TRITF Tri Tech Holding Inc (CE)

BEIJING, Nov. 14, 2012 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Tri-Tech Holding Inc. (Nasdaq: TRIT), a premier Chinese company that provides leading turn-key solutions for water resources management, water and wastewater treatment, industrial safety and pollution control announced today that revenues for the third fiscal quarter ended September 30, 2012 decreased by 24.4% to $18.1 million from $24 million in Q3 2011. Net loss attributable to TRIT for the quarter was $677K, a 135.0% decrease from net income of $1.9 million in Q3 2011. Diluted net loss per share was $0.08 compared to diluted net earnings per share of $0.24 in Q3 2011.

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Key Financial Results of Q3 2012

• Revenue from Water, Wastewater and Municipal Infrastructure decreased 58.6% to $6.4 million from $15.5 million in Q3 2011
• Revenue from Water Resource Management Systems and Engineering Services increased 90.3% to $6.7 million from $3.5 million in Q3 2011
• Revenue from Industrial Pollution Control and Safety slightly increased 2.2% to $5.1 million from $4.9 million in Q3 2011
• Gross profit for the quarter was $4.7 million, a decrease of 22.6% or $1.4 million from $6.1 million in Q3 2011
• Gross margin was 25.6%, matching 25.3% in the same period of 2011

Mr. Warren Zhao, Joint CEO of the Company, commented on the operating results, "While we continued to grow in two of our three operating segments, the third quarter of 2012 was a challenging one for our company as a whole. This was because overall revenues decreased and expenses grew in our historically largest segment, resulting in net losses for our company. These challenges primarily related to (i) difficulties driving revenues in the municipal water, wastewater and industrial markets, largely due to reduced local government spending and uncertain economic growth in our industry; (ii) unanticipated customer-driven delays in evaluating project bids; (iii) slowed revenue recognition from several of our large projects, resulting from regulatory requirements and customers' changed engineering requirements, which made us extend our projects schedule; and (iv) substantial increases in operating expenses, mainly due to headcount, which increased by 59% to 474 by the end of the third quarter from 299 a year ago.

"Although we are striving to diversify our customer base beyond our core of government-related or state-owned entities, these efforts will take time. Uncertain industrial economic growth and delayed and more restrained fiscal expenditure plans in sectors we focus on (due in part to the central government transition in China), rising labor and raw materials costs, and intense market competition presented unprecedented challenges to our profit growth.

"To address these challenges and improve profitability, we will focus on completing existing projects to convert our backlog into revenues as efficiently as possible. While we will continue to seek new projects, we will seek to reduce our sales expense growth rate and control overall operating expenses. In addition, we will continue striving to grow our market share in the three lines of business by adjusting our strategies to current market conditions, such as, for example, focusing on projects that tie up less of our resources, projects in smaller, less well-developed areas and projects that benefit from government fiscal support."

Recent Business Developments

We made some progress in implementing our business strategies during the third quarter, although we confronted temporary difficulties in achieving growth from our business of water, wastewater and municipal engineering services. We are pleased that phase one of our Ordos Water Treatment Plant was fully put into operation and is successfully purifying and supplying water to the residents with a preliminary capacity of 2,000 to 3,000 cubic meters per day. The expansion phase was almost completed by the end of the quarter and is currently in trial operation.  Our India Bihar wastewater system project received all the regulatory approvals required by the Reserve Bank of India in September, and we have been accelerating implementation steps since the approval. At present we have completed the specific design for the sewage plants, pump stations and are in the midst of procuring equipment. 

During the third quarter, we continued to develop our water and wastewater treatment, water supply and pollution control businesses in China. We secured industrial wastewater and sewage treatment contracts worth an aggregate of $2.08 million, by which we will provide system procurement services, hot water softening and water supply for multiple customers in different cities. Our water resources business market expansion strategies have grown this business segment to record levels for our company. We secured flash flood foresting and river hydrologic monitoring contracts worth $8.06 million. We were also awarded a water conservation irrigation contract for Buerjin County in Xinjiang, and we are providing the township of Yelaman with four sets of water conservation irrigation systems for a new irrigation area covering 625 hectares. To further our attempts of the water resources business in the Indian market in the third quarter, we bid to provide river water quality monitoring and groundwater monitoring in several states in India. These projects are in a final stage of tender evaluation.

Recently we signed a strategic partnering agreement with Rubicon Water, an Australian irrigation solution provider. We are the exclusive PRC distributor of Rubicon's irrigation products, which target the information-based infrastructure market in Chinese irrigation districts, leveraging our matured sales networking to promote the system. We have established a business division to promote these products and have begun to market them in several Chinese irrigation areas.

