American Superconductor Q1 2027 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
August 6, 2026

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Revenue reached a record $94.1 million, up 30% year over year, led by 27% growth in Grid and 45% growth in Wind. The company also reported three consecutive years of non-GAAP profitability and two consecutive years of GAAP profitability.
  • Positive Sentiment: Bookings exceeded $130 million, including a record $25 million turnkey utility order supporting a mine expansion. The 12-month backlog surpassed $300 million, while total backlog exceeded $400 million, improving near-term revenue visibility.
  • Positive Sentiment: AMSC ended the quarter with $153.1 million in cash and generated $16 million of operating cash flow, enabling it to fund the approximately $7.4 million purchase of a third Comtrafo factory in Brazil without adding building-related debt.
  • Negative Sentiment: Management expects second-quarter revenue to exceed $85 million because some customer deliveries were accelerated into the first quarter. First-quarter gross margin was also pressured by Comtrafo purchase-accounting adjustments, Brazil manufacturing investments, and unfavorable product mix, while non-GAAP net income fell to $7.6 million from $11.6 million a year earlier.
  • Neutral Sentiment: Management sees substantial longer-term opportunities in mining, semiconductors, traditional energy, utilities, data centers, and Brazil, but acknowledged that large turnkey projects are not expected to become the majority of orders and that Comtrafo expansion into Latin America and North America will take additional time.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
American Superconductor Q1 2027
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Good morning, and welcome to the AMSC 2026 Conference Call. All participants will be in listen only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Nicol Golez, Director of Communications. Please go ahead.

Nicol Golez
Nicol Golez
Director of Communications at American Superconductor

Thank you, Amy. Good morning, everyone, welcome to American Superconductor Corporation's First Quarter of Fiscal Year 2026 Conference Call. I'm Nicol Golez, AMSC's Director of Communications. Joining me today are Daniel McGahn, Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, and John Kosiba, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, and Treasurer. Yesterday, after market close, American Superconductor issued its earnings release for the first quarter of fiscal year 2026. A copy of this release is available on the investors page of the company's website at www.amsc.com. Remarks that management may make during today's call about American Superconductor's future expectations, including expectations regarding the company's future financial results, plans, and prospects, constitute forward-looking statements.

Nicol Golez
Nicol Golez
Director of Communications at American Superconductor

Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including those set forth in the Risk Factors section of American Superconductor's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended March 31st, 2026, which the company filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on May 27th, 2026, and the company's other reports filed with the SEC, which are also available on our website. The company disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements. On today's call, management will refer to non-GAAP net income, a non-GAAP financial measure. Tables for reconciliation of GAAP to adjusted financial measures can be found in the company's earnings release. With that, I will now turn the call over to Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer, Daniel McGahn. Daniel?

Daniel McGahn
Daniel McGahn
Chairman, President, and CEO at American Superconductor

Thanks, Nicol, good morning, everybody. I'll begin today by providing an update and sharing a few remarks on our business. John Kosiba will then provide a detailed review of our financial results for the first fiscal quarter, which ended June 30th, 2026, and provide guidance for the second fiscal quarter, which will end September 30th, 2026. Following our comments, we'll open up the line to questions from our analysts. We start off the new fiscal year with our sights set on growth. We have officially surpassed $90 million in quarterly revenue, which represents 30% growth over the year-ago quarter. Our Grid revenue led the way at over 80% of AMSC's total revenue, which grew over 25% versus the year-ago period. Wind was nearly 20% of our business and grew 45% from the same period last year.

Daniel McGahn
Daniel McGahn
Chairman, President, and CEO at American Superconductor

Our track record now shows that we have delivered three consecutive years of non-GAAP profitability and two consecutive years of GAAP profitability. We closed the quarter with a strong balance sheet of over $150 million. Our revenue this quarter reflects strong diversification across our core markets. Total revenue came from roughly 30% from renewable energy projects, 20% from traditional energy, 20% from materials including semiconductors, 20% from utility projects, and nearly 10% from military projects. We saw exceptionally strong bookings for the quarter.

