PowerBank - Earnings Call - Q1 2026

Transcript

Megan Haley (Head of Investor Relations)

All right, hello everyone. Thank you for standing by. Good afternoon and welcome to the PowerBank Fiscal First Quarter 2026 Financial Results and Corporate Update Conference Call. My name is Megan Haley. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After today's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session, which will feature previously received questions. Participants of this call are advised that the audio of this conference call is being broadcast live over the Internet and is also being recorded for playback purposes. A webcast replay of the call will be available approximately one hour after the end of the call and accessible on the investor relations portion of our website for access for 30 days. Today, the company issued a press release for its financial results for the fiscal first quarter ended September 30, 2025.

A copy of that press release can be found on the company's website at powerbankcorp.com under the Investors tab. Joining me on today's earnings call from PowerBank's management team are Dr. Richard Liu, Chief Executive Officer, and Sam Sun, Chief Financial Officer. During this call, management will be making forward-looking statements, including statements that address PowerBank's expectations for future performance or operational results. Forward-looking statements involve risks and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those statements. For more information about these risks, please refer to the risk factors described in PowerBank's annual information form, most recently filed annual report on Form 40-F, and subsequent periodic reports filed with the SEC, SEDAR, and PowerBank's press release that accompanies this call, particularly the cautionary statements in it. The content of this call contains time-sensitive information that is accurate only as of today, November 17th, 2025.

Except as required by law, PowerBank disclaims any obligation to publicly update or revise any information to reflect events or circumstances that occur after this call. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to CEO Dr. Richard Liu.

Richard Liu (CEO)

Thank you, Megan, and good afternoon to everyone on the call. Prior to turning the call over to our CFO, Sam, I'd like to highlight some of our existing progress to accompany our filing and the financial report for this fiscal quarter 2026. We're going to focus on our presentation today on our three-month year-to-date results. As of today, we are sitting with projects representing approximately 104 MW of solar and 44 MWh of battery energy storage that are expected to reach notice to proceed within 12 months, which we believe has the potential to grow by an order of magnitude in the coming years. Solar power is undeniably the source of energy that has unique significant cost and environmental benefits to power producers and consumers alike as technologies continue to propel solar's proliferation across the globe. For the first quarter of fiscal 2026, we reported $19.2 million in revenue.

That is an increase of $4.1 million compared to last year's same period. Our development fee increased $3.4 million from the prior year's same period. EPC service increased to $11.9 million from prior year, and the gross margin also improved from 25%–27%. The independent power producer production generated $3.8 million in high margin revenue compared to $3.3 million in the prior fiscal year. That's an 18% increase. This revenue represents recurring asset-based revenue for zero-emitting electricity supplied to our customers, such as electrical system operators, municipalities, and our community solar subscribers. To underscore, we believe the IPP revenues will grow over time in lockstep with the solar power plants we built that we choose to own upon completion. I'd like to also highlight some of the announcements, events, and milestones in the quarter that support the conviction that we are well positioned for growth.

The company announced that its largest owned and operated asset in the U.S., the 3.8 MW Getty Solar Power Plant in New York State, is now fully operational. We have received the first quarter income very happily already, and the project has also received its commercial operating payment, about $1.5 million through NYSERDA's NY- Sun program. The project is also expected to receive additional about a quarter million dollars through the ICA adder. That's one of the adders community solar builders like us is given in the state of New York. The second one is that the company announced that it executed the lease and the power purchase agreement with the New York State Division of Military and Naval Affairs, the DMNA, for the development of a portfolio of ground mount, rooftop, and parking canopies solar power projects and battery energy storage systems.

With a cumulative total of 20 megawatts, PowerBank intends to develop, finance, and construct the projects, a combination of behind-the-meter system and community solar projects on land owned by the DMNA. Once operational, the clean energy generated by the project will be sold to the DMNA and the long-term power purchase agreements that have an initial term of 20 years or will be sold to local residents through the community solar subscription. The third announcement worth mentioning is the venture we are having in Nova Scotia, Canada. We received the contracts for Sydney, Brooklyn, and Path of Westwook community solar projects that is about CAD 1.74 million funding through the Nova Scotia Department of Environment and Climate Change, provided by the Nova Scotia Department of Energy and managed by the Net Zero Atlantic Program.

Those projects are owned by a third party and are being developed by the company for the third party. We actually are well under permitting, and we have started engineering, procurement, and construction initiatives to deliver the first set of community solar projects in the province of Nova Scotia. The fourth one worth mentioning is the company announced the installation of its 4.99 MW battery energy storage system in Canada for Ontario's IESO, and the project is known as SFF06. We are at the end of the construction and looking forward to have it commissioned shortly, I would say. Those are the few numbers. Those are a few events. I'm sure there are more coming your way, and I'm certainly looking forward to hearing your questions. Now, before the questions, I would like to ask Sam, our CFO, to give the financial results in more detail.

