence to do business with us. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to our CEO, Jim Deller. Jim.
Jim Deller (CEO)
Thank you, Brent, for the financial overview. As always, I'd like to thank everyone for joining us on the call today and your interest in ClearSign. For the call today, Matthew will lead a question-and-answer session where we'll go through different business units much like our previous calls. We will end with an outlook for the rest of 2025 and then open up the call for Q&A from our investors. Many of you have seen this, but you can send in questions ahead of time to our investor relations at [email protected]. Matthew, I will hand over to you.
Matthew Selinger (Principal and Founder)
All right, Jim. Thanks. We did just have a call about a month ago, and I'd like to carry some of the themes we talked about then: diversification of both product lines and channel. I have heard from some investors of the perception that we've been a bit quiet, especially in this interim. Can you give some color of what's been going on?
Jim Deller (CEO)
Certainly. I certainly realize we have just issued the one that's really related to a purchase order since the last call, but the period's actually been very busy for us, and we have got a lot done. I think some of the major activities are probably worth highlighting. The large 26 process burner order that's going down to the Texas Gulf Coast chemical company has been in testing. There's been a lot of engineering and a lot of interaction with the logo as we progress that project. There's been a lot of activities related to sales growth and customer visits, both individual sales trips and commerce attendance that I think we should touch on later. The Ministry of Industry has been very busy for us. We've had continuous work there that I'm actually very excited about.I understand not many purchase orders came in in this quarter, but we actually are having a lot of progress and got a lot done.
Matthew Selinger (Principal and Founder)
Okay. Great. I think we'll dive in and unpack some of those. One of the items you mentioned, Jim, was the recent press release about a Flare order. Could you give a little more—and this is, again, diversifying some of the product lines, right? Could you give a little more color on this order, and we'll dive into this?
Jim Deller (CEO)
Certainly. In the last call, we started talking more about Flare. This has been a product line that historically we've not talked about much. It's not been a dominant focus of ours. In the recent months, we have seen a lot more traction. It seems to be a new need driven by regulations. We did receive an order in the last few weeks. What's exciting is this is actually a repeat order from the same customer. This customer has actually bought Flares from ClearSign back in the past, even prior to my joining the company. Just a little bit of background on what we're doing, right? These Flares are a cylindrical vessel. It's a large cylindrical vessel, probably 30 feet high, and the burner element is inside that vessel. The burner element is designed to have very low NOx emissions and burn the fuel cleanly. That's our specialty. That's why we're putting burners in there. The existing burners were not meeting the permit requirements, and the customers come to ClearSign to replace that burner. The vessels are in place. The first order we got, we did the engineering. We've since got the order to build that Flare burner. The order we've just recently released is a second engineering project to design a burner. We have to engineer these because they have to retrofit into the existing products.
Matthew Selinger (Principal and Founder)
So we're seeing a resurgence kind of in this product line.
Jim Deller (CEO)
Yes.
Matthew Selinger (Principal and Founder)
Let's talk some numbers here. You mentioned obviously that this was the third total project for this customer. This most recent order is the second in short order. We did concentrate talking about, excuse me, this is the third order for them most recently. We talked about the second order on the last call. And on that, you did talk a bit about the total order size. Could you kind of give some quantification on that?
Jim Deller (CEO)
Certainly. These orders are coming in phases, but to give you some talk about the overall project, the supply of the engineering and the burner product to the site is going to be ballpark $250,000-$300,000. For example, the last one, they have added some other hardware to the order that has increased the size of that scope. Compared to a typical burner order that we have given guidance is typically around $100,000, just the burners for the Flares being in the $250,000-$300,000 range. Now, just to build on that and a theme from the previous call, we have talked about the systems projects or our ability to sell not just in this case the Flare burner, but the entire Flare product as a system. We do have some of those quoted.When we can expand that scope and talk to the size, those will be in the range of $750,000-$1.25 million typically. But the orders we have in-house now, just for clarity for everyone, an equipment supplier will be in the $250,000-$300,000.