Daniel McGahn
Daniel McGahn
Chairman, President, and CEO at American Superconductor

Total orders now climb to over $130 million, reflecting the strong market tailwinds behind our business. A major orders highlight includes the recently announced $25 million order from a North American utility to support a large mine expansion. I'll share more details on this later. We have a robust 12-month backlog exceeding $300 million, and a total backlog of over $400 million. We have firmly set our site on growth I believe this puts us in great position for fiscal year 2026.

Daniel McGahn
Daniel McGahn
Chairman, President, and CEO at American Superconductor

I'll turn the call over to John Kosiba to review our financial results for the first quarter of fiscal 2026 and provide guidance for the second quarter, which will end September 30th, 2026. John?

John Kosiba
John Kosiba
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer at American Superconductor

Thanks, Daniel. Good morning, everyone. AMSC generated revenues of $94.1 million for the first quarter of fiscal 2026, compared to $72.4 million in the year-ago quarter. Our Grid business unit accounted for 81% of total revenues, while our Wind business unit accounted for 19%. Grid business unit revenues increased by 27% in the first quarter versus the year-ago quarter. This year-over-year increase was led by the contribution of Comtrafo. Wind business unit revenues increased by 45% in the first quarter versus the year-ago quarter. This year-over-year change was driven by increased ECS shipments. Looking at the P&L in more detail, gross margin for the first quarter of fiscal 2026 was 26.3%. Included in cost of goods sold in the first quarter was approximately $1.5 million of purchase accounting and non-cash adjustments related to Comtrafo. This had an impact of approximately 160 basis points on the quarter.

John Kosiba
John Kosiba
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer at American Superconductor

We also invested in additional direct labor in Brazil to support the expected revenue growth as a result of the strong bookings over the past two quarters. This investment does lower a factory's productivity until they become fully integrated into the manufacturing process. Lastly, gross margins for the quarter were impacted by an unfavorable product mix. We do not anticipate a similar product mix next quarter. Moving on to operating expenses, R&D, and SG&A expenses for the first quarter of fiscal 2026 were $22.5 million, compared to $18.5 million in the year-ago quarter. Approximately 23% of R&D and SG&A expenses in the first quarter of fiscal 2026 were non-cash. Our net income in the first quarter of fiscal 2026 was $9.5 million, or $0.21 per share. This compares to a net income of $6.7 million, or $0.17 per share in the year-ago quarter.

John Kosiba
John Kosiba
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer at American Superconductor

Our non-GAAP net income for the first quarter of fiscal 2026 was $7.6 million, or $0.17 per share, compared with non-GAAP net income of $11.6 million, or $0.30 per share in the year-ago quarter. First quarter GAAP and non-GAAP net income included an $8.1 million adjustment to contingent consideration. This is not a taxable item. It impacted the recognition of tax expense through the FIN 18 approach required of interim tax provisions. A with and without analysis of the FIN 18 tax provision identified a $2 million non-cash tax expense recognized in the quarter. Any tax expense related to a change in contingent consideration within the quarter is not forecasted or included in our guidance. Please see a press release issued last night for a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP results.

John Kosiba
John Kosiba
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer at American Superconductor

We ended the first quarter of fiscal 2026 with $153.1 million in cash equivalents, and restricted cash. This compares with $147.6 million on March 31st, 2026. We generated $16 million of operating cash flow in the first quarter of fiscal 2026. Within the first quarter, we experienced strong cash milestone collections on several projects, coupled with initial receipts generated from our recent orders. As planned and pursuant to the SPA of the Comtrafo acquisition, we purchased a third factory in Brazil within the quarter for a total cost of approximately $7.4 million. This factory solidifies the capacity necessary to support our growth plans for Comtrafo. I'll turn into our financial guidance for the second quarter of fiscal 2026. We expect that our revenues will exceed $85 million. Our net income on that revenue is expected to exceed $1 million or $0.02 per share.

