Consolidated Water (NASDAQ:CWCO) Q4 2021 Earnings Call

0:00 Good morning. Thank you for joining us today to discuss Consolidated Water Co.'s full year 2021 results. Hosting the call today is the Chief Executive Officer of Consolidated Water Co., Rick McTaggart, and the company's Chief Financial Officer, David Sasnett. Following their remarks, we'll open the call to your questions. At any time during the call, you may join the Q&A. Cue by pressing star 1 on your keypad. Before we conclude today's call, I'll provide some important information Cautions regarding the forward-looking statements made by management during the call. I'd like to remind everyone that today's call is being recorded and will be made available for telecom replay via instructions in yesterday's press release, which is available in the investor relations section of the company's website.

0:45 Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Consolidated Waters Co. CEO, Rick McTaggart. Sir, please go ahead.

0:52 Thank you, Anthony. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us on today's call. As you saw from our earnings release yesterday, 2021 was a challenging year for the company due to the impact of the pandemic on certain areas of our business. While our retail and manufacturing segments performed below historical levels, we made progress growing our business in other areas. On the call today, I'd like to talk about what produced these results and the foundations we continue to lay to support our future growth and expansion. Last year, our bulk segment was our biggest revenue contributor and biggest incremental revenue contributor, increasing $2.5 million compared to 2020.

1:39 And our services segment was our second biggest incremental revenue contributor by $947,000. While our manufacturing revenue declined during the year due to adverse economic conditions and retail revenue declined due to the cessation of tourism in Grand Cayman during the pandemic, the challenges and opportunities presented to us during this period further validated the importance of diversifying our manufacturing segment revenue by expanding our geographic presence and customer base. In 2021, we successfully integrated our sales team across four business segments, led by our recently promoted Executive Vice President of Business Development, Mr. Brent Brody.

2:29 We expect our manufacturing segment to strengthen this year, supported by our integrated sales team, which is leveraging the relationships and excellent reputation that PERC has developed over many years with potential customers and Engineering Advisors in the Southwest United States. This integrated sales approach is providing opportunities for Eric's to pursue projects in this water short area of the country in addition to its primary sales market in Florida. And on the desalination side of the business, our manufacturing segment is fully integrated in three projects that we are pursuing in Hawaii, California and Grand Cayman.

3:15 We believe that having AIREX's design and manufacturing capabilities in-house makes us more competitive on these three important projects, each of which includes design, construction, and long-term operation of seawater desalination plants for municipal customers. Our retail segment with operations in Grand Cayman continued to be adversely impacted by the pandemic during 2021. We operate four seawater desalination plants that produce piped drinking water for our retail utility business and another three seawater desalination plants for our bulk water customer in Grand Cayman. In total, we produce all of the piped drinking water on Grand Cayman, which is home to about 95% of the country's population.

4:07 We are extremely encouraged by recent easing of COVID-19 restrictions and the return of tourism to the Cayman Islands as the country's Phase 5 reopening plan continues. In fact, we've already seen a 7% increase in water sales in our retail service area during the first two months of 2022 as compared to the same period last year. And with just about a day left in March, we've already produced almost 15% more water then in March 2021. Just last week, the Cayman Islands welcomed back its first cruise ship in two years, the Disney Magic. It is the first of a series of ships scheduled to visit Grand Cayman over the next month.

4:58 Naturally, we expect the resurgence of tourism to help our retail water sales return to normal levels over the coming months as hotels and businesses begin to serve the thousands of tourists and vacationers coming back to the islands. Now, before I talk a little more about the year and the outlook for 2022, I'd like to turn the call over to David, who will take us through the financial results for the year.

5:26 Thanks, Rick, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. As Rick mentioned, we are encouraged by the easing of travel restrictions, but we continue to face significant challenges as a result of the current economic environment. Despite these challenges, we've maintained our strong financial foundation as we pursue new opportunities, and we have continued to pay dividends. Yesterday, we issued our earnings release for 2021, which is available in the investor section of our website. We reported that revenue totaled $66.9 million for our 2021 fiscal year, which is a decrease of 7.9% in 2020. This decline reflects decreases of $847,000 in retail segment revenue and $8.4 million in manufacturing segment revenue.

