In an exclusive interview with The Fly, Orion Energy's (OESX) CEO Mike Altschaefl talked about the company, upcoming products, market opportunity, competition and much more. Here are some highlights:
LED MARKET: In business since 1996 and public since 2007, Orion Energy focuses on delivering "enterprise grade LED Lighting in IoT solutions," CEO Mike Altschaefl explained to The Fly. Primarily servicing the commercial and industrial marketplace, Orion also provides TurnKey capabilities. "We have the ability to both review a situation for a customer, custom design fixtures for them and actually manage the installation of those fixtures in their facilities on a nationwide basis," Altschaefl added.
$11M LETTER OF INTENT 'A NICE WIN': Earlier this year, Orion announced a $11M Letter of Intent with an undisclosed costumer to do a nationwide rollout of lighting retrofit. While Altschaefl noted that the company has "not publicly acknowledged who that customer is for competitive reasons," the chief executive said that Orion expects "most of that to fall into our fourth quarter” and expects "to have upside potential from that same customer going forward." "It is a very nice win for us and a very significant win for us," he said. In the automotive space, Toyota (TM) and Ford (F) are among the company's biggest clients.
UPCOMING PRODUCTS: Orion's CEO expects the company to "roll out several new products over the next couple of months leading up and at the LightFair," which will take place in May. Further, Altschaefl believes the upcoming products are going to be "competitive," leveraging off of "some of our existing relationships and also producing product that can fit some of the different channels that we are selling into."
MARKET TRANSITION TO LED: Noting that government studies seem to indicate that only about 20% of the existing lighting fixtures in the commercial industrial space have been converted from fluorescent or earlier technologies to LED, CEO Altschaefl believes "there continues to be a very significant multibillion-dollar market that still needs to be converted," with the market "wide open" to Orion. Furthermore, the chief executive is "optimistic that there's going to be larger opportunities to work with costumers" as larger companies appear to be "allocating more capital to green initiatives, and clean tech and reduction."
COMPETITIVE INDUSTRY: Calling it a "competitive industry," Orion's CEO pointed out that competition "comes in a couple of different paths," depending on how the company goes to market. Orion competes not only with "some of the larger players in the industry – names like Acuity (AYI), Eaton lighting (ETN), Hubbell (HUBB) and Cree (CREE)," but also with regional or smaller lightning companies and with "fixtures that are being sourced from overseas," the chief executive explained. While Orion has not given public estimates of revenues for fiscal 2020, Altschaefl feels the company has "a lot of momentum," and is "pretty optimistic with a larger customer account so we can continue a nice growth path as we go forward in this industry."
"Meet the Company" is The Fly's recurring series of exclusive short interviews with Executive Officers to offer a deeper look inside the company. A more detailed version of this interview to follow.
For more on Orion Energy click here.
For more on the company's customers click here.
For more on Orion’s upcoming products click here.
For more on the market transition to LED click here.
For more on competition click here.
Orion Energy
+0.027 (+3.02%)
Toyota
+0.38 (+0.32%)
Ford
+0.05 (+0.59%)
Acuity Brands
-0.11 (-0.09%)
Eaton
-0.16 (-0.20%)
Hubbell
+0.085 (+0.07%)
Cree
-0.61 (-1.08%)