Matthew Selinger (Principal and Founder)
Those are great size orders, guys. I do want to make a clarification regarding some of the terminology. I'm not sure if investors picked this up, but we did have a little bit of changing terminology in the last press release. I know you may want to address this just so we don't confuse investors going forward.
Jim Deller (CEO)
Thank you, Matthew. Yes, I actually did want to bring this up. Just to confuse it, and Matthew, please help me out if this gets too complicated. I'll try and keep this really simple. The wording of the last order we got was that this unit is actually an incinerator. I mentioned what we're supplying is the burner into a vertical vessel, and the purpose of that piece of equipment is to dispose of waste gas. Just the way that both what's technically called an enclosed ground flare and an incinerator are defined, this particular product falls under both names. The reason I wanted to bring this up is looking at permits or potential future journal articles or reports on the site, you will see that sometimes these things are called incinerators, sometimes they're called flares.I don't want to be confusing and keep flipping back and forth in the press releases, but just for clarity for anyone looking, they are actually the same thing.
Matthew Selinger (Principal and Founder)
Okay. Fantastic. Let's move into the process burners then, Jim. Can you give an update on the progress of some of the orders we've announced? You did touch on this in your kind of earlier high level, but maybe dive into the actual orders on the process burner side, traditional process burners.
Jim Deller (CEO)
Yes, certainly. This is probably the most important area going on for ClearSign at this time. We have two very large process burner orders that are in different stages of production. The first we have been talking about for some time, there are 20 burners waiting on the job site for a Los Angeles refinery. Those are scheduled to be installed in the third quarter of this year. They will be the first major installation for ClearSign process burners. We will be very excited to get those in. At the same time, we are also working on the 26 burner order for a Gulf Coast Chemicals Company. Those burners are going to four different heaters. They are in the final engineering and testing phase, but they are also due to be fabricated, shipped, and hopefully installed later on this year.These two installations will put our products into household global name companies and be very well recognized within the industry. In terms of references and establishing ClearSign is showing what we can do, these will be very important for us.
Matthew Selinger (Principal and Founder)
Okay. And then shifting to expanding the sales channel for process burners, I'm going to ask you kind of what's going on with Zeeco. I know we announced the sales and marketing agreement in December, and I know the co-branding was finally launched in March. Any sort of update you can tell us going on with the relationship with Zeeco?
Jim Deller (CEO)
I can. I mean, it's quite brief at this point. I'm very pleased. Their marketing team and our marketing team are working together really well to complete the packaging information that the Zeeco sales team need. I believe they are just about done. Certainly one of my markers for the upcoming months is to register the first inquiries that come in from a Zeeco sales lead. The operation is going well. We're also testing the burners at Zeeco for the 26 burner order. Just the interaction and the assistance, and we've actually hosted our client up as part of that testing. They've been in to witness. The accommodation of our client on the Zeeco site has just been phenomenal. It's truly been a very supportive and productive relationship.
Matthew Selinger (Principal and Founder)
Okay. How about giving a little bit of color on the pipeline? What are you seeing in the sales pipeline in general? Maybe give us some visibility into that.
Jim Deller (CEO)
Yeah. Maybe I can start. We track our sales in software salesforce.com, but we can pull data out of that to keep track of how things are going. A big indicator for me looking for our future business is the opportunity pipeline and the inquiries we're getting in and the trends that that's showing. Maybe just to share some very high-level data, the number of quotations that we've been able to provide so far this year compared to the same time period last year has doubled, which is very encouraging. What's more encouraging is when I look at the total value of those proposals, the value of the proposals put out year to date this year are just under five times the value of the proposals put out this period last year. I don't want to give a false impression. Those are not orders. There's no direct math or promises. For me, looking forward to our business, the first thing I'm looking for is the interest there. Are we getting the inquiries? Are we getting—does our equipment meet those inquiries to the place that we're actually putting out price proposals? This is a very strong indicator. I'm very optimistic with these numbers and the data that I'm seeing.