John Kosiba
John Kosiba
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer at American Superconductor

We expect our non-GAAP net income to exceed $8 million or $0.17 per share. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Daniel. Dan?

Daniel McGahn
Daniel McGahn
Chairman, President, and CEO at American Superconductor

Thanks, John. $16 million of cash generated in the quarter. That's impressive, even to me. It really shows kind of what the business can do. There's definitely a drive here that's happening that we're going to talk through the call. Our revenue results for the first quarter surpassed expectations. It does make the second quarter revenue challenging as we accelerated some deliveries due to customer demand in the first quarter. Our order momentum shows we're well-positioned for growth. The $25 million order from a North American utility represents the largest individual order for a mining project in our company's history, setting a new company record. We expect to deliver this turnkey solution during our next fiscal year, 2027. We do have our sights set on other large orders in our pipeline. This order is significant because it demonstrates the financial and operational leverage of our integrated power solutions.

Daniel McGahn
Daniel McGahn
Chairman, President, and CEO at American Superconductor

Even without this quarter's largest order, we brought in over $100 million in new orders. This outperforms our last fiscal year's average of roughly $70 million a quarter. Under this contract, our team is handling the design, engineering, installation, and commissioning of a system that combines our proprietary modular STATCOM technology, our metal-enclosed capacitor banks, as well as our shunt reactors, a 138 kV power transformer, the associated switchgear to protect the system from the network, as well as additional protection and control equipment. Just to make a note, if we had sold this as a single product solution, this order would be about maybe $4 million-$5 million. Today, we're able to offer a combined solution that reduces project complexity, simplifies execution, and can avoid costly future grid upgrades.

Daniel McGahn
Daniel McGahn
Chairman, President, and CEO at American Superconductor

This expands our revenue for this type of project by a factor of five. This is an enabler for potential future growth in materials and utility markets. This is what I've been talking about when I say more content or more product per project. We believe the long-term visibility of our business has never been stronger. The material sector, which includes mining and semiconductor projects, generated about a third of our total orders. Traditional energy demand followed with about 30% of total orders driving the business. While renewables, utility, and other industrial applications each represented about 10% of total orders, and military represented just under 5% of total orders. We do see major tailwinds and long-term opportunities across our core sectors. In the semiconductor market alone, we're working with a significant project pipeline. Global semiconductor capital expenditures are jumping 20% to $200 billion, led by expansions from giants including Micron.

Daniel McGahn
Daniel McGahn
Chairman, President, and CEO at American Superconductor

These global expansions help drive our long-term pipeline. Simultaneously, the global mining project pipeline has reached $1.2 trillion, with over $250 billion actively under construction. Top global mining firms invested nearly $80 billion in 2025, forecasting to grow to $82 billion in 2026, creating more potential demand for our solutions. Traditional energy investments are expanding. In the U.S., the administration's push on more conventional fuels, which drives demand for many of our core products, remain robust. For 2026, projected investment in fossil fuels is expected to be around $1.2 trillion out of a total of $3.4 trillion in global energy investment, rising approximately 3% after a slight dip in 2025. Oil and gas upstream received nearly 50% of these investments with over half a trillion dollars per year.

Daniel McGahn
Daniel McGahn
Chairman, President, and CEO at American Superconductor

The renewable energy sector, we see the Indian wind market is expected to double capacity by 2030, and globally, it's projected that wind capacity will nearly double and solar will more than triple by 2030. We are capitalizing on massive expansions in the utility business. U.S. utility capital spending is projected to exceed, again, that number again, $1.2 trillion over the next four years. This is driven by accelerating grid demand from data centers, AI, cloud computing, and the like. We're already delivering solutions to utilities facing these shifts. During the first fiscal quarter, the business accelerated faster than anticipated. The business is in a great position and has reached a new level with quarterly revenue greater than $90 million and a very strong cash position. We believe fiscal year 2026 could be even better than fiscal year 2025.

