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Chart Industries Inc (GTLS -0.37%)
Q3Â 2020 Earnings Call
Oct 22, 2020, 9:30 a.m. ET
Contents:
- Prepared Remarks
- Questions and Answers
- Call Participants
Prepared Remarks:
Operator
Good morning and welcome to the Chart Industries, Inc. 2020 Third Quarter Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. The company's supplemental presentation was issued earlier this morning. If you have not received the release, you may access it by visiting Chart's website at www.chartindustries.com. A telephone replay of today's broadcast will be available following the conclusion of today's call until Thursday, October 29th, 2020. The replay information is contained in the company's press release.
Before we begin, the company would like to remind you that statements made during this call that are not historical in fact are forward-looking statements. Please refer to the information regarding forward-looking statements and risk factors included in the company's earnings release and latest filings with the SEC. The company undertakes no obligation to update publicly or revise any forward-looking statement.
I would now like to turn the conference call over to Jill Evanko, Chart Industries' CEO.
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Thanks, Andrew. Good morning and thank you everyone for joining our call today. Here with me is Scott Merkle, our Chief Accounting Officer and we'll talk through our third quarter results, how our recent announcements are already benefiting us and how our strong order book and backlog is setting 2021 up to be a great year.
I'm very pleased with the performance in the third quarter, in particular, our order and bottom line execution amid active deals both buy and sell side. It's surprising to me as I read the initial takes from the morning that people we consider [Technical Issues] interested in the clean energy transition and our long-term strategists have a mixed reaction to the quarter. A timing miss on revenue, but not lost the competition, a beat on EPS and multiple record orders in a variety of diverse applications coupled with a very strong start to October seems inconsistent. But, hey, let's see if what I share on the call help you better understand why we are extremely pleased with our current position.
As you know, we have spent the last two and a half years executing on various steps to set up the position we are in today. The focus on our core cryogenic engineering and product offering that is a very unique play in the hydro spaces of clean energy, specialty products and repair service and leasing while getting stickier with our customers through broader long-term agreements. We will walk through the supplemental deck release this morning as we typically do. All figures in the deck and press release are continuing operations. For those who have asked for year-to-date results for the discontinued operations of the cryobio sale that's included on the last slide of the appendix of the presentation.
Starting on the right hand side of Slide 3, the blue power sources are where our current equipment offerings directly is used. The orange or letters K and L, solar and wind, are being utilized in conjunction with many of the other fuel. Through our recent partnerships, in particular with green hydrogen provider McPhy, we will be able to participate on more projects that involve a coupling of these types of power sources.
I'd like to take a moment to step back on Slide 4 to a few key steps in our [Technical Issues] transformation over the past couple of years and why they are important in conjunction with our recent announcements that further set us up to be a pivotal player at this inflection point in the ESG and clean energy transition. This is also fundamental to understand our strategy, themes you'll continue to hear and a good way to understand potential upcoming investments and how they will build upon this foundation.
So what's different from three years ago. First, we have a lower customer concentration with higher end market and geographic diversity. This came in part as a result of our geographic footprint expansion through acquisitions such as VRV as well as through the formation of our global commercial teams. Year-to-date 2020, we have booked orders with 407 new customers, including 115 related to specialty markets and 55% of these customers are outside of North America. Second, expanding our stickiness with our customers through long-term agreements that encompass our entire set of products as well as repair and service.
This year to date alone we have completed 15 agreements four LOIs and three MOUs, ranging from the virtual pipeline in India with ExxonMobil LNG and IOCL to equipment for Molson Breweries new production lines. Historically, we would typically have had no more than five agreements at any one point in time. In conjunction with these expanded LTAs, we have expanded our repair and service footprint as well as our leasing fleet offering our customers a one-stop shop inclusive of installation and refurbishment, while giving flexibility [Technical Issues] customer and project leads that we would not have had access to without our rental program.
And finally, through our acquisitions that have helped us accomplish these strategic building blocks, we have been able to expand our talent including keeping strategic industry leaders such as the Spada brothers, the former VRV owners and expanding our skilled workforce in the case of our recently acquired Alabama location.
Our recently announced divestiture of the cryobio business for $320 million in cash, not only was our final step in selling non-core product lines from our portfolio, it also opened up opportunities for further investments in our high growth, high-margin businesses including giving us access to acquire Worthington's cryogenic trailer and hydrogen trailer business, which was completed on October 13. We have long desired their transport business based in Theodore, Alabama, we call them Teddy Trailers, not only to expand our hydrogen equipment product line to larger-sized transports, but also for the key location to manufacturing capacity.
The challenge previously was that we competed head to head on cryobiological with them and therefore we were unable to get this deal completed. Once we were no longer competing on those products, it became easier to acquire the business. This past week, which was our first week of owning the business, we have already received commitments for $9 million of hydrogen trailer orders.
We continue to generate strong free cash flow, which has been used to pay down debt. As you can see on slide 5. We expect the fourth quarter, free cash flow generation to be the highest cash generation [Technical Issues] 2020 with full-year expected free cash flow to be between $120 million and $140 million, again on a continuing basis. The third quarter free cash flow was lower than the second quarter due to AR collections from the timing of sales in particular with September being considerably higher than July and August, as well as noticable customers holding payments at the end of their quarters or fiscal year ends.
For example, we collected over $12 million from one customer the first week of October, $6 million from another and $5 million from the third. We closed the sale of the cryobio business on October 1. The proceeds were used to pay down debt. And as you can see in the bottom left hand table, the September 30th pro forma net leverage ratio was 1.75. After the investments we made in mid-October, pro forma would be 1.98. It's also worth noting that we have $120 million of cash on our balance sheet. This strategic step has also opened up the ability to invest in our target markets, products and technologies.
In addition to debt pay down and the Worthington trailer acquisition, we invested in McPhy, a specialized company in zero carbon hydrogen production and distribution equipment. Through this, we also executed a commercial MOU, which will give us access to multiple new projects and customers. It has been one week since the transaction closed, and already we have identified and been pulled into discussions on five new projects that we previously would not have had involvement.
Many have asked if there are other investments or acquisitions on the horizon? There are three near-term potential acquisitions [Technical Issues] with near term meaning sometime in the next two to six months if we can get to agreement. All are related to our specialty products or markets and each would be less than $30 million headline prices. Not to be overlooked our organic investments, to that I would like to point out are the hiring of hydrogen engineers and commercial resources globally and the expansion of our leasing fleet.
In the third quarter, we hired nine hydrogen external resources to our commercial and engineering teams, enhancing our already meaningful team focused on this growing area. Additionally, we have added 20 standard transports to our leasing fleet with 20 more in process and we'll expand the leasing fleet to hydrogen trailers. We are already seeing the benefits in our order book from these investments. For example, we booked record repair service and leasing orders of over $35 million in the third quarter compared to the prior record of $13 million. We are continuing to see traction on leasing with eight new sales leases and 18 new operating leases signed in the third quarter alone.
Keep in mind as well that we receive interest monies on these leases which is not booked as part of an order. Another immediate impact from these investments has been in hydrogen as shown on Slide 6. We have received commitments on orders for $6.4 million and $2.4 million this past week for the Teddy Trailer business and also received a PO earlier this week for $2 million for gaseous hydrogen trailers out of our Germany location.
