Chart Industries - Q3 2023

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good morning, and welcome to Chart Industries, Inc. 2023 third quarter results conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. The company's release and supplemental presentation were issued earlier this morning. If you have not received the release, you may access it by visiting Chart's website at www.chartindustries.com. A telephone replay of today's broadcast will be available following the conclusion of the call until Friday, November 24, 2023. The replay information is contained in the company's press release. Before we begin, the company would like to remind you that statements made during this call that are not historical in fact are forward-looking statements. Please refer to the information regarding forward-looking statements and risk factors included in the company's earnings release and latest filings with the SEC.

The company undertakes no obligation to update publicly or revise any forward-looking statements. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jill Evanko, Chart Industries President and CEO. Please go ahead.

Jillian C. Evanko (President and CEO)

Thank you, Sylvie. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining Joe Brinkman, our CFO, and me to walk through our record third quarter 2023 results, starting on slide 5 of the supplemental deck. We are very pleased with our team's positive momentum on integration progress, financial results, deleveraging, and delivering on the broad-based demand that we saw continue through the third quarter. One very positive accomplishment that I want to start with is that we have achieved approximately $500 million of cash proceeds from a subset of the originally defined divestiture perimeter, with the signing and closing yesterday of the sale of our American Fan business to Arcline for $111 million in an all-cash deal, with multiples in line with prior Chart transactions.

In addition, we expect approximately $80 million next Tuesday from the earlier-than-expected Cofimco sale closing and also expect to close the $4.25 million Cryo Diffusion sale next week. We have one additional business that was considered in the original asset sale perimeter that has not been sold, and we are evaluating whether we will proceed with the divestiture or keep the business within our portfolio. We also generated net cash from operating activities from continuing operations of $104.4 million, and $142.2 million when adjusted for M&A transaction fees and cash costs. Combined with our margin strength, we are at 3.59 net leverage ratio, which when pro forma for the announced divestitures, is 3.47.

We reiterate our expectation to achieve our target net leverage range of 2.5-2.9 by the middle of 2024. With respect to margin strength, since the close of the Howden acquisition on March 17, we have performed above 30% on reported and over 31.5% on adjusted gross margins and expect to continue to be at or above this level going forward. In the third quarter, we posted record operating income, EBITDA, EBITDA margin, and adjusted EBITDA margin. Adjusted EBITDA margin of 21.7% grew 440 basis points compared to the pro forma third quarter 2022 on top line sales growth of approximately 10%. The team has made incredible strides in achieving our year one cost and commercial synergies.

We have already surpassed our year one commercial synergy target by double, only seven months post-acquisition, with $297.9 million of synergy orders booked across hydrogen, LNG, carbon capture, and multiple other end markets. To date, we have achieved $135.6 million of cost synergies and are on track to hit or exceed our year one target of $175 million. The commercial synergy wins were one of many contributors to our record orders excluding Big LNG. We did not book any Big LNG projects in the third quarter and still had $1.13 billion of orders, resulting in record backlog of $4.14 billion. We've included slides 6 and 7 to show our continued achievement of our targets on time or early, and the material on these slides will be discussed throughout today.

Moving to slide nine, the third quarter and year-to-date 2023 figures we present are results from continuing operations. This excludes the Roots results for our entire ownership period, as Roots was moved to discontinued operations previously, and the divestiture closed on August 18. The following are included in continuing operations for the third quarter and Q3 year to date, but are not included in our 2023 or 2024 forward-looking outlooks. Cofimco, which is anticipated to close next Tuesday on October 31. For the third quarter and year to date, Cofimco is treated as an asset held for sale. Yesterday, we divested American Fan, as I said previously, and effective then, the business is no longer part of Chart, and we expect to close on the sale of Cryo Diffusion next week. The business is also not in our outlooks.

Throughout today, we will reference 2022 comparison periods. All references are pro forma for the combined business of Chart and Howden. We will not refer always to pro forma each time we reference 2022. Slide 10 shows both a sequential comparison of the third quarter to second quarter 2023, as well as versus third quarter 2022. Starting compared to the third quarter of 2022, orders excluding Big LNG grew 1.5% against a strong comparison.

Meaningful margin expansion has occurred, with reported gross margin expanding 240 basis points, reported EBITDA dollars up 35%, and reported EBITDA margin up 350 basis points. Sequentially, compared to the second quarter of 2023, we had significant growth above 30% in non-Big LNG orders, as well as growth in total orders of 6%, even when considering the approximately $200 million Big LNG order booked in Q2. Additionally, growth, operating, and EBITDA margins all were consistent with or above the second quarter, with new records set in Q3 for both reported and adjusted EBITDA margins in the combined business. Third quarter 2023 record reporting, reported operating income of $104.4 million increased 9% compared to the second quarter of 2023.

When adjusted for one-time costs, primarily associated with the Howden integration and deal, both adjusted operating income of $161.4 million and adjusted operating margin of 18% were records. Additionally, operating margin increased in three of the four segments sequentially when compared with the second quarter of 2023, and when excluding Big LNG, all four segments. Third quarter 2023 sales of $897.9 million grew about 10% when compared to the third quarter of 2022 and included record sales for CTS and specialty products. During the third quarter, we saw a revenue push out to future periods related to customer project design and schedule changes, supply chain delayed deliveries impacting percent of completion and revenue recognition, and timing within our RSL book and ship business.

While a smaller impact, we also prioritized certain customer schedules within our facilities that created timing changes between projects and backlog. Third quarter revenue would have been above $1 billion absent these timing impacts. Based on current order and market trends, we are confident in realizing this revenue, which is still in our backlog, during the fourth quarter in 2024. As a reminder, historically, order cancellation rates have been significantly below 1%, and since the Howden acquisition, we have only had 0.19% of backlog canceled. Slides 11 and 12, 12 show the continued trend of increasing both growth and EBITDA margin, as I've already touched on. Since closing the Howden acquisition, we have consistently been at or above 30% on reported gross margin and 17.5% and 21.5% for reported and adjusted EBITDA.

