管理層發言
Greetings. Welcome to the AirJoule Technologies' Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Call. Please note, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to turn the conference over to your host, Tom Divine, Vice President of Investor Relations and Finance. Thank you, you may now begin.
Thank you, and good morning. With me today for our full year earnings call are Matt Jore, Chief Executive Officer; Pat Eilers, Executive Chairman; Bryan Barton, Chief Commercialization Officer; and Stephen Pang, Chief Financial Officer. During this call, we'll be referring to a presentation, which is available on the webcast platform and on the Investors section of our website. I would like to point out that many of the comments made during the prepared remarks and during the Q&A section are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could affect our actual results and plans. Many of these risks are beyond our control and are discussed in more detail in the risk factors in the forward-looking statements sections of our filings with the SEC. Although we believe the expectations expressed are based on reasonable assumptions, they are not guarantees of future performance, and actual results or developments may differ materially. And now I'll turn it over to Matt Jore.
Thanks, Tom. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our full year 2025 earnings call. This is an important call for AirJoule. 2025 was the year we built the foundation for commercialization and 2026 is the year we intend to convert that foundation into a commercial pipeline to revenue. Before I review our accomplishments and outline our plan for the year ahead, I want to take a moment to talk about something that has become impossible to ignore, the growing urgency of water resilience. In Corpus Christi, Texas, home to one of the nation's largest petroleum ports, the main water reservoir has dropped below 10% capacity, its lowest level on record. The city's own projections indicate it could reach a water emergency within months, meaning supply will be unable to meet demand. The Governor of Texas has publicly warned that the state may need to intervene. Industrial operations that produce jet fuel for Texas airports and support billions of dollars in economic activity face the prospect of curtailment due to lack of water. The city's proposed long-term solution is a desalination plant that will cost over $1 billion and is years away from producing any water. Meanwhile, in the Middle East, the unfortunate ongoing conflict has caused immense human suffering. Our thoughts are with the people and the communities affected there. It has also exposed the critical vulnerability for the more than 100 million people who depend on desalination for their water supply. Desalination plants in Bahrain have been damaged by military strikes, facilities in the UAE and Kuwait have been hit by missile debris. As a recent columnist observed, water is now more strategically important than oil. These desalination plants are centralized facilities that represent single points of failure for entire populations. These risks are real, and they are often underappreciated until they become urgent. They stem from the same structural problem: the world's water infrastructure is concentrated, brittle and increasingly vulnerable to disruption. Whether the stress comes from drought, industrial and population growth or geopolitical conflict, the result is the same. Communities and industries are exposed to water supply risks with very limited alternatives. AirJoule offers a fundamentally different approach: distributed water generation from the atmosphere that operates independently of pipelines, reservoirs and centralized desalination. AirJoule systems generate water on site behind the meter and at the point of need. They require no municipal water connection. These systems produce pure distilled and potable water from ambient air using waste heat. We've proven this in the field. Over the past year, AirJoule systems have operated in Texas, Arizona, California and Dubai. The macro tailwinds that we discussed on prior calls remain in full force and have been exacerbated and exposed by the current war. Data center expansion and the onshoring of advanced manufacturing are exponentially driving an increase in industrial water and power demand. But the events of recent weeks have elevated the conversation from efficiency and sustainability to resilience and security and even survival. That shift is accelerating interest in exactly what AirJoule can deliver. In our year-end call in March of last year, we laid out a clear set of objectives for 2025: validate our technology in the field, develop products for commercial launch, strengthen our partnerships toward building a commercial pipeline and ensure sufficient capitalization to support commercialization. We delivered on these commitments. On technology validation, we said we would move from laboratory demonstrations to real-world field deployments. In Dubai, we operated an AirJoule system at a government advanced technology facility showcasing