Ballard Power Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:BLDP) Q4 2023 Earnings Conference Call March 11, 2024 11:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Kate Charlton - IR

Randy MacEwen - CEO

Paul Dobson - CFO

Conference Call Participants

Rob Brown - Lake Street Capital Markets

Aaron MacNeil - TD Cowen

Sonia Jane - UPS

Dushyant Ailani - Jefferies

Jordan Levy - Truist Securities

Kashy Harrison - Piper Sandler

Vikram Bagri - Citi Capital

Brett Castelli - Morningstar

Operator

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Ballard Power Systems' Fourth Quarter 2023 Results Conference Call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. [Operator Instructions]

I would now like to turn the conference over to Kate Charlton, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Kate Charlton

Thank you, operator, and good morning. Welcome to Ballard's fourth quarter year and end 2023 financial and operating results conference call. With us on today's call are Randy MacEwen, Ballard's CEO; and Paul Dobson, Chief Financial Officer.

We will be making forward-looking statements that are based on management's current expectations, beliefs and assumptions concerning future events. Actual results could be materially different. Please refer to our most recent annual information form and other public filings for our complete disclaimer and related information.

I will now turn the call over to Randy.

Randy MacEwen

Thank you Kate and welcome everyone to today's conference call. Our Q4 and full year results demonstrated measured progress against the 2023 milestones we outlined for investors in our 2023 Capital Market's Day.

Let me share a few highlights from the year. We shipped 74 megawatts of product in 2023 including 540 fuel cell engines. We grew revenues on a year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter basis by 25% and 130% respectively. We made good progress on gross margins and cash burn which Paul will discuss.

We supported numerous customers in maturing their fuel cell platforms while also securing new customer platform wins across our verticals. We've increased our diversification across our business. We launched our next generation bipolar plate project to enable further cost reduction and production scaling.

We signed the UN Global Compact affirming our commitment to integrate universal sustained principles of environment, labor, human rights and anti-corruption in our business and we're now sourcing 100% of the hydrogen used at our Denmark facility from green sources.

We'll now zoom-in on our key market verticals for a brief update on each. Activity in our bus vertical indicates increasing acceptance of fuel cell buses for transit operators as a viable option to de-carbonize their fleets. Revenues from bus customers for the year were up almost 20% compared to the year 2022.