Our freight and material input costs have tempered significantly compared to the past 3 years, as you can see on slide 13. Carbon steel is back to 2020 levels. Stainless steel is off its peak and behaving fairly consistently, while aluminum is more available, similar to 2021 cost levels, and has declined since the beginning of this year. We expect input costs to further normalize, although we continue to see late deliveries and longer than lead times from our suppliers. Whatever cost increase, be that material, labor, or other, including across the past few years, we respond quickly with price increases to protect our margins and profitability. As costs decline, our margins are anticipated to reflect improvement from these price increases. We also anticipate a tailwind in 2024 as we continue to execute on supply chain synergies.

Slides 14 through 16 add some more detail around our third quarter results. I'm going to start on slide 14. Safety is our number one priority. Our total recordable incident rate decreased again this quarter, ending at 0.52 and achieving our lowest lost time incident rate in our history. I'd like to thank our team for 70% of our sites being accident-free for more than 1 year, and all of our European sites being accident-free in the month of September. Strong progress in our certification industry leadership position was also made in Q3, and we'll discuss a few of these in a moment. Turning to slide 15, Repair, Service, and Leasing, which comprises over 30% of our annual revenue, is performing exceptionally strong year to date. Third quarter 2023 Book-to-Bill for RSL was 1.22.

RSL orders increased more than 20% when compared to third quarter 2022. Year to date Q3, RSL orders increased 15.7% when compared to that same period in 2022, and RSL sales increased 15.5% for the same period comparison. Third quarter 2023 RSL backlog is at a record $609.7 million, an increase of more than 35% compared to the third quarter of 2022. We love that we're seeing tangible commercialization of Howden's digital Uptime offering to the Chart legacy business, including applying Uptime to 51 LNG refueling stations from Chart legacy customers across 15 different customers. Additionally, the team is working on bringing Uptime to regas stations, heat exchangers, turbo expanders, and Earthly Labs in the near term.

Uptime brings reduced risk and liability to our customers, cost savings via less downtime and fewer feet on site. Given the many macro and geopolitical factors happening in the world today, we are sharing some insights on our regions on slide 16. EBITDA margin is fairly consistent across all of our regions, with some variability between quarters. Our Americas and Europe regions are our two largest, and each is seeing double-digit growth across many of the financial metrics. Our Middle East and Africa region continues to deliver stellar quarterly and year-to-date results. Many have asked us about our presence in the Middle East, considering the current war situation. We have 35 people physically located full-time in the UAE, and historically, the Middle East, excluding Africa, has done between about $35 million and $50 million per year in sales.

We have not seen any disruptions to the business so far in this region. Our APAC and India region delivered record backlog bookings in the third quarter and continues with excellent cash conversion. We see this region as a heavy hitter ahead on synergy orders, especially in countries where hydrogen and other clean energy solutions are becoming more and more prominent, such as Australia, Japan, and Korea, for which Howden brought us a much stronger presence. Finally, our China region has performed at or above forecast each quarter this year in all metrics. Not only have we been able to repatriate $35 million of cash from China to the U.S. this year to date, we are seeing demand increasing in the region. For China, we anticipate a stronger second half of 2023 versus first half, and also approximately 20% or higher orders in 2024.

Slide 17 shows the strength in the order book and strength in base heat transfer systems demand outside of Big LNG, with a 72%+ increase in non-Big LNG orders when compared to the second quarter of 2023. On the upper right-hand side of Slide 17, you can see some key wins from Q3, including another Chart water win in India and an order from TechHouse AS for the supply of a steam turbine generating set for a new project for the Statfjord C, one of three integrated platforms operated by Equinor ASA. We had our highest-ever quarter for individual orders, each greater than $1 million booked in the third quarter, with 139 of these, and expect to be above 100 in future quarters. Slide 18 shows specific momentum gain in markets that we serve with a complete solution set.

Each continues to increase in terms of commercial pipeline for us. This is driven by both continued traditional energy investment, as well as the breadth of climate policies and increasing funding systems for renewables projects, including the EU Renewable Energy Directive. The energy transition also drives demand for clean metals and mining, and as a result, we've seen increasing demand for our fans and our Ventsim products. We will discuss LNG and hydrogen in the coming slides, so let me touch on water treatment and carbon capture here. Not only were orders for both end markets in Q3, the highest order quarter in our combined history, both are experiencing macro tailwinds. For example, the global PFAS water treatment market is projected to reach $546 billion by 2030, a market well-served by our water treatment technology.

We booked water orders with 15 new customers in the third quarter, including one for treating trace amounts of TNT in wastewater. Our carbon capture bookings are getting larger in size, indicating more movement to larger scale, as well as progress to actual build versus just engineering studies. To demonstrate our expectation for continued increasing demand across the entire business, you can see the takeaway on slide 18, that we have over $20.3 billion of potential orders in our commercial pipeline, including over $1.3 billion that are potential synergy orders, an increase from $800 million of potential synergy awards in May. Note that our total commercial pipeline of opportunity that could close between now and year-end 2023, or in the next two months, is $5.94 billion. Slide 19 shows the way we serve the LNG market.

We are bullish on all four of these aspects of LNG, including Big LNG, for both macro and Chart-specific reasons. Multiple LNG projects are underway, and we believe there is now consensus around the thought that the energy crisis is not over, as there continues to be geopolitical unrest, returning high visibility to energy security and energy access. Let's go left to right on slide 19, starting with Big LNG. The takeaway is that we anticipate Big LNG orders and revenue each year for the foreseeable future. This is driven by expected LNG sanctioning, expanded sizes of projects, and the movement to modular mid-scale for international projects, many of which have already qualified our IPSMR process technology.

