Plug Power Inc  (NASDAQ: PLUG) Q1 2020 Earnings Call Transcript

Plug Power Inc  (PLUG) Q1 2020 earnings call dated May 07, 2020

Corporate Participants:

Teal Vivacqua Hoyos — Director, Marketing Communications

Andy Marsh — President and Chief Executive Officer

Paul Middleton — Chief Financial Officer

Analysts:

Colin Rusch — Oppenheimer & Co. — Analyst

Jeffrey Osborne — Cowen and Company — Analyst

Christopher Van Horn — B. Riley FBR — Analyst

Amit Dayal — H.C. Wainwright & Co. — Analyst

Eric Stine — Craig-Hallum Capital Group — Analyst

Jonathan Dorsheimer — Canaccord Genuity Corp. — Analyst

Craig Irwin — Roth Capital Partners — Analyst

Ethan Ellison — Morgan Stanley — Analyst

Presentation:

Operator

Greetings and welcome to the Plug Power First Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference call. [Operator Instructions]

It is now my pleasure to introduce your host Teal Hoyos. Please go ahead, Teal.

Teal Vivacqua Hoyos — Director, Marketing Communications

Thank you. Good afternoon and welcome to the Plug Power 2020 first quarter earnings call.

This call will include forward-looking statements. We intend these forward-looking statements to be covered by the Safe Harbor provisions for forward-looking statements contained in Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. We believe that it is important to communicate our future expectations to investors. However, investors are cautioned not to unduly rely on forward-looking statements because they involve risks and uncertainties and actual results may differ materially from those discussed as a result of various factors, including but not limited to, risks and uncertainties discussed under Item 1A, Risk Factors, in our annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2019, as well as other reports we file from time to time with the SEC. These forward-looking statements speak only as on the day in which they were made and we do not undertake or intend to update any forward-looking statements after this call.

At this point, I would like to turn the call over to Plug Power’s CEO, Andy Marsh.

Andy Marsh — President and Chief Executive Officer

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining the first quarter Plug Power conference call.

A Shareholder Letter issued today provides highlights for the quarter and our prospects for the coming year. Let me just start by reminding you of a few highlights in the letter.

Like most organizations, we’ve placed the safety of our employees first. Our field technicians and manufacturing workers have been engaged supporting our essential customers every day. Our engineering administrators have become quite effective working from home. A recent survey of our employees indicate 98% feel well informed about our safety measures and 95% agree with the steps we have taken as a management team. We have been ahead of the curve in protecting employing while serving our customers.

The work in supporting our essential customers in food retails and internet sales has been stellar. Our business is essential to distributing retail food in the US. During the crisis, more than 30% of the food on people’s table in the United States moved through Plug Power’s products. We’ve also seen a seasonal increase for our Internet retail customers. With this increased workload, we have been able to keep our uptime at our customers’ sites to well over 99%.

This crisis has highlighted the value of solution and what it brings to customers, and during the past quarter, we’ve seen unforeseen orders to accelerate deployments with some of these customers. This allow us to comfortably reiterate our guidance of $300 million in gross bookings for the year and $20 million in EBITDA. I also believe we are in a sector that will remain successful during and post this crisis. I and many others believe online shopping will accelerate as a result of this experience, a segment our solutions bring the most value.

Also, we continue to execute on our five year plan. We’ve released our high-power, 125kW stack that well-positions Plug for on-road and large-scale backup power markets. Even during these unusual times, discussion and some testing continues. As you can imagine, we’re quite excited about our plans as we execute on our

Hydrogen strategy that we laid out at the Plug Power Symposium this past September.

Today, we announced the pending transaction to acquire United Hydrogen. United Hydrogen operates a low carbon, 6.5 ton liquid hydrogen plant today that will soon be expanded to 10 tons. This represents 25% of our hydrogen usage by year-end, and will support improvements in our hydrogen margins. We also have a letter of intent to acquire an electrolyzer company. We plan to build this business into one of the leading electrolyzer companies in the world. If you recall, only a few years ago Plug took a nascent MEA company that is now the largest manufacturers of MEAs in the world. We plan to do the same with this acquisition.

