Beam Glb Reports Q1 2026 Results: Full Earnings Call Transcript

Beam Glb (NASDAQ:BEEM) reported first-quarter financial results on Friday. The transcript from the company's first-quarter earnings call has been provided below. This content is powered by Benzinga APIs. For comprehensive financial data and transcripts, visit https://www.benzinga.com/apis/. View the webcast at https://dpregister.com/DiamondPassRegistration/register?confirmationNumber=10209318&linkSecurityString=1040b2c9ec4 Summary Beam Global's backlog grew by 50% to $9 million, with significant contributions from Smart City applications and energy storage. Q1 2026 revenue decreased by 51% to $3.1 million compared to the previous year, due to order timing and reduced federal EV spending. International customers made up 51% of revenues in Q1 2026, marking significant diversification from government contracts. The company remains debt-free with a $100 million unused line of credit, indicating strong financial health. Gross profit saw a decline, with a reported gross loss of $0.4 million, impacted by fixed overheads and lower volumes. Beam Global launched a patented wireless charging system for autonomous vehicles and expanded its international footprint, notably in the Middle East and Africa. Management emphasized strategic diversification and highlighted significant growth opportunities in international markets and new product lines. Full Transcript OPERATOR Hi, Good afternoon and thank you for participating in Beam Global's first quarter 2026 operating results conference call. We appreciate you joining us today. Desmond Wheatley, President, CEO, and Chairman of Beam Global, is joining me by phone. Desmond will be giving his thoughts on 2026 and providing an update on recent activities at Beam Global, followed by a question and answer session. But first I'd like to remind you that during this call management will be making forward looking statements, including statements that address Beam's expectations for future performance or operational results. Forward looking statements involve risks and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those statements. For more information about these risks, please refer to the risk factors described in Beam's most recently filed Form 10K and other periodic reports with the SEC. The content of this call contains time sensitive information that is accurate only as of today, May 15, 2026. Except as required by law, Beam disclaims any obligation to publicly update or revise any information to reflect events or circumstances that occur after this call. So I'm going to go ahead and start with a few key highlights. Our backlog grew 50% during the quarter from 6 million at December 31 of 25 to 9 million at March of 31 of 26, with more than half attributable to the Smart city applications, approximately 1/3 to energy storage and the balance to the EV ARC and related products. And perhaps most importantly, our Q2 2026 revenue through today and has already exceeded our first quarter results, a clear signal that the business is accelerating operationally. The quarter was active. We made our first EV ARC sale in Abu Dhabi for public EV charging. We launched a patented autonomous wireless charging system for autonomous vehicles. We were selected to supply patented battery systems for drones supporting life saving aerial operations globally. Beam Europe achieved a record 1.7 million in smart City infrastructure orders in a single week across Romania, Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia and Italy, approximately doubling the strongest weekly order volume achieved in 2025 and we secured the largest residential EVRC order to date in New York. We continue to operate with no debt, no going concern issues and an unused hundred million dollar line of credit. Turning to the financials, our first quarter revenue was 3.1 million, a decrease of 51% compared to 6.3 million in Q1 of 25. The decline reflects order timing with two large orders being moved out of the quarter, a seasonally slow period for our European operations and the ongoing reduction in federal government EV spending. Our International customers comprised 51% of revenues in Q1 of 26 versus 25% in Q1 of 25 and revenues from non government commercial entities increased 48% year over year to represent 78% of our total revenues. Continuing the diversification trend we have been executing against on gross profit, we reported a gross loss of 0.4 million or negative 13.3% compared to a gross profit of 0.5 million or 7.9% in Q1 of 25. Our gross results included a 0.7 million of non cash depreciation and tangible amortization in cost of revenues. Excluding these items, the adjusted non-GAAP gross margin was 9.4% compared to 20.6% in the prior year period. The decline reflects the impact of our fixed overhead allocations against the lower product volume and is not indicative of deterioration in our underlining unit economics which continues to improve. Our operating expenses were 6.3 million compared to 16 million in Q1 of 25. The prior period includes a non cash goodwill impairment charge of 10.8 million not represented this quarter. Excluding that charge, our operating expenses increased approximately 1 million year over year. This is primarily due to a 1.8 million non-cash provision for credit losses related to a single customer balance that was reserved in