We're very excited to share in Q3, we had our IPSMR technology selected for an international Big LNG modular project, for which we anticipate booking a full order in late 2024 or 2025, with engineering work already underway. There are multiple other Big LNG projects in our pipeline, as you saw on the previous slide. To the right of Big LNG on the slide is a small and floating category, which has grown significantly over the past 18 months and continues to do so, especially in Southeast Asia and Africa, where we have dozens of imminent opportunities. Just last week, we were awarded a FEED study for Chemtex for a 0.4 MTPA plant, expected to move to full order in 2024. In LNG infrastructure category, ISO containers, LNG fueling stations, and regas have been very consistent.

The one aspect of LNG infrastructure that has been depressed the past two years is LNG over-the-road vehicle tanks. We're finally seeing some rebound in demand for these tanks with our highest order quarter for this product since the first quarter of 2022. Also, remember that the LNG over-the-road vehicle tanks were the jumping-off point for our unique liquid hydrogen onboard tank that has gained early and often traction so far. And finally, a growing category for our equipment and solutions is the retrofit service and repair for existing LNG facilities, driven by operators desiring optimization of output from existing capital, reducing downtime, and in some cases, necessity of a retrofit to keep the facility running.

We currently have three nitrogen rejection unit feed studies underway for customers that are dealing with high nitrogen content natural gas, which can create challenges in liquefaction, output, and consumption of LNG. We have an extremely differentiated solution to handle this. Moving to slide 20, this shows the U.S. Department of Energy's announced selection of seven regional hydrogen hubs in which we are a partner in the HyVelocity Hub. More importantly, though, for our future demand, is that each of the seven hubs is not a single project in a single location, but rather each will be a collection of projects across the hydrogen value chain. We've been in discussion with many of the projects that will now potentially be down selected by the regional hub partners, and we anticipate multiple orders across the hubs in the coming years....

This federal funding is expected to also catalyze many private sector investments in hydrogen and is estimated to be over $40 billion of that private sector investment spend. Both gaseous and liquid hydrogen demand is expanding globally across various geographies, so this isn't just a U.S. story, as you can see on the lower right-hand map on slide 21. Not only is hydrogen and helium been our number one end market for synergy orders, the third quarter was also record order quarters for this market. We continued to be a leader in global certifications and firsts related to hydrogen, including delivering KGS-certified liquid hydrogen trailers, the first that will deliver liquid hydrogen in South Korea. There are other firsts shown on the left-hand side of slide 21.

So I've already shared the strong third quarter synergy achievements at the outset of the call, which are repeated on slide 23. We also have more cost synergy potential ahead, not only with renewals on the calendar year-end cycle, but also optimizing the use of our Mexico facilities, legal entity consolidations, tax reductions, and executing on additional identified insourcing opportunities. Slide 24 shows 4 commercial synergy wins from the third quarter, generated from both Chart and Howden legacy customers, as well as new customers. These are the result of the breadth of Howden's field service footprint and resources, shared capabilities for insourcing internal testing, thus accelerating lead times and therefore getting synergy orders, full solutions with all mission-critical manufacturing in-house, and strong relationships with key customers in multiple end markets that both Chart legacy and Howden legacy bring to the table.

Commercial and cost synergies are very tangible, but what is less so tangible is the One Chart culture that our global team members have embodied together to achieve these results. Slide 25 shows some examples of this, including a QR code app that the team came up with that we use to submit new synergy ideas. Another great example was our teams working together to improve our 2023 EcoVadis sustainability ratings from bronze to silver for certain European sites. I spent time already on our robust aftermarket service and repair capabilities. Slide 26 shows that there are still a significant amount of synergies available to us, which are accelerating as we close 2023 and head into 2024 and support continued double-digit+ growth in the RSL segment.

I want to just share one example of this, and this is just in the last day or so. We received about a EUR 500,000 order from customer Vigo. You may recall me talking about Vigo early on as an early synergy in the RSL segment, where we were able to take Chart legacy fueling stations and get a long-term service agreement with this customer as a result of Howden's UK field service folks. This is... This order this week is the second station that's going to be installed by the Howden UK team, and in a meeting with this customer this week, they were really positively impressed by the performance of the service team in the UK.

In turn, we were able to book this additional order, which, by the way, is not included in the $297.9 million of commercial synergies that we reported today. We shared our progress on net leverage ratio so far at 3.59, forward expectations, and now we reiterate our financial policy as shown on slide 28. Our third quarter 2023 ending liquidity level of $700 million covers all material 2024 debt service needs, even before our fourth quarter expected cash generation and divestiture cash proceeds in the fourth quarter. It's also worth noting that we have no major debt due until 2030. Now turning it over to Brinkman, who has been extremely instrumental in our deleveraging as well as our synergy execution.

Joe Brinkman (CFO)

We continue to undertake actions to generate more cash for debt paydown and optimize our balance sheet, including repatriating over $25 million of cash in the third quarter, favorable repricing of our Term Loan B, and closing on the sale of our South African facility for $2.2 million. We anticipate closing the sale of two other properties in the fourth quarter. On slide 30, you can see additional details of our Theodore, Alabama jumbo tank and rail expansion. This is a high ROI project for us, and the additional capacity is needed to deliver on the $115 million of orders already in backlog for this facility.