Finally, you may have seen that Generate Capital, our primary debt buyer has doubled our line of credit, while simultaneously dropping our interest rates by 3.5%. This is a testimony that a debt buyer that knows the company well in these incredibly difficult times recognize that Plug Power will continue to thrive, and we want to take these unusual steps to support the continued growth of Plug Power.

Paul and I are now more than happy to take your questions.

Questions and Answers:

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first question today is coming from Colin Rusch from Oppenheimer. Your line is now live.

Colin Rusch — Oppenheimer & Co. — Analyst

Thanks so much, guys, and well done on all the execution this quarter. So the first question is really about the guidance. Obviously, you think you guys had pretty good visibility coming out of the fourth quarter into revenue this year. So I wanted to get an update on the mix of customers underlying that guidance and the sort of visibility that you have to support that from an order perspective at this point.

Andy Marsh — President and Chief Executive Officer

Sure, Colin. So, at the moment, we have $290 million of the $300 million passed [Phonetic]. So very, very comfortable with the guidance. To give you a feel, usually at this time it’s about 75% of what we expect. What we’ve seen since the last call is there has been somewhat a change, I’ll say in the mix. I mentioned that food retail as well as Internet retail that we have received new orders during the first quarter. While we see a slowdown — not a cancellation but a slowdown in deployment for some of our auto companies that we do business with, which is not surprising. So, we have a great deal of visibility and a great deal of confidence in the numbers. And while we look at the funnel to allow us to close the $10 million gap, the confidence level is, it’s fair to say, extremely high.

Colin Rusch — Oppenheimer & Co. — Analyst

Perfect. And then, looking at the balance sheet, it’s good to see some additional liquidity there and flexibility. Obviously, you guys have a certain amount of restricted cash still on the book. Can you talk a little bit about your options for reducing that level of restricted cash and how much progress you’ve made, looking that forward?

Andy Marsh — President and Chief Executive Officer

Sure. Colin, I’m going to let Paul take that question. Paul?

Paul Middleton — Chief Financial Officer

Sure, Andy. And thanks, Colin. I think — well, the good news is, as we’ve disclosed previously, we’ve signed into a much more robust and a better structure with one of the key customers that this program financing, we’re associated with. Now, we’re already making significant progress in that we get 70%, 80% of the cash day one in those transactions. There’s [Technical Issues] aside that we kind of equate to the long-term service fees, but the majority of the proceeds are available to us day one.

And I think what you’re going to see — and even new customers that we’re working with, we’ve got structures that we’re using that are kind of like vendor financing programs where we’re going to get the majority of that cash upfront too. So I think you’re definitely going to see that number come down over the near term. With the offset of that fact — there will be some incremental layers just as we do more programs. And since most of the customers, including those in the PPA program, continue to grow their scope, there will be some upward amounts. But in general, we’re in much better position today with these structures and continue to make progress on the — putting forth structures that give us the majority of the cash as we close these transactions.

Colin Rusch — Oppenheimer & Co. — Analyst

Okay. That’s helpful. And then the final one. Obviously, you’re not disclosing terms around these acquisitions, but just the fact that you’re getting close. Can you give us a sense of order of magnitude [Indecipherable] plans around financing those? Obviously, your public currency has had a pretty good run. But are you expecting to do this with all cash? Are you expecting to do with all equity? Give us a sense of kind of your optionality and thought process at this point.

Andy Marsh — President and Chief Executive Officer

So, I think, Colin, it’s fair to say that depending on — obviously, these transactions have not closed yet. But I think it’s fair to say that it will be a combination of cash, shares as well as debt.

Colin Rusch — Oppenheimer & Co. — Analyst

Perfect. All right, guys. Thanks so much.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question today is coming from Jeff Osborne from Cowen & Company. Your line is now live.