It's worth pointing out that the traditional customer discussions from the hydrogen investments have brought attention to our European hydrogen capabilities, including both gaseous and liquid equipment. We currently have discussions under way with 74 different hydrogen customers and have 29 NDAs in place with a subset of those. If you remember, we ended the first quarter with four [Technical Issues] NDAs.
This morning, we put out a separate press release describing our participation in the US Department of Energy's H2S scale Texas project which intends to show that renewable hydrogen can be a cost-effective fuel for multiple end-use applications including fuel cell electric vehicles, when coupled with large base-load consumers that use hydrogen for clean and reliable stationary power. We're partnering with companies throughout the hydrogen value chain including Frontier Energy, Toyota Motor North America, Shell, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and Air Liquide on two related projects.
All of our recent hydrogen announcements further our commercial reach as well as collaboration to bring our equipment to this accelerating market. We take every opportunity to expand our agreements to more customers and again to be inclusive of our very unique product offering as well as repair and service. This quarter's 10 new agreements, two LOIs and one MOU show the differentiation and diversity of our product offering. For example, the MOU was for a significant new hydrogen project in Asia, one LOI related to LNG mobile and storage equipment in Africa, while another was from Molson Breweries new production line.
We've always stated that it's important not to [Technical Issues] meet our major industrial gas customers. And in this vein, we completed a first time LTA with an industrial gas major in the United States inclusive of bulk original equipment and repair and service capabilities. Five new long-term agreements in Europe were completed, including two for multi-year LNG fueling station build out in repair and service. And while our air cooled heat exchanger business has been the hardest hit this year, we continue to execute on our strategy to be the global supplier of air coolers manufacturing as close to our customers as possible and for a variety of applications.
In Q3, we've built on those by signing an agreement for air cooled heat exchanger global supply with Flint Hills. We have already discussed our hottest specialty products for our hottest speciality market which is hydrogen. The great thing though about our products is that they are used in a variety of end markets and applications and are molecule agnostic. Other high-growth areas including water treatment and space exploration are worth watching too.
Slide 8 spotlights the water treatment aspect of our business. On the last earnings call, we discussed the demand growth in the United States since then we have seen further demand for desalination as a solution for water scarcity in places such as the Middle East. This is the result of further regulation increasing environmental concerns and perhaps what is most interesting to me is a desire for there to be power terminal in water treatment facilities built near and in conjunction with each other. This offers us a very unique opportunity.
We are currently working with customers in locations such as Africa [Technical Issues] these in a network style fashion. Year-to-date through September, water treatment orders were $10.3 million compared to $6 million for the entire year of 2019. In the third quarter of 2020 we booked record orders for six facilities. This is meaningful as in all prior years our average for a full year would be equipment for five facilities. Included in Q3 was a contract for $3.7 million with Archer Western [Phonetic] for designing and fabricating liquid oxygen system for the Dallas, Texas water utility ozone improvement project as well as the $1 million order for equipment for the world's largest waste water treatment plant being constructed in Egypt.
And while we have not yet seen full return to the field from the major industrial gas players, we have seen a considerable ramp in carbon dioxide related product demand in the last quarter. Specialty products for beverage carbonation, cannabis, concrete curing and craft breweries are in high demand. Couple this end-use demand with recent CO2 supply disruptions driving end users to minimize supply risk with larger volume onsite storage system and we have significant order increases for our small bulk liquid CO2 tanks.
2019 full year for these tanks average 137 units per month. Year-to-date September of this year has averaged 155 per month even more meaningful though has been the third quarter 2020 average of 228 per month compared to January and February pre-COVID levels of 140 per month. And telling you also about first of a kind orders and activities in the first quarter mainly due to more of them arising around the transition to clean energy. Since then we have noted a broader set of folk opportunities or as our team calls them folking orders, including 23 in the third quarter.
From left to right on Slide 9, we have executed a three-year exclusive design and supply agreement for liquefaction, truck loading and pipe for ISTOR's proprietary liquid air energy system. ISTOR stores energy using an offsite electric-driven cryogenic process during off peak hours returning that stored energy to the system during on peak hours. This is targeted for various locations around the United States.
The Middle first of kind is for the engineering of Stratolaunch's liquid oxygen tank for use on a carrier plane. The picture you see there is their actual rendition. This will also give us a jumping-off point for cryogenic tanks that can be used for other molecules that will fit in smaller onboard aircraft spaces. Just this past month research showed that the space industry is expected to grow by over $1 trillion in the next decade. Recent NASA grants to companies such as ULA, SpaceX and Lockheed will further progress commercial spaceflight which in turn means more equipment for us to supply to various sites back here on earth.
A few recent examples include three tanks for SpaceX's Starship program Raptor engine development, our supply of ULA's Vulcan launch site ground support systems in Cape Canaveral. And for Lockheed, our liquid nitrogen system [Technical Issues] acoustic chambers and test their equipment before sending it to space.
And finally, our always under-appreciated piece of equipment, the doser as shown on the far right hand side of the slide. The doser is amazing. It helps customers cut down on plastic in their bottles, it makes nitro coffee, it cans beer and wine, it puts the right amount of molecule into eyelash serum, and now it's being used in household disinfectant packaging of phenol and Fabuloso in Mexico and South America.
To give you a sense of the need for our products and technology in this region for plastic bottle package disinfectant take Mexico City, where the packaging is done at high elevation location. The product is then distributed into lower elevated cities such as Cancun or Guadalajara. Without the counter pressure from liquid nitrogen dosing, the product package will collapse with the change in elevation. The label won't adhere correctly, and in turn, consumers will now take the product up from grocery store shelves making these scratch products.
I would not have thought I would be telling you that even with the COVID situation unresolved and the election weeks away that we would have record backlog levels in both of the distribution and storage businesses as well as an increase of 19% versus the same quarter of 2019 in the base E&C Cryo backlog excluding Calcasieu Pass.
Much of this is a result of the organic investments we discussed already and it's also driven by record orders in the third quarter including water treatment in hydrogen as described earlier, repair service and leasing, driven by our expanded leasing fleet, LNG regas, ISO containers for LNG applications, demand for these ISO containers which are intermodal shipping containers capable of transporting cryogenic liquids by ship, rail and truck has significantly increased with more movement of smallscale LNG.
We had our second ever HLNG vehicle tank order quarter above $20 million in the third quarter. As a reminder, second quarter of this year was the only other HLNG vehicle tank quarter with orders above $20 million. We are also seeing activity from geographies besides Europe including an order from a large Japanese auto company for their on-road trials. And as we mentioned in the release, many of these same customers are working on the possibility of liquid hydrogen on-board vehicles for the future and we will have a prototype of this design completed before year-end.
Finally, we continue to see record order levels for fueling stations with year-to-date station orders totaling 56, a 37% increase over year-to-date 2019 levels. As we have commented previously the LNG infrastructure activity is continuing to gain strength and we expect that to continue over the next several years. We received a meaningful order in the third quarter from a leading LNG logistics company in South China. This order for trailers is strategically significant for us and this is the first time we've been able to enter the Southern region of China for LNG.