We accelerated our capital spend timing to take advantage of market opportunities that arose, primarily in the space exploration, rail, and marine markets, where multiple blue-chip customers needed deliveries as early as possible in 2024. We were able to work with our building contractors to accelerate the pouring of the very thick concrete floor, which holds tanks up to 1,000,000 pounds, and expedite the arrival and erection of the building's steel. You can also see on slide 30 where the site was as of June 30 and the incredible progress as of this week. Also, the steel workers remain on site, and we expect to have all of the building columns complete by Sunday. We originally had a multi-phase CapEx optionality on this project, which was to be determined based on future demand.

Given the early rail car demand and backlog, we also decided to accelerate what was originally phase two scope with the site's rail spur addition and revamp. We now expect occupancy and the beginning of operations earlier than originally anticipated. Pulling forward this related capital expenditure spend was instrumental in securing the $58 million of third quarter 2023 orders booked specifically for this facility. On slide 31, the table walks from U.S. GAAP reported statement of cash flows, cash from operations, which includes both continuing and discontinued operations, as well as assets held for sale movements to our adjusted free cash flow from continuing operations of $84.8 million, which is a metric we are using for guidance.

We are also showing normalized free cash flow on this table to reflect the Teddy 2 accelerated capital spend and non-recurring stub interest payment, which when adjusted, was $128.8 million. It should be noted that we also had one key customer with $25 million accounts receivable due in September, that is now expected to be a tailwind for us for fourth quarter cash. Slides 33 and 34 cover our guidance metrics. We are updating our full year 2023 sales forecast to approximately $3.45-$3.5 billion. This is driven by the earlier than expected divestiture completions for American Fan, Cofimco, and Cryo Diffusion, which is a positive, and third quarter 2023 revenue timing discussed earlier.

All of our divestitures in 2024 represent annualized revenue of approximately $225 million at EBITDA multiples in line with prior Chart transactions. We are updating our full year adjusted EBITDA guidance to reflect the lower revenue in 2023, which has now moved into 2024 due to supply chain and customer delivery, delivery timing. We expect to see a nice sequential step up in free cash flow in the fourth quarter of 2023. Our cash available for debt paydown now reflects the $111 million from the American Fan divestiture, as well as the updated free cash flow guidance and higher CapEx spending in Q3. While there is some modestly lower interest expense flowing through our guidance in Q4, we will not see most of the benefit until 2024.

Which brings us to the next slide, slide 34, and our 2024 outlook. Our EBITDA forecast of approximately $1.3 billion remains unchanged since November 2022, despite the divestitures done in 2023, which are being offset by continued strong order growth and commercial and cost synergy wins. As you can see here, we are initiating a 2024 revenue outlook of approximately $5.1 billion, which is supported by our record Q3 2023 backlog of $4.1 billion, and strong commercial synergies still expected to be announced in the fourth quarter and early 2024. Remember, as the company shifts to more of a solution provider, that extends our orders to sales conversion cycle. We anticipate free cash flow.

We are removing the word adjusted for 2024, in the range of $575 million-$625 million. We are also guiding 2024 adjusted EPS to $14+. Additional details are on the slides. We look forward to seeing you at our November 28th Investor Day, where we will provide three-year forward outlook, as well as a longer-term view on our markets. And now, Sylvie, please open up for Q&A.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your touchtone phone. You will then hear a three-tone prompt acknowledging your request. Should you wish to withdraw from the question queue, please press star followed by two. If you're using a speakerphone, we do ask that you please lift the handset before pressing any keys. Please go ahead and press star one now if you have any questions. Your first question will be from Ben Nolan at Stifel. Please go ahead.

Ben Nolan (Managing Director)

Great, thanks. Hey, Jill and Joe,

Jillian C. Evanko (President and CEO)

Hey, Ben.

Joe Brinkman (CFO)

Hey, Ben.

Ben Nolan (Managing Director)

First of all, the orders are strong, the guidance is really strong. The backdrop, though, in this environment with higher interest rates feels a little less certain than maybe it has in the past. In fact, I know, and Jill, you would know that one of your competitors, or at least a fraction of their business is competitive to yours, was out sort of saying, there's just too much uncertainty to have much confidence looking into next year. You don't seem to be reflecting that at all, and certainly it's not in your orders. The question here is...

Sorry, that was a long-winded start, but the question here is, could you maybe talk through, maybe segment by segment, what your line of sight is for next year, and maybe by those segments, what portion of the business is economically sensitive, and then what portion of it you think is maybe not?

Jillian C. Evanko (President and CEO)

All right. Thanks, Ben, for the question and the tee up. Before I answer your question directly, thank you for recognizing the strength in the order book and the outlook ahead. That leads me to our view and our confidence level, our very high confidence level in these figures and this outlook, in particular, given our record backlog and our record orders, ex, ex-Big LNG, which I think is extremely important, right? That it's the shift in the dynamic of the business away from that heavy reliance on one or two orders coming in, and this broad-based demand where we have multiple end markets that we serve, which, oh, by the way, we don't have to change our manufacturing lines to serve, right?

We can use a brazed aluminum heat exchanger, whether that's in Big LNG, whether that's in hydrogen liquefaction or helium liquefaction, in some cases, carbon capture. So the list could go on, and you're really familiar with that. But that broad-based nature of our backlog, the visibility that we have to where those projects are in terms of progression, is one of the shifts that Joe talked about in his remarks there of moving toward that solution provider, gives us more visibility into that backlog. I'd also say, specifically, of more than 65% of our backlog, for—that covers 65% of our 2024 covered by backlog. I think that's an important metric, right? When we talk about also, the ability for us to move schedules around and to be able to adapt, to-...

How we serve our customers is another key element to how we deliver on that backlog. We did mention as well in our outlook that it does include commercial synergies. I mean, heck, I think you commented on it in your early look report. We delivered 100% more of our year one synergies commercially in the first seven months of our ownership of Howden. I mean, that shows the combination and that full solution offering coming into our backlog. All right, let me talk about the segments, 'cause it'll really get into the question about what's sensitive and where we see those sensitivities, both from a positive and a potential watch-out perspective. Let's start with CTS. You know, CTS is our shortest cycle, shortest book and ship cycle.