Jeffrey Osborne — Cowen and Company — Analyst

Hey, good afternoon, guys. A couple of questions. One, in 2Q, Andy, I was just curious in the current quarter that we’re in, were there any limitations around getting into customer sites around setting up new distribution centers that we should be aware of? I know you’ve reiterated the guidance for the year, but I wasn’t sure if it’s more back-end loaded because of social distancing. Actually, it’s a good question, Jeff, and actually, the second and third quarter of this year — especially the third quarter than we expected at the time [Technical Issues]. Luckily, if you start thinking about food distribution, Internet distribution, often these are in areas, which are low population sites and the challenges of social distancing aren’t as difficult. Usually, they’re located 60 to 100 miles outside major cities. We’re, in the next two quarters, I’d bet it’s 20 sites we’re bringing on, Jeff. Many of those permits, we’ve actually done virtual where we’ve used FaceTimes and other elements for working with the local authorities. So we haven’t — it’s a really good question. It’s one — actually, schedules move two, three weeks out, but then I’m seeing activities moving. As I mentioned before, the auto companies we had a couple of programs going on. We have one with Chrysler that we’ll continue and that obviously got pushed out a bit because of the crisis here. But I think geographically where these sites are, in combination, you can do a lot of the social distancing and the discipline at these sites is probably not as challenging since we’re doing a lot of these builds within [Indecipherable] which really limits the level of work that has to be done on a site. So, it is something that, especially in the early days of the crisis I was really worried about. But it seems things are running relatively smooth. That’s great to hear. I just had three other ones. So I appreciate the detailed response, but you can certainly be briefer. So a couple of quick ones here. The commercial vehicle strategy, lightening systems, etc. Do you see yourself in three years, selling direct to like an emerging OEM such as them? Or do you want to be selling to a Tier 1 supplier? I’m just trying to think about how the model changes for you relative directly to the end user like an Amazon or a Walmart or a Home Depot?

Andy Marsh — President and Chief Executive Officer

We have good relations. So I’ll answer quick, Jeff. So the answer to both the them is yes. We see ourselves selling directly to OEMs, Tier 1s, as well as selling to integrators. And one of the advantages of the relationships with people like Walmart and Amazon, for example, is that they’re more than willing to introduce us to the Tier 1 OEMs and recommend us as well as their preferred integrators.

Jeffrey Osborne — Cowen and Company — Analyst

Got it. That’s helpful. And then on Generate — maybe this is out there in the 10-Q as that comes out, but can you talk about the metrics that they looked at to double the availability and obviously lower the rate? Is there any covenants that we need to be aware of around that facility itself?

Andy Marsh — President and Chief Executive Officer

I’ll let Paul take that one, Jeff. Paul?

Paul Middleton — Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. Well, they have a formula that they — we do have a covenant and it looks at our ABL, value of our assets, and they also have an advanced formula [Indecipherable] restricted cash pools. But to be honest, I mean, I think they’re a unique fund because unlike a lot of vendors, we really don’t have a lot of covenants and restrictions on our facility. They really get into understanding the enterprise and our pipeline and the markets and the products that we sell. It’s just basically the faith that they have in us and what we’re doing and the continued growth that we’ve continued to show and the growth of our overall portfolio.

So they recognize that as we continue to grow this company, now passing into positive EBITDA area and continue to grow from there, that we rightfully should be able to access a lower cost of capital structure. So this is part a recognition of that as well as trying to make sure they’re positioned to be a part of this ongoing opportunity which we’re excited to have them be a part of.

Jeffrey Osborne — Cowen and Company — Analyst

Definitely. Makes sense. And my last question probably for you, Andy. On the electrolyzer side, can you just talk about the technology itself? There has been a lot of developments in terms of multi-megawatt scale, a lot of price compression in that industry, debates around alkaline versus PEM. The other acquisitions you’ve done, I would sort of put in the camp of you bought a diamond in the rough on the cheap and then really integrated them well to become more vertically integrated to drive down costs.

I don’t get the sense that that is what you’re doing here, given that you’re levering up and using cash and stock. So can you just talk about how you assessed the technology choices out there and future-proofing the cost curve? Because there has been a lot of developments in that sector, in particular.