accordance with our policy. When we remove these one timers, our reductions in compensate the reduction is related to compensation facilities and other G and A expenses which partially offset the increase. Our net loss was 6.9 million compared to 15.5 million in Q1 of 25. The Q1 of 26 net loss includes the 3.5 million of noncash charges. Excluding these items, the non GAAP net loss was 3.7 million compared to 3 million in Q1 of 25. We believe the relative consistency of our non GAAP net loss across both periods despite a 51% decline in revenue reflects our disciplined cost structure and is indicative of our meaningful operating leverage as revenue recovers. On liquidity, our working capital decreased 2.7 million to 6.2 million at March 31 of 26. Excluding the 1.8 million non cash credit loss provision, the underlying operational decrease was approximately 0.9 million. Our cash increased 1 million during the quarter. We remain debt free and we have an unused 100 million credit facilities and we believe we are well positioned to fund operations. In closing, our Q1 was a challenging quarter on revenue. Excuse me, I have something all of a sudden. Desmond, would you like to go ahead? Let me go ahead and hand it over to Desmond. All of a sudden I'm joking for something. Desmond Wheatley (President, CEO and Chairman) Thanks for that. And thanks all of you for tuning into this first part. Lisa, maybe you could mute your phone just while you recover there on the other line. Thanks everybody for tuning into the call. It was only about a month ago that we had the earnings call for the release of our 10K, and during that call I went through a pretty comprehensive update on the happenings of 2025 in the first quarter of 2026, both operationally and financially. So I'm going to keep my comments fairly brief today and leave plenty of time for any questions that you may have. Well, as Lisa said, Our first quarter revenues in 2026 were not what we'd like them to have been. They are in no way an indication of an underlying or fundamental weakness in the business or our strategic plan. First quarter has historically always been a slow quarter for us, and that's particularly true of the contributions from our Beam Europe offices, where the Orthodox Christmas and New Year pushes well into January and weather and other considerations tend to slow down the deployment of the traditional infrastructure products which we manufacture and sell across Europe, like street lights, traffic portals and other street furniture. Coincidentally and unfortunately, from a timing point of view, we also had 2 large deployments of EV ARC systems pushed from the first quarter into the second, which have had an outsized impact on our Q1 revenues. I guess we haven't lost those orders. They're both good orders and we expect to recognize the revenue from them. Also has to be said that the war in the Middle East has not helped our efforts because we were actually anticipating some material revenues coming from our new operations in the Middle East. But those, like everything else in the region, seem to have been put on hold while the authorities and decision makers prioritized dealing with the immediate impact of the war. I've just spent a significant amount of time at our Beam Middle East offices, and while I certainly did observe a lack of momentum where all business dealings are concerned, it's also very clear that the United Arab Emirates and the Gulf region in general, are determined to get through this conflict and come out on the other side stronger, with even more aggressive plans for future growth. And in fact, we did actually make our first sale of EV ARC for public charging in Abu Dhabi while I was there a couple of weeks ago. We've already got it deployed for some other reasons, but this is for public charging. So while we didn't get the material contribution to revenues that we've been hoping for in the first quarter, we have managed to make some sales in the Middle East since that time. And I'll spend a few minutes on my time in the Middle East. Later in the call back to our results. Like any manufacturing company with facilities across the world, we have fixed overhead costs which do not reduce when the volumes of products which we deliver reduce. Those costs, like rent, insurance, and other day to day operational costs associated with owning and maintaining our factories stay pretty much exactly the same whether we do a small volume of products or a very large volume. The result of this, as you've seen in the first quarter, is that our gross profits can be negatively impacted by the allocation of fixed overhead across a smaller number of units produced and delivered to the customer. That explains the decline that you see in the gross profits which we reported during the quarter. But that's a metric that works both ways. As our sales volumes return to growth, and we certainly believe they will, the allocation of those fixed overheads becomes less and less burdensome. And in fact, we get a great deal of operating leverage coming from the fact that we do not need to invest in infrastructure to produce higher volumes of products. We're already set up to do that. I consider that the most important metric from an operational point of view are our unit economics. And those, I'm happy to report, continue to improve and are thoroughly currently running at