6:16 This decline was partially offset by an increase of $2.5 million in our bulk segment revenue and $947,000 in our services segment revenue. The reduction in our retail revenue represents a 4% decrease in the volume of water sold by Cayman Water. This is due to the closing of Grand Cayman Island to all tourism back in March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The decrease from manufacturing segment revenue was due to the loss of orders from Eric's former largest customer, and we discussed this in previous calls and in our public filings. Eric's has made efforts to replace this revenue generated from this customer with new revenue from existing and new customers.

7:04 However, this effort has been adversely affected by continuing negative economic conditions. For example, we are experiencing increasing raw material costs, raw material shortages, and extended delivery times for our raw materials. We believe these same factors have also adversely affected the overall financial condition of ERIX's current and prospective customers. Rick will go into detail about ERIC's key strategic initiatives later on in this call. The increase in our services segment revenue was due to an increase of approximately $3.2 million from operating and maintenance contracts attributable to new customers, which helped to offset plant construction revenue, which declined during the year.

7:56 The increase in our bulk segment revenue is attributable to an increase in energy costs for CW Bahamas, which increased the energy pass-through component of CW Bahamas rates and the increase is also due to a lesser extent by a 5% increase in the volume of water sold by CW Bahamas. Our gross profit for 2021 was $23.5 million or 35.2% of revenue as compared to $26.8 million or 36.9% of revenue in 2020. are net income from continuing operations attributable to consolidated water stockholders for the full year of 2021 was $3.4 million or $0.23 per basic and diluted share. That's compared to net income of $8.6 million or $0.56 per basic and diluted share for 2020.

8:47 Total net income attributable to consolidated stockholders for the full year 2021, which includes the results of discontinued operations, was $876,000 or $0.06 per basic and fully diluted share. This was down from net income of $3.7 million or $0.24 per basic and fully diluted share for the previous year. I'd like to speak briefly about our balance sheet now. Our accounts receivable balances related to our CW Bahamas business totaled $21.5 million at the end of 2021, which was up from the $16.8 million at the end of the previous year. These receivables are due from the Water and Sewage Corporation of the Bahamas. Last month, we received correspondence from the Ministry of Finance of the Government of the Bahamas that set forth a payment schedule providing for the gradual reduction over the course of 2022 of C.W.

9:42 Bahamas' delinquent accounts receivables due from the Water and Sewage Corporation. Such correspondence also indicated that the government intends to return all of CW Bahamas accounts receivables from the water and sewage corporation to current status. We appreciate the government's renewed focus on paying CW Bahamas receivables given the economic impact the pandemic has had on the Bahamas. It's important to remember that the Bahamas government has always eventually paid 100% of CW Bahamas receivables and that we have never been required to record an allowance for doubtful accounts for our CWO Bahamas receivables. As of December 31st, 2021, our cash and cash equivalents totaled a healthy $40.4 million. Our working capital exceeded $69 million.

10:35 Our debt was only $200,000. And the stockholders' equity attributable to the CWCO Bahamas, excuse me, CWCO shareholders totaled $157.6 million. This completes my financial summary. I'd like to turn the call back over to Rick now.

10:52 Thank you, David. One of our key strategic initiatives has been to build out a more diversified book of business for AirX. For those unfamiliar, AirX is a custom and specialty manufacturer of water treatment-related systems and projects. It also provides design, engineering, management, operating, and other services applicable to commercial, municipal, and industrial water production. As I mentioned earlier in the call, we fully integrated our sales team across our business segments in 2021. This has particularly benefited AirX by further diversifying its client base and geographical market. As we reported last year, our ERIC sales team has been focused on developing and redeveloping relationships with large engineering consultants and general contractors who provide design and construction services to the municipal water market.

11:53 In 2021, about 77% of our manufacturing revenues came from various municipal water projects. The municipal water market is cyclical, and while bidding activity for municipal equipment supply has slowed in recent months after a strong post-COVID burst of activity, AirX is maintaining a much stronger contracted orders backlog than this time last year. Unfortunately, like many companies over the last several months, AirX has been adversely affected by supply chain challenges including material shortages, price increases, and logistical delays that have impacted its manufacturing processes. Certain municipal orders that we had expected to be completed in the last half of 2021 were pushed into this year, and we are now seeing about 2.6 million of orders pushed into next year, 2023.