Governments such as India are taking actions for LNG to continue to play a significant part in their energy transition plan including plans to increase the share [Technical Issues] gas from 6.3% to 15% of the country's energy by 2030. And on September 10 of this year, Minister Pradhan announced that the 11th city gas distribution authorization would launch very soon, extending the coverage of the network to 500 cities. The 11th round will include 50 to 100 districts and our made and make in India offering is well positioned to service expanding LNG infrastructure market.
Finally related to LNG, while we only have the remaining $46 million of Calcasieu Pass orders included in our revenue outlook and no additional big LNG projects, we do continue to expect big LNG to be upside to our outlook. We received an early engineering release for a big LNG terminal for brazed aluminum heat exchangers and cold boxes to be used on the natural gas pre-treatment train. This is not related to Venture Global's Plaquemines project, Cheniere's Corpus Christi Stage Three or Tellurian's Driftwood project.
While we haven't talked as much about COVID-related demand, it's still relevant. Medical oxygen related orders increased 7.6% in the third quarter compared to the second quarter, making the third quarter the highest medical oxygen related order quarter of 2020. We had expected to see a reduction to more typical pre-COVID-19 order levels for these applications, but the heightened need for oxygen equipment in India was the primary driver of the increase of this demand. And just early this morning, we received notification of a purchase order for $4 million for oxygen tanks for a customer supplying Egyptian hospitals fighting COVID [Technical Issues].
Finally, the E&C FinFans business, in particular air cooled heat exchangers has not dropped off further than what we saw in the second quarter, but we have not seen a recovery either. October order activity has started very strong in first 21 days. Let me share a few key wins so far. We have had eight orders already over $1 million, a record hydrogen order quarter and we're only 21 days in. Strong service order in our E&C Lifecycle business for over $1.5 million in Algeria. We received verbal notification that we won an order for multiple LNG semi-trailers in Russia for smallscale network. We expect that to be booked within the fourth quarter of 2020. And while beverage ended the third quarter strong with the highest number of units ordered in September in any month since February, October month-to-date, we have already booked 80% of our September beverage orders, and those are just some examples.
Now Merk can give you the cold hard facts for the quarter.
Scott W. Merkle -- Vice President & Chief Accounting Officer
Thanks, Jill. Sales of $273 million were down 19.2% when compared to the third quarter of 2019, entirely driven by E&C FinFans. Excluding FinFans, the rest of the businesses' sales were up 11.1% year-over-year with D&S East up 20.9%. Year-to-date 2020 sales are down only 3.3% from 2019 year-to-date or down 4.9% organically, which reflects the diversification of our business. As we frequently discuss most of our changes on sales are movements between quarters versus lost volume. We had over $22 million of expected sales in the third quarter related to specific projects shift due to customer delivery timing with the majority of that shifting into the first half of 2021.
The breakdown is $12 million in E&C Cryo, $4 million in E&C FinFans and $6.5 million in D&S East. The rest of the shortfall was around the recovery related to beverage equipment where it occurred later in the third quarter than we had expected but when it did it recovered in a bigger bang for the buck way than we expected. And in turn will have a positive impact on the fourth quarter of 2020. Even with certain shipments being pushed out, we were able to deliver reported gross margin as a percent of sales of 28.8% and when normalized for restructuring cost was 29.7%, bringing our year-to-date normalized gross margin as a percent of sales to 29.2%.
We expect the fourth quarter gross margin as a percent of sales to be the highest of the year. Gross margin combined with our continued cost improvements in SG&A resulted in reported diluted earnings per share of $0.43 and adjusted diluted earnings per share of $0.63 with the adjustments related to the restructuring for our Tulsa, the Texas facility consolidation in E&C FinFans and deal related costs. Reported and adjusted diluted EPS were both the highest of 2020.
SG&A of $41.1 million in the third quarter of 2020 was $38.4 million when normalized for one-time expenses. Year-to-date, we have taken out over $66 million of annualized cost with associated restructuring charges of just over $12 million. This cost out is reflected in our positive trends in both gross margin and SG&A and has resulted in our year-to-date record low normalized SG&A as a percent of sales of 14.8%.
Full year 2020 sales are expected to be approximately $1.18 billion inclusive of $23 million of Venture Global Calcasieu Pass revenue in the fourth quarter. We anticipate full year diluted adjusted earnings per share to be approximately $2.25 [Phonetic] on 35.3 million weighted average shares outstanding. Our assumed effective tax rate is 19% for the full year 2020.
On to Slide 13, our sales range for 2021 is unchanged from prior at $1.25 billion to $1.325 billion. And keeping with our new tradition of giving an approximate number we would share approximately $1.28 billion for revenue with associated adjusted diluted earnings per share of $3 to $3.40 on 35.3 million weighted average shares outstanding. Adjusted EPS is increase from our previous estimate $2.90 to $3.25 per share. You can see the puts and takes on a bridge on this slide and I'm excited to continue to see the year unfold with many upside opportunities that are not included in our 2021 outlook. We also continue to expect strong free cash flow in the 14% to 15% of sales range.
With that, I'll now turn it over to the operator to open up for questions.
Questions and Answers:
Operator
Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And your first question comes from the line of James West with Evercore ISI.
James West -- Evercore ISI -- Analyst
Hey, good morning, Jill.
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Hey, James.
James West -- Evercore ISI -- Analyst
I want to first talk about your base industrial gas business because the -- if we're looking at the -- all the economic indicators that I'm looking at consumer and housing is leading this recovery pretty substantially and we're in a very big V-shaped economic recovery. And so the major chemical and industrial gas providers should be huge beneficiaries because they are early cycle beneficiaries. So, I was curious if you could just comment on your conversations when you're talking to Linde or are you talking to their products or others. What are they saying about their businesses right now, which should be, I think in a nice recovery form and how much is that going to help your kind of base business ex all the other really positive things you have going on in hydrogen, LNG etc.
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Yes, very much in line with what you just stated is the feedback that we're getting. But let me just step back, we still haven't seen a full recovery to pre-COVID activity levels on the order side with those industrial gas majors and that's primarily related to continued travel restrictions for the field installation folks.
James West -- Evercore ISI -- Analyst
Right.
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Which is actually very positive setting us up for Q4 and 2021. And so coupling that return to the field with this consumer and housing strength on the recovery, we see upside potential to our base forecast that we have with the industrial gas guys. We also are hearing that the fourth quarter will be very strong. In some cases, these customers are actually telling us that it's going to be stronger than the third quarter, which obviously was recovered fairly well.
The other element on the industrial gas players are independent distributors that play in pockets where business may be too small for a major to take or they have a particular product category that they focus in on. And we've seen those in independent distributors really come out very strong around the food and beverage side of the business. And there is a lot of quoting activity with those guys too. So, we stand to benefit both from the majors as well as from the independents as we head into next year.
James West -- Evercore ISI -- Analyst
Okay. Okay, great. And then with respect to hydrogen, obviously you're making pretty strong moves from the hydrogen side and partnerships. It seems to me that what's going on behind the scenes is even stronger than what we might be seeing the public announcements here from various hydrogen committees and boards, etc., and some of the players in the space. Is that a fair statement to make and does that suggest that the hydrogen narrative here which obviously we need public policy to kind of move this along, but it seems to be there, is the hydrogen business taking off faster than perhaps we or you would have expected, say, three to six months ago?
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Absolutely. It's a fair statement that you're making, and you're probably not even making it strong enough to what's happening. Yeah.