our technology to public and private sector customers across the Middle East. In Hubbard, Texas, we deployed the first U.S. field demonstration of AirJoule, showing our ability to produce pure water from air and generating months of operational data across diverse environmental conditions. At Arizona State University, an independent academic evaluation is ongoing in one of the most demanding air environments in the United States. On product development, we said we would advance our products toward commercial readiness. Last year, we made a deliberate engineering decision to focus our initial builds on our so-called A250 platform, which we'll now be referring to as our AirJoule Core product. This is our core two-chamber system optimized for industrial dehumidification and water generation. This allowed us to build, deploy and learn from multiple systems in the field, and those learnings have directly informed the design of our A1000, which we'll now be referring to as AirJoule Prime. This is our larger water generator for industrial-scale applications that we're currently building. Both products share a common sorbent chamber architecture and produce distilled and potable water that meets FDA bottled water standards. On partnerships, we said we would leverage our strategic relationships to accelerate commercialization. GE Vernova invested additional capital and commenced a strategic waste heat integration project with us. We'll also be deploying an AirJoule system at GE Vernova's New York facility to support our waste heat strategic project with them and to be used as a demonstration system for GE Vernova's customers. Additionally, we were selected for the Net Zero Innovation Hub to showcase our AirJoule system for Google, Microsoft, Data4 and other leading data center infrastructure companies. We established defense sector credibility through ACRADA with the U.S. Army and an agreement with a defense contractor for anti-corrosion applications. And we announced an exclusive Middle East distribution agreement with TenX Investment, an Emirati-owned company with well-established relationships across government, commercial and industrial sectors throughout the Gulf. On the commercial pipeline, we said we would develop strong customer engagements with a path to commercial sales. We are now actively engaged with customers across several industry verticals. We introduced the water purchase agreement business model, and we developed a defined, repeatable customer engagement process that is advancing prospects toward commercial deployment. Bryan will take you through that process in detail shortly. On the balance sheet, we said we would ensure sufficient capitalization to support commercialization. We completed a $15 million private placement anchored by GE Vernova, filed an S-3 shelf registration and completed a $23 million equity offering in January 2026, ensuring that we have the runway to execute on our plans with no debt. Let me highlight the key milestones from the fourth quarter and the first several weeks of 2026. Some of these were discussed on our third quarter call in November, but I want to place them in the context of the full year and the momentum we're carrying into 2026. During the fourth quarter, we continued to advance our defense sector relationships. ACRADA with the U.S. Army, which we announced in October, is focused on integrating AirJoule with tactical waste heat recovery systems to deliver resilient water supply for forward-deployed troops. In December, we announced a collaboration with Red Dot Ranch to bring off-grid water solutions to rural residential communities in Pescadero, California, demonstrating AirJoule's value proposition for distributed residential water generation. We deployed an AirJoule Core system in January and completed the first stage pilot in February. In December, we also commissioned an AirJoule Core system at Arizona State University for independent academic evaluation by Dr. Paul Westerhoff and his team of globally recognized experts in atmospheric water harvesting. In January, we announced an exclusive distribution agreement with TenX, providing AirJoule with market access across six Gulf countries, and we commenced our partnership in the Net Zero Innovation Hub program in Denmark that I mentioned earlier. Looking ahead, 2026 is the year when AirJoule transitions to commercial pipeline building. We expect to secure multiple long-term customer commitments across data center, industrial, defense and international markets. Importantly, the customer relationships we build in 2026 are laying the foundation for scaled commercial business in 2027 and beyond. As I mentioned earlier, one of our recent announcements was our exclusive distribution agreement with TenX across the Middle East, a region where water demand has far exceeded natural supply and where recent conflict has further exposed its fragility. I'd like to turn it over to Pat Eilers to discuss the significance of this part of the world in terms of energy, water and the opportunity it represents for an AirJoule solution in that region. Pat?