Daniel McGahn
Daniel McGahn
Chairman, President, and CEO at American Superconductor

We see significant tailwinds in the material space and the traditional energy market. Strategically, we're going after a number of key markets, all of which have significant capital being invested in them. At the same time, we're expanding our offerings and capacity in Brazil and South America. The team is very excited about our growth prospects. Looking ahead, we're excited about what comes next. We see strong demand in the materials sector, where we're pursuing semiconductors and mining opportunities. We also see continued strength and a healthy pipeline in the traditional energy sector. We're advancing on additional data center opportunities as well. Together, we believe all of these opportunities combined position us well for continued growth. In summary, the momentum we've generated has set a strong foundation. We're excited about the future, and we're exceptionally well positioned to capitalize on the opportunities ahead.

Daniel McGahn
Daniel McGahn
Chairman, President, and CEO at American Superconductor

Our future-facing technologies help harmonize the world's desire for decarbonization and clean energy with the need for more reliable, effective, and efficient power delivery. I look forward to reporting to you again following the completion of our second fiscal quarter of fiscal year 2026. Amy will now take questions from our analysts.

Operator

Thank you. We'll now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. At this time, we'll pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question comes from Eric Stine at Craig-Hallum.

Eric Stine
Eric Stine
Analyst at Craig-Hallum

Hi, Daniel. Hi, John. Good morning.

Daniel McGahn
Daniel McGahn
Chairman, President, and CEO at American Superconductor

Hey, Eric. Good to hear your voice.

Eric Stine
Eric Stine
Analyst at Craig-Hallum

Hey, you too. I know you've obviously built this platform to build out those capabilities. You mentioned the multiplier effect and this order in mining in support of the utility. What's your confidence that these types of large orders become more the norm for you? Curious, when you think about those large orders, are they more skewed to this type of application, whether it's mining in support of a utility, or how should we think about that?

Daniel McGahn
Daniel McGahn
Chairman, President, and CEO at American Superconductor

I think it's early for us to say that what frequency they'll come at. We have a number in the pipeline. It's what we've been kind of working towards. Really, it's a culmination of the strategy of the acquisitions that we've done, that we can now offer a combined set of complementary technologies that provide power support and power conditioning support to utilities and the material space. Those are the two main areas that we're marketing into, and that's where we see traction in the pipeline. We've talked in the past about average order size. This hopefully can drive that upwards. I don't see these as regular events, per se.

Daniel McGahn
Daniel McGahn
Chairman, President, and CEO at American Superconductor

They'll still be projects like we've done all along, where we're doing cap banks and filters together, or we're adding in the STATCOM technology with that, or we're providing a power supply for a chemical plant or what have you. When those opportunities present us, which is like this one did. This is a customer that we know well, that knows us very well, and they really asked us, can we do more for them? They like what we've done, they like the service we provide, and they've kind of pushed us in this direction. They see us combining all this stuff together and say, "Well, can you take on the full project?" This is the first time we're doing that. I hope that we can do that again, I don't see that as where the majority of the business is going to come from.

Daniel McGahn
Daniel McGahn
Chairman, President, and CEO at American Superconductor

It is a really nice accelerator that we now have the potential to take advantage of when the customer wants us to do it. At the end of the day, we're going to be driven what our customers want. In part, that's why the Q1 revenue results so high. Customers needed product faster. It's really a testament to our capability to deliver on the manufacturing and operations side, and we're able to do that. Much of our business comes from a few handfuls, couple dozen key customers from us. We want to make sure that we're moving in a direction that helps them de-risk their projects. That's what we're doing, and we're benefiting from it.

Eric Stine
Eric Stine
Analyst at Craig-Hallum

When you talk about, just to confirm, you talk about the customer realizing your capabilities, one that you know well. Are you referring to that customer as the ultimate mining customer or the utility customer that you are supporting for this project?

Daniel McGahn
Daniel McGahn
Chairman, President, and CEO at American Superconductor

Yeah. In almost every case, it's both, right? There's almost.