Financial Performance in Q3 2012

Revenues

Revenues for Q3 2012 were $18.1 million, a decrease of $5.8 million, or 24.4%, from $24 million in the same period of 2011.

Revenue by Segment

Revenue from the Water/Wastewater Treatment and Municipal Infrastructure segment for the third quarter of 2012 was $6.4 million, a 58.6% decrease, from $15.5 million in the same period of 2011. Revenue from this segment constitutes 35.4% of total revenues. The decrease was mainly due to decline of new project contracts sales, smaller sales recognized from Ordos water plants projects as they were close to completion and slower sales recognition from India Bihar municipal wastewater projects. The Ordos project contributed 10.2% of the total revenues for Q3 2012, compared with 57.1% of total revenues in Q3 2011. In Q3 2012, the initial phase project was almost completed, and backlog left to be completed was only $1.3 million.  We recognized only $1.8 million of revenue from the expansion phase of the Ordos project, or 10% of the expansion phase contract value, with backlog of $1.9 million left to be completed. The Indian Bihar municipal wastewater projects, which contributed $1.98 million, or 5%, of the Company's revenues in Q3 2012, were 30% completed as of the end of Q3 2012. This project is currently behind schedule.

Revenue from the Water Resources Management Systems and Engineering Services segment saw substantial growth of 90.3%, to $6.7 million from $3.5 million in Q3 2011, representing 36.7% of total revenues. The water resources segment was still quite promising in the third quarter, and business continued to benefit from government support, in the form of efficient government policy execution and fund allocation. The significant increase in this segment was due mainly to the strong revenue stream from the flash flood early warning and small river hydrologic monitoring projects awarded in the third quarter of 2012 and the timely implementation of projects awarded in previous quarters.

Revenue from the Industrial Pollution Control and Safety segment was $5.1 million, a slight increase of 2.2% from $4.9 million in Q3 2011, representing 27.9% of total revenues for Q3 2012. This increase was due primarily to an increase of revenues from the industrial wastewater system contract for Xushui Dawangdian Industrial Park in Hebei, industrial communication contracts for oil and gas fields and our international projects in Qatar and Mexico. The Xushui Dawangdian Industrial Park wastewater project was 60% completed, which contributed the largest proportion of the revenue in Q3 2012.

Gross Profit and Margin

Gross profit was $4.7 million for the quarter, decreased 23.3% from $6.1 million for Q3 2011. Gross margin for the quarter was 25.7%, which was 25.3% in the third quarter of 2011. The flat gross margin continued to reflect the decrease of overall revenue and proportional decrease of overall cost.

Total Operating Expenses

Total operating expenses for Q3 2012 were $4.9 million, or 27.3% of the total revenues, an increase of 69.0% from $2.9 million, or 12.3% of the total revenue for Q3 2011. The increase resulted from rising selling and marketing expenses and general and administrative expenses as the Company aggressively implements its growth plans amidst rising expenses.

• Selling and Marketing Expenses
  In Q3 2012, total selling and marketing expenses increased by 98.6% from $0.5 million in Q3 2011 to $1 million. This was caused by the expansion of sales force and increases in compensation and welfare payments to such staff.
  
• General and Administrative Expenses
  General and administrative expenses increased by 63.3%, from $2.4 million in Q3 2011 to $3.9 million in Q3 2012. This increase was mainly due to increases in staff compensation and welfare, provision for doubtful accounts, non-cash stock option expenses and other related service expenses. We had a total headcount of 474 as of September 30, 2012, which represents an almost 59% increase over the headcount of 299 as of the same time last year. General and administrative expenses for Q3 2012 were approximately 19.8% of total revenues, compared with 10% in the same period last year.

Income from Operations

Loss from operations totaled $282 thousand, a 109.0% decrease from $3.1 million in Q3 2011.

Net Income and EPS

Diluted net loss per share was $0.08, based on net loss of $677 thousand and weighted average number of diluted shares outstanding for the quarter ended September 30, 2012 of 8,215,536, compared to $0.24 in Q3 2011, based on net income of $1.9 million and weighted average number of diluted shares outstanding of 8,160,407 in Q3 2011.

Liquidity and Capital Resources

As of September 30, 2012, cash and cash equivalents, excluding restricted cash of $2.9 million, were $13.0 million. As of September 30, 2012, working capital was $11.4 million. We received $3.9 million from the Ordos water treatment plant build-transfer ("BT") contract in Q3 2012 and $1.6 million in October 2012. In the aggregate, $22.9 million in cash has been collected from the Ordos project as of the time of this announcement, and we expect to collect approximately $60 million more from the Ordos projects during the next two years.