James West -- Evercore ISI -- Analyst
Okay. [Speech Overlap]
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Is there so much activity and while the governments and the public sector play a part in it, you'd be surprised at how much the private sector is making investments as well. A lot of the reason we don't elaborate upon it further is that these companies making these investments and working are looking to have a competitive advantage as they do first projects and whether it's marine or transport or fuel. Yeah, I just give you an example, we're working with a potential customer on cooling for warehousing in cooling [Technical Issues] site that type of activity where the real long-term answer to achieve these decarbonization goals for companies that have put a 2030 or 2050 target out is going to have to move toward hydrogen and in a warehouse case it's going to have to be liquid hydrogen because of the capacity to store it.
James West -- Evercore ISI -- Analyst
Sure. These customers, I know you mentioned kind of the smaller customers make it miss, but I mean I think some of the regular customers are not small, I mean, we're talking server farms or Microsoft and things like Amazon for their cloud computing capabilities and others. I mean, some of the people that we've talked in the last couple of weeks are major, major drivers of the economy that seem to be also moving to liquid hydrogen. Is that a fair -- another fair statement I mean?
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Another fair statement. The names you just named are absolutely looking to move in that direction. I mean, you could list dozens and dozens more that are of that caliber in that size and magnitude...
James West -- Evercore ISI -- Analyst
Sort of Walmart, example [Phonetic], yeah.
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
There you go. Exactly. I mean, you look at it -- on the other side of the coin, you have the shelves of the world and hotels that are also making investments in this area. So, you've got multiple industries coming at this at the same time and working to achieve this network. So it is way bigger than I would have even said three months ago.
James West -- Evercore ISI -- Analyst
Right. Okay. Perfect. Thanks, Jill.
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Thank you. [Technical Issues]
Operator
Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Walter Liptak with Seaport.
Walter Liptak -- Seaport -- Analyst
Hi, there. Thanks. Good morning and good quarter.
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Thanks, Walt. Good morning.
Scott W. Merkle -- Vice President & Chief Accounting Officer
Good morning.
Walter Liptak -- Seaport -- Analyst
Good morning. I wanted to ask, just to stick on the hydrogen thing for a minute, the order intake for the Teddy Trailers that looks like there was like one quarter worth of orders in just like a few weeks. Is that fair? And I think you guys gave a range of like $15 million to $20 million after the orders came in for those Teddy Trailers, you have to rethink that maybe increase the number of trailers or the revenue from those trailers over the next 12 months?
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Yes, it's accurate to say the first couple of weeks is equivalent to what a typical quarter historically has been. So that's off to a really good start and I can elaborate on that the quoting activity behind that is substantial. So it's not like those were the only orders on the horizon and it's going to go dry. We have a great opportunity to leverage the manufacturing capacity in the Teddy Trailer location and we intend to be able to do that very quickly here.
The historical high number of trailers that were done in that facility was nine and we're looking to do 20 in 2021. So we're going to see how this quarter, quarters roll out beyond this first kind of $10 million [Technical Issues] in the first couple of weeks and that would be the point where we would consider revising that $15 million to $20 million for 2021.
There is also a couple of additional capabilities in that facility that we're going to build upon and we're looking to increase in the fourth quarter which could add on capabilities for different equipment that goes along with the trailer. So, we'll see how that ramps up in Q4 along with the order booking and potentially increase that come February.
Walter Liptak -- Seaport -- Analyst
Okay, great. Thanks for that. And then the fueling stations, I wonder if you could give us some color on the fueling station growth, maybe the geographic regions and the applications for those fueling stations.
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Yes. And let's separate hydrogen fueling stations just to the total. The 56 number I gave year-to-date on fueling stations, which are primarily on LNG or LCNG. And those 56 are spread between China, Southeast Asia and Northwest Europe. It split about half and half from Northwest Europe and China. And certain of those Chinese orders are for export to other Southeast Asian regions, it's fairly widespread demand meaning across customer bases and across countries within Northwest Europe, but the more recent [Technical Issues] has been higher concentration in Germany.
Walter Liptak -- Seaport -- Analyst
Okay, great. All right. Thank you. I'll get back in queue.
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Thanks, Walt.
Operator
Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Eric Stine with Craig-Hallum.
Eric Stine -- Craig-Hallum -- Analyst
Hi, Jill. Hi, Scott.
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Hey, Eric.
Scott W. Merkle -- Vice President & Chief Accounting Officer
Hi, Eric.
Eric Stine -- Craig-Hallum -- Analyst
Hey. So, just sticking with LNG and love to talk about the vehicle tanks and thanks for all the detail on, I mean, the overall business, you gave a lot there. But interested by kind of the geographic expansion that you're seeing or you're talking about South America, Russia and Japan, also different applications such as buses just how do we think about that in the context of the two long-term supply agreements that you have now in Europe? And where do you service that from, is that something that you're able to do that out of your location, your VRV location in Europe or is that something where you're going to need a new facility or through a different part of your business?
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
So, I'll start with the back half of your question. We now have production capabilities in both our Georgia, US facility as well as our VRV Italian facility. The combination of those two facilities' capacity is about equivalent to $200 million of HLNG vehicle tanks per year. And if you [Technical Issues] we did about $65 million, we thought that we saw it come mid-COVID time we would be down in the $45 million to $50 million. But I think it's actually going to return to similar 2019 levels and completely take off from there.
The long-term agreement folks which we have two of that are on these sole source supply agreements for this particular product, some of those are also looking at equipment for other geographies. So, while historically, they have been focused on the European region, they're starting to order for regions like Brazil and South America. What that does is it allows us to manufacture close to where the product is going to go and it also allows us to look at the type of tanks that they're looking for some of these guys have a more proprietary tanks than others.
In terms of diversification, we've seen a lot of activity in the last three to six months for as we commented Russia which is really around mine haul trucks in Southeast Asia is particular in Japan. We've been working on that geography for about seven years. And we feel like we're at that tipping point with this large auto order that we received in the third quarter. If these trials go well that will be nice incremental business that we don't have included in our forecast for next year.
And then the last region that we're seeing quite a bit of quoting activity [Technical Issues] now and it could be in the millions of dollars for any one particular order from this customer is in the country of Poland and that's the buses.
Eric Stine -- Craig-Hallum -- Analyst
Got it. Okay. Very helpful. Maybe just turning on -- turning to kind of the overall business, the pipeline, but I guess also big LNG and I'd love to hear your thoughts on how that's maybe changed where the outlook has improved given that there has been a very significant recovery in the JKM index in the pricing that would underpin a lot of projects.
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
I'd start by saying we're just so happy that we've been able to decouple the base business from the upside potential of big LNG that we don't want to have anybody revert to starting to include that in our -- that upside opportunity in our base. But with that said, I agree with your sentiment that there has been a nice recovery even in the last few weeks around the JKM in the pricing side, which bodes well for some of these projects that are on the horizon. So, the three we normally talk about which are Plaquemines, Cheniere's Corpus Christi Stage Three and Tellurian's Driftwood. We don't have a change in opinion, we've all long said that we believe that at least the Phase 1 will get to FID at some point in 2021 and without speaking out of turn I think that's fair to continue to have that in our [Technical Issues] which just to clarify for everyone else on the line means de minimis revenue impact to 2021 but very nice revenue impact to 2022, 2023 and 2024.