Sam, if you could, please.

Sam Sun (CFO)

Thank you, Richard. Please note that all the figures are in CAD here. PowerBank, we had a very strong quarter for Q1 fiscal 2026. Our total revenue for the three months ended September 30th, 2025, was around CAD 19.2 million compared to CAD 15.1 million in the prior year period, an increase of roughly 27%. Development fee revenue for the first quarter of fiscal 2026 was CAD 3.4 million, whereas no development fee revenue was recorded in the same period last year. This increase reflects the higher level of development activities completed and monetized during this quarter. Revenue from EPC services increased by approximately 1% to CAD 11.9 million in the first quarter. IPP revenue grew by CAD 0.6 million, reaching CAD 3.8 million in the first quarter of fiscal 2026, up from CAD 3.3 million in the prior year period.

This improvement was primarily driven by stronger performance across the IPP portfolio and the commencement of production from our 3.8 MW New York-based community solar project at the start of this quarter. Gross margin improved to approximately 45% in the first quarter of fiscal 2026 compared to 27% in the same quarter last year. Operating expenses were approximately CAD 5.9 million in Q1 2026 versus CAD 21.4 million in the prior year quarter. The decrease was primarily driven by the absence of the CAD 17.8 million impairment loss recognized in Q1 2025, partially offset by higher professional and consulting fees in Q1 2026. As noted in today's press release, adjusted EBITDA for this quarter increased to CAD 4.8 million compared to CAD 2 million in the same period last fiscal year.

Net income for the quarter was around $1 million or $0.03 per basic share compared with a net loss of $26.5 million or $0.87 per basic share in the same quarter of fiscal 2025. The improvement in net income was primarily driven by a $4.4 million increase in gross profit in Q1 2026 and the absence of the prior year impairment charge. As of September 30, 2025, current assets totaled $35.5 million compared to $41.3 million as of June 30, 2025. The decrease primarily reflects a significant reduction in prepaid expenses and deposit, partially offset by higher inventory levels. Current liabilities decreased from $43.1 million at fiscal year end to $36.4 million as of September 30, 2025, mainly due to declines in unearned revenue and the current portion of long-term debt.

Long-term debt was $61.3 million, a reduction of around $1.6 million year-over-year driven by repayments made in Q1 2026. We continue to secure highly favorable financing terms relative to our size from reputable financial institutes, which are detailed in our filings. Our cash, receipt cash, and short-term investment totaled approximately $13.3 million as at September 30, 2025, compared to $14.9 million at the end of fiscal 2025. A portion of this balance remains restricted under credit agreement assumed as part of the Solar Flow-Through Funds acquisition. We remain confident in our ability to execute our strategy for fiscal 2026 and beyond with continued focus on expanding our IPP portfolio and advancing our development pipelines. Back to you, Richard.

Richard Liu (CEO)

Great. Thank you so much, Sam. I know there's questions waiting, but I would like to make some comments on three items just to share with my view from where I see to the company, to the market, and to the future activities. I'd like to start with the market. I think we, as part of the renewable energy industry, have experienced a tremendous headwind over the last, I would say, 12-plus months. You can see the industry index has severely depressed and so on and so forth. I would say that the road ahead has become a little bit, I would say, much clearer.

With the one big beautiful bill in action, with the guidance issued by the U.S. government, now we clearly know what needs to be done before July 3, 2026, what needs to be done by December 2027, what can be done can be moving forward until the 2030s. We also know that was for solar. We have actually a significant amount of work currently underway under the leadership of our Chief Operating Officer, Andrew VanDorn, and his team in the U.S. to get the project to pass the physical work test before the July 2026 deadline. We intend to deliver a huge number of projects before the end of 2030. While we are delivering, building, permitting the solar projects in the States, whether they are with the Army base, whether they are with community solar or with corporate PPAs, that we do looking at the future.

That going forward, as you know, that battery storage has become very in demand, and related ITC and other incentives are good until 2036. We have significantly shifted our marketing activities, our sales activities in the U.S. towards battery storage project development. I'd like to bring you the updates in the next quarter or the quarters to come. While things are going on well in the States, we also focused on our home country, which is Canada, that as you know, we are currently building three battery energy storage projects. One of them, SFF06, is close to commissioning. Those other three projects are in the Long-Term Contract with the IESO, the grid operator.