greater than 30% across our entire portfolio, with some products doing much better than that. That's to say, at the unit level, we're spending less and less money to produce an individual product, while our revenue numbers stay fixed or in some cases have even increased. That in turn means that as our volumes increase and our overhead allocations are diluted over larger volumes of products, those improved unit economics will return even better gross margins in the future. We've demonstrated this to some extent over the last couple of years, as you've seen improving gross margins when our volumes have been consistent or growing. So while our revenues and gross margins declined during the first quarter, this is not part of a broader trend. I can say this with a high degree of confidence because again, as Lisa said, our contracted backlog was 50% higher at the end of the first quarter than it was at the beginning, showing growth in sales. Furthermore, I can tell you that as of today, we've already generated the same amount of revenue in just half of the second quarter as we generated in all of the first. And we now have the second half of the second quarter to continue this trend of growth, which we demonstrated so materially in the fourth quarter of 2025, which if you remember, was 50% higher than the previous quarter. It's also worth pointing out that we often generate more revenue late in any given quarter than we do at the beginning. So that's another metric to consider. Incidentally, the SEC is currently considering a move away from quarterly filing for companies like ours, believing, as I do, that biannual reporting will be just as useful for the investment community and much less impactful and expensive for the reporting companies. We spend an enormous amount of time and money going through this quarterly reporting. Had we already moved to biannual reporting, I'm pretty confident that we could report a first half of this year which would not raise eyebrows for anything other than growth. Our sales and backlog numbers are increasing at a time when, as I've already mentioned in previous calls, we're responding to a complete cessation of orders of our electric vehicle charging products by what was previously our largest customer, the U.S. federal government. And I think this is proof positive that our strategy of diversifying our product portfolio and also the geographic markets into which we're selling is working. Simply put, even absent what was previously our largest customer contributing to our revenues, we're returning to growth in sales and backlog. Revenue contribution from international customers were over half our first quarter revenues, up from under a quarter during the same period last year. That's a trend which I think we're going to see continuing and even growing as the year progresses. This shows that without a doubt it was the right move for us to expand internationally through our acquisitions in Europe and also the joint venture which we created in Abu Dhabi with the Platinum Group. In fact, I can tell you that as of this moment, the largest opportunities that we are currently addressing are all coming from our international expansion. Similarly, our efforts to expand our selling beyond federal, state and municipal government customers are continuing to bear fruit. Sales to non government entities in the first quarter were actually up by almost 50% and now comprise 78% of our total revenues in the quarter. When you consider that just two years ago almost all of our revenues came from government contracts and the majority of those from the federal government, you can see that our efforts to broaden our sales funnel really paid off. I'm particularly enthusiastic about the way our products are being used by new customers and in ways that we haven't previously seen. It's certainly a new thing for us to have our teams of battery engineers and scientists now perfecting battery solutions for top secret weapons and highly specialized drones and robots. We now have US law enforcement using our Beam Patrol product, which is a bundle of four electric motorcycles, and our rapidly deployed knock grid charging products. Incidentally, this is a very popular solution in the Middle East. We recently presented this product to the Chief of Police of Dubai, and a cadre of senior-ranking officers. Our Beam Middle East team is now putting together a proposal at the request of that law enforcement agency. We now have Beam Bike solutions operating in North America, Europe and the Middle East. This product Bundle, which comprises 12 Beam branded electric bicycles, rapidly deployed and idle scalable charging infrastructure, and an application for Android or iOS which controls the bikes and allows for billing, geolocation and a whole lot of other fantastic utility, is also creating opportunity revenue for us which we've never had before. I actually believe that this new opportunity will also increasingly provide a source of recurring and very profitable revenue. Another good example of a new technology solution which we've recently introduced in the market is our patented wireless autonomous charging for autonomous vehicles. Autonomous vehicles have been around for a long time, but as with so many things, solving for the last 5% of true autonomy has probably taken as much time, investment and work as the first 95%. But it