Andy Marsh — President and Chief Executive Officer

Sure. So, Jeff, when we take a look at [Technical Issues] Plug Power, I usually always start with what do customers want. And my leading customers — and we’re doing some electrolyzer deployments this year — and when we look at that, our customers want to have a greener footprint, and that certainly was an opportunity when we looked at cell products through our present channels.

We also took a step back and thought about what an electrolyzer really is, and it is a fuel cell, essentially, running in reverse, and if you take a look at the capabilities we have in MEA manufacturing, in system integration, it looks a lot like what we’ve got, and that we can help drive down the costs considerably using the buying power that we’ve developed. We believe that green hydrogen and the cost of electrolyzers will continue to go down. But because of our scale, we believe we are in a very strong position to be a leader.

And look, well, I look at also that there is a huge opportunity, as you know, for electrolyzers globally, especially in Europe. The European Commission has announced plans between Europe and Africa to deploy over 80 gigawatts of electrolyzers by 2030 and I think with our fundamental cost advantage because of scale, because of our marketing reach with our sales teams, especially in the United States and Europe, as well as our relationships with customers who want greener solutions, it looks like it’s just a natural fit.

Jeffrey Osborne — Cowen and Company — Analyst

Got it. Makes sense. Thank you.

Andy Marsh — President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is coming from Chris Van Horn from B. Riley FBR. Your line is now live.

Christopher Van Horn — B. Riley FBR — Analyst

Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my call, and hope everyone is doing well.

Andy Marsh — President and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Chris.

Christopher Van Horn — B. Riley FBR — Analyst

So, I just want to touch on the 2024 targets. It seems like those are still intact, and I want to just get an update. Do you still see kind of the similar breakout in terms of your market opportunity that you highlighted from commercial vehicles, etc? And then was acquisitions part of that plan or were the acquisitions that you’re thinking about now kind of incremental to that?

Andy Marsh — President and Chief Executive Officer

So, the answer to that question, Chris, is look — let me go through just a couple of questions there. When I look at the 2024 plan, I probably would almost bundle large-scale backup power with on-road vehicles both of which use a similar technology. And between those segments, we identified about $0.25 billion by 2024. And probably my perspective at the moment is large-scale backup power may be larger than I expected and that on-road vehicles may be slightly lower than I expected just because of the engagement we’ve been having and the speed of developments in those two areas. So that’s kind of my view there.

When I look at the total commitment for 2024, part of the margin improvements built in was associated with having our own ability to generate hydrogen. So an acquisition like United and further deployments really help us more on margin side. I think as we’ve talked about the electrolyzer market, and as that develops, I think we’ll probably be sharing updated targets throughout the year about what we think is possible.

Christopher Van Horn — B. Riley FBR — Analyst

Great. Got it. And then, part of your value proposition, in our view, is that you offer cost savings. And certainly, given the current environment, are you having more conversations around how you can be a cost saver for some of your customers and have you kind of seen those increase over the past couple of weeks as we sort of start to emerge from these shutdowns?

Andy Marsh — President and Chief Executive Officer

Chris, with the customers that I have been busiest with during the past month and a half, they’ve added four new sites to my deployments this year to accelerate, and they did that — if you take a look at food distribution, some of these facilities are quoting out 30% more food than they did at even at the Christmas time period. And I think there is a recognition, without fuel cells and Plug Power’s products, that really wouldn’t have been possible.

Christopher Van Horn — B. Riley FBR — Analyst

Okay. Got it. Thank you so much for the time and stay safe and healthy, everyone.

Andy Marsh — President and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Chris.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question today comes from Amit Dayal from HC Wainwright. Your line is now live.

Amit Dayal — H.C. Wainwright & Co. — Analyst

Thank you. Congrats, guys. Can you give us a time frame for when these two acquisitions that you’re looking into potentially could close? Second quarter?

Andy Marsh — President and Chief Executive Officer

We would expect by the end of the second quarter, Amit. How are you? Good to hear you. Yes, the end of the second quarter.

Amit Dayal — H.C. Wainwright & Co. — Analyst

Thank you. Understood. And just at a high level, Andy, if you could share what the margins in these businesses look like. I know you are indicating they’re going to be accretive. But if you could give us any color on the margins in this business and how you can potentially improve those, if they are not at scale yet.