As of September 30, 2012, the Company had aggregate lines of credit of $21 million, consisting of $9.2 million, $7.9 million and $3.9 million underwritten by Hangzhou Bank, ICBC Bank and China Merchants Bank, respectively. In September 26, 2012, we completed a financing transaction underwritten by the Bank of Nanjing to issue corporate bonds of $7.89 million (RMB 50 million by exchange rate of 6.341) with a maturity of three years and a coupon of 6.2%. We have received the proceeds of the financing and the initiatives increased our financial flexibility and structure.

Financial Performance in the First Nine Months of 2012

Revenues for the nine months ended September 30, 2012 were $60.4 million, an increase of $1.3 million, or 2.2%, compared to $61.7 million in the same period of 2011. Gross profit was $15.7 million, compared to $16.4 million in the same period of 2011. Gross margin was 26.0%, compared to 26.5% in the same period of 2011. Operating income for the nine months ended September 30, 2012 decreased from $8.6 million in 2011 to $2.8 million. Net income attributable to the shareholders of the Company was down 60.5% to $2.1 million, compared to $5.4 million in the same period of 2011. Diluted EPS was $0.26 compared to $0.66 for the same period of 2011.

Projects Backlog and Pipeline

As of September 30, 2012, the Company's total project backlog was $70.4 million, which it expects to record in 2012 and onwards. The backlog included $38.8 million in the Water and Wastewater Treatment segment, $7.9 million in the Water Resource Management segment and $23.7 million in the Industrial Pollution Control segment. The decrease on the backlog as of September 30, 2012 was primarily due to receiving fewer and smaller new contracts in the third quarter. The lower backlog predicts a slow quarter for us in the fourth quarter, particularly if we have any issues in converting backlog into revenues or obtaining new projects in the fourth quarter.

Backlog by Segment

(In USD million)

The Company is currently monitoring potential projects with a total expected value of $139 million, of which approximately $86.7 million is in Water and Wastewater Treatment, $5.2 million is in Water Resource Management and $47.1 million is in Industrial Pollution Control. The Company has not been awarded any of these projects, and there are no guarantees that it will be selected for any of such projects if and when it bids.

Fiscal 2012 Guidance Update

Based on the performance in the third quarter of 2012 and the estimate for the fourth quarter, the Company expects revenues to be around $80 million. Assuming the weighted average number of diluted shares remains the same, we expect our EPS to be around $0.04. These are the Company's targets, not predictions of the actual performance. The foregoing statements regarding targets are forward-looking and actual results may differ materially.

Conference Call

Our Joint CEOs, Warren Zhao and Gavin Cheng, President Phil Fan and CFO Peter Dong will host a conference call at 9:00 AM EST, Nov 15, 2012 (10:00 PM Beijing/Hong Kong Time, Nov 15, 2012) to review the Company's financial results, growth strategies and to respond to questions and comments.

To participate, call U.S. Toll Free Number +1 (888) 846-5003 approximately 10 minutes before the call. International callers, please dial +1 (480) 629-9856. The conference ID number is 4573871. A live webcast of the call will be available at public.viavid.com/index.php?id=102380. Both an MP3 file one hour after the call and a transcript 48 hours after the call will be available. These will be archived for 90 days and accessible via www.tri-tech.cn.

About Tri-Tech Holding Inc.

Tri-Tech designs customized sewage treatment and odor control systems for municipalities and private sectors in China and international markets. These systems combine software, information management systems, resource planning and local and distant networking hardware that includes sensors, control systems, programmable logic controllers, supervisory control and data acquisition systems. The company also designs systems that track natural waterway levels for drought control, monitor groundwater quality and assist the Chinese government in managing its water resources. The company is also moving into the industrial pollution control market. Tri-Tech owns 39 software copyrights and 11 product patents, and employs 474 people. Please visit www.tri-tech.cn for more information.

An online investor kit including a company profile, presentations, press releases, current price quotes, stock charts and other valuable information for investors is available at www.tri-tech.cn/ir. To subscribe to future releases via e-mail alert, visit www.tri-tech.cn/ir/info/request.

This press release contains forward-looking statements. These statements are made under the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements include statements concerning plans, objectives, goals, strategies, future events or performance, and underlying assumptions and other statements that are other than statements of historical facts. These statements are subject to uncertainties and risks including, but not limited to, product and service demand and acceptance, changes in technology, economic conditions, the impact of competition and pricing, government regulation, and other risks contained in reports filed by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. All such forward-looking statements, whether written or oral, and whether made by or on behalf of the company, are expressly qualified by the cautionary statements and any other cautionary statements which may accompany the forward-looking statements. In addition, the company disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof.

For more information, please contact:

Tri-Tech Holding Inc.

www.tri-tech.cn
IR Department
+86 (10) 57323666
ir@tri-tech.cn

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SOURCE Tri-Tech Holding Inc.