FuelCell Energy to cut 22% of staff in bid to lower annual expenses by 30%

FuelCell Energy (NASDAQ:FCEL) +5.2% pre-market Friday after reporting a smaller Q2 loss and higher revenues than a year ago, and saying it laid off 22% of its workforce in the U.S., Canada and Germany, as part of a restructuring plan to reduce its annual operating expenses by 30% to protect its position in response to slower than expected market investments in clean energy.

Following the reduction, FuelCell (NASDAQ:FCEL) said it has a total of 426 global employees; the new plan follows a global operational restructuring announced in November, which included a 17% workforce reduction.

The company said it will focus its commercial efforts on carbonate-based distributed generation, including data center, grid resilience and reliability, and carbon recovery applications, and its solid oxide development efforts on electrolysis validation and demonstration, while pausing R&D activity.

FuelCell (NASDAQ:FCEL) said it plans to recalibrate production at its Torrington, Connecticut plant production schedule to align with contracted demand rather than forecasted demand, which without continued growth in its closed order book would result in a decrease in annualized production rate.

The news comes as FuelCell (FCEL) reported a Q2 net loss of $1.79/share compared with a $2.18/share loss in the year-earlier quarter, revenues higher by two-thirds to $37.4M from $22.4M a year ago, and backlog rising to $1.26B from $1.06B.