Andy Marsh — President and Chief Executive Officer

So, one way to start thinking about United Hydrogen, at least during the near term, is to really be significant in improving the margins of our hydrogen business. If you remember, Amit, at the Plug Power Symposium, we outlined that we expect hydrogen margins by 2024, we’ll achieve over 30%, and this will be an incremental step in helping to achieve those higher margins. Eventually, I’m sure, we’ll look at leveraging this capability to support other customers and other industries. The hardware business itself, we’ve demonstrated that if you look at this quarter is 35%, and we expect margins in that range going forward.

Amit Dayal — H.C. Wainwright & Co. — Analyst

Understood. And then just from a balance sheet perspective, if these acquisitions close and expand those businesses or business lines, what kind of a balance sheet need will you have relative to the business model today?

Andy Marsh — President and Chief Executive Officer

I think that, as I mentioned before, our present position will finance our current business in material handling. I think that in some of these areas there will be partnerships which we will leverage especially in hydrogen which could reduce capital. And so I think when you look at this first deal, this transaction deal with Generate Capital, it’s an indication of some of our thought process about what the future balance sheet will look like.

And look, as the business continues to grow — and we’re very, very ambitious — even beyond the $1 billion to grow requires capital, and the capital can come from a wide variety of partnerships, through debt and through equity, and we’ll be weighing each of them based on what we think maximizes returns for the shareholders of Plug Power.

Amit Dayal — H.C. Wainwright & Co. — Analyst

Understood. That’s all I have, Andy. I’ll take my other questions offline. Thank you so much.

Andy Marsh — President and Chief Executive Officer

Okay. Thanks a lot.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next question is coming from Eric Stine from Craig-Hallum. Your line is now live.

Eric Stine — Craig-Hallum Capital Group — Analyst

Hi, Andy. Hi, Paul.

Andy Marsh — President and Chief Executive Officer

Hi, Eric. How are you?

Eric Stine — Craig-Hallum Capital Group — Analyst

Hey, I’m fine. How are you?

Andy Marsh — President and Chief Executive Officer

Very good.

Eric Stine — Craig-Hallum Capital Group — Analyst

Good. I will just sneak a few in here at the end just on the hydrogen piece. On the electrolyzers, just any thoughts on how you think that expands the market ability to address other customers that maybe in the past had not been economical? And I know in the past you had a partnership with HI-GEAR [Phonetic] a few years back and we’re looking to go down the reformer path as well. Curious if electrolyzers are kind of the new path there.

Andy Marsh — President and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. Look, Eric, as I mentioned before, I think one of our core strengths is that we listen to customers. And our customer base today, in many cases, have aggressive sustainability goals, i.e., someone like Amazon, and we’ve taken this path because we’ve been encouraged to head in this direction. But we also see in this market opportunity to expand our reach, not only in traditional markets but places where they are looking to replace reformers [Phonetic] today like in fertilizer manufacturing, we see huge opportunities for selling hydrogen. And so that kind of has been — the first driver is my customers today want it. My second driver is there is a huge market opportunity as indicated by reports you see being issued by people like Bloomberg, McKinsey and others about how big this market opportunity is long-term.

Eric Stine — Craig-Hallum Capital Group — Analyst

Got it. That’s helpful. And with United…

Andy Marsh — President and Chief Executive Officer

I should mention, Eric. [Indecipherable] United also has really been the first company in 20 years in the United States to deploy a successful liquefier. And if you start thinking about getting renewable [Indecipherable] at $0.02 a kilowatt hour and using the United liquefier technology, you have extremely low cost hydrogen, and that’s really is also driven — we see that there is a marriage and mix between the two.

Eric Stine — Craig-Hallum Capital Group — Analyst

That makes sense. I guess my follow-up was just on United. I mean, clearly, you’ve got very significant hydrogen demand plans out in the future. I mean, so, is it safe to assume that this is a first step because clearly you’ve got designs on much bigger?