12:53 In response to these challenges, AIRx engineers are working with suppliers and customers to find solutions to avoid these delays by implementing design changes and or substituting equipment and materials while all the time ensuring that our products meet or exceed customer requirements. We've also been working on other areas to expand our product offerings and presence in the U.S. and as you know in October 2019 we acquired a controlling interest in PERC Water Corporation, an award-winning water treatment and reuse infrastructure provider and manager. It currently operates primarily in the Western United States. PERC expands our service offerings as well as provides us with a new platform in the Western United States for expanding our core business of designing, constructing and operating water desalination plants.

13:51 and as I mentioned earlier, we're currently pursuing three projects, two of which are in the Western United States. PERC has seen increased bidding activity in primary markets for new plants and asset management contracts and they are currently pursuing more than a dozen potential design, build and asset management projects. PERC has developed an excellent reputation with municipalities and developers in the Southwest as a company that delivers design-build water treatment projects on time and at the most competitive cost. FERC's unique Custom Design Report, or CDR, offering provides potential clients with a 20% design plus a not-to-exceed construction cost estimate, which the client can use for planning in comparison with other project delivery models.

14:46 PERC provides clients with a single point of responsibility for design, construction, and commissioning of municipal water treatment projects. By comparison, other project delivery models typically used in municipal projects, such as design-bid-build, consist of multiple points of responsibility for design, construction, commissioning, etc., which ultimately increases the cost of the project to the client. PERC's innovative wastewater treatment plant design features minimal land use, neighbor-friendly facilities, maximum noise and odor control, and maximum cost efficiency. Once a plant is commissioned, PERC is also able to operate the plant using its highly skilled workforce of licensed operators.

15:36 PERC currently operates two of the most advanced water reuse plants in California for the Water Replenishment District in Los Angeles. The combination of PERCs and Consolidated's unique experience operating complex membrane-based water treatment plants permits us to pre-qualify to bid for similar new projects and operating contracts. Our plan to expand service revenues in the wastewater reuse market is supported by our strong balance sheet and growing pipeline of potential projects. Now looking at our international operations outside of the United States. As I mentioned earlier, the easing of the COVID-19 restrictions and the return of tourism to the Cayman Islands has been very encouraging to see after many months of lockdowns and travel bans.

16:31 On February 18th, the Cayman Islands government dropped all on-island COVID testing for vaccinated travelers. and they no longer require post-arrival COVID-19 tests for fully vaccinated travelers. A quarantine period for partially vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals was also reduced from 10 days to seven days. The government significantly increased the occupancy limits on gatherings, which facilitates the return of conferences and conventions to the islands. In fact, I know one of my and friends is actually attending a conference in May there. In addition to the return of cruise ships to the island, major airlines including American, Delta, Southwest and United have resumed their flight routes to Cayman earlier this month.

17:26 As a result of these positive indicators, we see our retail water sales returning to normal levels over the coming months as hotels, restaurants and other and other tourism related businesses return to service the island's visitors once again. In fact, as I mentioned earlier in the call, we have seen our retail water sales increase by 7% in January and February compared to last year and production is actually up by 15% so far in March. We are also seeing the potential for expansion of our business on the island and in January we submitted a multi-million dollar bid to design, build and operate a new 2.6 million gallon per day desalination plant in Grand Cayman for the government-owned water utility. We anticipate hearing the results of that bidding process by the middle of next month.

18:26 Our Bahamas operations through our Bahamas government customer applies all of the piped water on the island of New Providence, Bahamas. And New Providence is the most populous island in the Bahamas with about 275,000 residents, or 70% of the country's population. And this includes Nassau and Cable Beach, which Nassau is a political capital and commercial hub of the Bahamas. We're seeing a rapid return of tourists to the Bahamas. and although higher tourism numbers don't necessarily translate to higher water sales for us, it does bode well for the overall financial health of the Bahamas since a significant part of the Bahamian economy and tax base is directly dependent on tourism.

19:17 As David mentioned, our receivable balance in the Bahamas is still high, but we recently received assurances from the highest levels of government that The balances will be brought current by early 2023. So in closing, we believe that our management team and board have charted the best course for the company to recover in 2022 from the impacts of the pandemic and to grow our business by focusing on water short regions of the western United States. We believe that our extensive experience, excellent track record, and novel approach to designing Building and operating both seawater desalination facilities and wastewater treatment and recycling plants, as well as our strong cash position and relatively low overhead burden, continues to give us a competitive advantage over other companies, some of which are much larger than us.