Matthew Selinger (Principal and Founder)
For clarity, the numbers, the kind of quantification you were giving was total proposals. Is that correct for the company?
Jim Deller (CEO)
Yes.
Matthew Selinger (Principal and Founder)
Okay. So that may include then the M-Series focused on the midstream, which we talked about quite a bit in the last call.
Jim Deller (CEO)
Mm-hmm.
Matthew Selinger (Principal and Founder)
Okay. With that, why don't we—we did focus, I know, a lot of the last call on the M-Series, which is, again, a new product line focused on the midstream. Can you give me some color? What's going on? What are you seeing there?
Jim Deller (CEO)
That just continues to be a good product line and a great story for us. The interest is just growing. In the last few weeks, in the midstream in general, this is actually a pre and more burner, but we've worked with Exotherm, one of our customers, and started that burner up in their facility as part of a check before that heater goes out to their customers' job sites. That went well. We look forward to getting that burner out. We have had repeat inquiries from established customers, Tulsi in the midstream and Devco in particular. We've been able to recently provide quotes to them for not only new burners, but also retrofit burners where there's equipment out in the field with new emissions requirements and now looking at M1 burners for replacement of the existing burners out.Through them, we're also getting traction with some of the major companies in the midstream business and actually getting some really good interest from them, which is extremely exciting because just the volume of the equipment out there.
Matthew Selinger (Principal and Founder)
Okay. As a reminder, the go-to-market strategy here is leveraging channel partners, which you mentioned, right? Devco, Tulsa midstream, Exotherm?
Jim Deller (CEO)
Mm-hmm.
Matthew Selinger (Principal and Founder)
Are there others out there that we could be utilizing and leveraging?
Jim Deller (CEO)
Yes. Definitely. I mean, a very tangible part of our sales activities right now and the planning and how do you plan for sales growth is to take our M1 technology and go and meet the other companies that produce heaters. Because the more of those we introduce our technology to and get to use our burners, they essentially become an additional part of our sales channel and expand our reach and exposure. Very much that's a key part of our sales growth plans.
Matthew Selinger (Principal and Founder)
Okay. And speaking of kind of sales and growth plans and initiatives and activities, what about conferences? Are you leveraging conferences? And I do believe there's been some very recently. Is that correct?
Jim Deller (CEO)
In this. What we've been doing since the last call, a couple of the key activities. One was just having our engineers down, making a tour, visiting customers one-on-one and local meetings. There have been some key conferences in that period also. One of them, we're seeing a significant interest up in Canada. There are some key conferences up there that we've been able to attend and use to start making a network and connections up in Canada. Probably the most important for us was the American Petroleum Institute meeting. This is a biannual meeting. The main function is to update and refresh the refining and equipment standards, which actually is the name of this conference. Because of that, nearly all of the lead engineers from the major refineries, the major heater manufacturers, and the consulting companies, they are all there.
It is a very good conference for us to attend frequently. One of the key activities there is obviously the sessions are important. We're doing the technical work, but it is the dinners and the lunches and the times that we can interact with our customers. Previously, we've been able to interact with the lead engineers just because we've got personal relationships with them. This last call or this last visit, I'm sorry, we were able to get one-on-one dinners with the lead engineers from the major refineries on multiple occasions, major heater manufacturers. We are seeing that they are talking to us now about us being solutions to their projects. They are spending a lot more time with us, showing genuine interest in ClearSign and what we are doing. To go back talking about the sales numbers, I think that that is about the same theme that's being reflected in the sales numbers because a big part of that increase in value is a lot of process burner opportunities where we are being included at the early stages as our clients now look for solutions to their NOx problems as they retrofit their refinery heaters to comply with new standards that they either have or they foresee in the future.
Matthew Selinger (Principal and Founder)
ClearSign is really a known entity now.
Jim Deller (CEO)
It's really getting a lot more established and being taken seriously. I mean, this was what we've been trying to get to for years. It's really starting to show up in the numbers.