This is heavily industrial gas majors business, and you can get the industrial gas majors outlooks, but what we're hearing from a forecast perspective is kind of in line to what it always is generally and historically, which is in that, like, kind of mid-single-digit growth. When you look backwards at CTS, it's fairly insensitive in terms of being dramatically lower or dramatically higher. Within CTS, I would point out that the EU and China regions serve the CTS segment, and in the remarks, I commented that we expect China orders year-over-year to be 20% or more higher than 2023. As we did... You know, we didn't see really a slowdown per se in those two regions in that market, but we're seeing some pickup in activity.

CTS, I think, is fairly insensitive, and we have a very good line of sight to the next 12 months from those key customers. In the HTS segment, big LNG, we have good backlog for the coming couple of years on the big LNG front. We do expect to book another big LNG order around year-end-ish, and we have good line of sight to more for the coming years, inclusive of that IPSMR win, that international win that we can't name, but we have the technology, and we haven't yet booked the order. Even without that, we see plenty of commercial pipeline, not only for other LNG, including retrofits, but I'd like to hammer home that point on traditional energy, oil and gas.

Again, the beauty is we serve traditional energy and clean energy end markets with the same manufacturing lines, and we have seen traditional energy pick up. I think the metric that we showed was 72% in order increases ex big LNG from last quarter sequentially. All right, specialty. I think the specialty is interesting, because specialty is kind of where I think the comments, as you referred to, one of our competitors or at least a small part of the business being competitor, the comments there probably would ring, ring into the specialty segment if you were to try to pick out one of the segments here.

But, one thing I would say, if I, if I know who you're talking about, one thing I would say that I fully agree with is, waiting on the government to fund something is not a good strategy. And that's absolutely not where we are with, with our specialty end markets. You know, these are, as Joe called them, blue-chip customers, and, we're talking in specialty, these are, in some cases, the IGs that I talked about in, in CTS, EPCs. These are large companies that, are making these investments, and we're the beneficiary of them. With that said, I do think the government, hubs and fundings can be a catalyst for more, but that's not what our basis of our outlook is built on.

It's built on the projects that we have in backlog and what we think is real, real in the commercial pipeline. In terms of the rest of specialty, right, this is also global. It's not a U.S.-only commentary, right? So take hydrogen, you know, it's industrial gas, it's mobility, it's utility storage, and we're seeing a lot of pragmatic projects in the coming into the backlog versus the dreamers. And then lastly, in RSL, I want to end with RSL. I purposely am ending with RSL because RSL, you know, think back, one of the key elements of our strategy over the last five years and really amped up with the Howden acquisition was having a higher percent of our revenue in aftermarket service repair.

For exactly the idea that we're going to continue to grow double digit through a cycle, this gives us a lot of resiliency and confidence in being able to do so. Yeah, the other thing I would say is, you heard me talk on the amount of opportunity in pie and RSL that we don't even touch today. We don't even have a lot of our Chart legacy products that we serve outside of the United States, and there's just opportunity without having to have the actual end markets themselves grow dramatically for us to gain share and have this continue to grow double digit. All in all, I think our confidence is high for different reasons perhaps than someone else's confidence may be, a little bit less.

Ben Nolan (Managing Director)

All right. That was extremely thorough. I appreciate it. Thanks, Jillian.

Jillian C. Evanko (President and CEO)

Thanks, Ben. Appreciate the question.

Operator (participant)

Next question will be from Martin Malloy at Johnson Rice. Please go ahead.

Martin Malloy (Partner and Director of Equity Research)

Good morning.

Jillian C. Evanko (President and CEO)

Hi, Martin.

Martin Malloy (Partner and Director of Equity Research)

Hi. I wanted to ask a question about the hydrogen outlook and some of the graphs on there you have on 21. I was wondering if maybe you could help us with thinking through the scope of potential awards to Chart for, say, a 10-ton per day hydrogen production liquefaction plant coming online, assuming that the hydrogen is going to be used for transportation or stationary power? When you think about all the storage and transportation end use equipment that you might sell?

Jillian C. Evanko (President and CEO)

Yeah, thanks, Martin, for the question, and appreciate you looking into the detail that we have put out in the deck. So let me touch on a few things on that slide 21. In that upper right-hand graph, you know, there's a lot to digest here. The first thing being that we are continuing to see more and more commercialization in hydrogen. The second being that the three facets of the hydrogen value chain: production, storage and transport, and then end use, you can see for the last couple of years, the primary, our primary customer spend was in production and storage and transport. And now, if you look at that last category, we're starting to see an increase in orders for end use, whether that's mobile refuelers, that could be fueling stations, things like that.

And that to us is a positive indicator for the years ahead, given that you have to have, for the ecosystem to work, you have to have supply and demand. And you're seeing that end use, the demand starting to grow. So that's the takeaway, the two takeaways on that upper right-hand chart on slide 21. Now, what your question was, was kind of Chart content and what are we seeing on... Let's take, you know, whether it's a 10 ton per day. We're seeing most of the liquefiers we see are either 15 ton per day or 30 ton per day, so I'm gonna just use 15 ton per day as an example.

You know, if you take the liquefier itself, those typically, a 15-ton per day is gonna cost, or our content will be $35 million-$50 million, on a 15-ton per day. Obviously, with variability depending on aspects and customizations that the customer may want. But the second half of your question, which I really, I really think is astute, is around used for transport or stationary power, which brings us more equipment around the production site. That is typically what we're seeing right now, storage tanks and trailers. What our hydrogen team tells me is that the trailers are usually ordered about a year after the production equipment is ordered or the production technology.