20:17 Looking ahead in 2022, we remain very optimistic about our growth prospects. Our optimism is buoyed by the and more. We see these as strong catalysts for growth in 2022 and beyond. With that, I'd like to open up the call, Anthony, for questions. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you must have started on your telephone keypad. If using a speakerphone, Please pick up your hands before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press start and 2. At this time, we will pause momentarily to sum up our roster.

21:13 Our first question comes from Steve, pardon me, our first question will come from John Bear with Ascend Wealth Advisors. You may now go ahead.

21:23 Morning.

21:25 Hey, John. Morning, John.

21:26 Oh, good. Was on speaker. A couple of quick questions. Since Eric has, you said, if I caught this right, about 77% of their business is coming from the muni market, and I'm assuming that most of that is our funds that had already been targeted for that work. Is that right, from the municipals?

21:55 Yeah. They're municipal water projects for Port St. Lucie and Palm City, various municipal water plants. I don't know where they're getting the funding for these. We're working through contractors and engineering groups on these projects as equipment suppliers.

22:17 Okay. Where I was going with this is whether or not you're starting to see or have any indication that Money is starting to come in from the infrastructure bill that might help either open up new projects or fund ones that have been kind of on the table and kind of just pending that kind of stuff. Are you able to tell if you're seeing any impact from that, positive impact?

22:47 Honestly, I'm not aware of any specific projects that are tied to that infrastructure bill. A lot of this work was being planned and designed even before that bill was passed. These are things that are multi-year contracts that we are involved in. I really can't say with any certainty whether that's helped.

23:15 John, we've had general discussions with people relative to our PERT business that seem to I don't know if it's had enough time to make that kind of impact yet.

23:50 and many more. Thank you for joining us.

24:49 We had individual sales guys for AirX, for PERC, and for our legacy businesses, and that's all sort of been united under Brent, who's running that now. I think it's been very effective.

25:07 John, where it makes sense, we employ AirX to make equipment for any plants that we will be building. The exciting part of this is that We now have an ERIC sales team through PERC on the western coast of the United States and in Arizona. ERIC's never had the opportunity previously to reach out to those areas of the country. We think ERIC's will be very competitive bidding on projects there that, as Rick said earlier, don't really directly involve PERC, but PERC has the relationships with the customer and the contacts to lead those opportunities to ERIC's and give them a chance for them.

25:45 That sounds very encouraging. You've mentioned about raw material demands and so forth, the pressures there. Are you seeing anything in the way of personnel issues, turnover, that kind of thing, that's affecting you at all?

26:03 No, I mean, we're aware of the demand for operators, for example, in our PERC business. So the management team's been... Very attentive to that to make sure that we don't have that sort of turnover. I think we offer very competitive employment terms and we want to make sure we stay that way. On the customer side, there's a willingness to absorb these extra costs, certainly on projects that we're looking at. Something that might have been 20% cheaper two years ago is The customers are still moving on those projects.

26:48 Most of them are. But let me point out, John, that our customers are having issues, too, relative to a number of things. So that's why those orders were pushed. Rick mentioned it was pushed from 2022 into 2023. Eventually, that will settle out, and we won't have those issues going forward. But for the short term, that's why we had a small deferral of revenue from this year to next year.

27:10 Yep. Very good. Thanks for taking my questions. I'll let somebody else go forward. Thanks. Thanks, John. Again, if you have a question, please press star then 1. Our next question will come from Ada Tatto with TSP Capital Management. You may now go ahead.

27:35 Hi. I just wanted to follow up on the Eric's topic. Since they are located in Florida and you're trying to manufacture for California and Arizona, would you be looking to open a manufacturing facility in the Southwest?

27:54 No, we don't have any plans for that, Ada. I think the facility we have in Florida is completely capable of servicing those regions, just as Some of our competitors are actually located in California, and they regularly participate in the Florida market here. So we're trying to make it a little bit more uncomfortable for them in their home market.

28:26 Okay. Another question that I had was what, in your press release, I believe you talked a little bit about your potential acquisitions. that your balance sheet is strong to accommodate that. And what would you be looking for in a potential acquisition?