Matthew Selinger (Principal and Founder)
Okay. I'll shift to an additional product line, boiler burners. Maybe just give a high level, what is going on with the boiler burner product line now?
Jim Deller (CEO)
Yeah. I mean, the market has generally been quiet in California. We've recently seen a significant increase in inquiries for the water tube boilers that we've got a burner at the end, one that we're modifying for that. I'll have more news. We actually have California Boiler coming into our office. We've got a meeting with them on Thursday to talk about sales planning and how to address this market as part of that. I don't have a lot of more news right now. I think on the next call, we can give an update.
Matthew Selinger (Principal and Founder)
Okay. Fantastic. How about the ClearSign Eye? I know in the last call, we had some significant developments to report, which is exciting. We're seeing this product line kind of start to get its early growth, right?
Jim Deller (CEO)
Yeah. It's hard to say early when they, yeah, the product line's been around for a long time, but yeah, we have recently got some very significant traction. We had the four sensors going down to a prominent Gulf Coast refinery for installation and demonstration there. Those are in production. They're not down on the site yet, but I think in the next couple of months, they're due to be sent down there and started up. That refiner has also requested a quotation for sensors for a second heater. We think they'll have to get these demonstration ones up and running first, but we expect that to follow on.
Also, we have now got the opportunity with building sensors to fit onto our first ClearSign burners down on another Los Angeles refinery and have a second heater with ClearSign burners where we're actually providing a quotation for the sensors to be installed there. It is starting to happen. I think for the timing, it takes about 12 weeks to manufacture these sensors, more time to install them. Compared to a burner project, this product is going to turn quicker. It is a standard product going to be off the shelf. It is really a disruptive technology that replaces a device called a flame rod that is hated in the industry for repeated mechanical problems. I think there is a really big need for it. It is a flame detection device, so clients are going to have to see it to get comfortable using it. With that turnaround, to get these installed, to get a few months of runtime, we're seeing things picking up. I think realistically, we're probably in the six- to nine-month range. I'm really expecting to start seeing some traction as we get these first installations out into the field and getting them running and then the news to spread around the industry.
Matthew Selinger (Principal and Founder)
All right. There'll be a few commercial installations coming up fairly soon. These are sold into then the same customers with the same expertise and the same subject matter experts. Is that correct? Those are their products?
Jim Deller (CEO)
Yeah. That's really nice for us. It's the same people. The subject matter experts in the refinery are fired equipment experts. That covers the burners, the sensing technology, and other aspects of the heaters. These are the same people we're already talking to. I think what's significantly different is the sensor is not related to any NOx requirements or permitting. The applications for these sensors are worldwide, every heater, rather than just the regions that are under new or expectedly new NOx constraints.
Matthew Selinger (Principal and Founder)
The market exceeds that of our process burner addressable market?
Jim Deller (CEO)
Vastly, yes. It's every process burner that has a flame sensor on it. It is a huge number.
Matthew Selinger (Principal and Founder)
That's exciting. Kind of a high volume off the shelf, lower sales price, as we said, right?
Jim Deller (CEO)
Yes.
Matthew Selinger (Principal and Founder)
Applicable to our existing and growing customer base.
Jim Deller (CEO)
Yep. Off the shelf, but no customer engineered. Yeah. This will be a volume-style product.
Matthew Selinger (Principal and Founder)
Great. That's exciting. Jim, what can investors kind of be should they be looking for some key milestones kind of over the next few months and rest of the year?
Jim Deller (CEO)
My key is just thinking through this. As I mentioned, the startups of those two big process burner projects are going to be key for us. Those are very big deals. We have some other projects in progress, actually, with Kern Energy. Kern's a repeat customer of ours. We're expecting to move forward with some other heater projects with them, which will be just for that repeat business. It will be exciting. Back to the point, the two bigger, the Los Angeles refinery startup and the U.S. Gulf Coast, I think are going to be very significant.
