Strong Growth in Revenue and Profitability
While we saw momentum in our business throughout the year, the fourth quarter was our best in term of revenue and gross profit. Our fourth quarter revenue was up 84% year-over-year to $8.2 million, and our gross profit doubled to $3.8 million. These remarkable fourth quarter results contributed to our second-best annual revenue for a fiscal year. Annual revenue grew approximately 33% to $21.1 million while our gross profit increased 42% to an all-time high $9.6 million. For the year, we had EBITDA[i] of $1.7 million, which was our second-best all-time, and our bottom line improved to $0.7 million from the loss of $1.8 million the year before.
Record Order Intake and Large Order Backlog[ii]
Contributing to our strong financial results was our record order intake of $27.3 million in fiscal 2023, which was up 133% year-over-year, and which highlights the importance that our multinational customers are placing on reducing their carbon emissions and maximizing profitability through substantial energy cost savings and improving operational efficiency. However, much of that $27.3 million has not yet hit the books as reported revenue, and instead has added to our swelling order backlog, which stood at $21.4 million as at September 26, 2023. Since year end, we’ve already seen $8.4 million in new orders and we’re less than four months into fiscal 2024. Of note, on September 13, 2023, we announced a $4 million heat recovery order from one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies. This was our largest heat recovery order since before the pandemic, and while we have sold products into this sector before, this was our first turn-key heat recovery order from a pharmaceutical company. We recently signed a Global Master Services Agreement with this customer, which has about 40 sites of interest to us around the world, and we already have paid project development agreements (“PDA”) for two other sites active with them.
Surge in Project Development Agreements
In addition to order intake and order backlog, activity pertaining to PDAs is an important indicator of momentum in our business and a key metric in assessing the strength of our business development pipeline. In fiscal 2023, we received 25 signed PDAs (including seven in the fourth quarter) compared to ten signed PDAs in the prior fiscal year. While our custom equipment orders have been steadily on the rise for some time, we are excited to see a significant year-over-year increase in the number and value of signed project development agreements. Although there is no guarantee that signed PDAs will result in completed turn-key projects, the surge in agreements demonstrates the growing demand for our carbon emission reduction and energy efficiency solutions by our Fortune 500 and other large multinational customers.
Focused on Repeat Business
Thermal Energy receives significant repeat business from its Fortune 500 and other large multinationals customers. Over the last few years, about 60% of our orders have come from our top ten key accounts. Combined, these ten customers have about 1,000 sites of interest to us around the world. So far, we have partially penetrated about 100 of these sites (in fact, there's only a few sites that we have fully penetrated and done everything there is to do). As a result, we estimate that we have completed a little less than 5% of the total potential with these ten key accounts. This highlights that there is still an enormous amount of potential future repeat business with these ten accounts alone.
Investments in our Team, our Business, and our Future
To better accommodate the demand for our solutions, we made targeted investments in our team, including adding two salespeople in France (a country where we did not already have salespeople) and additional engineers to execute projects in Europe. We’ve also made investments in digitization, designed to enhance future growth and efficiency. One of those investments is a customized app-driven field survey tool called CREST (Carbon Reduction Scoping Tool), that will allow our team members to quickly and in real time gather data and identify project opportunities while on site. We expect CREST to increase sales and engineering efficiency and help identify more heat recovery and cross selling opportunities for our direct sales team. By doing so we increase the efficiency and timescales involved in scoping heat recovery projects and bringing them in front of our customers. We are also investing in a new global accounting program and enterprise resource planning software to eliminate the manual accounting process and reduce internal labour costs and employee turnover.
Conclusion
We are proud of what we achieved in fiscal 2023. Our strong momentum in order intake, large order backlog, and the surge in project development agreements underscore the demand for our solutions and that we are poised for continued success. These remarkable achievements would not have been possible without the dedication of our talented team, the trust of our global customers, and the support of our shareholders. I would like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to our dedicated team members, customers, partners, and our valued shareholders, for their support. Together, we are building a stronger and more prosperous future for Thermal Energy International.