looks as though we're there now. Millions of miles have been safely and successfully driven by autonomous vehicles on city streets, across the world, and the level of mainstream user adoption has surprised even many of the so called experts in the field. So while solving for that last 5% of autonomy used to be the biggest hurdle facing the industry, now, not surprisingly, the biggest challenge faced by operators of fleets of autonomous vehicles is actually how to charge them. It might seem a bit surprising that the developers of this futuristic and very challenging technology have so far settled for predictable and traditional methods to charge autonomous vehicles. At the moment, operators of fleets have all their vehicles come to a central location where a human being has to plug them in and try to charge them as quickly as possible so they can fleet as many vehicles as possible across a limited number of charging cables. This is inefficient, very expensive, and certainly not autonomous. Beam Global's patented wireless off-grid charging technology allows an autonomous fleet operator to deploy charging throughout their service zone so that an autonomous taxi might never be more than two minutes away from the nearest wireless EV arc. Our research shows that we're able to keep autonomous taxis full throughout the day by simply having them charged for short periods of time between each ride. This means that taxis no longer have to go back to a central location where there's an incredibly expensive and inefficient infrastructure way to pull them. It also means that the infrastructure that they rely on to fill their vehicles is not vulnerable to centralized failures such as those that you get during a blackout or for some other reason the power fails to the centralized charging depot. Finally, it means that we can provide about twice as many rides per vehicle as the current traditional taxi model provides in the markets we've studied. I think what that does to the cost and revenue model of those operators, and you'll quickly appreciate why we're so bullish on this opportunity. This patented Beam technology is a game changer. I'm not alone in thinking that the autonomous vehicle are going to be the next big thing in transportation. And a unique, simple and highly efficient way of charging these vehicles will, I believe, bring very significant opportunities for growth. This is particularly true in the Middle East, where the regulatory environment and general appetite for these sorts of new technologies is much more favorable for the rapid and scale growth that we expect to see. So it's clear that this geographic and product portfolio diversification and expansion has been crucial to us not just surviving the EV slowdown in the United States, but actually it's been enabled us to take advantage of a whole new set of fantastic opportunities for which our products and technologies are ideally suited. I've said before that I'm convinced that the United States will return to the electrification of transportation, probably starting most aggressively at the federal level. And when it does, we'll be ready to take advantage of that returning opportunity too. What will be different next time is that it will come on top of and be accretive to all the other revenue and profit opportunities that we've created in its absence. This level of diversification will not only create opportunities for more revenue and profits, but it'll also insulate us from the kind of swings that we've just witnessed in this quarter, where one or two large sales moving right can have an outsized impact on our results. We're going to continue both of these diversification efforts as we evolve, and as usual, we're going to continue to do so with an extreme sense of financial discipline, just as we always have. On the product side, you can see us continue to create new intellectual property. In the first quarter, we were granted patents which are important to defending our position with some of the unique and very relevant technologies we produce. These patents, which were granted both in the United States and Europe, cover products which enable us to maximize off energy, off grid energy generation in ways which we're increasingly discovering are so very important in diverse markets across the world. We also received another patent for our battery portfolio, which, as I've said previously in this call, is now creating opportunities and generating revenue for us in high growth military and commercial applications, not least of which are the diverse and highly specialized unmanned vehicles or drones for which we are developing bespoke, highly energy dense and safe battery pack solutions. The drone market appears to still be in its infancy, is growing very rapidly, and is probably just a tiny fraction of what it's set to become. Veeam Global is producing batteries for unmanned vehicles which operate in the air, on the ground and both on and under the surface of the sea. Combining those activities with what we expect to see in terms of opportunity generation through our Beam Flight product, I think you should expect to anticipate ever increasing contributions to our business from our focus on the drone market. One of the most impressive attributes of our product portfolio is its universal appeal anywhere I traveled across the globe. I've just returned from a six week