I think for the growth of the industry, and I continue to be really excited about the midstream, especially with the M1 product that we have, getting the traction and the growth and expanding the sales channel and the potential for repeat orders and getting into some of the major players on the end user term in that part of the industry. I think just getting the sensors up and running will be a great development for us. I mean, really this engagement with Zeeco and getting their sales force engaged, starting to get inquiries in from Zeeco. I mean, we've presented our technology to 50 of their sales team. That's 50 of their U.S.-based sales team. About half of those are embedded in the customer refineries. That's where they have an office.The exposure they have and the opportunities that they will come across are going to vastly outnumber what we see. For them to have the right materials, which is what we're creating, what's taking the time right now, to be able to have a conversation with their customers if they hear they're considering putting in an SCR to reduce their NOx emissions, to be able to walk into that meeting and say, "I have a solution for you," I believe is going to be extremely powerful. Looking for those first inquiries coming in from the Zeeco sales team, to me, is going to be a big market.
Matthew Selinger (Principal and Founder)
Great. It's exciting. I think exciting times and seeing these other product lines and our sales channels start to kick in. I think a lot of investors have watched it for a while, and it's, like I said, again, exciting to be here. I don't have any more questions. With that, I think we'll open it up to the operator and then open it up for other people to ask questions. With that, operator, please open it up for questions.
Operator (participant)
We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then the number one on your touchstone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. To resolve your question, please press star then the number two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assess our roster. Your first question comes from the line of Sameer Joshi from HC Wainwright. Please go ahead.
SameerJoshi (Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Yeah. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions, Jim, Brent. Matthew did a good job covering a lot of the topics that we wanted addressed. Just digging a little bit deeper in some of those, the Zeeco co-branding effort, how are the Zeeco salespeople incentivized to sell or market your products? Is there a commission-based approach, or is there some kind of revenue sharing? Just wanted to understand what is their incentive to market the product.
Jim Deller (CEO)
Thanks, Reid. To be honest, that is a subject we have yet to work out. This engagement at this level with Zeeco is quite new. Obviously, we're working through getting the materials to them and getting them engaged with our sales team. At this point, there is definitely an incentive system there. I've not had a discussion at this time with Zeeco about a specific or different incentive system or ClearSign project specifically. Obviously, it's the Zeeco employees and the Zeeco sales team. That is a subject that I would address with respect of the Zeeco organization and the understanding we have with them.
SameerJoshi (Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Understood. Yeah, I know it's early days, and you're still working out how it will work. That's fair. On the ClearSign Eye, four deployments that you are planning this quarter, are there any subsequent—I know you talked about some additional orders emanating from this, but at the same location, can you deploy additional sensors? Because it is a super major, how many other refineries can you also deploy at the same super major?
Jim Deller (CEO)
Yeah. Great question. At this point, what we're manufacturing are four demonstration units going down to a super major on the Gulf Coast. That refinery has many heaters with many burners. Even on that one site, there will be thousands of potential opportunities. Being a super major, you'd reasonably expect that that company has multiple refineries within the U.S. and then even more globally. You can rattle off the household names of the major oil companies that have refineries throughout the U.S. The sensors are applicable through all of those refineries, whether it's—again, whether it's U.S.-based or other countries around the world.
SameerJoshi (Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Understood. This last question is sort of like a macro-level question, stepping back from where you sit. Given the tariff environment, supply chain environment, demand as a result of this environment, and also the forthcoming regulatory relaxing, potential relaxing of certain regulations, how does that—what is management's view of how these things will interplay with your business?
Jim Deller (CEO)
That is a good question. I have obviously got thoughts and opinions, which I will share. I do not have—I do not think anyone really has data at this point. We have looked very closely at the materials pricing of our products, and there were some initial, I would say, price fluctuations, I think, due to the uncertainty when the tariffs were first announced and nobody knew what was going on. The pricing seems to have settled down back to the pre-tariff levels from what we are seeing right now. As of today, we are truly seeing minimal impact right now, although there are obviously sensitivities just to the uncertainty. I think that is consistent with general conversations in the market. When we are looking at projects and our clients planning projects, I think just the uncertainty that it creates is as much of an issue as any pricing changes.