Andy Marsh — President and Chief Executive Officer

They are. And you know, Eric, it doesn’t mean necessarily the next activity we do in this area, we do by ourselves. We certainly would love to be able to partner. And so we do see rather broad opportunities. And that partner could be someone who is a customer today as well as an industrial gas company or someone who is new to this industry.

Eric Stine — Craig-Hallum Capital Group — Analyst

Got it. Okay. Maybe last one from me. I mean, obviously you’re showing that the business in the face of COVID very resilient. You did call out though that it did have an impact on the service side in Q1. Maybe you can just talk about specific ways that it did impact the business. And do you think you have it handled? Is it something that’s going to last for a little bit as long as we’re in this current environment?

Andy Marsh — President and Chief Executive Officer

So, Eric, when I look at it, because of COVID, I’ve actually improved the uptime of my units dramatically, and I did investments that if you looked at the end of the fourth quarter we had about 98% uptime at our customer sites. We’ve actually at the moment over 99.5%, and when you think about that difference, that’s a big number, a big change. And that’s like an investment. And now when we look at it, we’re really in maintenance mode as far as keeping that level. As well as the fact that we continue to make improvements in the units themselves, which we believe ultimately — and we’ll start really seeing I think the impact in the fourth quarter — really significant movement in our service margins.

Eric Stine — Craig-Hallum Capital Group — Analyst

Okay. But in terms of first quarter, I mean, was it a case of — I mean, you kind of mentioned that that it’s not an issue of increased costs due to [Technical Issues] of facilities or any of that.

Andy Marsh — President and Chief Executive Officer

No. It really wasn’t, Eric. It was really a cost associated with — we really made sure because every unit was up and running perfectly. And I think that delta improvements from 98% to 99.5% and having the fleet completely cleaned up was really where most of the cost came from. And now we’re kind of in a steady state mode.

Eric Stine — Craig-Hallum Capital Group — Analyst

Okay. That sounds great. Thanks.

Andy Marsh — President and Chief Executive Officer

Okay. Thanks, Eric.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question today is coming from Jed Dorsheimer from Canaccord Genuity. Your line is now live.

Jonathan Dorsheimer — Canaccord Genuity Corp. — Analyst

Hi, thanks. A lot have been asked. But just a couple, if I could. The first, Andy, you touched on a bit, but just wanted to dig in with the acquisition, particularly given the fact that you had already owned 30%. Was it the concern that this would fall into the hands of another party or really a desire to scale the business and kind of the one plus one equals three, the motivation for doing this?

Andy Marsh — President and Chief Executive Officer

Sure, Jed. I think especially since the Plug Power Symposium, we’ve been very clear that we want to migrate more into the generation business and that it could have a dramatic impact on our margins for hydrogen. And the relationship with United has gone on — it has been for a number of years, and we thought it was time — 10 tons of hydrogen, as I mentioned, represents about 25% of our usage, and that we’re really looking to drive improvements in our hydrogen margins and leverage the relationships that we’ve got.

Jonathan Dorsheimer — Canaccord Genuity Corp. — Analyst

Got it. That’s helpful. So, with that on the generation side, I mean, we’ve just seen that Daimler and Volvo announced the strategic sort of 10-year partnership around hydrogen for trucking. I’m curious what this does to your TAM. I don’t remember if you discussed that at the symposium, but it would seem like it would vastly expand that.

Andy Marsh — President and Chief Executive Officer

I mean, I think — so, if you take a bigger picture back, Jed, I think that’s a statement on the vitality this industry. Today, I was on a Reuters webinar with leadership at Air Liquide, Hyundai and Plug representing the United States. We believe that by 2050, 14% of US Energy and 18% of global energy is going to come from hydrogen. And fuel cells I think are the vehicles of choice for on-road trucking and I think this TAM for Plug Power and the TAM for the industry I think will continue to expand each year. And we have a nice leadership position as the biggest user of liquid hydrogen in the world. Now we’re becoming a significant generator of it. We’re already making our own green hydrogen. So I think all of these are positive steps.