Eric Stine
Eric Stine
Analyst at Craig-Hallum

Okay

Daniel McGahn
Daniel McGahn
Chairman, President, and CEO at American Superconductor

a triumvirate of constituents we have to serve. There's the engineering procurement construction company, there's the utility, and then there's the end user of the power, in this case, the mine. We've worked very much in conjunction with the mine, but really driven by the utility, because what they're worried about is protecting the grid and making sure they have enough power available to the mine as they expand their capacity. We'll have projects where one of those three will contract with us, but all three are usually at the table trying to drive what the capability needs to be put in place. That's where we excel. We're an engineer-first culture in so many ways that we want to make sure we can conform a configuration of a combined offering that really meets what the customer is asking for.

Eric Stine
Eric Stine
Analyst at Craig-Hallum

Okay. Maybe last one here, just digging into the outlook here by segment. I mean, first of all, a nice step up again in wind. Is it too early, or do you think this is potentially a new level? Can you just clarify or quantify maybe the grid orders that were pulled forward into Q1 from Q2?

Daniel McGahn
Daniel McGahn
Chairman, President, and CEO at American Superconductor

On the wind side, it feels a little bit like an acceleration. That always needs to be told if they pay timely and get sets to them. In this quarter, they were pushing very hard to get some extra, and we were able to deliver that. I can't always promise that that's the case, given the lead times that we have on our end and with the supply chain. The customer relationship really has never been stronger in India with Inox, and we want to do everything that we can to support them as they ramp. They're really great people. It's a really well-run company. We want to make sure that we're a good partner in their success. When we're capable, we certainly will try.

Daniel McGahn
Daniel McGahn
Chairman, President, and CEO at American Superconductor

It's always, Eric, as we say, it's dependent upon the payment, but it feels like their production level is at a new level. They still need to ramp that further to take advantage of what they already have in backlog, which is very significant. I think it's still in excess of 3 GW, 3.3 GW, 3.2 GW of demand that they have. They're at a kind of at a high level for that. As they build their projects out, we want to make sure that we're able to deliver timely. The other part you were asking about the outlook for the grid side. Is that right?

Eric Stine
Eric Stine
Analyst at Craig-Hallum

Just quantifying what you pulled into Q1.

Daniel McGahn
Daniel McGahn
Chairman, President, and CEO at American Superconductor

Some of these contracts will have multiple units to be built, sometimes a customer will say, "Well, we need the next one, or we need the next few." Our answer is always, "Sir, yes, sir. That's what we're here to do, if we're able to." I wanted to kind of telegraph clearly, just do the math, we were quite a bit higher than what we had guided to, that's going to create a little bit of a dip on the revenue side because you're basically pulling revenue forward. If you average the guide of what John said for Q2 with the result for Q1, that kind of puts us at a good level that the backlog at least leads you to believe that that should be sustainable. Again, it really depends upon customers.

Daniel McGahn
Daniel McGahn
Chairman, President, and CEO at American Superconductor

If customers are ready to receive and they want things faster, we do everything that we can to be able to make that happen. The converse is true. Sometimes other equipment hasn't arrived on time, the customer says, "Can you wait two months?" Or something. We always want to be able to conform to what our customers' needs are. That sometimes gives us some uncertainty with how we guide business, because as we get bigger, there's a lot more customers involved, there's a lot more projects, which means projects can move in and out. I don't know if that was entirely helpful for what you're asking, but I try to give you some color.

Eric Stine
Eric Stine
Analyst at Craig-Hallum

No, that helps.

Operator

The next question comes from Colin Rusch at Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.

Colin Rusch
Colin Rusch
Analyst at Oppenheimer

Thanks so much, guys. Can you talk about the performance advantages and some quantification of how we should think about that relative to some of the other offerings with this turnkey solution that you were able to deliver, or at least book here, for the utility?