Yes. Thanks, Matt. I have spent a considerable time in the Middle East region over the past two years with AirJoule and the last decade since my BlackRock days and I want to share some perspective on why it is an important region for AirJoule. The Middle East is one of the most water-stressed regions on earth. Gulf nations depend on desalination for 70% to 90% of their drinking water. At the same time, the region is experiencing massive growth in data center development, advanced manufacturing and infrastructure investment. Each of these sectors requires substantial quantities of water. Governments and enterprises across the Gulf are actively seeking technologies that can strengthen water security while reducing energy intensity. Matt described the recent attacks on desalination infrastructure in Bahrain and elsewhere in the Gulf. Those events have exposed the vulnerability that has concerned regional leaders for years, with the concentration of critical water supply in a small number of centralized coastal facilities. Communities have already lost access to drinking water when individual plants have gone offline. The fragility of this infrastructure is now visible to the entire world. This is exactly why distributed water generation matters. AirJoule systems operate independently of desalination infrastructure and can be located where water is needed rather than relying on pipelines or trucks. It can be deployed on site at industrial facilities, military installations and community water systems to produce pure distilled water from the atmosphere. This capability has significant value in a region where water resilience is now a national security priority. We recognize that the current conflict in the region creates uncertainty around the near-term timeline for deployments. We are monitoring the situation closely and working with TenX, our partner, to ensure we are positioned to move forward when conditions are favorable. At the same time, these events are reinforcing the strategic urgency of water resilience across the Gulf and the conversations we are having with prospective customers reflect that urgency. We are confident that the long-term opportunity in the Middle East is substantial, and we intend to support the increased need for water resiliency. Now I will turn it over to Bryan Barton, our Chief Commercialization Officer, to discuss our product roadmap and commercialization plans for 2026. Over to you, Bryan.
Thanks, Pat. Let's start with the AirJoule A250, which we're now referring to as AirJoule Core. As Matt mentioned, we made a deliberate decision in 2025 to focus our initial system builds on the Core platform. The Core is a two-chamber system that shares the same sorbent chamber architecture as our larger AirJoule Prime water generator. By building, deploying and iterating on the Core systems throughout the year, we accomplished two things simultaneously. First, we gained important engineering learnings that helped us improve the overall design of the system. Second and equally important, we used the Core system as a proof-of-value surrogate for the Prime system. Every Core deployment demonstrates to customers the performance, water quality and economics of the AirJoule platform, directly derisking the pathway to Prime commercial deployment. We are finalizing the Core product design and preparing for UL and NSF certification, which are required steps before commercial launch. We expect the Core product to be commercially available in late Q4 2026. For industrial dehumidification applications, there will be an additional Core product that will be optimized for maintaining low humidity environments in a range of approximately 30% to 40% relative humidity with significant energy savings compared to incumbent desiccant wheel technology. For this product, we are targeting commercialization in 2027. On cost reduction, we have made substantial progress. We have sourced lower cost components across multiple subsystems and are evaluating their reliability in our current builds. We are also simplifying the overall system design which reduces both manufacturing complexity and cost. The sorbent chamber remains the only custom manufactured component. The balance of the bill of materials consists of commercially available parts. Turning to the Prime: this is our larger water generator designed for industrial-scale water production using waste heat. Prime is the product that the majority of our data center and industrial water customers are ultimately looking for. The learnings from our Core systems have directly informed the Prime design, and we are building our first Prime system now in Newark, Delaware. Once operational, it will serve as a critical outdoor showcase unit, enabling customers to see the full scale system operating in real-world conditions. We will provide updates on Prime deployment timing as the build progresses and we gain operational experience with the full-scale system. Water productivity per chamber continues to improve through ongoing optimization of our sorbent performance and cycle tuning across a range of temperature and humidity conditions. These improvements directly translate to better economics for our customers, and we expect to continue to make gains as we move into commercial production. We are also initiating a dedicated optimization of the Core platform for the stand-alone dehumidifier market, focused on system performance optimization for dry storage and anticorrosion applications. This targets a large installed base of approximately 1.3 million industrial dehumidification systems globally and our longer-term HVAC integration work with Carrier continues to benefit from the engineering and productization work underway on both the Core and Prime systems. On manufacturing, our coating line is operational in Newark, producing the sorbent coated contactors central to AirJoule's operation. We are advancing