Bloom Energy (BE +4.10%) stock soared 11% through 9:50 a.m. ET after reporting an earnings miss but a revenue beat last night.
Heading into the quarter, analysts forecast the fuel cell energy stock would lose $0.04 per share on $307.5 million in sales. Bloom's losses were bigger than expected at $0.06 per share. However, sales came in much stronger than expected at $335.8 million -- and investors seem to like that news a lot.
NYSE: BE
Key Data Points
Bloom Energy Q2 earnings
Admittedly, even Bloom's $0.06-per-share loss was only a non-GAAP number. Earnings as calculated according to generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) show a much bigger loss for the quarter -- $0.27 per share. But even so, Bloom's results showed considerable improvements over its year-ago numbers.
Sales improved 11.5% year over year. Gross profit margins were positive and up by 170 basis points. Operating profit margins -- still negative at 6.9% -- were up significantly from a year ago (negative 18.1%), so Bloom is losing less money on more revenue and seems to be enjoying some benefits of scale.
Losses per share declined by 16%, despite Bloom buying back shares and shrinking its share count, which concentrates losses among fewer outstanding shares.
Is Bloom Energy stock a buy?
Turning to guidance, Bloom still isn't predicting when it will turn GAAP profitable, which makes it difficult to value the stock (or call it a buy or a sell). Still, management reaffirmed guidance for full-year sales of between $1.4 billion and $1.6 billion, and the latter number is above analyst estimates. Management also forecast significant improvement in gross profit margins to 28%. Granted, this was a non-GAAP number, but it's still better than Q2's non-GAAP gross profit margin of 21.8% -- which was itself an improvement over Q2 2023.
Bloom also predicted that its non-GAAP operating income for the year will be positive, running somewhere between $75 million and $100 million. Call me an optimist, but it really seems Bloom Energy stock is close to turning profitable -- if not this year, then probably in 2025.