Daniel McGahn
Daniel McGahn
Chairman, President, and CEO at American Superconductor

Yeah, there's kind of two veins for this. One is risk, and the other one is data and information. The risk side is getting everything delivered timely, all coming quality tested, things that work together, things that complement, and are compatible with each other. Ultimately the controls then have a lot more common data coming from us as a single vendor. Those are really the two main features that the customers like, that they can better control their risk. It means that the timetable is de-risked to a certain extent for the customer because we're able to deliver on a certain cycle our products. The way things are designed, what we've noticed is they don't have to then plan for upgrades or certain spare parts or things from multiple vendors. We try to take care of all that with the customer in mind.

Daniel McGahn
Daniel McGahn
Chairman, President, and CEO at American Superconductor

From a performance standpoint, like power factor and things like that, there are some things that we can do. I think we're going to learn and get better at that. I just think this is an important inflection point for the company because our scope is vast. Either we're going to make the products or we're going to source some of them, but it also gives us opportunity to understand what other products are out in the marketplace that complement what we do that maybe eventually can be part of the product portfolio. As we've done before, we either develop or we find interesting companies that fit our culture that can fit. There's a lot of goodness that comes out of this project, assuming that we're successful. It's very important for us to be successful. This is a customer that's trusted us for years.

Colin Rusch
Colin Rusch
Analyst at Oppenheimer

Excellent. Just in terms of the Comtrafo integration, I had two questions here. One, can you give us an update on qualification for the transformers in the North American market? Also start to give us a sense of how much cross-selling you've been able to do in Latin America so far, and then how we should think about that potentially impacting the potential order flow as we go through the next couple of years, and with the traditional products being sold through their channel.

Daniel McGahn
Daniel McGahn
Chairman, President, and CEO at American Superconductor

Yeah, I'm not really deviating from what I've said upon the acquisition. The first year, we're really focused on growth in Brazil. There's tremendous opportunity there. There's an absence in the market on the sizes that we're now delivering. That creates a really good opportunity for us to ramp our capability capacity there to service that market. That's really the reason we like Comtrafo. Besides, we like the people. The product works really well. There are efforts to expand in Latin America. It's more of these projects, maybe not as big as this utility one, but that combine the capabilities of the overall combined AMSC. I'm hoping that can start to bear fruit, we'll say, in the second year. The third year is, I think, a lot of U.S. investors are really focused on, because we get very myopic on our own market. I get that.

Daniel McGahn
Daniel McGahn
Chairman, President, and CEO at American Superconductor

To us, profit is profit and a good customer relationship anywhere in the world, if managed appropriately, really can be a long-term partnership. To finish the question with North America, part of this project is we design the specification in a way where we could potentially use Comtrafo in it. If we're able to do that, we don't want to necessarily take on additional risk, but we're going to understand kind of really where we are as early as next year. There are other projects that customers are pushing us to bid on as a transformer supplier in North America. Again, for us, the customer comes first. We need to make sure we can deliver the product at the right price, the right performance that they need, because the hope is it becomes a longer-term relationship. These are not one-off.

Daniel McGahn
Daniel McGahn
Chairman, President, and CEO at American Superconductor

A lot of the cultural change that AMSC brings to its acquisitions is this long-term customer relationship with a lot of service, with a lot of touch to the customer, so they understand we're somebody that they can rely on and count on for years to come, not just for one single project. I'm optimistic, Colin, that at some point we can talk more specifically about project in North America, but that's not going to happen this quarter or next or probably the quarter after. Originally, I said it probably would be in the third year. I think the risk of that is going down. That is more and more likely that that's going to happen based upon the efforts. I think the risk of us entering Latin America more in the second year, the risk of that has gone down as well.

Daniel McGahn
Daniel McGahn
Chairman, President, and CEO at American Superconductor

The team is really focused on this. It's one of the main avenues for growth, is that having the transformer allows you to look at the electrical system at a different point, some cases earlier, and that allows us to think about how we can engineer the project in a way where the performance from our products becomes even more valuable. I think that's really the magic, and that's going to unfold over the next two to three years.

Colin Rusch
Colin Rusch
Analyst at Oppenheimer

Awesome. Thanks so much.

Operator

The next question is from Justin Clare at ROTH Capital Partners. Please go ahead.