process development to establish a scalable, repeatable manufacturing process. Our Newark facility has sufficient production capacity to address expected sales volume through 2027. As demand increases beyond that, we expect to transition to contract manufacturing for both contactor production and full system assembly. We're initiating those conversations now and preparing for assembly documentation required to support that transition. On Slide 9, I want to walk us through our process for converting strong customer interest that Matt and Pat described into commercial deployments. We have developed a defined repeatable customer engagement process with four stages. Stage 1 is discovery and evaluation, where we assess product market fit for a specific customer, benchmark AirJoule's performance against the customers' alternatives and complete a technoeconomic analysis. This stage typically takes one to three months, and we are actively engaged with customers across several industry verticals. Stage 2 is a proof of value. In some cases, the technoeconomic analysis from Stage 1 or prior deployments are sufficient for customers to move to commercial structuring. In other cases, we deploy a demonstration unit on site and validate performance in the customers' operating environment. The customer validates water quality, observes waste heat integration, economics, and confirms real-world performance and reliability. Our deployments in Hubbard, at ASU, in Dubai and in Pescadero have all served as proof-of-value demonstrations. Today, the Core system is our primary proof-of-value platform because it operates on the same architecture as the Prime and demonstrates the same sorbent performance, water quality and energy economics. As Prime becomes operational, it will serve as an additional proof-of-value asset at full scale. This stage typically takes six to twelve months. Stage 3 is commercial structuring. Once performance is validated, we define the commercial model, which could be a water purchase agreement, direct unit sale or a lease. We also align on product configuration, site engineering, deployment scope and pricing. This stage typically takes three to six months. Stage 4 is deployment and scale. Multiunit commercial deployment, expansion within the customer's portfolio and across geographies and recurring revenue through service, maintenance and WPA contracts. This is the long-term value creation engine. I should note that these stages are not strictly sequential. For customers with strong strategic urgency or established familiarity with our technology, commercial structuring discussions often begin while proof-of-value work is still underway. This parallel progression can compress the overall timeline from initial engagement to commercial deployment. Putting it all together, here's what to expect from us in 2026. The Core system for both industrial dehumidification and smaller scale water production applications will be our first commercial products to launch late Q4 this year following completion of certifications. Our first Prime system is being built now, and once operational, it will serve as our showcase for industrial scale water generation customers. Through our partnerships with the Net Zero Innovation Hub for Data Centers, we expect to deploy an AirJoule system later this year. This deployment will directly demonstrate AirJoule's performance for Google, Microsoft, Data4, Danfoss and other leading data center companies. Through TenX, initial commercial deployments in the Middle East are planned for late 2026, subject to regional conditions. And across our defense partnerships, we anticipate deployments in 2026 in both water resiliency and anticorrosion applications. And in the residential market, we're planning for additional partnerships and deployments that can unlock new developments in water-scarce regions. Through these various deployments and partnerships, our focus in 2026 is on building the deployed reference base in contracted customer relationships that support scaled commercial activity in 2027 and beyond. Every deployment we execute this year validates AirJoule for an entire category of customers and advances our pipeline toward commercial conversion. The customer engagement cycle we are outlining is the engine that converts interest into commercial deployments. We're advancing customers through this process with the discipline and the pipeline is growing across multiple verticals and geographies. Now I will turn it over to Stephen for the financial update.
Thank you, Bryan. I will now walk through our financial results for the fourth quarter and full year 2025 and also provide some color on our 2026 outlook and liquidity position for the year. We can turn to the financial results slide in the presentation. As a reminder, AirJoule Technologies accounts for its 50% ownership in the JV with GE Vernova using the equity method. The numbers I will discuss are for AirJoule Technologies and the results from the joint venture are reflected in the loss from investment in AirJoule JV line. For the fourth quarter, AirJoule Technologies reported net operating expenses of $3.2 million. This is inclusive of approximately $0.7 million in administrative and engineering expenses reimbursed to us by the joint venture under a statement of work. For the full year, net operating expenses at AirJoule Technologies were $13.6 million, which compares to $11.2 million in 2024. The year-over-year increase was driven primarily by a $4.2 million increase in noncash stock-based compensation expense and is offset by lower professional fees and a shift in the R&D line from AirJoule to the joint venture. Our net loss for the full year is $9 million. The primary components below the operating line were a loss in investment AirJoule JV of $39.3 million offset by a noncash gain of approximately $25 million from changes in the fair value of earn-out