Jonathan Dorsheimer — Canaccord Genuity Corp. — Analyst

Great. And then I just have a question in the near term on execution. I know you mentioned that this business is going to be accretive. It does look like the core Plug business that operational costs are running a bit higher. I’m wondering if we should be viewing this as kind of the steady state for the business or whether or not Q1 was an anomaly.

Andy Marsh — President and Chief Executive Officer

Jed, I will let Paul take that question.

Jonathan Dorsheimer — Canaccord Genuity Corp. — Analyst

Great. Thank you.

Paul Middleton — Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. Hey, Jed, and thanks, Andy. I think if you look at it sequentially from the back half of last year to now, it’s relatively consistent. And I think from a run rate standpoint, in that 20% to 21% range is fair from an opex standpoint, is a fair standard to use or estimate proxy. But I think as we continue to grow the overall top line, both with organic and inorganic, you’re going to see the continued leverage trend you have been seeing and will continue to see as we go forward.

Jonathan Dorsheimer — Canaccord Genuity Corp. — Analyst

Great. That’s helpful. Thank you, guys.

Andy Marsh — President and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Jed.

Operator

Thank you. Your next question today is coming from Craig Irwin from ROTH Capital Partners. Your line is now live.

Craig Irwin — Roth Capital Partners — Analyst

Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. Andy, one thing that [Speech Overlap]

Andy Marsh — President and Chief Executive Officer

Nice, Craig.

Craig Irwin — Roth Capital Partners — Analyst

Hey, hope you guys are all well [Speech Overlap]

Andy Marsh — President and Chief Executive Officer

[Speech Overlap]

Craig Irwin — Roth Capital Partners — Analyst

[Speech Overlap] is the update on the pedestal customers, the plus or minus 3, 4 [Phonetic] needed to get to your $700 million GenDrive forklift revenue by 2024. Have any of those customers maybe engaged with your current pedestal customers to observe the peak capacity that they’ve been able to demonstrate in this unusual environment? The ecommerce customer obviously is really benefiting with 10% more throughput and then Walmart has said publicly that grocery demand is up 400% year-over-year. Has that drawn attention from some of these other pedestal customers? And are you maybe seeing that influence their decision process?

Andy Marsh — President and Chief Executive Officer

Craig, I think you actually are hitting on a good point. The customers we’re engaging with here were pedestal customers, and I’m thinking of one in Europe now who is one of the main food delivery companies in France who has only one site with us. I was on the phone yesterday with their French sales team and they were explaining that they were really looking at the value of that one site having fuel cells and that they have some rather aggressive expansion plans.

I see the same going on in the United States with some of the two or three largest retail customers. So I think that — as I said before, I say that the success we’ve had in food retail is — with our present customers, they take notice. I told you that I’ve done [Phonetic] 40 sites through this year, which is really unusual because [Indecipherable] the year begins. I would just say I remain rather bullish that over the next six to nine months will be pronounced [Phonetic] the fourth pedestal customer.

Craig Irwin — Roth Capital Partners — Analyst

Excellent, excellent. Then, if I could ask a question about United Hydrogen. One of the things that really impacts the economics of their liquefaction facility is the fact that it’s located on the site Olin Corporation uses for chlorine production, right, and hydrogen is a byproduct there. United Hydrogen has a long-term supply agreement with Olin Corporation. But can you maybe describe for us your confidence that you would inherit the same positive economics with Olin and can you share with us the duration of this agreement? Is this something that is a multi-decade agreement? Or is this something where we could look for a probable negotiation within the next single digit number of years?

Andy Marsh — President and Chief Executive Officer

So, the contract is signable, and, Craig, we’ve already spoken with Olin, and it is a multi-decade agreement.

Craig Irwin — Roth Capital Partners — Analyst

Excellent. And then are there potential expansion opportunities with Olin given that this is already a pretty constructive relationship?

Andy Marsh — President and Chief Executive Officer

I’ll just say yes [Speech Overlap].

Craig Irwin — Roth Capital Partners — Analyst

Love it. Congratulations.

Andy Marsh — President and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Craig.