Just to finance projects, it's good to have stable pricing, stable financing costs. With that said, I've not heard of any projects that we are discussing or bidding on or chasing orders for that have actually been affected by any of the news. The speculation is purely my opinion. In terms of what we've seen, to my knowledge, we've seen nothing that has been tied directly to tariffs with our customers. In terms of the regulations and effects on the EPA, most of those changes appear to be focused on promotion of hydrogen technology, which obviously is something that we do watch very closely as we work out the promotion of our products. Do we promote the hydrogen burner? Do we focus on other technologies? The main driver of our business is low-NOx requirements and the need to meet new permit requirements.
That is an age-old known pollutant, and it's clearly written into the function of the EPA. We've not seen any slowing down or changing of the needs to reduce ground-level ozone, which is a precursor of NOx, is a precursor of that. Again, we're watching it very closely. I'm seeing more of an effect on the hydrogen side of a market, which is really just affecting what type of equipment people are selecting. In terms of the other projects we're chasing and the need for the technology that we provide, we're really not seeing an effect. Traditionally in the past as well, the NOx emissions, I think, are a known and accepted pollutant and have not been fickle with the change in the political climate.
SameerJoshi (Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Understood. Thank you for taking my questions.
Jim Deller (CEO)
Thank you, Josh.
Operator (participant)
Your next question is from the line of Jim Kennedy from Marathon Micro Fund. Please ask your question.
Jim Kennedy (Founder)
Hi, Jim. Congratulations on the good progress.
Jim Deller (CEO)
Thank you, Jim.
Jim Kennedy (Founder)
Really, two questions related to some comments you made about the proposal pipeline and it being up approximately 5x in dollar volume compared to a year ago. Number one, and I realize this may cut across product lines, but can you comment on, are these competitive situations where there was a request for proposal? It went out to many companies, or were they ones where you are the only provider of what they may be kicking the tires on? That is the first part. The second part is really the source of these proposals. Did they come from your internal folks? Did they come from the channel? What is getting these proposals elevated the way they are, at least at this point? Thank you.
Jim Deller (CEO)
Thank you, Jim. So yeah, I'll take this one at a time. The growth in the sales value of the proposals out is a combination of multiple different product lines. A significant portion is from the process burners and inquiries from major refineries who are planning how to control emissions or to make expansions in units and stay underneath a NOx cap. Other parts of that are from the newer systems projects that we're bidding, where we're bidding for complete systems, which are obviously of a lot higher value than just providing the burner elements. Now, as to the competitive situation of those bids, we've got a number, but I think generally the refining process burner opportunities are in the early stages where the clients are assessing their options to control their emissions.
They obviously have options like installing a large, expensive SCR on their heaters, which we need to recognize as a competitive offering. There are also some situations where the client may have a large number of heaters, and they have the opportunity to change out every single burner with a more standard burner or actually address just much fewer heaters and make much larger NOx reductions and install the ClearSign equipment. In those regards, there are competitors. However, the price advantage we have against an SCR, and I think the big changes that we are seeing is we have always had that value compared to options like the SCR, but the difference now is that we are actually considered a credible alternative. These large refineries are coming to us because they see us as obviously a preferred solution. We are a lot less expensive. We are a lot less disruptive to their refining.
The amount of work to install our burners is vastly less than it would be in SCR. I think really this speaks to the acceptance or the growing acceptance of ClearSign burners and recognizing us as a viable provider to these major global companies. On the systems project side, there is a mix. Some we have bid, and I believe they may be going into a somewhat competitive situation depending on the NOx levels the client actually needs. There are certainly others where we have or we believe that we are in the position of being the only vendor able to meet the specific needs of the customer, which is very exciting.
Jim Kennedy (Founder)
Gotcha. In these situations where the customer is looking for, let's call it the lowest possible PPM, you're the only game in town, right? To follow up with that, do you think those customers are looking for your level of notch reduction because of what's coming down the pike regulatorily, or they just want to do the right thing?