Justin Clare
Justin Clare
Analyst at ROTH Capital Partners

Hi. Thanks for taking the questions here. Just wanted to follow up. Did you disclose the percentage of orders that were data center related in this quarter? Just given the size of the backlog here, record backlog, how should we be thinking about the conversion rate there relative to historical trends? Any changes given the order mix? Just curious because there's a meaningful emphasis on speed to power in the data center part of the market. If you could speak to just how those orders might convert relative to other products in your portfolio.

Daniel McGahn
Daniel McGahn
Chairman, President, and CEO at American Superconductor

There's a bunch of things on the data center side that we're looking at that we're bidding on. I think that there'll be an acceleration maybe as soon as this year, in that space for us. However, in this order bucket, there was not a data center order in there. For the backlog, I think simply the message is we're kind of de-risking our plan. We're de-risking your model, that it just makes the certainty and likelihood stronger, particularly in the near term. We think about the next two, three quarters. Given where we are with lead time, average lead times are still about the same, about nine months in aggregate. There's part of the business that's faster. There's part of the business that's slower.

Daniel McGahn
Daniel McGahn
Chairman, President, and CEO at American Superconductor

I think what we're going to probably see over the next two, three years is our lead times for the entire business probably get longer simply because I think the longer lead time business is going to be where the bigger projects are going to come and more revenue intensity is going to come. Again, I think the backlog gives us a good situation where we de-risk what we're hoping to do. An order that we generate today typically isn't going to affect the financials for three, four, five, six quarters out.

Justin Clare
Justin Clare
Analyst at ROTH Capital Partners

Got it. Okay. That's helpful. Then I may have missed this earlier. I've been switching between calls, orders were led by the utility sector mining developments. Wondering if you could speak to kind of what is changing that is potentially driving that uptick in the orders for that sector right now, and then remind us what the solution is that you're able to provide to the customers in that segment.

Daniel McGahn
Daniel McGahn
Chairman, President, and CEO at American Superconductor

Yeah. When we talk about materials, it could be chemicals, but it's principally mining and processing of mined minerals and semiconductor. We see significant investment in both. We see deeper and more trusted relationships with mines and with semiconductor fabs. We see a growing pipeline that's getting, I'll say, less risk to it and more intensity to it, meaning larger orders and larger pipelines. It really comes down to the trillions that are being invested in mining. This whole premise that the rest of the world needs to invest in a bunch of different minerals because much of that source comes from China. It's a risk reduction, and it's a capacity expansion that's happening globally that we're taking advantage of. The same thing with semiconductor.

Daniel McGahn
Daniel McGahn
Chairman, President, and CEO at American Superconductor

It's just a smaller version of the same story, which there's a drive to reshore manufacturing capability here in the U.S., but also throughout Southeast Asia. Again, it's really competing with China. Our investment thesis is as this money gets invested outside China, how do we take advantage because so many of these processes depend upon electricity, either the level of power being commensurate with a design or the power quality being regulated to a level that maybe we're the only ones that could provide. We see mining, we see utility, we see semiconductor as all areas that have strong tailwinds that should help us deliver future growth.

Justin Clare
Justin Clare
Analyst at ROTH Capital Partners

Got it. Okay. Appreciate the added detail. Thank you.

Operator

The next question comes from Tim Moore at Clear Street.

Tim Moore
Analyst at Clear Street

Thanks. Nice revenue growth in the quarter and appreciate you clarifying that the timing of that pulling of the order in the June quarter, probably out of your September quarter, that even sets things. One thing I just wanted to follow up on was the capital expenditures. I recall John mentioning the third factory in Brazil. I think it was a little bit over $7 million. Do you expect to spend on another factory this year, or you think the bulk of the CapEx is kind of done for Brazil this year when you do the equipment by the end of this month?

John Kosiba
John Kosiba
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer at American Superconductor

Hey, Tim. John here. For the quarter, we invested about $10 million total in CapEx. About seven and a half of that, give or take, was the building and called another couple million on additional build-out to help support Brazil. We don't anticipate any other building-related capital expenditures.

