Birchtech Corp. (BCHT) Earnings Call Transcript

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Birchtech's Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] This conference is being recorded today, Thursday, November 12, 2026. And the earnings press release accompanying this conference call was issued after the market closed today. On our call today are Birchtech's President and CEO, Richard MacPherson; and CFO, Michael Mioska. Before we get started, I'll read a disclaimer about forward-looking statements. This conference call may contain, in addition to historical information, forward-looking statements that are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 or forward-looking information under applicable Canadian security laws regarding Birchtech. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements that express the company's intentions, beliefs, expectations, strategies, predictions or any other statements relating to its future earnings, activities, events or conditions. These statements are based on current expectations, estimates and projections about the company's business based in part on assumptions made by management. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Therefore, actual outcomes and results may and are likely to differ materially from what is expressed or forecasted in the forward-looking statements due to numerous factors discussed from time to time in Birchtech's periodic filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission or Canadian security regulators. In addition, such statements could be affected by risks and uncertainties related to factors beyond the company's control that may cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. During today's call, the company will discuss adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP financial measure. Adjusted EBITDA is presented as a supplemental measure of the company's performance and exclusive of certain items that the company believes do not reflect the core operations of the company. Such non-GAAP measures should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for GAAP financial information. Additionally, the company's definition of these measures may differ from those used by other companies, making comparisons across organizations difficult. And finally, this conference call contains time-sensitive information that reflects management's best analysis only as of the date and time of this conference call. The company does not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect future events, information or circumstances that arise after the date of this conference call. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to President and CEO, Richard MacPherson. Richard, the floor is yours.