Jim Deller (CEO)
It varies across projects. We have one very large project that would fall into the system side. The client has a cap on their NOx emissions in tons per year or pounds per year. There is a certain number of NOx molecules they're allowed to make a year. By enabling them to operate with lower NOx emissions, we're actually enabling them to expand the capacity of their plant. There is definitely a value to the absolute lowest NOx numbers they can get. That is what we believe is the financial driver for that project. There are other projects where we can enable the client to modify less of their equipment to meet their overall NOx cap. To be fair, we have to recognize they're making an economic decision looking at the total project cost. Do they modify, for example, two heaters with ClearSign burners, or do they modify eight heaters with somebody else's burners and look at the overall cost of those projects? I think we have a competitive offering. The additional advantage is by going with the ClearSign burners, if the needs change in the future, they've got the option of putting more and more ClearSign burners in as the regulations continue to reduce.
Jim Kennedy (Founder)
Gotcha. And then just circling back to my proposal question, with this increased dollar volume that's in-house now, how much of that is Zeeco-related versus not? I mean, are we just—we're basically in the first inning with Zeeco now, and can you say that most of what's in-house at 5x is not related to Zeeco bringing it in the door?
Jim Deller (CEO)
That's right. At this point, we do not have inquiries coming in from the Zeeco team as of yet. This is developed through the ClearSign team through a lot through personal connections, knowing the subject matter experts on the refineries, through conference meetings, etc. I am actually very excited as we bring Zeeco on board and ramp up with their sales team. That will be additional to the business that we have today.
Jim Kennedy (Founder)
Yeah. I mean, what an exciting opportunity. Okay. Thank you, Jim.
Jim Deller (CEO)
Thank you, Jim. I appreciate your questions.
Operator (participant)
There are no further questions at this time, so I'll be turning the call over to Mr. Matthew Selinger for your UMLE questions. Mr. Selinger, please go ahead.
Matthew Selinger (Principal and Founder)
Yeah. Thank you, Operator. I'm going to go ahead and read some questions. Thank you to the investors that sent them in. We've got a healthy number of questions that came in the email ahead of time and even up to this current moment. Starting with the first one, Jim, you did mention in the last call that you could tweak the ultra-low emission burners to make them good, but juice up their energy efficiency and be a mass market adoptable burner for those not needing the ultra-low Ferrari model, but would do just fine with a very efficient sedan. Have you made progress on moving to this market and getting any traction with this potentially appealing new option?
Jim Deller (CEO)
We have. This is one of the growth areas we're working on. I appreciate this is a sales initiative and also a technology and a sourcing project because as you bring the sales price or move your technology into a lower sales price part of the business, the cost is a very big factor of that. We have actually got some quotes out with customers for this lower spec or less Ferrari product. We do have good feedback. What's been interesting is as we pursue this initiative, we're actually uncovering new areas of collaboration and new partners and new opportunities. Yes, we are acting on it. We do have quotes out. I'm definitely not saying it's done because what we're learning is there's actually a lot more opportunity here that we believe is potentially very good business for ClearSign.We will continue to work on that and develop the products to meet that market that we believe we have the ability to do well with the engineers and the technology at ClearSign.
Matthew Selinger (Principal and Founder)
Great. Here's another question. How will further ramp-up and commercialization of the ClearSign Eye sensor look like? I know you touched on this earlier.
Jim Deller (CEO)
Good question. I think if just take a step back looking at the ClearSign products, we have products like the process burners and the flares where there is engineering, quite long lead times. Then we have products like the boiler burners and what we are planning to be the midstream burners that will be a more standardized platform, off-the-shelf model. The sensors take that one step further, and these will be produced in volume of a fixed design, kind of a sold off-the-shelf product. I think the question was probably related to the market and sales and my expectations of the growth of that market. We will have the first sensors installed in the next two to three months. Realistically, the client and the industry will want to see them operate and get confidence in their performance and the durability.