In addition to that, Eric, I would say that we've seen some more commercial activity on some of these other projects that we hadn't spoken as much about. So that early engineering release for nat gas pre-treatment that we received in the third quarter was for a different big LNG project. One, that wasn't one of those three. And then there is some of these international opportunities on the horizon. I'm pretty excited about the potential for a fairly large air cooled heat exchanger order that ties to one of these projects, which could be sometime in the next three to six months, assuming we are successful in that. And I think we're very well positioned on that.
Eric Stine -- Craig-Hallum -- Analyst
Okay. Thanks a lot.
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Conner Lynagh with Morgan Stanley.
Conner Lynagh -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst
Yeah. Thanks a lot. Good morning.
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Hey, Conner.
Conner Lynagh -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst
I was wondering if you could elaborate somewhat on the acquisition opportunities you were discussing, appreciate you, you don't want to get too in the weeds here, but I was wondering if you could maybe just discuss what some of the markets that you're focused on and maybe additionally what would this look like, should we think of this as something like the trailer capacity acquisition or it's sort of a plug and play capacity expansion? Is it more of a technology acquisition or would you additionally consider something like the McPhy structure.
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
So, these are all would be full acquisition, so not similar to the McPhy structure. They all relate to either process technology or equipment and engineering capabilities. They are very much in line with our desire to continue to grow our product offering in particular around the specialty products that we've talked about, and not just hydrogen I should clarify. That's important to note. While we continue to look for hydrogen opportunities, these are -- one of them is related to hydrogen, one of them is related to multiple specialty products. And then one of them is related to one of the high growth markets that I've highlighted in the last couple of earnings calls.
Without going into more detail on that, we're extremely familiar with all three of them, meaning that we work together with them whether it's going together in the current state on projects or whether it's kind of a supply customer relationship, both directions. So, there is either businesses we know very, very well either really natural fits and two of them are kind of in the similar [Technical Issues] precise and one of them is closer to that 20 to 30 [Phonetic] mark.
And I think there, I guess I will elaborate a tad bit more in that. There are various different stages and so there's two that are a little more imminent, hence we did this three to six-month range. So, I think, there is a possibility that yet to done by January-ish and you get the third, maybe in the first quarter.
Conner Lynagh -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst
Got it. That's helpful. Maybe to pivot here FinFans with sort of the one of the weaker spots in the quarter. Can you help us think through sort of how derisked the revenues or margins are in that segment, certainly energy has had a tough time for a while now and that's a big market there. But can you just discuss how much of your backlog at this point is from a better market that seems unlikely going forward or is more reflective of the current run rate. And how should we think about sort of how much is more just book and ship versus converting on some longer cycle stuff?
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Yeah. This business is more book and ship than the opposite. There's a couple of projects here or there like that $3.8 million one that we commented shifted from the third quarter into either the fourth quarter of the first quarter, but for the most part, this is a book and ship somewhere between kind of two to five months, depending on the product itself. There is also consistent revenue stream from the repair side, which is primarily fans less so on the air coolers.
Yeah, I've kind of reviewed the business seen where we fit. I think, we are really bumping along the bottom. I don't see any further precipitous drop off at this point and there is a few bright spots out there, but I don't want to give false hope of a faster recovery than what I think which is mid-year 2021 starts to come back.
In terms of the margins, I think, what we saw in the third quarter is what you'll continue to see with some improvements as we further complete the Tulsa to Texas consolidation. We really started that in July, mid-July is when we announced that internally. So, you don't think even have a completed move at this point. We do think that will get done by the end of the first quarter of 2021. And so you'll start to see that return quicker. And we're doing it in pieces, so you should get a little bit of a benefit in the fourth quarter as well as in the first.
There is, I would say that from how we've built our outlook there is more upside than there is certainly downside to that outlook. But again I'm extremely cautious to provide that because while there's in excessive of amount of quotation activity, it's that translating the quotation activity to the order itself and that's really based on more of the midstream and upstream markets in multiple packages looking to chase the same project as they come out and available. I do think that that will change as next year opens up and some of this shut-in activity returns to more normal state, but bumping along the bottom Conner.
Conner Lynagh -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst
Alright. Appreciate it. I'll turn it back.
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Thanks.
Operator
Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of J.B. Lowe with Citi.
J.B. Lowe -- Citi -- Analyst
Hey, good morning, Jill. Hi, Scott.
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Hey, J.B.
Scott W. Merkle -- Vice President & Chief Accounting Officer
J.B., how are you doing?
J.B. Lowe -- Citi -- Analyst
I'm good. I'm just looking at the bridge between 2020 and 2021, it's one of the businesses we haven't talked about yet that being smallscale LNG and pet chem, I'm just wondering how much of that business is already booked as backlog and you're just going to be converting to revenue over 2021? And then the outlook for each of those businesses is -- for 2022, is that something that could grow even further in 2022 or more of a steady state, just any help on the smallscale LNG side and the pet chem side would be great.
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Yes. So, we currently have three projects already booked, which equates to just about $35 million to $40 million on that line. There is also one that we have the LOI for and we're waiting for notice to proceed, which is another $35 million. And an additional one that our view is it does get across the finish line in the fourth quarter, which would be somewhere in that $20 million to $25 million range. On top of that there is multiple other ones in the pipeline, but those are really the ones that I believe are kind of over that 90% mark of getting to the finish line.
As you look at 2022 and beyond, I think that there is actually a stair-step up in 2022 in this particular line for two reasons. There are quite a few pet chem projects that got put on hold because of COVID that they aren't going away [Technical Issues] timing around them. And that's not only in North America, but also in places like the Middle East and in Saudi. Coupling that with the smallscale activity that we're seeing in some more of the remote regions like Vietnam and other areas of Southeast Asia. I think that there's a nice build of import terminals regas and smallscale export that you see for utilities. So, I'm viewing 2022 considerably better than 2021 and what you see here.
J.B. Lowe -- Citi -- Analyst
Okay, great. My other question was just on the timing issues in terms of some things coming in hitting 3Q versus 4Q and then being pushed into next year. There is some concern that you addressed earlier in your remarks about how things are just shifting around, but is there something -- is there anything specific on the things that have been shifted that we should just be expecting is kind of a normal part of the business? Or was it something specific like a specific project that we've seen some of these things shift into next year?
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
It's both. So, our business does have projects that move in and out between quarters. We always kind of have commented that to us six months is meaningless unfortunately to some people that's meaningful. We really look at it as how we lost to competition and we feel like we're gaining market share, certainly across the businesses with the exception of air coolers where there is no market share to gain. So, to clarify that. So there's a little bit of a fundamental nature to our business. Like for us $25 million on $300 million is that's a plus or minus type of thing in our internal discussions, but I realize it's hard for people to understand.
There is also specifics to what shift at this time and we -- Merk walked through a couple of examples of those. The D&S shifts are really related to customers that were getting back to work from COVID and couldn't accept the shipments. So that's a shorter term type of problem. The larger pet chem projects was around the operators looking at when they wanted to take delivery. So, frankly, I think that's a timing shift given some of the economic conditions versus [Technical Issues] the project had an execution problem, but rather, hey, we want to buy a little bit of time before we need to take delivery of this.