Thank you, operator, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to our third quarter 2026 financial results conference call. I'd like to begin with an update on our patent litigation. On October 22, we filed our appellee brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in response to the appeal brought by the CERT defendants. The brief response to each of CERT's challenges on liability, the jury instructions and damages, and drives directly on the District Court's owned pretrial and post-trial opinions, in which the court reaffirmed the legal standard applied that trial and rejected many of the same arguments CERT is now using on appeal. We've asked the Federal Court to affirm the jury's verdict and the approximately $78 million trial judgment in full. Just as importantly, the appeal does not stop the clock. Post-judgment interest continues to accrue while the appeal is pending. It's now been more than 7 years since we launched our patent enforcement program in 2019. And over that period, we have received approximately $37 million in license fees and settlements from utilities, every interparty's review petition challenged our FDA patents have been dismissed, removed prior to institution or resolved. Separately, the one remaining case from our consolidated Iowa actions was remanded in August to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, where it was originally filed. And the previously imposed stay has been lifted. Our objective has not changed: collect the judgment in full with interest and convert those relationships into long-term product supply customers. We also took an important step on capital allocation during the quarter. In September, we commenced purchases under our $5 million share repurchase program, reflecting our view that our shares are undervalued. Repurchases under the program may be made from time to time, subject to applicable legal and regulatory requirements, market conditions, share price and other factors. We view the program as a disciplined complement to, not a substitute for the investments we are making to scale our water platform, and Mike will walk through the details in his remarks. Now turning to operations. Our business delivered third quarter revenues of approximately $5.5 million compared to an overall number of $7.4 million in the third quarter of last year, and that period included a $2.6 million onetime license fee. Excluding licensing, our product revenues grew 15.7% year-over-year, driven by stronger demand in our mercury emissions business and sales for the water treatment market. And our SG&A expenses decreased by 35%, primarily due to lower professional fees, as the prior year period included significant higher legal fees associated with that license that generated the revenues during the period. Revenues also increased approximately 45% sequentially from the second quarter, consistent with the seasonal strength we typically see in the second half of the year. The U.S. coal market remains stable, and continued federal support for coal plant operation reinforces the demand for proven emissions control solutions like our patented SEA platform, extending the operational runway for our core air quality business and strengthening the foundation on which our water business is now being built. Now let me provide some additional color on our air business. Third quarter product revenues, which are primarily derived from our sorbent product sales, increased 15.7% year-over-year to approximately $5.5 million. That growth was driven by the mix of plants running and increased demand for coal-fired generation, supported by more extreme weather conditions and higher natural gas prices. The third quarter has historically been one of our strongest periods for mercury emissions control, as summer cooling demand drives higher coal-fired generation, and with it, greater sorbent consumption at the plants that we serve. Our SEA platform remains a cornerstone of the company's air business. The SEA technology is used in approximately 80% of U.S. coal-fired power plants that use sorbent technologies. And with all IPR challenges concluded, our commercial focus is squarely on deepening those relationships. As incumbent supply arrangements conclude at utilities that we've already licensed under Birchtech, we're now positioned our sorbent formulations and the applied expertise that comes with them for adoption into their day-to-day operations. The demand backdrop remains constructive. Electricity demand from data centers and AI continues to rise, and coal-fired generation continues to play an important role in grid reliability. We expect this environment to support a growing pipeline of supply conversations with utilities over the coming years. As we close out 2026 and look ahead to 2027, the air division's road map remains centered on 3 objectives. One, convert unlicensed users of our technology into licensees and ultimately, long-term supply customers. Two, grow reoccurring activated carbon sales across our roster of licensed utilities and also settle our last major case with the Midwest defendant. And three, direct the cash flow generated by this mature high-margin business towards scaling of our water platform, where we see the greatest long-term return potential. In short, the air business continues to serve at our self-funding engine, generated both the capital and the market credibility that allow us to invest in water while continuing to deliver value to our shareholders. Now let me turn to the water, where our focus this quarter was on building the commercial infrastructure required to scale. Our Design Centers remain the foundation of our data-first approach to water treatment. We continue to expand the capabilities of our Analytical Design Center, which now supports the evaluation of a broader range of treatment media using utilities own water, helping smaller systems identify the most cost-effective path to compliance before they commit their capital. Through our collaboration with national engineering firm, civil and environmental consultants, RSSCT testing performed at our Analytical Design Center is available to hundreds of water utility clients that they serve across the country. And we continue to support multiple national engineering firms with a combination of RSSCT analytics and carbon reactivation work on research projects with government entities and larger municipalities. Every one of these engagements produce performance data that helps the utility select the route treatment approach and positions Birchtech as a natural partner when that utility moves to full scale. On the product side, our SEA-IX nuclear-grade ion exchange rosin line which we launched in March, continues to target an estimated $200-plus million addressable market, spending nuclear power, coal-fired utilities and municipal water treatment. And we have since expanded that line with rosin SEA-IX to remove boron and heavy metals. Alongside granular activated carbon, ion exchange rosins are recognized by the U.S. EPA as a best available technology for many contaminants, including PFOS, which allows us to match the right media to each customer's water chemistry rather than enforcing a one-size-fits-all solution. Our water treatment solutions business continues to collaborate with engineering firms and utilities on integrated projects that may include end-to-end media change-out services, vessel replacements and shorter-term pilot testing, primarily in wastewater applications for water utilities as well as coal and nuclear power plants. Our largest long-term opportunity remains with our Carbon Rejuvenation technology. Our improved thermal reactivation process has demonstrated that rejuvenated granular activated carbon performs comparable to virgin carbon for PFOS removal, which could mean meaningful lower life cycle media costs for utilities while reducing that waste. As part of our efforts to establish commercial scale reactivation capabilities, we also evaluated potential acquisition opportunities. In September, we announced a proposed acquisition under a 9 bonding term agreement. Following further evaluation, however, we decided not to proceed with the acquisition and terminated the term sheet. Separately, we recently entered into an agreement with an industry partner for the supply of granular activated carbon, which we believe will provide a faster, more capital-efficient route into the water treatment market than the proposed acquisition. Under the agreement, we expect to begin supplying high-grade granular activated carbon to water treatment customers in early 2027. Starting at 2,000 tons per year without requiring any capital expenditure on our part to establish this initial supply capability for the water market. We expect this agreement to generate meaningful granular activated carbon supply revenues beginning in '27, while supporting the water market with a high-grade product and the capacity to scale the demand. We plan to expand our sales team as the supply ramps up, given that the total supply once dully up to capacity, is approximately 10,000 tons per year. At the same time, we continue to advance our Carbon Rejuvenation strategy, including the development of our first reactivation facility. In developing our own facility, built around our proprietary process, allows us to align that investment with the growth of the water treatment market and scale capacity as the demand grows. Beyond that facility, our strategy contemplates additional reactivation capacity developed in partnership with water utilities. We are now in discussions with prospective water utilities, those partners and the engineering firms that serve them. Data generated at our Design Centers is being used to define the permitting requirements, capital expenditure parameters and projected operating costs for our planned reactivation capacity, and we look forward to sharing more as these efforts progress. The regulatory backdrop continues to enforce the need for affordable solutions. The federal drinking water limits of 4 parts per trillion for PFOA and PFAS remain in place. And while the EPA has proposed allowing eligible systems up to 2 additional years to reach compliance, the underlying obligation is not going away. And under that proposal, systems with PFOA or PFAS levels at or above 12 parts per trillion that request the extension would still need to implement interim treatment measures for the meantime. For many utilities, particularly smaller and rural systems, the question is no longer whether to treat, but how to do so affordably. That is precisely the problem our water platform is designed to solve. That focus on smaller systems is also why we were pleased to welcome Charlie Cooper as Business Development Manager on October 1. Charlie brings 21 years of hands-on water treatment experience, from industrial mine water discharge to municipal drinking water, including 5 years overseeing the West Virginia Rural Water Association Emerging Contaminants Program, where he helped systems across the states prepare for new testing, treatment and regulatory demands. With nearly 50,000 community water systems nationwide, many of them small utilities with limited internal resources, Charlie's experience will help us engage these systems earlier and connect them with practical, cost-effective solutions including the potential savings of Carbon Rejuvenation. From here, our water strategy is about conversion and scale, turning testing engagements into reoccurring service and product revenue, advancing our carbon rejuvenation capabilities and continuing to broaden our product line. Complementary to established air business, our clean water technologies provide a second substantial revenue stream that we expect to grow meaningfully over the next several years. With that, I'd now like to turn the call over to our CFO, Mike Mesa, to walk through some key financial details from the third quarter of 2026. Mike?