liabilities and subject vesting shares. The $39.3 million JV loss compares to $5.3 million for the full year 2024. The primary driver of the variance is the noncash impairment of in-process R&D that reduced net income at the joint venture. This is a noncash accounting adjustment related to a change of valuation of intellectual property contributed to JV at formation. It has no impact on our joint venture's operations cash position or our ability to execute on the commercialization plan. Now let's turn to the joint venture. The total JV cash outflows for the year were approximately $18 million, which is consistent with the guidance provided on our third quarter call. The JV received capital contributions totaling $17.8 million from AirJoule Technologies during the year. $5 million of that came from GE Vernova through the April 2025 equity investment in AirJoule Technologies. The joint venture remains in the development phase as there is nominal revenue of approximately $110,000 during the fourth quarter from the sale of AirJoule Core systems to Arizona State University. AirJoule Technologies ended 2025 with approximately $22 million of cash on the balance sheet. Subsequent to year-end, we completed an equity offering in January 2026 that raised approximately $22 million in net proceeds. Following that offer, our combined pro forma cash position across AirJoule Technologies with the JV was approximately $44 million with no debt. With respect to liquidity, we have sufficient cash to fund our operations, the JV and our planned commercial deployments through 2027. We expect our combined cash spend across the corporate entity and the JV in 2026 to be approximately $25 million. The January offering, combined with our existing cash and liquidity, provides a clear runway to execute on the commercialization plan that Matt and Bryan have both outlined. Looking ahead to 2026 at the joint venture level, we are budgeting approximately $17 million to $19 million in operating expenses to support the productization, manufacturing and commercial deployment activities that Bryan described. This is in line with our 2025 spend level. At AirJoule Technologies, our corporate operating expenses are expected to be approximately $15 million for the full year, of which approximately $8 million is noncash stock-based compensation. With the successful execution of our registered offering in January, along with our effective S-3 registration status, we continue to maintain strong flexibility in managing our capital position and balance sheet. Going forward, we will remain opportunistic in evaluating any financing and strategic opportunities that enhance our balance sheet and support long-term value creation. With that, I will pass it back to Tom for the Q&A portion of the call.
With that, I will pass it back to Tom for the Q&A portion of the call.
分析師問答
And the first question we have comes from the line of Michael Legg with Ladenburg Thalmann.
Congrats on the quarter. Nice progress here. Wanted to ask a little bit about—you talked about the customer engagement. Can you talk about how you're going about engaging the customer from a feet-on-the-street perspective, from a distributor perspective? How is the outreach going? Talk about that a little bit, please?
Thanks, Mike. This is Bryan. I think if I understand your question correctly, it's really around our process of engaging customers. Is that accurate?
Yes, yes.
So it's worth noting that there are really three ways in which these conversations are initiated. One is through direct engagement from the customer themselves—when they reach out to us. Then there are warm introductions that happen across our network to the tops of these organizations. And then there's meeting folks through conferences or trade shows or suppliers. There's a lot of activity in all three categories of how we reach our customers. Many come to us because this is an urgent topic for a lot of data center builds in particular. One thing to note on the data center market is there's a lot of builds that are happening and a lot of builds that end up getting canceled due to permitting on the water side—where everything seems to be moving ahead, but then you can't secure the water permit. That is driving a lot of engagement for us in the data center market. There's other verticals as well where that outreach has been predominantly customer-driven in the industrial sector as well as in the residential sector, which we believe is a significant value for AirJoule to unlock different kinds of frozen residential developments.
Yes. Great. And then on the supply chain—you mentioned most of the components are commercially available. As we scale over the coming years, is there anything that's a scarce supply chain item or that you don't have redundancy on that we should be thinking about?
I don't think so, Mike. Most of the components in the system—pumps, motors and valves—are already at scale. The custom part of our sorbent chamber is an aluminum vacuum chamber produced through cast aluminum manufacturing. It's a commodity industrial process; our form factor is unique, but it is available at scale. The component inside the vacuum chamber is our sorbent-coated contactor. The contactor is already produced at scale by many vendors—millions of parts globally. We coat that with our metal-organic framework sorbent material. We do that in-house to define the coating process, but coating parts is also a commoditized process with many vendors that can do it at scale. AirJoule needs to define and own the optimization of that coating process and lock it down before we engage a partner to take it to scale.
Okay. Great. And then just one last question. You mentioned a $10 million capital call on the AirJoule joint venture at year-end. Can you explain that and then also talk if there are any other major CapEx needs for 2026?
Yes, Stephen, do you want to take that?