I think we'll see, given the liquefier activity that we've seen in 2023, I would expect we'd see a pickup in trailers in late 2024 and in 2025. I like the staggeredness of the way that the full solution and the exceptional hydrogen portfolio that we have has been rolling out. I also really like the point we wanna try to drill here, is that it's not U.S. only, and you see that on that bottom right-hand map. You know, these are orders across multiple geographies and we had a Howden compression order for about $16 million in the third quarter, and that was, again, that was for an Asia location. So it's really broad-based, global.

We serve all these facets of the value chain and in transport or stationary power, which really are the more pragmatic applications for hydrogen, we get the benefit of equipment technology on the production site, as well as the ancillary pieces and parts.

Martin Malloy (Partner and Director of Equity Research)

Great. Thank you very much.

Jillian C. Evanko (President and CEO)

Thanks, Martin.

Operator (participant)

Next question will be from Eric Stine at Craig-Hallum. Please go ahead.

Eric Stine (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Hi, Jill. Hi, Jill.

Jillian C. Evanko (President and CEO)

Hey, good morning, Eric.

Eric Stine (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Good morning.

Jillian C. Evanko (President and CEO)

Good morning.

Eric Stine (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Hey, so I appreciate that you're limited as to what you can say, but curious just on the new LNG award, or new LNG opportunity that you expect to book later next year. I've been wondering if you can give any detail in terms of size, and also, you know, just curious, is this one of the counterparties that you've been qualified with? Is this a new customer? Details would be helpful.

Jillian C. Evanko (President and CEO)

Yeah. Thanks, Eric, for the question, and I appreciate you picking up on our excitement around this particular win. You know, we've we're qualified. IPSMR qualification, without boring you with the technical details, is a big deal. And it's a big ordeal to get there. It's multi-years with, in particular, with international oil companies, and we have, you know, a couple, I think, close to a dozen of these validations and qualifications technically. And we had, I think last quarter we said nine international potential projects that fall in this category. Now we say we have 10, plus the one that we know we were awarded the technology. That's a meaningful step for us. I think part of that. So the direct answer, yes, it's with one that has qualified us.

The way that these typically work is the qualification happens through engineering, and then the project team is the one who actually makes the decision because they have to implement it. And so that's a, again, that's a separate process and a longer process. So we're super excited about this win. This is a high dollar. If you're looking at historically the way we range out, our Big LNG projects, you know, you say $100 million to a few hundred million. This is certainly going to be at the high end of that range, in terms of size and content. And, I can't tell you, international, there's very limited locations geographically, internationally, that are, that have, very sticky and established, LNG activity, and so you can probably at least hone in on that from, from my answer there.

But, I think even bigger, you know, when you're talking about future potential growth, it unlocks, having this type of win unlocks an entire market within Big LNG that we never played in or played extremely limited in before. And so that's, yeah, that's my takeaway, is the strategy for profitable growth, continued consistency, consistency in Big LNG bookings, and now we have this whole other facet of the world that is going to use IPSMR. I love it.

Eric Stine (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Right, and I guess it's safe to assume that this large company has a backlog beyond just this project?

Jillian C. Evanko (President and CEO)

That is the-

Eric Stine (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Or at least a pipeline.

Jillian C. Evanko (President and CEO)

Yes, you are correct, Eric.

Eric Stine (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. And then last one for me. You mentioned the 65% coverage and backlog. I mean, obviously that's a great number for Chart solo, but, you know, just context now that Howden is added as well, I mean, should we kind of view them the same, that that is a, that's a historically high level of backlog coverage?

Joe Brinkman (CFO)

Oh, yeah, absolutely, Eric. That having 65% historically for Howden is excellent backlog coverage.

Eric Stine (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Okay, thanks.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Next question will be from Mark Bianchi at TD Cowen. Please go ahead.

Marc Bianchi (Managing Director)

Thank you. I'm gonna honor John's request and ask just one question.

Jillian C. Evanko (President and CEO)

Thanks, Mark.

Marc Bianchi (Managing Director)

The, so the fourth quarter guidance here, and then for, for 2024, just trying to think about the progression as we get into 2024, because I think typically you would have some, a seasonal downturn in the first part of the year, and then it ramps over the course of the year. Maybe that's dampened a bit by Howden. Even if that happens, it would seem that you'd need to be exiting 2024 at, at margins, maybe quite a bit above the 25% EBITDA margin that's implied by the guidance. So maybe if you could just provide a little bit of a progression on, on how this should play out in 2024 to give us a sense of the exit rate.

Jillian C. Evanko (President and CEO)

Yeah, thanks for the question, Mark. And, you know what I would say, maybe I'll step back to since we closed on the Howden deal, we've been at above 21.5% adjusted EBITDA margin. We see the cost synergies are really starting to flow through the PNL here, in particular on SG&A as an example. We definitely see 2024 in terms of progression. You know, we used to say, Chart legacy, we used to say, "Okay, the first quarter and the fourth quarter were the lowest quarters of the year." We don't see that nearly as much, just given the shift to the project nature of the business.

What we do want to point out in particular on, and I'm gonna come back around on, the margin point here, but in particular, we want to make sure everybody noted, the comments about the senior secured notes, interest payments, where we pay in January and July. So there are two payments a year. So that's an important, 'cause that flows through operating cash. On the margin side, you, we have, increasing benefit from mix in backlog around the projects that we've booked, the synergies I already touched on, and then the delivering through on the higher volume, that we have. So I would the way I would model the year is kind of sequentially stepping up the EBITDA margin from where we sit today.

