AMSC CEO on Expanding Across Mining, Energy and Data Center Infrastructure

**Nicole** (0:00)
Joining us right now, Daniel McGahn, president and CEO and chairman of American Superconductor, also referred to as AMSC. It's great to see you. It's wonderful to have you on. I saw your record revenue and strong orders in the first quarter. Tell us a little bit about that and welcome to the show.

**Daniel McGahn** (0:22)
It's great to see you again, Nicole.
We surpassed a whole new level, a record level of revenue in the quarter, more than $90 million. This represents 30% year on year growth. Additionally, the first quarter for us, it's our first quarter of the financial fiscal year. We delivered really exceptionally strong bookings with more than $130 million, which really reflects the strong tailwinds behind our market.
We're really at a new inflection point. The backlog for 12 months is about $300 million, which is what we did in entirety last year. So we already have enough backlog to signal very strong growth coming for this year. And we're only a few months here into our fiscal year. There was one big order, I think that is transformative for how people think about the company in the quarter, which was for a mine. We are providing more and more substation level equipment to our projects. There's a lot of strong demand in the material sector, which could be for us semiconductors are mining. We see very strong health and strength in the pipeline there, as well as in traditional energy for us. But this $25 million order allows us to put together a lot of component equipment that the company makes and be able to help a utility that we've had a very long relationship with. So this $25 million order is the largest order for a mining project in company history.

**Nicole** (1:53)
Yeah, you mentioned the backlog, the 12-month black log, exceeding $300 million, a total backlog of over $400 million. And the $90 million, surpassing $90 million in quarterly revenue, that represents 30% growth year over year. So as you see strong demand in the material space, mining, as you just were referring to, the continued strength, what will continue to drive numbers like these going forward?

**Daniel McGahn** (2:24)
I think it's a lot in industrial and materials, a lot with utilities for us, and a lot in traditional power sector. So the company has really expanded the markets that we pursue. We've expanded the amount of content we provide per project. Those all translate into a diversified set of market sectors we focus on, which spells multiple pathways to growth. So we're in probably the best position the company's ever been, to be able to grow to new heights. If you look at last year, our order book we brought in probably 70-75 million per quarter. Now we're above 100 even with this large order, if I take it out, we're more than 100 million. So we're at a new level, and this is a business that really tracks with capital spending in manufacturing, in materials, in semiconductor, and spaces that where we see are very big and bright for us in the coming quarters.

**Nicole** (3:20)
What is the look at data centers?
You're progressing with additional data center opportunities. I'm sure that's getting updated regularly. Where are we now with that?

**Daniel McGahn** (3:32)
It's probably the thing I get asked about the most.
We have a part of our business that we support utilities on the feeder line when they're building a bunch of data centers and looking at the impact for power and power quality. On the grid itself, and then late last year, we started to see our first wins and our first deliveries into construction projects for utilities, and really as part of a data center, build out the capacity of that data center. This is another area for us to start to pursue.
I know investors can be up and down on where this market is going to be and how big it's going to be. But if you look at the demand for electricity, that's only going up. The reliance on electricity is only going up. And we're in a unique position to be able to solve those problems for people that we know really well, which are the engineering construction companies that help build their customer's capacity. And that could be data or chemical or chips or really anything. And our company comes in to be able to manage the power flow and the power quality.

**Nicole** (4:34)
And congratulations on that $25 million order from the North American Utility Company that you spoke about a short time ago. That's setting a new company record. And I think about some of the other needs and growth going forward. Tell me where we see more demand versus less demand, because there's, you mentioned energy. We talked about data center.