28:48 We are looking for, well, mainly companies now that would give us an expanded geographical presence for our PERC business. So they would be located in the United States. maybe operating companies that service wastewater clients that would be additive to PERC. We're not looking to expand our manufacturing business from that standpoint, which is also in the United States, but we are certainly looking at potential opportunities to expand PERC's footprint.

29:35 and we're also looking at companies involved in membrane technology. We're very familiar with that. That would perhaps give us access to new markets. There's a number of technologies we've looked at over the years. We continue to look at companies that may give us a competitive edge from a technology standpoint. We've looked at a couple of those recently and we're always interested in enhancing the scope of products that we can offer to our existing customers and even getting into perhaps new markets It's potentially highly profitable because it's a niche market that involves the use of membrane technology.

30:13 Thank you. You're welcome. Again, if you have a question, please press star then 1. Our next question will come from Steve Percoco with Lark Research. You may now go ahead. Okay, thank you. I have a question. If you answered it, I apologize. Can you give us a better perspective on the new plant that you're bidding on in Cayman? Is that going to be additive to the market? Is it going to replace capacity in the market? I presume that Water Authority is going to operate the plant, but maybe I'm wrong about that.

31:04 If I'm wrong, would you have an opportunity to bid on the operations of that? Also, where is the plant located? Does it affect your existing owned plants?

31:23 So Steve, the project that we bid on was a design, build, and operate agreement for the Water Authority. So it's a 10-year operating tail, which is included in the contract. There's no financing component. So if we were successful, we would get paid for the plant when it's completed. The plant is located in Georgetown, which is the government utilities service area, so it would not impact our service area, our retail business. And I'm not sure what their plans are on whether this is additive or whether it would – there is an older plant in the area that there's been some talk of them retiring that, but we're not sure what they're doing.

32:21 Uh-huh. Given that with the opening back up, there's still some uncertainty about how strong tourism is going to come back, I would imagine. I would think that they would gauge this plant or at least wait to see how strong the tourism comes back. Is that are they just planning to go ahead with it no matter what at this point?

33:01 The government utilities service area did not experience the declines in demand that we did in our retail area. The government services, the local population centers, we service The tourism business on the Seven Mile Beach, which all the big hotels are located within our service area. So I presume they need the capacity just based on their normal growth projections, which have not been skewed by the pandemic, comparative to our demand.

33:49 Okay. All right, well, great. That's all I had. Good luck with your bid.

33:56 Okay, thank you very much, Steve. Again, if you have a question, please press star then 1. It appears there are no further questions. This concludes our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the call back over to Mr. McTaggart. Sir, please go ahead.

34:23 Thanks, Anthony. I appreciate everybody joining the call today, and I look forward to speaking with you hopefully again in May when we release our first quarter 2022 results. Thank you. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Before we conclude today's call, I would like to provide the company's safe harbor statement that includes cautions regarding forward-looking statements made during today's call. The information that we have provided in this conference call includes forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including but not limited statements regarding the company's future, revenue, future plans, objectives, expectations and events, assumptions, and estimates.

35:13 Forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of the words or phrases usually containing the words believe, estimate, project, intend, expect, should, will, or similar expressions. Statements that are not historical facts are based on the company's current expectations, beliefs, assumptions, estimates, forecasts, and projections for its businesses and the industry and markets related to its business. Any forward-thinking statement made during this conference call are not guaranteed of future performance and involve certain risks Thank you very much. Receivable in the Bahamas, the possible adverse impact of COVID-19 virus on the company's business, and various other risks.

36:22 As detailed in the company's periodic report filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. For more information about risks and uncertainties associated with the company's business, please refer to the management discussion and analysis of financial condition and results of operations and risk factors sections of the company's SEC filings. including but not limited to its annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. Any forward-looking statement made during the conference call speaks as of today's date. The company expressly disclaims any obligations or undertaking to update or revise any forward-looking statements made during the conference call to reflect any changes in its expectations with regard thereto or any changes in its events, conditions, or circumstances on which any forward-looking statement is based.

37:13 except as required by law. Before we end today's conference call, I would like to remind everyone that this call will be available for replay starting later this evening. Please refer to yesterday's earnings release for dial-in replay instructions available via the company's website at www.cwco.com. Thank you for attending today's presentation. This concludes the conference call. You may now disconnect.