You know, that's, you can see that reflected in the implied fourth quarter 2023 guidance. I don't see anything that says there's one quarter, like we used to have, that's really we should call out as being lower than the rest of them.

Marc Bianchi (Managing Director)

Okay. Thank you very much.

Jillian C. Evanko (President and CEO)

Thank you, Mark.

Operator (participant)

Next question will be from Pavel Molchanov at Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Pavel Molchanov (Senior Investment Strategist)

Thanks for taking the question. Actually, piggybacking on the previous question, but more zooming in on top line. Given how much the business mix has changed, particularly the recurring and service revenue, is the kind of progression first half versus second half gonna be meaningfully smoother going forward versus the legacy Chart, which was very back-ended weighted?

Jillian C. Evanko (President and CEO)

Yes. Hey, Pavel, thank you for the question. So the short answer is yes. The longer answer is that, the way you. I'll give you an example, right? The way that the larger projects, timing of deliveries, that will take a—a Big LNG project. In the second quarter of this year, we had more Big LNG related revenue because there was the delivery of a train for a customer that we got that, you know, that revenue into the quarter. We had less so in the third quarter because we're starting work on it, on the next train or the next series of trains. So there is a little bit of kind of how those project delivery schedules play out. Much smoother than historically.

If you look at our backlog, you will have a step up from first half to second half in 2024, just based on the big LNG projects that are in the backlog, but not nearly kind of this, yeah, Q1 to Q2 to Q3, and then down in Q4 like it used to be.

Joe Brinkman (CFO)

Yeah, and I would just add that, just, one thing to add, Pavel, is, you know, growing business is naturally gonna have a bigger fourth quarter than the first quarter just because it's growing.

Operator (participant)

... Did that answer your question, Pavel?

Pavel Molchanov (Senior Investment Strategist)

Perfect.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Next question will be from Craig Shere at Tuohy Brothers. Please go ahead.

Craig Shere (Director of Research)

Tuohy Brothers. Thank you.

Jillian C. Evanko (President and CEO)

Hey, Craig.

Craig Shere (Director of Research)

Hi. So, given the commercial synergies are kind of doubling original guidance, just kind of scratching my head a little bit that shouldn't that have aided 2023 revenue performance? And kind of related to this question, can you elaborate a little bit on the elongation of the non-Big LNG book-to-bill?

Jillian C. Evanko (President and CEO)

Yeah. Thanks, Craig, for the question. Almost all of the synergies that we have booked, the orders are full solution style bookings, and these have engineering, timing, and these, and in many cases, are gonna be across 12-36 months type of rev rec cycle. You don't really get anything in the very short term. You know, the amount of synergy we booked in the third quarter, you're really gonna start to see that in the first quarter, in terms of sales. In terms of the elongation of the non-big LNG book-to-bill, what I would say here is that we... Maybe I'll turn the question slightly differently. We continue to expect to see a book-to-bill above one.

That's, that's kind of the way we think about continuing to be able to grow the backlog, to grow the top line at that 15%+. And, having these solution, this full solution differential is a way that we get sticky with these customers, and in many, many cases, there's multiple projects behind the ones that are in the backlog. So, one of, one of the points that I think is really important in the shift of our business from what we used to look like is that we're, and I've said this time and time again here in the last hour, is that we're no longer reliant on one or two things, and that gives us that confidence level to be able to, to grow through the cycle. And we love Big LNG, but we can grow without Big LNG.

Now, I do wanna hit the point home that we continue to expect Big LNG orders here, and we have a really good line of sight to the ones that we know we have content on, across the coming foreseeable years here. So it's a great position to sit with record backlogs, but also with the visibility we have to the full solution commercial pipeline, that we expect to continue to come into the order book here, throughout the years ahead.

Craig Shere (Director of Research)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Next question will be from Atidrip Modak at Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Atidrip Modak (VP of Equity Research)

Hi, good morning, team.

Jillian C. Evanko (President and CEO)

Hey, Adi.

Atidrip Modak (VP of Equity Research)

Can you help, can you help us understand the moving pieces in the 2023 guidance between the $100 million in revenue slippage, what segments that affects, and to Craig's question from earlier, the synergies and the asset sales that have occurred? Then 2024 guidance seems like it remains unchanged. Did that already contemplate the divestitures, or are there any offsetting factors there?

Jillian C. Evanko (President and CEO)

Yeah, thanks for the question, Adi. So as we pointed out in our remarks, there were a few factors that went into the timing shift, and I'll say this again, I say it every quarter. 2-3 months in our business, especially now that we have these long, larger projects, is it's really hard to get exact. And it's not lost revenue, it's timing of the revenue associated with whether that's POC for supplier deliveries or progress, whether that's customers that call us and say, "Hey, we wanna add a capability or tweak a design to get more output from the nameplate production," or whether that's, you know, us moving and prioritizing a customer because they have an urgent situation, and less revenue recognition in a quarter off of that. So that's kind of the tactical side of things.

We had, at the end of the second quarter, obviously, Roots was in discontinued operations, we had expected Cofimco to close pretty close to year-end of 2023, and we're excited that it's gonna close on the 31st of October for that cash in. We hadn't expected to have the American Fan divestiture done in 2023, but that was really a nice win-win. It's ending up in a really good home for the fact that it's, you know, 80%+ Navy-oriented government, which isn't core to our business. Those were the couple of divestiture pieces that kind of shifted timing for the rest of 2023.

