Conference call highlights:
1) Synergy continues to advance its 300 fuel cell bus program in the cities of Foshan and Yan Fu. This is the largest announced fuel cell program globally. Last year, they deployed about 24 fuel cell buses, we expect probably in range of about 100 fuel cell buses from them in 2017.
2) Gaoming railway line in Foshan is currently behind planned construction schedule. So, we now expect the world’s first fuel cell power tram line to be deployed likely in 2018.
3) Yinlong plans to manufacture approximately 35,000 EV buses in 2017. They have 2020 plan, which is 20% of the buses sold by 2020 will include fuel cell technology.
4) Broad-Ocean has now signed two major deals using Ballard modules from the planned production capacity. The first deal is with a leading bus manufacturer for 1,000 fuel cell buses to be deployed in a critically important city in China over the next few years. The second deal is with another leading bus manufacturer for 5,000 fuel cell modules over the next two years as well.
5) high margin technology solutions business. We're seeing growth opportunities across the Board, including automotive, train, UAV, military and material handling. We're also seeing growth opportunities in Europe, China and the United States. Japan continued to be a tricky market, more on that in a minute. And our technology solutions team is currently working on a total of 36 different projects, the highest in our corporate history
6) General Motors and Honda jointly announced an investment of $85 million to support their plan to manufacture fuel cell cars and start mass production in Michigan by 2020
7) California plans to increase the number of hydrogen refueling stations from its current 25 to 49 in 2017, and up to a 100 stations in 2018
8) Germany will increase its hydrogen stations from currently at 38 to about 54 by mid-2017.
9) we believe we're currently designing industry leading modules for Heavy Duty Motive, as well as industry leading automotive fuel cell stacks and sub stack technology.
10) In 2016, we signed a long-term sales agreement with Solaris Bus, a European bus OEM.
11) Europeans GI program was formally launched with a goal of deploying 144 fuel cell buses in 10 different regions and cities.
12) 20 fuel cell buses in California, 10 with AC transit in Oakland, and 10 with Orange County transit authority
13) We continue expect to achieve milestone fee in 2017 unlocking significant and steady orders for our industry leading power manager products for many years to come.
14) In late 2016, flight testing using our fuel cell propulsion system was successfully completed on a major UAV fix link platform with a leading unnamed aerospace company. we expect in situ of foreign companies to also start test flights using our fuel cell system later this year.
15) Toyota Tsusho,while we’re not able to provide a more detailed update at this time due to customer sensitivities, we can report that initial product deployments are scheduled for 2017.
16) gross margin expansion - it's higher than the number we've given previously, so in excess of 30%.
17) think about as fairly typical or softer Q1. But we are looking for Q2 to Q4 to be relatively speaking with some finding variability to be much smoother in the past, and driven largely by the contribution, as we say, from both of TS but also from some of the other markets too.
18) where do we need to get to be close to breakeven on operating cash flow hasn’t changed. It’s is still in the $110 million to $120 million range.
19) last year at this time, we had an order book of $58 million. We obviously delivered $85 million in revenue. We entered this year with $87 million of bookings and for -- for delivering in 2017.
20) "there's no reason to believe that that $27 ( $85 - $58) million turns business should decline based on the end markets that you're serving, assuming your comments on Protonex continuing to grow. And I think you put power agreement on place for '17. Is that a fair statement?" Randy MacEwen: "Yes".