Thank you, Rick, and good afternoon, everyone. I will keep my section to a concise review of the financial results for the third quarter of 2026. For a full breakdown of our financial results, please view our regulatory filings. Revenues totaled $5.5 million for the third quarter of 2026 as compared to $7.4 million for the same year ago quarter. Product revenues increased 15.7% in to $5.5 million compared to $4.7 million in the prior year period. This increase was primarily due to the mix of plants running and increased demand for coal in connection with our mercury emissions business driven by more extreme weather conditions and higher natural gas prices. Additionally, sales were recognized for the water treatment market in 2026 compared to none in the comparable period of 2025, the decrease in total revenues reflects $2.6 million of onetime upfront license fees recognized in the third quarter of 2025 under new licensing agreements with utilities, for which there were no comparable transactions in the third quarter of 2026. Gross profit totaled $1.6 million or 29.9% of total revenues, as compared to $4 million or 54.8% of total revenues in the same year-ago quarter. The decrease was primarily driven by the shift in revenue mix away from the higher-margin licensing revenues recognized in the third quarter of 2025, partially offset by greater product sales in the current period. We continue to invest in the expansion of our water business while maintaining discipline across the rest of our cost structure. SG&A expenses decreased by 35% to $1.8 million in the third quarter of 2026 as compared to $2.7 million in the same year ago quarter. The decrease was primarily due to lower professional fees, as the prior year period included significantly higher legal fees associated with licensing activities. R&D expenses remained approximately flat at $0.5 million in the third quarter of 2026, which was comparable to $0.5 million in the same year ago quarter. R&D expenses relate to research conducted to develop water treatment products utilizing new sorbent technologies. Net loss for the third quarter of 2026 totaled $0.3 million or $0.01 per basic and diluted share as compared to net income of $0.8 million or $0.04 per basic and diluted share in the same year ago quarter. Adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP measure, totaled a loss of $0.5 million in the third quarter of 2026 compared to income of $1 million for the third quarter of 2025. Cash as of September 30, 2026, totaled $10.8 million with no debt as compared to $2.2 million as of December 31, 2025. Turning to capital allocation. During Q3, cash allocations for the quarter included the continued investment in the development of our water platform, including development work on our first Carbon Rejuvenation facility and the purchase of lab equipment as well as operating expenses, working capital and the repurchase of the company's shares under our stock buyback program. Going forward, we expect quarterly cash use to remain in a similar range and to manage expenditures for the contributions of seasonally stronger quarters. We believe our current cash position supports our planned investments. In mid-September, we repurchased shares under our $5 million share repurchase program, buying back 103,864 shares through September 30 at an average price of $1.64 per share funded from available cash and all of those shares have since been retired. And as a reminder, our liabilities on the balance sheet include a $7.1 million profit share liability that is nonrecourse and only repayable when certain proceeds are collected from our litigation activities. This completes my prepared comments. Now before we begin our question-and-answer session, I'd like to turn the call back to Rick for some closing remarks. Rick?

Thank you, Mike. To sum up, the third quarter was defined by steady execution. We grew product revenues 15.7% year-over-year and reduced our SG&A by 35%, filed the resolute appellee brief in support of our approximate $78 million final judgment, and began to repurchase shares under our share repurchase program. We had a dedicated business development leadership for rural and small water systems, and continue to advance our first Carbon Rejuvenation facility. As we close out 2026 and move into 2027, our priorities are clear. Appeals through the pursuit of full collection of the judgment with interest, convert licensed coal-fired utilities into reoccurring supply customers, advanced offtake agreements for our first planned Carbon Rejuvenation facility, and expand our presence across the water treatment market through our design centers, product lines and strategic partnerships. We entered the final stretch of the year from a position of strength with a debt-free balance sheet and clear priorities. I'm confident in this team's ability to capture the significant opportunity in front of us. And with that, operator, please open the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions] And our first question, we'll hear from Rob Brown with Lake Street Capital.

I just want to follow-up, what are kind of the next steps on the appeal process? Rick, can you hear me?

Just one moment, please.

Yes. Rob, sorry, the line was muted on me. Yes, with regards to the appeal process, we've filed our response and expect that they will have a final response to that. I think they've got either 30 or 45 days to do that, but our fund response to their appeal has been submitted. I think once they do a response back again on that, it moves forward to the court review. I may be off on that, but that's my understanding today.