When we look ahead to 2024, what we would share here in terms of the outlook being unchanged is, while our guide in 2024, we hadn't really given, we had not given a revenue guide, we had given an EBITDA guide. And, you know, we had known the original asset sale perimeter, which I would point out again, that we hit the number, the target, even with a subset of the original perimeter, just 7 months post-close of the acquisition. But, when we look ahead, you know, we had commercial synergies that we talked about on the last question from Craig, that now are coming stronger earlier into the order book. So that gives us earlier revenue in 2024 than...

that which it allows us to cover, the, what we had sold out of the portfolio is the—if I were distilling it to one answer, that's really it. You know, of course, there's things like the way that we talked about the step up in first half to second half, and the timing of when these projects' revenue recognition kind of ramps up, and having booked the big LNG order at the end of the second quarter, we see a good line of sight to that revenue ramping up. We have full notice to proceed on that, so that revenue really ramping up mid-2024 as well.

Atidrip Modak (VP of Equity Research)

Thank you.

Jillian C. Evanko (President and CEO)

Johnny.

Operator (participant)

Next question will be from Rob Brown at Lake Street Capital. Please go ahead.

Rob Brown (Co-Founder, Partner and Chief Strategy Officer)

Morning, Joe and Jill.

Jillian C. Evanko (President and CEO)

Hey, hey, Rob.

Joe Brinkman (CFO)

Hey, Rob.

Rob Brown (Co-Founder, Partner and Chief Strategy Officer)

Just wanted to follow up. Given the really strong commercial synergies that you're showing, and really better than you expected, how do you see that continuing? Do you expect that to, you know, kind of flow through in future periods, and do you sort of think that that can be better than you ultimately expected?

Joe Brinkman (CFO)

No, we've been continually surprised by all the synergy opportunities that we're seeing. You know, as we pointed out in our remarks, pivoting to more of a solutions provider here, you've got the traditional cryogenic liquid background of Chart, you've got the gas side of the business at Howden really coming together for solutions for customers in the hydrogen space and in other spaces. Yeah, continue to expect more synergy wins as we put these offerings together.

Jillian C. Evanko (President and CEO)

And Rob, I'd elaborate on that answer in that, you think about—we said $800 million of commercial synergy pipeline available to us. That was in May of this year. And now we're saying $1.3 billion of commercial synergy pipeline here, sitting at the end of October, even after this $300 million of already awarded commercial synergies. That's pretty exceptional in my mind, but what to me is even more so is, yeah, we have this WhatsApp group for the commercial team, and we share wins amongst that, and the amount and types and breadth of the synergy potentials that these teams are working on and going out together, you know, this is the value of the One Chart commercial team, is really amazing.

The other thing that I think has been fantastic around bringing these synergy opportunities forward, there's two things I'd point out. One is we have a dedicated team that trains the commercial organization and the technical organization on the respective offerings that both Chart and Howden legacy brought together, and I think that's really driven their ability to sell. So kudos to Jesse and the team that's been working on that. And then the second piece is this RSL opportunity. You know, I can't share enough times how much synergy potential on the RSL side that's untapped yet, and it's already gaining a lot of traction.

I love the tools, you know, Mark, Mark and his team up in Buffalo, the tools that they've been able to deploy to our commercial teams, whether that's an app to be able to see an install base when they go to a customer, or just gathering, gathering the opportunity of install base, has, has really been an accelerant to, the synergy achievement. I'm not gonna give a specific number, but I don't see, I don't see certainly it slowing in 2024 by any means.

Rob Brown (Co-Founder, Partner and Chief Strategy Officer)

Great. Thanks for the color, and congratulations on the progress.

Jillian C. Evanko (President and CEO)

Thank you, Rob.

Operator (participant)

Next question will be from Sherif Elmaghrabi at BTIG. Please go ahead.

Sherif Elmaghrabi (Equity Research Associate)

Hey, thanks for taking my question. Changing gears here, you talked about high velocity hub really being a group of projects. Can you give us more color on what kind of projects Chart's involved in at the hub? And, on the equipment side, given it's blue hydrogen or mostly blue hydrogen, is there an opportunity for HTS and CTS here as well?

Jillian C. Evanko (President and CEO)

Yeah, thanks for the question, Sherif. So yeah, stepping back on the hubs, I think... Well, first of all, I think BTIG understands the hubs really well from what I read, in the sense of, in the sense of they're not-- it wasn't just seven awards, and that was it. You know, sometimes we had some calls in saying, "Well, you're only in one hub." Well, you actually just joined the hub, but being in the hub doesn't mean that you automatically are winning a project. We're in the high velocity hub. We think that, in particular, in high velocity, there's a great opportunity for liquefaction, which would be strong for our content.

Also in the high velocity hub, we have partners such as, such as Cummins in this hub, and so there's a lot of kind of behind-the-scenes opportunities for us to commercially work together, whether that's in the hub or not. When we talk about across the hubs, so as the regional hub partners down select the projects, you know, there will be multiple projects in the hubs. We have been in conversations with existing customers and potential customers that all have projects that they would like to win within the hubs, and think that there's plenty of opportunity both on the gaseous and the liquid side. So to your question on HTS, so we talked specialty, right? So on HTS or CTS content for hydrogen opportunities, I'll let Joe talk to that.

Joe Brinkman (CFO)

Yeah, I mean, just, just the liquefaction flows through HTS, but as a reminder, any investment in liquefaction of hydrogen is gonna lead to more hydrogen trailers needed and more hydrogen storage tanks downstream, that those trailers are delivering and do so. We get pull-through in both HTS and CTS with any of the hubs.

Sherif Elmaghrabi (Equity Research Associate)

Yeah, that's very helpful. Thanks, both, for taking my question.

Jillian C. Evanko (President and CEO)

Thank you, Sherif.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. At this time, we have no further questions. Please proceed.

Jillian C. Evanko (President and CEO)

Thank you, for everyone for attending the call today, and we look forward to continuing the dialogue going forward and a strong fourth quarter. Goodbye.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this does indeed conclude your conference call for today. Once again, thank you for attending, and at this time, we do ask that you please disconnect your lines.