Craig Irwin — Roth Capital Partners — Analyst

Yeah. Congratulations on the strong quarter, Andy.

Andy Marsh — President and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Craig.

Operator

Our next question today is coming from Ethan Ellison from Morgan Stanley. Your line is now live.

Ethan Ellison — Morgan Stanley — Analyst

Hey guys, this is Ethan on for Stephen Byrd. Hope you’re all doing well, and thanks for taking my questions.

Andy Marsh — President and Chief Executive Officer

Well, thank you, Ethan.

Ethan Ellison — Morgan Stanley — Analyst

Yeah. I just have a couple of higher-level market sizing questions, sort of building off your comments around TAM. I guess in terms of the new greenfield warehouse and distribution center space is I think where Plug value proposition may be the most compelling. How do you think about Plug’s potential market share or the market share opportunity for fuel cells more generally in this part of the market going forward?

Andy Marsh — President and Chief Executive Officer

Sure. So, Ethan, you are right. As one of my largest customers told me, fuel cells are a no-brainer if you’re building a new facility because you don’t have to put the battery infrastructure in place. Hydrogen infrastructure cost is about on par. Plus, you get all the additional savings.

But I think when you take a step back, a good deal of the work we do, a good, probably 60% to 70%, is actually associated with facilities that already exist. So what I think about the value proposition, a lot less to do with work. The more work you do, the stronger the value proposition, especially when you’re talking brownfield facilities. So, anywhere from, I would say, 30 to 35 trucks and up, if you work more than a shift and a half, Plug Power, in many instances, can make a compelling value proposition. And so that’s why when you start looking at our forecast for 2024, we are looking at doing approximately — shipping 25,000 units, that still represents a rather small percentage of market. There is over 6 million forklift trucks out there. So we have a continual opportunity to grow this business well beyond what we’ve outlined at the Plug Power Symposium.

Ethan Ellison — Morgan Stanley — Analyst

Great. Yeah, that’s really helpful. Maybe one follow-up and just another sort of longer-term growth question. In terms of those locations where there are, I think you said 35 or more trucks working more than half or more ships, do you just have maybe some ballpark figures on what size of the market you think that is? And then separately, just how do you think about the growth rate of that greenfield warehouse distribution center space, longer-term, whether it’s a longer-term CAGAR maybe in terms of square footage or something or just how you think about that market evolving?

Andy Marsh — President and Chief Executive Officer

I probably take — to answer your first question, there is about 3.5 million opportunities out there for fuel cells into those type of distribution centers and manufacturing facilities. I probably think more, quite honestly, about the transition to Internet sales where you have many of the large retailers today trying to understand how they compete against the Amazons and Walmarts of the world, and the value proposition is so strong there. Whether it’s new distribution or old distribution centers, I think we make a rather compelling argument.

And I think that, Ethan, I think you’re going to see this as the world changes and we know you see in traditional retail companies which are really struggling, I think many of those sites will end up — and sales will end up being taken over by folks who are doing Internet retail sales, and boy, Plug solutions is a great solution for those opportunities.

Ethan Ellison — Morgan Stanley — Analyst

Okay. [Technical Issues] Thanks for all that color. And congrats on the quarter, guys. Take care.

Andy Marsh — President and Chief Executive Officer

Okay. Thanks, Ethan.

Operator

Thank you. We’ve reached the end of our question-and-answer session. I’d like to turn the floor back over to Andy for any further or closing comments.

Andy Marsh — President and Chief Executive Officer

I want to thank everyone for taking the time today. This is a difficult time for many companies. And when I look at the work our employees have been doing to keep essential business and customers going and the growth opportunities their work has allowed for us in the future, combined with bringing on new teammates in hydrogen, we strongly stand behind our goals for this year of $300 million in gross bookings, $20 million in EBITDA as well as the fact that we see our goals for 2024 and are continuing take the steps to ensure that Plug Power will reach $1 billion in gross bookings by 2024, $200 million in EBITDA and $170 million in operating income.

So thank you for taking the time today, and stay safe.

Operator

[Operator Closing Remarks]