Sincerely,
William Crossland
President and Chief Executive Officer
Thermal Energy International
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ENDS
For media enquiries contact:
Thermal Energy International Inc.
Canada: 613-723-6776
UK: +44 (0)117 917 2179
Marketing@thermalenergy.com
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Thermal Energy International Inc.
613-723-6776
Investors@thermalenergy.com
Notes to editors
About Thermal Energy International Inc.
Thermal Energy International Inc. provides energy efficiency and emissions reduction solutions to Fortune 500 and other large multinational companies. We save our customers money by reducing their fuel use and cutting their carbon emissions. Thermal Energy’s proprietary and proven solutions can recover up to 80% of energy lost in typical boiler plant and steam system operations while delivering a high return on investment with a short, compelling payback.
Thermal Energy is a fully accredited professional engineering firm with engineering offices in Ottawa, Canada, Pittsburgh, USA, as well as Bristol, UK, with sales offices in Canada, UK, USA, Germany, Poland, and Italy. By providing a unique mix of proprietary products together with process, energy, and environmental engineering expertise, Thermal Energy can deliver unique, site-specific turnkey and custom-engineered solutions with significant financial and environmental benefits for our customers.
Thermal Energy’s common shares are traded on the TSX Venture Exchange (TSX-V) under the symbol TMG and on the OTCQB under the symbol TMGEF. For more information, visit our investor website at https://investors-thermalenergy.com or company website at www.thermalenergy.com and follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/GoThermalEnergy.
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This press release contains forward-looking statements relating to, and amongst other things, based on management’s expectations, estimates and projections, the anticipated effectiveness of the Company’s products and services, the timing of revenues to be received by the Company, the anticipated effects of COVID-19 on the business, backlog and revenue, the expectation that orders in backlog will become revenue, the anticipated benefits of the Company’s current efforts at training and business improvement efforts, opportunities for growth, the Company’s belief that it can capitalize on opportunities, the size of markets and opportunities open to the Company and expectations that order intake will bounce back.. Information as to the amount of heat recovered, energy savings and payback period associated with Thermal Energy International’s products are based on the Company’s own testing and average customer results to date. Statements relating to the expected installation and revenue recognition for projects, statements about the anticipated effectiveness and lifespan of the Company’s products, statements about the expected environmental effects and cost savings associated with the Company’s products and statements about the Company’s ability to cross-sell its products and sell to more sites are forward looking statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve a number of risks, uncertainties and assumptions. Many factors, some of which are outside of the Company’s control, could cause events and results to differ materially from those stated. Fulfilment of orders, installation of product and activation of product could all be delayed for a number of reasons, some of which are outside of the Company’s control, which would result in anticipated revenues from such projects being delayed or in the most serious cases eliminated. Actions taken by the Company’s customers and factors inherent in the customer’s facilities but not anticipated by the Company can have a negative impact on the expected effectiveness and lifespan of the Company’s products and on the expected environmental effects and cost savings expected from the Company’s products. Any customer’s willingness to purchase additional products from the Company and whether orders in the Company’s backlog as described above will turn into revenue is dependent on many factors, some of which are outside of the Company’s control, including but not limited to the customer’s perceived needs and the continuing financial viability of the customer. The Company disclaims any obligation to publicly update or revise any such statements except as required by law. Readers are referred to the risk factors associated with the Company’s business as described in the Company’s most recent Management’s Discussion and Analysis available at https://www.sedarplus.ca
EBITDA and backlog are non-IFRS financial measures, do not have a standardized meaning prescribed by International Financial Reporting Standards and therefore may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other companies. Please refer to the Company’s most recent Management’s Discussion and Analysis available at https://www.sedarplus.ca for more details about these non-IFRS financial measures.
Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
[i] EBITDA represents earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation, amortization, impairment of intangible assets, and share-based compensation expense. See note below about non-IFRS measures.
[ii] Order backlog represents any purchase orders that have been received by the Company but have not yet been reflected as revenue in the Company’s published financial statements. See note below about non-IFRS measures.