Daniel McGahn
Daniel McGahn
Chairman, President, and CEO at American Superconductor

Yeah, the building was part of the transaction. It just occurred at a later period because there were certain restrictions and things that had to be examined and removed. It's really the tail end of a cost that I would say is related to the transaction. It was planned, it was contemplated, and it just happened to happen. The good thing is it happened in a quarter with really strong cash flow.

Tim Moore
Analyst at Clear Street

Good. No, I like it. I was just waiting for it. Yeah.

John Kosiba
John Kosiba
SVP, CFO, and Treasurer at American Superconductor

Just so we're clear too, for everybody. We paid for that building with the cash flow in the quarter. There's no additional liability with that building.

Daniel McGahn
Daniel McGahn
Chairman, President, and CEO at American Superconductor

The additional CapEx that would be spent in Brazil really is to focus on tooling and capacity, and we're going to modulate that relative to the demand. What we're finding now is that the demand is stronger than our capacity, and we need to try to catch up. Part of the math that John went through is we're hiring as fast as we can, and we're investing in tooling as fast as we can because we believe there's a ramp further coming in Brazil. That's the main reason we bought Comtrafo. The main reason they were excited to have us involved is because of our demonstrated track record in expanding factories. We think it's a great cooperation between the now broader AMSC to go after this wonderful opportunity in Brazil.

Tim Moore
Analyst at Clear Street

No, that was great to see. I'm glad it happened in this quarter. I was just waiting for it this fiscal year, and glad it was earlier because of the demand there. My other question is, you're sitting on nearly $150 million in cash. Are you waiting to get to a certain point on integration of Comtrafo before maybe you pursue another acquisition? Is there any kind of pockets of grid capabilities that maybe you prefer in your pipeline or funnel of sensible targets that you're considering?

Daniel McGahn
Daniel McGahn
Chairman, President, and CEO at American Superconductor

Yeah, I don't want to telegraph targets because we're in discussions with a bunch of different companies. We've become known as a good acquirer. We treat the owners well. We treat the company well. We really try to find a way to get at this cultural thing, which I talk about, which is servicing the customer in an exceptional way. We have a great cash balance. We need to continue to digest Comtrafo, get all that working before we consider going, doing another one. I don't feel like we have to do another one on a specific timetable, but if we see something that comes up that we think fits, it's another piece to our puzzle that we're trying to solve for customers, then we'll go do it. This large utility order gives us a look at other equipment that get built at a substation level alongside ours.

Daniel McGahn
Daniel McGahn
Chairman, President, and CEO at American Superconductor

They may be avenues we want to pursue, but I usually don't telegraph where we're going to go because it makes things in the market more expensive to us if they know that they're more and more important to us. At the end of the day, what we're trying to do is build a larger company that's more resilient, has less variability in the profit-making capability, and we think that translates into more stability for our customers and more value for our shareholders.

Tim Moore
Analyst at Clear Street

Thanks, Dan. That's helpful color. That's it for my questions.

Operator

This concludes our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Mr. McGahn for closing remarks.

Daniel McGahn
Daniel McGahn
Chairman, President, and CEO at American Superconductor

Thanks, Amy. We really see major tailwinds in materials, including semiconductors, traditional energy, and utilities. We're driving to expand our capabilities in Brazil as that market is ramping up as we had hoped. It has been a great and exciting first few quarters in Brazil, and we look forward to future financial impact because of that acquisition. I hope the tone that we're conveying today is with great optimism. The order book really moves us to another level, then we look to try to continue to be in position to grow in the longer term. Thank you, everybody, for your support and your attention today, and I look forward to talking to you soon.

Operator

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.

Executives
    • Nicol Golez
      Nicol Golez
      Director of Communications
    • Daniel McGahn
      Daniel McGahn
      Chairman, President, and CEO
    • John Kosiba
      John Kosiba
      SVP, CFO, and Treasurer
Analysts
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