J.B. Lowe -- Citi -- Analyst
Okay, great. Thanks, guys.
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Thanks, J.B.
Operator
Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Rob Brown with Lake Street Capital.
Rob Brown -- Lake Street Capital -- Analyst
Good morning, Jill.
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Hey, Rob.
Rob Brown -- Lake Street Capital -- Analyst
On your kind of outlook buildup, you talked about specialty products and service growing at about 10%, that's nice growth. But how do you sort of see that line growing over time. Should it accelerate given the step up in hydrogen and your service focus, but maybe just a sense of what that can grow sort of sustainably over time.
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Yes. You went right to the heart of the matter there, Rob. We've seen this surge in specialty products from an order activity perspective even 30% plus year-over-year and even percent sequentially. So, I think, we're right there even for 2021 but there's you kind of give this range where there's puts and takes in other lines. So, we tried to get you kind of down the fairway. I think that grows more at a 15% to 20% as the years unfold here. So, we've now seen a couple of quarters, a few quarters where the orders in specialty have been in that 20% to 30% growth range and we'll be coming up on a year of that as we [Technical Issues] 2020 which gives you a much better line of sight to be able to see how that kind of flow through your revenue line.
So, there is upside potential in that in 21 but certainly would be we expect that to be higher than that 10% as we go into 2022 and 2023 and from there. Part of that also we haven't -- we've commented more around hydrogen and how that's ramping, which I think is a big part of this, the water treatment that we commented on, but there is also this -- all this activity around the HLNG vehicle tanks to I think lend itself to a really nice revenue few years ahead of us. What happens after that on the HLNG vehicle tanks is I think it becomes part of our regular business and we calibrate the specialty to make sure that we're encompassing new potential markets. So that's how we're thinking about it.
Rob Brown -- Lake Street Capital -- Analyst
Okay, great. Thank you. And then kind of going back to smallscale LNG, you talked about a fair amount of that's already in the pipeline. Maybe give us a sense of sort of what's happening there and what new things could develop. Are these -- is this ISO tanks or is it kind of regas terminals, or maybe just what kind of makes up those projects at this point?
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
So, there's two pipelines of activity that they coincide with each other. The LNG ISO containers have been very hot lately in. We expect that will continue. I mean, you've seen the New Fortress news out there and they're a great customer of ours [Technical Issues] to this growing trend toward small scale and that's focused in North-South America, the Caribbean. We're seeing that trend also start to happen in some of these new build locations, like the Indonesia, Myanmar Vietnam, as well as in India.
India, we haven't touched much on ISO containers. But in 2021, that's when we move to commercial production with ExxonMobil LNG and IOCL on the virtual pipeline, which our main product for that virtual pipeline is ISO containers. So, as that particular project ramps up there is quite a bit of activity that will be related to that.
On the terminal side in these obviously take a little bit longer to get from pre-FEED engineering to FID because they are more of that upfront capital cost for a full terminal somewhere between $100 million and $140 million with our portion somewhere between $10 million and $35 million. Yeah. This is another area that we expect to continue to step up, especially as the network continues to get built out and especially as utilities make their decisions around how they're going to handle peak shaving. This is in the United States, the hottest topic in the Northeast of the US is where we're seeing the most activity and I think has breakthrough potential there. And then regas is primarily related to Southeast Asia where the pipeline of order activity is for us.
Rob Brown -- Lake Street Capital -- Analyst
Okay, great. Thank you. I'll turn it over.
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Ben Nolan with Stifel.
Ben Nolan -- Stifel -- Analyst
Hey, good morning, Jill, Scott.
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Hey, Ben.
Scott W. Merkle -- Vice President & Chief Accounting Officer
Hi, Ben.
Ben Nolan -- Stifel -- Analyst
I wondered in fact on that something that you mentioned, I think, it was in the press release about an order that you had for gaseous hydrogen.
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Yes.
Ben Nolan -- Stifel -- Analyst
I assume that is pressurized. Is that correct? Is it what how I should interpret that?
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
That's correct. So, these were -- the orders were for gaseous hydrogen trailers or transports and that is pressurized. Yes.
Ben Nolan -- Stifel -- Analyst
And obviously you guys are really cryogenic focused. But I was curious just how big of a business that is I think there is a lot of at least we've heard a lot of discussion about yeah, how did it grow and we'll see how much of the business is transportation [Technical Issues] cryo versus pressurized depends on how far you are from the source of consumption, everything else. But could you maybe talk through that a little bit and how you're positioned aside from the cryo aspect of that?
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Yes. And it also to all the comments that you just made on top of that it's also regional in terms of preference. So, we see much more liquid which is cryogenic in the States, in particular in Europe, it's still very much gaseous and that's where these particular trailers are for and are being made. Our [Technical Issues] for gaseous hydrogen transports is out of our Germany facility or GOFA facility and we do all kinds of trailers out of that facility.
So, again, agnostic to the molecule, agnostic to the use and we have plenty of capacity in that particular facility to continue to do that. It's our intention that we have that capability as well in the United States and we also do trailers out of our India facility and we do some transports out of our China facility. So, we're well positioned regionally, because obviously these are not something you're going to ship on the water. There are going to be made close to where they're going to be used.
In terms of the size of that business, it's fairly small right now, the majority of our hydrogen, I'd say, 75/25 split of liquid to gaseous is the current state of our hydrogen activity.
Ben Nolan -- Stifel -- Analyst
Okay. Now that's helpful. I appreciate it. And then the follow-up, I was just curious, given sort of how you've seen the ramp up in the leasing business, but also new order flow and everything else. Has there been any change in the way you're thinking or aspiring to get to with respect to recurring revenue and the mix of revenue or is it playing out the way that you thought that it would?
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
There has been no change in our thinking on that and it's stepping along as we thought it would. The recent agreements [Technical Issues] agreements are setting us up to continue to move toward that target.
Ben Nolan -- Stifel -- Analyst
Okay. Perfect. Thanks.
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Thanks.
Operator
Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Pavel Molchanov with Raymond James.
Pavel Molchanov -- Raymond James -- Analyst
Thanks for taking the question. Back to M&A, one of the capabilities vis-a-vis recurring revenue that you guys have not historically focused on is software of various kinds, but of course, and anything related to the energy transition SaaS is getting more and more attention. And I'm curious if you would be open to bringing some software capabilities in-house through an M&A deal.
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Yes, absolutely. And darn it, Pavel, you're like a mind reader on this stuff. One of the three that we're talking about does have that capability for a specific product category.
Pavel Molchanov -- Raymond James -- Analyst
Okay. Got it. Hydrogen and specifically electrolyzers as part of the European Climate Law, which still pending not final yet, but supposedly 30 gigawatts of electrolyzers by 2030 is going to be the target. From your perspective, would you be interested in getting into electrolysis in a direct sense or would you just kind of limit yourself to storage and the more ancillary parts of hydrogen?
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
We will stay focused on the equipment, but a lot of that equipment can be used in the electrolysis process itself. In terms of owning the molecule, that's not something that is in our strategy not for the least of which is we're not experts at it. And then the second, quick follow-on to that is we have great customers that are really good at that and we make our money on the equipment that goes into that. So we'll definitely see a commercial benefit for especially in the US you referenced, but that will be for equipment at those locations.
