(AKRON, Ohio – November 12, 2024) – Babcock & Wilcox Enterprises, Inc. ("B&W" or the "Company") (NYSE: BW) announced results for the third quarter of 2024.
Energy Demand
"We believe that we are in a unique position to leverage the significant increase in base-load generation demand in North America and around the world," said Kenneth Young, B&W Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. "Consumer demand for energy – either from the grid or behind the meter – along with increased energy needs from utility and large industrial clients are providing even greater opportunities for us to deliver our broad range of technology and considerable expertise in the areas of fossil fuels, natural gas, synthetic fuels and renewable energy to help meet that demand. We believe the increasing need for power and electricity fueled by demand from AI data centers, electric vehicles and expanding
economies will be key drivers for growth across our broad range of technologies and we are seeing our utility and industrial clients, including in the oil and gas sector, continuing to increase capacity utilizing our core technologies while evaluating further power generation augmentation through biomass, hydrogen and natural gas. We expect these tail-winds to increase in the coming years, as the amount of front-end engineering design (FEED) opportunities have grown. Today we have 12 to 15 active FEED studies that represent potential projects of over $10亿 in revenues in our pipeline. We believe that these expected industry tailwinds provide a strong foundation for B&W to grow in 2025 and beyond as we continue to drive for higher margins and improved cash flows."
"Overall, we continue to see strong demand for our diverse portfolio of technologies that help drive our increased backlog and higher implied bookings of over $80000万. As further evidence of the opportunities for growth, we are excited to announce that we have now received full notice to proceed on the $24600万 natural gas conversion project in Indiana," Young added.
BrightLoop and ClimateBright
"Our investments across our ClimateBright suite of decarbonization technologies to support the world’s energy transition are progressing well and notably we continued to move forward on our BrightLoop project in Massillon, Ohio, with a target of producing hydrogen by early 2026," Young said. “We are working on several carbon capture opportunities that utilize our SolveBright post combustion CO2 capture technology and our oxy-combustion technology that injects pure oxygen into the combustion process to significantly reduce CO2 emissions. We recently announced a FEED study in Sweden that utilizes our post-combustion technology with an existing waste-to-energy facility. In addition to our work in support of the BrightLoop project in Massillon, Ohio, we also are further developing our BrightLoop projects in West Virginia, Wyoming and Louisiana and are engaging in FEED studies for BrightLoop with various customers in Canada and around the world.”
Asset Sales and Debt Refinancing
“During the quarter, we completed the sale of our SPIG/GMAb business for net proceeds of $3370万, which improves our balance sheet to support growth and aligns with our ongoing strategy to sell certain non-strategic businesses. Combined, we have raised over $11600万 from divestiture of two assets in 2024. These sales reaffirm our objective to strengthen our balance sheet,” Young continued. “We remain in dialogue related to the sale of other non-strategic assets as previously discussed, as well as potential refinancing options."
Increased Margin Performance
“Our third quarter results demonstrated significant margin improvement, reflecting our strategic direction as evidenced by strong year-over-year adjusted EBITDA and net income increases. These results include two one-time items, a non-cash impairment on the recent SPIG divestiture and a settlement on a maintenance contract to avoid 10 years of potential significant future losses. Excluding these two one-time charges, we met adjusted EBITDA and net income expectations for the quarter. Looking ahead, we continue to expect increasing operating momentum driven by our Thermal and Environmental segments, as the fourth quarter is historically a seasonally strong period for B&W’s businesses, with increased services and project schedules from our customers," Young said. “Our business as a whole prior to divestitures is on target to achieve our stated goals in 2024. When adjusting the targets to reflect the recent divestitures, our EBITDA target range is around $9100万 to $9500万, excluding BrightLoop and ClimateBright expenses. Our global pipeline of over $90亿 in identified project