Durham’s newest public company is working to create zero-emissions power plants – one facility at a time.
Net Power (NYSE: NPWR), a clean technology company based in Durham, went public by combining with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), Rice Acquisition Corp. II, in June, raising more than $670 million in gross proceeds.
Monday was the first earnings report for the firm as a public company, and executives said they are bullish on the plan.
The firm reported $649 million in cash with no debt, as of June 30.
Shares were up nearly 8.7 percent Monday afternoon, trading at $14.40.
Executives told analyst the firm is making progress in developing what it calls Project Permian – a Texas-based plant that leverages the company's technology to create a carbon neutral natural gas plant.
“This is not just another power plant,” CEO Danny Rice told analysts Monday. It’s part of a much larger plan – to deploy affordable zero-emissions energy technologies across the globe.
Rice wouldn’t say where future plants might be located, but he told analysts the company will be particularly strategic about where it deploys its first dozen facilities.
As its cash runway will take the company through 2027, it can afford to be strategic. Rice said some firms are “forced to commit to do projects that would otherwise derail them from their long-term mission.”
“We’re not going to have that problem at all because we do have such a long runway,” he said.
And the runway could get even longer. In May the company submitted a grant application with the Department of Energy’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, worth potentially $270 million.
Rice said the company is focused on states where it can scale up with multiple facilities. Ideally, the second facility would be located in a state where there is a “pathway to delivering 20 to 30 plants in a given area,” he said.
And additions to its network will mean more jobs, particularly in engineering.
Net Power has 36 employees. A year ago it had fewer than 10, Rice told analysts.
Net Power is thinking globally, executives have said. In May, Net Power and SK Group announced their intention to form a joint venture to develop plants in Asia.