Pavel Molchanov -- Raymond James -- Analyst
Okay. Thanks very much, Jill.
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Thanks, Pavel.
Operator
Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of John Walsh with Credit Suisse.
John Walsh -- Credit Suisse -- Analyst
Hi, good morning.
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Good morning.
Scott W. Merkle -- Vice President & Chief Accounting Officer
Good morning.
John Walsh -- Credit Suisse -- Analyst
Wanted to talk a little bit about the cash flow, so you called out some timing, when we look at your running, I think the $83 million year-to-date is the correct number to use. As I look to Q4, which is usually always a good cash quarter for you in the range you have out there, is there anything we should be aware of as we think about it, because it would seem like the range is definitely very achievable at least as we look at it?
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
We feel the same way John and you're accurate that Q4 is typically a good cash quarter. We think this Q4 will actually better than the typical Q4s for the combination of the timing of our sales as we got through the -- or getting through the pandemic, I guess, is a better way to say it. Also, some of that cash collection activity that I briefly referenced. And we did build that inventory up at the beginning of the COVID timing in March and April, and we're still seeing that kind of drive down. Couple that with the HLNG vehicle tanks timing of the order to shipment, we've got large, very large order at the end of June and then a ramp-up of larger orders at the end of the third quarter. And so we'll see some of that bleed off as those get shipped in Q4. So those will be only kind of atypical items which would be more positive impacts to above a typical Q4.
John Walsh -- Credit Suisse -- Analyst
Got you. That's helpful. And then maybe just a finer point around some of the opportunity here with the balance, I mean, if we go back to the last Analyst Day, you talked about a target leverage sub-$2 million turns, obviously you've changed the portfolio since then. Is that still where you are comfortable or it sounds like there is some things here that maybe we'd flex up and come back down to that level or do you think you can actually run a little bit higher now that you've remixed the portfolio?
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
We could run higher, but we don't have any desire to our sub-$2 million is certainly achievable. With the cash that we generate on an ongoing basis even with these investments. We kind of [Indecipherable] if we spend $20 million tomorrow leverage those up to $205 million, something like that, but then within a month, it's back down under $2 million. So, our internal thought process is we like being in that little leverage point, we like having cash on hand, but we're not handcuffed to continue to invest in all the things that we've described. So, we are very pleased with where the balance sheet sits today.
John Walsh -- Credit Suisse -- Analyst
Great. Thank you. I'll pass it along.
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Thanks, John.
Operator
Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Marc Bianchi with Cowen.
Marc Bianchi -- Cowen -- Analyst
Hey. Thank you.
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Hey, Marc.
Marc Bianchi -- Cowen -- Analyst
Hey. Just, yeah, I'm working the math over here on my end and I -- it very well may be wrong, but if I look at kind of what's implied for the 2021 gross margin, it seems to be in kind of the 28%, 29% range and recognizing I could have that wrong, but just curious if you could comment on what's embedded for gross margin and if it is down from where you are exiting the year here, is there something specific driving that or is it just sort of conservatism?
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
We actually are at 29.8% for 2021 in our internal thought process in modeling. So, but I'm not sure where the disconnect is there.
Marc Bianchi -- Cowen -- Analyst
Yeah, no, we -- definitely follow up on that.
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Yeah.
Marc Bianchi -- Cowen -- Analyst
How do you see that playing out as the year progresses, I mean, do you think that it's pretty even over the course of the year or is it exiting at a higher rate than the average. And what are some of the puts and takes maybe in the low end and the high end of guidance, as you think about gross margin?
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
So, to step back we're exiting 2020 higher than the average, meaning that typically your Q4 -- your Q1 and your Q4 in our business are the lowest sales type of behavior, which in turn drives the margin down a tad. We think we'll exit this year, very, very strong on gross margin as a percent of sales. And that will hold as you head into 2021 and Q1. And now we'll on from there -- we actually build it with line of sight to step up on margin, as the quarters go on in 2021, which is somewhat related to some of the timing on when we know for example trailer is going to ship or one of the smallscale terminals is completed based on POC Rev Rec.
So, next year it's probably a little bit different, which frankly if next year happens the way that we expect it to from a [Technical Issues] perspective, I consider that the new norm.
Marc Bianchi -- Cowen -- Analyst
Okay. Super. And then the next question I had was kind of related to this hydrogen and LNG opportunity you guys have discussed before we got the sort of three-year revenue opportunity of over $2 billion for LNG and then the three year TAM of $1.1 billion for hydrogen, totally recognize the hydrogen pieces, a little bit more back-end loaded. But maybe just to set a baseline for us what's embedded in this guidance for 2021 for total hydrogen revenue and total LNG revenue, and then how do you see that growth rate progressing?
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Yeah, so for hydrogen, we're between $30 million and $40 million. And then for LNG, let's say, you got to include the 2023 for Calcasieu Pass, and then we got about $40 million on small scale and a typical kind of [Indecipherable] on top of that. So, you're in the $300-type-million range on specific LNG. And then there's a lot of equipment around LNG that is on top of that would be considered in our typical distribution and storage either bulk or micro-bulk business.
Marc Bianchi -- Cowen -- Analyst
Okay. And any thoughts on growth rates just sort of heading into 2022, just to give maybe a placeholder to think about?
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Okay. I'm going to go out over my skies, I think, [Technical Issues] hydrogen, it was Rob Brown that hit on it a little earlier kind of on specialty markets in general. We broad rush this at 10% and we're probably getting to that tipping point where we can't use the excuse that we don't know enough anymore. So, hydrogen easily is a 25% grower from 2021 to 2022. LNG is separating out big LNG. Okay. That's I'm not going to comment on that. But on LNG in its entirety, we'd probably place that between 7% and 9% growth 2021 to 2022.
Marc Bianchi -- Cowen -- Analyst
Yeah. Okay. And maybe just one more if I could, in terms of these targets that the $2 billion and $1.1 billion, when do you think or what are the types of milestones that you think you need to see and the market needs to see to really start plugging those into real kind of visibility and something that we can kind of count on what are the news items you're looking for?
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
So, I'd split LNG between the LNG export terminals for the mid-scale facilities, which is just about $750 million to $1 billion type of dollar size for our content because that's wholly dependent on the projects that already have regulatory approval, getting to FIDs. So, we are bullish that they do at least phase ones and that's really what to watch for. If you see any equipment provider say that they got notice to proceed related to any of these big projects then that's a pretty good indicator that FID already happened or is going to come in the next 24 hours. The remaining half of that LNG is already out there and happening, so it's less around any particular pricing of the gas or any particular government that needs to do something, because these are well under way. So these are half baked markets and infrastructures that need to continue to be built out, so it's really just timing on the orders and as these players get their infrastructures built out.
And we're -- as I commented in my prepared remarks, we're very excited about the opportunity with this 11th city gas network in India because that's the 50 to 100 new potential stations as an example, in that time period. Hydrogen is very different. You're seeing quite a bit of pilot activity and government stimulus money. But I think there is still needs to be a way to figure out how to get scale and scale up and cost down. So, I'd be watching for continued government announcements around hydrogen because that's been the number one way with grant money that these projects have gotten off the ground.