Yes, Mike, you're asking about the 2026 capital call, correct? Those capital calls are part of the normal course funding plan for this year, as we laid out in our prepared remarks, to fund the JV for the anticipated expenses. On the second part of your question—any other major CapEx for 2026—no, nothing other than the forecast we provided in our prepared remarks around our cash needs. CapEx for the joint venture was largely funded last year to support the build-out that Bryan described.
Our next question is from the line of Alex Fuhrman with Lucid Capital.
Congratulations on all the milestones you've achieved in 2025. Wanted to ask about gross margins. What kind of gross margins are you expecting initially for your first couple units of sales? And then as you think about longer-term contracting—transitioning to contract manufacturing—what kind of gross margin do you think you'll be able to achieve at scale?
Maybe I can take that. For this year, we're focused on deployments at hand. Gross margin is less of an emphasis in the near term versus our long-term objectives, which are around 30% to 35% at scale as we move into contract manufacturing. This year, our focus is more on top-line and customer engagement execution. As we move into 2027 and contract manufacturing, that margin is what we're targeting. Our design and build materials conversations will help unlock the long-term gross margin profile we're pursuing.
Okay. That's helpful. And nice to see the first, though small, revenue here for the JV in Q4. Should we expect to see similar small revenue throughout 2026 as we get closer to the full-scale commercial launch at the end of the year?
Yes, we do. We envision these deployments—while some will be paid in nature—will be paid deployments. So we expect some modest revenue that will continue to accrue at the joint venture level. Given the accounting treatment of the JV, that will flow through the equity income or loss from the JV line.
That's really helpful. You mentioned the water crisis in Corpus Christi and the trade-off between AirJoule and desalination. How close are your economics to competing with large-scale desalination projects? And how much of a selling point is the lack of a massive upfront CapEx for these types of projects as you start engaging with communities like that?
Thanks, Alex. It's important to think about how a desalination plant actually gets built. It's a multiyear permitting and planning process. Typically, desal plants are billions of dollars of infrastructure that go in, they clean up the salt water and they have to dispose of brine—brine disposal is often a point of concern. Economically, desalination is definitely cheaper than AirJoule for water creation—about five to ten times cheaper in operating cost. The difference is the value of deploying AirJoule when the time to permits and capital are constraining economic development. Right now there is significant build-out activity where permitting and time-to-water are bottlenecks. Another point is that water produced by AirJoule is distilled and very low in TDS. That can be an advantage versus some RO or desal systems where there is residual TDS. So AirJoule's value is in speed to market, distributed water, resiliency and water quality. When you need water quickly at the point of use and you need resilience, AirJoule becomes attractive.
And Alex, I'll add two things. We've established a water purchase agreement business model, which has been well received by customers. If you envision AirJoule plants at sites where there's waste heat—every data center and industrial operation has waste heat—you can imagine placing an AirJoule plant at those locations. The water purchase model provides a recurring revenue stream over 15 to 20 years, so gross margin discussion also applies to selling water, not just equipment. That recurring, site-specific water revenue is a key part of the economics.
Our next question is from the line of Julian Mitchell with Barclays.
This is Drew on for Julian Mitchell. I wanted to get a sense of what commercial opportunities you're expecting to turn into firm orders more broadly on a global scale and more specifically in the Middle East. Any additional color you could provide there would be great.
Thanks for the question, Drew. As discussed on the call, we are engaging across several verticals: residential projects unlocking whole residential communities that are currently frozen due to water permitting; a number of data center engagements; the U.S. military for water resiliency; and dehumidification applications. There are numerous customer conversations poised for deployments and proof-of-value work. We will announce these as they convert to commercial commitments throughout the year, and our expectation is that successful deployments will cascade into commercial orders across different verticals.
At this time, there are no more questions in the queue, so I'll turn it back to Matt Jore for some closing comments.
Thanks, everyone, for joining us this morning. 2025 was a year of building for us—building systems, building partnerships and building towards commercial pipeline. In 2026, we expect to see the early results of that work through our first product launches and additional customer deployments. Every deployment we execute this year and every customer relationship we advance is building the foundation for scaled commercial activity in 2027 and beyond. Thank you.
Thank you. This will conclude today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation, and have a wonderful day.