In the meantime, we have LT2, which is long-term procurement 2, coming out on December the 18th, that the company is preparing a large set of projects that are built into the system on December the 18th. Back to September, the company also in partnership with a utility that is building into a large solar farm under the LT2 generation program. You can see while in Ontario, building battery storage, we are managing the IPP assets, and we are certainly looking for the new projects. Also in Alberta, we completed the construction of the first megawatt rooftop for Fiera that currently is being connected by Fortis. We are looking forward to doing more projects with partners such as Fiera, who have hundreds of buildings in the commercial and the industrial market.

I think given the technology advancement, given the electricity cost increase, given the overall system cost in line with the inflation, that solar is here to stay. Solar is here to last, and solar is certainly here that is taking us to places even above Earth. That is the views of the U.S. and the market in Canada in the market. With that forward thinking, there are a few announcements that I'd like to provide a summary to friends on this call. November last year, 2024, we announced that entry into the data center market. Over the last 12 months, we have evaluated numerous sites. We have reviewed interconnection abilities. We have negotiated power supply agreements, and we are working with a few high-potential sites where data centre is built, but can be commissioned to provide required computing power to our potential customers.

In the meantime, you would say that our new development, not only developing data centers on Earth, giving the longer term of power delivery required five or seven years for hundreds of megawatts. You can see that Google, Amazon, the Elon Musk, and all those people are looking at how do we bring the data center a more environmentally friendly way for the longer term in shorter time. One of the initiatives is that the AI infrastructure in the space where solar powers are 24/7, where the space natural cooling that will reduce the cooling cost significantly. As you know, in any data center, the cooling cost is about 40% of the power that's required. Given the advanced space technology development, the payload cost to build a data center or AI infrastructure in the space has significantly fallen.

Now we are looking at our partners, and we will say that solar energy is our bread and butter that can be deployed in the space with partners by PowerBank, whereas you know that the satellite since the 1960s has always been powered by solar panels. Stay tuned on our advancement on the data center side. We also announced that we are entering into Crypto Treasury Strategy. We have dedicated the Getty Solar Power Plant, our largest asset in the States, that any free cash will be used for acquiring a basket of coins to get us into the crypto treasury area. Now the Getty project is up and running. We are happy with the first three months' revenue, and we will be able to, in the position at the anniversaries, look at the net cash flow and officially get into the Crypto Treasury Strategy.

That is the second future things now. Thirdly, as you can see, we entered into a strategic development agreement with Intellistic Technologies, which is a technology company focused on AI, decentralized database, decentralized data center, and also crypto blockchain technologies. While we are looking at many, many opportunities, we focused on deploying AI agents in the area of Agentic Computing into the PowerBank ecosystem. We have deployed the first AI agent into the PowerBank ecosystem. That agent currently is being trained with 15 years plus of experience on knowledge and data that we collected as PowerBank. We are looking forward to have this agent trained that can produce more productive results from an analytical perspective, from site control perspective, from permitting perspective, all the way to bring the company in much more efficient and much larger scale to NTP of all those projects.

That is on the data center development, on the Crypto Treasury Strategy, and on the AI agent. There are many initiatives while we focus on our foundation, which is power building, and we are bridging the traditional power industry with the new digital technologies. Having said that, it looks a lot, as you know, that PowerBank has a very efficient, very skilled team of experts. How are we going to deliver all of this? I would recommend our friends on this call to look at the three things of this company that is positioned for not only solid to get through the current environmental or economic environments, but also for the years to come. I think first, I would say, is the people. I think we maintain a revenue per capita of about $2 million or $3 million. That is what this company's professionals deliver.

The second, you look at our financial reports. At this moment, we're sitting on about $30 million cash, and our independent power producer generates recurring revenue that is improving. You look at our pipelines and look at our projects. We continue with our strategy of vertical integration. We continue to focus on our people where we are delivering with simplicity and the speed. That is making every project that is absolutely making money, independently making money, and with low volatility for our investors, shareholders, and our stakeholders. With that, I know it's a long statement or long sharing with our audience here, and I am good for questions now, Megan.

Megan Haley (Head of Investor Relations)

Okay. Thank you, Richard. Everyone, we'll now conduct our question and answer session. Please allow us a moment to pause and collect the questions, and we will be putting them to management for comment.

All right. For the first question, Richard, could you please elaborate further on the factors driving the company's gross margin increase from 27%–45% this quarter compared to the first quarter last year?

Richard Liu (CEO)

I'm actually very surprised that we're making that much money. I would say there are two things coming, three things coming. I think first of all is about how Andrew's people actually managing the field activities. As everyone knows, for PowerBank, time is money. At this moment, I know Dennis is in the field. Andrew is in the field. Matt is in the field. There's not many people in the office. The reason we're doing this is because we want to make sure that the projects are proceeding on a timely manner so that we can reduce time-related cost to the minimum as possible.

