Hartford Business Journal

16 HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | JANUARY 23, 2023 terest (2%), partially forgivable loans, and $10 million in Urban and Indus- trial Sites Reinvestment Tax Credits. The funding was to support a 90,000-square-foot expansion of FuelCell's Torrington facility, which broke ground in late 2015, and the hiring of hundreds of workers. Under the original terms of the deal, half of the first $10-million loan was forgivable if FuelCell created 165 full-time jobs and retained 538 full- time positions, for a total of 703 jobs maintained for two consecutive years. Half of a second $10-million loan was forgivable if FuelCell created another 160 full-time positions and retained 863 full-time jobs for two consecutive years. But the company struggled to reach those benchmarks and faced several headwinds in the years following the deal's announcement. In late 2016, FuelCell laid off 75 people in Torrington and 11 more in Danbury, and it reported only 458 employees in October 2017, according to the Republican-American. In 2019, FuelCell announced another round of 175 layoffs at its Torrington plant and was facing the threat of bankruptcy. That same year, the company's board of directors fired then-CEO Chip Bottone, and appointed Few, who refinanced loans that were on the verge of default. Since FuelCell's deal with the state was originally hatched, it's been amended twice, according to Jim Watson, a DECD spokesman. The loan has been reduced to $10 million and DECD has agreed to forgive $2 million if FuelCell retains 538 jobs and creates 91 more, Watson said. FuelCell has not earned any forgiveness, Watson said. Thomas Gelston, FuelCell's senior vice president of investor relations, said his company will have to make an estimated $3.3 million accelerated payment on the $10-million loan as a result of missing the revised deal's employment targets. Project backlog And despite the recent growth, analysts weren't impressed with the company's fiscal fourth-quarter earnings report on Dec. 20, 2022, which showed revenues below their expectations. FuelCell reported fourth-quarter revenue of $39.2 million — $5.1 million less than analysts predicted. However, revenue increased from $13.9 million in the fourth quarter of 2021. FuelCell reported a fourth-quarter loss of $15.2 million, greater than an $8.4-million loss in the year-ago period. Most of the company's revenue — $24 million, or 61.2% — came from product sales, followed by electricity generation, which totalled $8.8 million, or 22.4%, according to the earning's report. For all of fiscal year 2022, which ended Oct. 31, the company reported a $147.2-million loss, compared to a $101-million loss in the previous year. FuelCell's stock price has dropped 18.5% over the last six months, and plummeted to $2.65 per share on Dec. 20. The stock price has since rebounded to over $3. "While the tech progress is encour- aging, expenses are elevated and international growth in South Korea and other locations is unclear," according to a report by Jeffrey Osborne, managing director and senior research analyst at Cowen Inc., who follows FuelCell. FuelCell's generation backlog was $1.1 billion at the end of the fourth quarter, falling 14% from 2021. The company announced during its earn- ings call that, to reduce the backlog, it would drop two Hartford generation projects — proposed on a vacant lot at 441 Homestead Ave. — totalling 8.4 MW. The projects, part of a 2018 power-purchase agreement with utility giant Eversource, were based on FuelCell's older, natural gas-pow- ered technology and no longer deemed economical, according to FuelCell's Chief Financial Officer Mike Bishop. But Bishop pointed to strong product sales of $60 million in 2022, as it reentered the Korean market following a settlement agree- ment with POSCO Energy, the largest energy supplier in the Asian country. FuelCell in 2015 sued POSCO, a business partner at the time, for $200 million, claiming breach of a contract. POSCO countersued in 2020, before a settlement was reached a year later in 2021. FuelCell said it recently filled orders for 20 molten carbonate fuel cell modules from Korea Fuel Cell, a POSCO subsidiary. It's had other significant recent deals: • It completed a 7.4 MW natural gas-powered fuel cell park at the Naval Submarine Base in Groton. • It has a power-purchase agreement with Eversource and United Illumi- nating to install a 14-MW fuel cell park in Derby; site work has begun and the project is expected to go online during the fourth quarter this year. • It's also constructing a distribution hydrogen platform for Toyota at the port of Long Beach, Calif. FuelCell Energy's position today is a far cry from where it was several years ago, the executives said. Bishop said the company has transitioned from focusing on its generation portfolio and product sales and service, to investing in new tech- nology including hydrogen production and carbon capture, along with solid oxide power generation. "So, what you've seen is that our expenses go up over the last couple of years, because we're making measured investments in our new hydrogen technologies," Bishop said. "We ended the fiscal year with about $458 million of unrestricted cash on our balance sheet, so that gives us strong confidence in being able to invest the capital both in research and development for the commercial- ization of these technologies as well as capital expansion plans." FuelCell Energy's Valerie Hoffman, director of service operations, and Tom Gelston, senior vice president of investor relations, at a 1.4-MW fuel cell at Trinity College. The fuel cell is owned and operated by the Danbury-based company. HBJ PHOTO | STEVE LASCHEVER Home Sales Here's a list of recently sold luxury homes in Greater Hartford. Sale price Address Town Baths Beds Square footage Days on market $1,750,000 10 Atwater Terrace Farmington 4 5 6,151 24 $1,380,000 41 Stockbridge Drive Avon 5 7 6,260 3 $1,330,000 503 Cedar Ridge Drive Glastonbury 4 6 5,842 57 $1,025,000 29 Bainbridge Road West Hartford 6 4 3,631 4 $960,000 30 Wildwood Drive Avon 5 4 5,246 12 $850,000 315 North Steele Road West Hartford 4 5 4,200 12 $840,000 406 Tall Timbers Road Glastonbury 5 3 3,244 5 $828,228 59 Nelson Drive Burlington 4 3 3,077 0 $810,000 15 Woodside Circle Hartford 5 4 3,575 3 $784,000 75 Daniel Trace Burlington 5 6 5,131 24 $730,000 100 Terrys Plain Road Simsbury 4 3 4,310 4 $725,000 29 Belknap Road West Hartford 8 5 4,367 136 $715,000 24 Farm Hill Road West Hartford 4 3 3,343 2 $711,000 1 Westland Road Burlington 4 4 3,304 54 Credit: Data provided by Evan L. Berman of William Raveis Broder Team. Contact him at evan@brodergroup.com. Mike Bishop

• Cover