business trip which took me to Europe, the Middle East and Africa. I visited London, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Nairobi in Kenya, Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, Zanzibar in Tanzania and Kigali in Rwanda before returning to the Middle East and then ending my trip in New York City. Now those are all very diverse and different environments and yet the enthusiasm and genuine need that I continue to discover for our products is universal. It's no product it's no secret that our products create a lot of value in New York City where since 2015 they providing rapidly deployed off grid electric vehicle charging and crucially vital backup power during grid failures caused by hurricanes or lack of grid capacity. Well, it turns out the utility grid constraints, the requirement for uninterrupted robust and reliable electricity and the provision of mobility are universal requirements, at least across those markets which I've visited in the last couple of years. While in East Africa, I met with senior government ministers, officials from the United Nations, NGOs and commercial enterprises. Our ability to deploy transportation and energy infrastructure without going through construction or electrical work turns out to be just as important in East Africa as in New York City, although perhaps for somewhat different reasons, and also for many of the same reasons. Certainly when talking to the United Nations about deploying tactical to democratize access to electricity and transportation in the region, Beam Global products ability to provide that type of infrastructure without an ecosystem of service providers, officials and regulators and regulations who can draw these types of projects out and make them much more expensive for reasons both legal and illegal, it's a real game changer. It was encouraging to see the UN and other NGOs becoming so excited when they realized how much impact our products could have without all of the usual hurdles, risk and never ending processes. An indication of how much excitement there was around Beam Global perhaps, and the impact our products can have in East Africa was the amount of mainstream national press coverage that my trip received. I was in most cases met at the airport, even sometimes at 1 o' clock in the morning by the press who were eager to question me about our energy and mobility products. I also spent time in interviews both in studio and on location discussing the merits of our approach and the enthusiasm of both governments and enterprise in East Africa for these types of solutions. And again, these were not sort of esoteric niche publications. I'm talking about mainstream national media. Beam Global already has product deployed across broad swaths of particularly West Africa as a result of our acquisition of what is now Beam Europe. That team in Serbia has a great deal of experience in deploying infrastructure across many nations in Africa. That experience will be essential and a significant differentiator for us as we start to deploy our portfolio of innovative energy and transportation solutions. And I look forward to bringing you news of our first wins in Africa and also the fantastic good that our products enable in environments where people have not previously had access to reliable and robust sources of electricity, and even less so to affordable transportation. Just as there was never a universal adoption of landline telephones in Africa and yet now everyone has a mobile phone, so I believe there will never be universal adoption of internal combustion engine vehicles. I do however, feel certain that the young and growing population on the African continent will have access to mobility and that all of it will be electric. We intend to provide solutions to cater to that enormous opportunity for growth. Products like our beam bike and Beam Patrol in particular are absolute perfect fits, as are our energy storage and generation solutions. I also think it's likely there'll never be a mass and universal adoption of centralized utility grid like those to which we're used in the West, Africa will have an opportunity to leapfrog that outdated model and develop an energy infrastructure which is highly disintegrated and dispersed, generating and storing electricity close to where it's used in a manner which is rapidly scalable and does not rely on vast centralized power stations and equally vast transmission and distribution infrastructure. That's a very last century approach to energy infrastructure, and I firmly believe that the future will find an Africa which has universal access to electricity, most of which comes from renewable sources which are generated and stored close to the load. Now, of course I'm describing an energy future in Africa which is made up of products just like the ones that Beam Global patents and manufactures today. And I firmly believe that that market where over 60% of the population is under 25 years old, will comprise a very significant opportunity for future growth. And we opened Beam Middle East not only because that market, where there's already a commitment to spend over a trillion dollars on sustainable energy infrastructure over the next decade or so, provides excellent opportunity for our expansion, but also because the location of the Beam Middle East headquarters provides an excellent access gateway to