I think secondly, we're looking at this one is really how do we manage our procurement. As we are shifting international procurement to domestic content, and we're looking at ways to comply with regulation. And because of our years of experience with our suppliers, that we were able to get best considerations to maintain our cost compared to everyone else. So this number is not only we did better, it's also because everyone did worse. That's where we got a better number.

Megan Haley (Head of Investor Relations)

Okay. All right. Thank you. Our next question comes from Brian Mantier. It looks like at the end of fiscal year 2025, the SFF06 project was expected to reach PTO in Q2 of fiscal year 2026. The latest filing says fiscal 2026.

The 903 and OZ-1 projects were previously expected to achieve NTP in Q1 2026, but the latest filing says Q4 of fiscal year 2026. Could you speak to any delays that are impacting the best projects? Have these delays impacted your outlook for this market?

Richard Liu (CEO)

Thank you, Brian, for the question. The three projects we have is with the ISO under a capacity contract for 22 years. We started the project by going through permitting, and SFF06 is the first one that got fully permitted under construction. I would say the delay is in part of the permitting delay. As you know, battery storage is new technology, and those sites are in rural areas where it is understandable that people have many concerns about a battery, especially in terms of fire and consequent firefighting, water contamination, and so on and so forth.

We actually had a lot of, I would say, more than what we have done in solar engagement with the local communities to get buy-in to moving it forward. That is where the major delay is coming from, which is really the permitting. SFF06 is built. Currently, it is being commissioned. I think it probably will be commissioned. I would love to get it up and running by end of the year, but I think the latest filing number is accurate. That now leaves the other two. For the other two, I had challenges in addition to the permitting, which is the interconnection. While the interconnection capacity is there, the point of common coupling is being considered for moving, taking into recommendations from the local community.

As you know, interconnection is very time-consuming as you are moving the point of common coupling with the utility, and that is what added the delays. The delays are there. Moving along, you will hear a lot more activities in that regard. We are not unique because every battery energy company is facing the same permitting delays. We remain very positive on the outlook of battery storage. Number one is the demand. As the electricity price is increasing, you will inevitably be looking at how you balance the electricity cost between peak and non-peak times, which is the battery storage. As we incur more AI-related activities where power quality and power reliability is required, the battery storage now is viewed as critical equipment in critical infrastructure operations. That is on the demand side.

On the supply side, as you know, the global supply of battery systems has been consistently dropping along the similar fashion as the solar panel did. When we look at this one, we say, given the cost reduction, given the demand increase, given electricity price increase in the States, I believe it is something 30% recently, we view a great opportunity to enhance our activities in battery storage. That is where I mentioned that in the States, our sales activities are focused in battery storage. In Ontario and Canada, we also, in addition to doing solar and other projects, battery is also a focus.

Megan Haley (Head of Investor Relations)

Okay. Thank you so much, Richard. It looks like the last question here has just been sent to me privately.

The question is, what progress has the company made in monetizing and securing safe harbor for the US pipelines to mitigate the impact of OBBBA?

Richard Liu (CEO)

Thank you. In the past, we were able to do safe harboring by putting up 5% of the project cost using solar panels. That is no longer the way to go forward. Based on the guidelines after the OBBBA, you have to pass the physical test, physical start test. We have sites now that are in the late stage of civil design, and we probably will get into the field, getting ready for the access road, for the fencing and all of those ones. We are focusing on the long lead items that are project-specific. One of the things is you no longer buy panels as safe harboring because panels actually can be interchangeable.

When you actually have project-specific items such as racking, such as transformers, which I understand now takes more than 12, even 24 months to deliver. I was in the office the other day looking at the single line diagrams, looking at our team putting a package together in negotiation with our regular suppliers on the transformer specs. Those are the things that we are doing, that not only will we pass the physical start test through field work, but also we will have project-specific long lead item equipment being ordered, manufactured so that we can deliver projects meeting the COD timelines.

Megan Haley (Head of Investor Relations)

Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you, everyone, for your questions. We are available for further questions over email or phone. Please feel free to reach out anytime. I'll just pass back over to you, Richard.

Richard Liu (CEO)

I really appreciate this opportunity you give us to pay attention to our company. We understand that we are a microcap company. We are on the Nasdaq Global Market, and we certainly are very eager to grow, to bring returns to our shareholders. I think most important for me is to appreciate everyone's attention. As Megan said, we are always available. Please reach out to us if there's anything that we can do to make the company better, to make your investment better. Please do reach out. Thank you and have a good day.