We have a few commercial proposals out that I expect to turn into orders once those are done. The community and the market communicates very well. We do not name clients in press releases often because we cannot, but the subject matter experts meet very frequently. I mentioned the API conference we have been to earlier on in this call. Everyone is talking. I do believe that there is a lot of interest in the Eye because of what it does and the problems that it solves. I think the news of the performance when they get installed will spread rapidly. To bring a long answer to a conclusion, I think we will start to see commercial orders picking up in the, I am probably short, but three to six-month time frame.As we get more of these out, I think more people will get confidence in them, and I expect it to ramp up from there.
Matthew Selinger (Principal and Founder)
Great. A follow-on in the sensor realm, Jim, is the collaboration with Narion still in place? To what extent is Narion further developing software or other applications?
Jim Deller (CEO)
Thank you. For anyone not familiar, Narion is a partner we have. They're based in actually our old Seattle office space. The owner and manager of Narion is an ex-Boeing employee, which is how we met with him with some of the earlier applications for the ClearSign Eye technology. The relationship with them is very much in place. We do talk with them frequently. The projects they work on are their business. We talk to interest. They share some information, but they have a wide range of projects. Because of the owner's, Mr. Kwan's, background, he obviously has aerospace interests, but there are a lot of other very exciting opportunities that he's working on. They do tend to be longer time frame because he is developing new technologies for some very high-tech industries and applications, but it's definitely ongoing and very exciting for us.
Matthew Selinger (Principal and Founder)
Here's another question. Jim, a few calls back, there was a lot of talk about SoCalGas and kind of the DOE grant. What's going on there with kind of the report about efficiency?
Jim Deller (CEO)
Yeah. So there's a lot. We continue to be involved with SoCalGas. As you said, we first got involved with them following the SBIR grant for the development of our hydrogen burner. That project is still going on. SoCalGas's interest was initially to provide financial assistance to support the introduction of that high hydrogen burner technology into their client base in California. As part of the utility companies in California, they've been able to put us in touch with some of these large consulting firms there. One was a, I think what you're referring to here was the ICF report, where they actually sponsored a third-party monitored testing of the ClearSign burner versus the best alternative burner in the boiler space. That showed about a four percent efficiency increase. By the way, there was a presentation given about an hour ago on that burner product going through.
I got very brief notes. We had a very good attention, a lot of interaction there. Back to the topic, the results and that efficiency increase have provided some great value statements for our sales team. It gets good traction because with that kind of saving, the installation of new burners will actually pay for itself over a period of time through the less fuel that has to be consumed in the boilers. Just following on from that, we talked a little about the M-Series burner, but that has similar benefits. Again, through those savings, the client can select the best notch burner available and realize a significant savings in fuel cost over the years, which can actually pay for the burner over time.
Matthew Selinger (Principal and Founder)
There's a follow-on question, which you might have already answered then. Are you seeing efficiency becoming more of a factor in terms of the sales process as just emissions, or is it equal? Or in this environment, is efficiency leading some of the times now?
Jim Deller (CEO)
It is certainly supporting the sales and gets interest. I think if you can from a client's perspective, what we're hearing is realize that a lot of our clients are not the end users, especially in terms of heater company. They're selling to their end users. If the heater company is offering a heater with a premium, a ClearSign product with extra low emissions, with a slight increase in price to the customer, being able to go to that customer and say, "You can put in this better burner, and by the way, you will recover your money and more over time because of these efficiency increases," it makes it a very appealing sales proposal for our customers who are DeFacto sales channels for us.
Matthew Selinger (Principal and Founder)
Great. I have no more written-in questions. Thank you. With that, I'm going to turn it again back to you, Jim, for any closing remarks.
Jim Deller (CEO)
Thank you, Matthew. Thank you, Operator. Thank you, everyone, for your interest and taking the time to participate today. We do look forward to updating you regarding our developments and speaking with you on our next call. In the meantime, please keep checking in for developments on our website, and especially for more behind-the-news scenes, news, and updates. Check in with us on LinkedIn. Thank you very much.
Operator (participant)
The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.