the African continent. There's already significant investment from the United Arab Emirates into Sub Saharan Africa and the politics, economics and geography of that region make it an excellent portal for us. Well, on the subject of the Middle East, we've just exhibited alongside our partners the Platinum Group at Mitte or Make it in the Emirates. This is certainly one of the largest, if not the largest trade events in the Gulf States. We had a prominent and highly visible booth and we also had real world deployment of our ev, ARC and beambike products working at the event. This was an excellent opportunity to get in front of the most influential decision makers and purchasers in the region. It was also an opportunity for us to further test the validity of our relationship with the Platinum Group, chaired by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Sultan Bin Khalifa Al Nayan. They certainly did not come up wanting and in fact again and again demonstrated their ability to bring the most influential leaders in the region to the Beam Middle East booth. Fortunately, our products are so compelling and unique that once we're introduced to these types of influential people, we do not have much difficulty in keeping their attention. The fact is that while there were many fantastic solutions on display at this massive event, you would have been hard pressed to find any which were more relevant and better suited to the Gulf markets than those which Beam Global presented. As a result, even during a time when we were justifiably concerned that the war might make the event less of a success than in previous years, we were actually very encouraged by the volume of attendees and particularly the volume and quality of those attendees who visited our location. High ranking members of the government, the military, the police and industry, particularly the oil and gas industry, visited and spent meaningful amounts of time learning about our solutions. I can't go into details at this point, but oil and gas is now using our products in the Middle East, as strange as that might sound to you. I look forward to releasing more information about this as permitted by our very excellent and very, very large customer over there. The BMT Middle East has a significant amount of follow up work prosecuting all of these opportunities and if sales are the best possible metric to judge one of these events, and I believe they are then we were certainly not disappointed in that area. In fact, we actually sold one of the units that we had on display right there and then and deployed it for a customer the following day. Such is the robust and dynamic nature of our products that we can demonstrate electricity and mobility infrastructure products at a trade show and then have those products operating in the field for a customer less than 24 hours after the event concludes. Now, before I wrap up, I just want to come back to the financials for a moment or two and echo a couple of things that Lisa started out with. During 2025, we had to take a significant non cash impairment of goodwill which was reflected in our net loss. This impairment of goodwill was driven by accounting rules, not by any belief on our part that there's been any decline in the value of our acquisitions. On the contrary, it should be obvious from the comments I've made during this call that our acquisitions are performing well and contributing significantly to the most material opportunities for growth that we have ahead of us. Now, in the first quarter of 2026, we've taken another significant hit to the bottom line, again driven by accounting rules rather than by what we actually believe is going on with the business. In this instance, we've reserved for a couple of million dollars worth of AR because the rules essentially tell us that that's what we need to do. But the fact is that we believe we will collect these monies. We have an excellent working relationship with the company to whom the AR is attributed, and in fact I just spent a day with them in New York this week looking at a whole host of new and material opportunities which we hope to close together. This reserve has significantly impacted our bottom line and also our working capital, just as the impairment did last year, and that was purely driven by our share price. But in both cases, these are non cash items and not, in my belief, truly reflective of what we're doing with the business. So I encourage you all to look at our financial performance absent these non cash impacts because it will give you a much better understanding for what's actually going on with the business and particularly where you're looking at the earnings per share, which are blown way out of proportion by these items. We continue to be debt free except for a couple of vehicle leases and have sufficient cash and working capital to continue to execute on all of the opportunities that I've outlined during this call. Disclaimer: This transcript is provided for informational purposes only. While we strive for accuracy, there may be errors or omissions in this automated transcription. For official company statements and financial information, please refer to the company's SEC filings and official press releases. Corporate participants' and analysts' statements reflect their views as of the date of this call and are subject to change without notice.