And I also would watch for continued announcements were players [Technical Issues] operating a plant versus talking about doing something in the future. So, for example, Plug Power is a great customer of ours and they have it figured out, because they are actually doing it, which is different than saying I'm going to do this project in the next five years and have a production-ready vehicle in 2026. So, those are the types of things that we watch for among our customer base.
Marc Bianchi -- Cowen -- Analyst
Awesome. Thanks so much, Jill. I'll turn it back.
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Thanks, Marc.
Operator
Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Chase Mulvehill with Bank of America.
Chase Mulvehill -- Bank of America -- Analyst
Hey, good morning, Jill.
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Hi, Chase.
Chase Mulvehill -- Bank of America -- Analyst
Hey, a quick follow-up on Bianchi's question, I think, when you talked about the margin profile included in 2021 guidance just to be clear that only includes big LNG for one quarter, correct.
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
That is correct. Yeah. So, only $23 million of revenue and that's all in the first quarter.
Chase Mulvehill -- Bank of America -- Analyst
Okay. All right. So, obviously, that's very margin accretive. So, if you end up having big LNG margins would be higher. Is that right?
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
That is correct. Yes.
Chase Mulvehill -- Bank of America -- Analyst
Okay. All right. And then coming back to hydrogen and when we think about the hydrogen build out, are you better positioned to benefit more in the US or internationally. And then also could you maybe talk about your positioning on smaller more regional based hydrogen projects like things that Plug are doing versus kind of larger more global projects like Air Products in [Indecipherable] project?
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
All the above. So, let me take your regional question first. As we step back and talk through kind of what we've done over the last 2.5 years. A key part of that was we wanted geographic locations for manufacturing our products and doing -- and being able to do that in each region. And that's we're able to do hydrogen manufacturing in China, in India, in Europe as well as in the United States. That's a key part of keeping that costs down when your consumer -- when your customers looking for buying equipment, it really has to be local. So, we're very well positioned there.
On the small versus large projects, our major industrial gas customers have been front runners in hydrogen production in plants and equipment and we continue to expect them to play a big part in this particular topic. So, we're positioned with them as they look to scale and participate in projects like the H2S scale Texas that we talked about this morning. On the smaller infrastructure and more localized infrastructure, we also have good direct relationships with the players that are taking on a regional state or a particular country location and that's even further enhanced through some of the partnerships collaborations that we've recently [Technical Issues]. So, I can't -- I won't and I can't because it's just not true to say we're better positioned in one or the other. We're very well positioned in all of that.
Chase Mulvehill -- Bank of America -- Analyst
Okay. Perfect. Good to hear. I'll turn it back over.
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Thank you.
Chase Mulvehill -- Bank of America -- Analyst
Thanks.
Operator
Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Greg Lewis with BTIG.
Greg Lewis -- BTIG -- Analyst
Yeah. Hey, thanks, and good morning. And realizing this call is running pretty long. Just one from me, Jill, you kind of touched on it around desalination and what that is. I guess, my question is as you start to kind of gain traction in the hydrogen. And just thinking about the water aspect of hydrogen, are your customers at all -- have discussions started around the opportunities for your desal into hydrogen. Yeah. That's all from me. Thanks.
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Hey, Greg. Fantastic point and thank you for listening carefully to our messaging. Yes, the short answer is, yes. And it's -- in my prepared remarks, I commented on the combination of water treatment desalination and power source is not limited to just LNG in combination with that. It's -- whether it's the treatment facility or the utilization of the molecule into the production of the other molecule, both of these conversations are happening. And we think that without going into detail of our power [Technical Issues] technology works together that combination is going to be really meaningful and unique to Chart as these types of projects get going. So that might be more of a medium term comment that I'm making. And again I don't want to give competitive advantage away, but that's I think that has a lot of potential.
Operator
Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Craig Shere with Tuohy Brothers.
Craig Shere -- Tuohy Brothers -- Analyst
Good morning. Thanks for taking the question.
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Hi, Craig.
Craig Shere -- Tuohy Brothers -- Analyst
Good morning. One clarification, I realized that it's really unclear where the hydrogen is going to come from and of today's exporters of LNG may in fact are entirely not be the same as major suppliers of hydrogen in the future. But one question I have is, I'm a little confused of what it takes to liquefy the stock at the lower temperatures and if existing small scale or large scale facilities domestically or worldwide using your technology IPSMR or other technologies can be tweaked to support the hydrogen or not.
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Yes. So, we -- our IPSMR process technology with some tweaks which our team already has done can liquefy hydrogen coupling that with the brazed aluminum heat [Technical Issues] which goes into liquefaction as well. We're in a good position. I would clarify that we want to make sure that we are agnostic. Our equipment is agnostic to which process. So, it's great if we get liquefaction opportunity for hydrogen. But we also are happy to have our equipment work with other hydrogen liquefaction processes.
The other part of your question around how liquefaction occurs really goes more into not just the process, but how the equipment works with that process because it has to withstand very high pressures and very low temperatures at the same time. And that's probably our biggest competitive advantage and that we've been doing these for 50-plus-years and our equipment is certified it withstands a lot of the metal hydrogen embrittlement challenges that are out there. So, the liquefaction part of it. Yes. I think that's something that easily jumps off from LNG. The equipment or the pipelines is a different story.
Craig Shere -- Tuohy Brothers -- Analyst
Excellent. And one last clarification, if you were to convert an existing LNG facility, say, 10 years later to support hydrogen, what kind of time and expense does that involve?
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
So, the answer to that is, if that gets solved and whether it's LNG or any other existing infrastructure it's the utilization of [Technical Issues] get solved to pull hydrogen through. You're probably talking about 50% to 60% cost reduction for the hydrogen cost challenge. So that would be a really nice win if that gets figured out. There is this kind of coming as a consensus in the industry that you can put 20% to 25% hydrogen in an existing pipeline and not create a problem, but that's 30,000 foot level. There is a lot more challenges around equipment that happen from there.
Nobody has solved that. I don't have a good answer on that, Craig, in terms of can it be done and how easily can it be done? We're working on it more from how does -- how can our equipment work together with a shift between molecule versus the transition of a full existing export facility to a production or electrolysis facility.
Craig Shere -- Tuohy Brothers -- Analyst
Understood. [Technical Issues]
Operator
Thank you. And with that I will now turn the call back over to CEO, Jill Evanko for closing remarks.
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Thanks everybody for joining us today and a big thank you to our Chart team members who continue to impress me each day with their efforts to make this company even better. We'll talk to you very soon. Thanks, Andrew. Goodbye.
Operator
[Operator Closing Remarks]
Duration: 71 minutes
Call participants:
Jillian C. Evanko -- President, Chief Executive Officer and Director
Scott W. Merkle -- Vice President & Chief Accounting Officer
James West -- Evercore ISI -- Analyst
Walter Liptak -- Seaport -- Analyst
Eric Stine -- Craig-Hallum -- Analyst
Conner Lynagh -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst
J.B. Lowe -- Citi -- Analyst
Rob Brown -- Lake Street Capital -- Analyst
Ben Nolan -- Stifel -- Analyst
Pavel Molchanov -- Raymond James -- Analyst
John Walsh -- Credit Suisse -- Analyst
Marc Bianchi -- Cowen -- Analyst
Chase Mulvehill -- Bank of America -- Analyst
Greg Lewis -- BTIG -- Analyst
Craig Shere -- Tuohy Brothers -- Analyst
