Orion Energy at LD Micro Main Event: Exploring Growth Amid Sustainability Focus

On Tuesday, 21 October 2025, Orion Energy Systems (NASDAQ:OESX) presented at the LD Micro Main Event XIX Investor Conference, outlining its strategic focus on sustainability and energy efficiency. The company emphasized its diversified revenue streams across lighting, EV charging, and maintenance, while also addressing cost-cutting measures and M&A opportunities. Despite facing sustainability-related challenges, Orion remains optimistic about its growth prospects.

Key Takeaways

• Orion Energy focuses on sustainability, energy savings, and carbon footprint reduction through its three business segments: lighting, EV charging, and maintenance.
• Recent cost reductions have lowered the breakeven point to approximately $80 million, providing leverage for future growth.
• The EV charging segment, bolstered by the acquisition of Voltrec, achieved $17 million in sales last year.
• The company is open to M&A opportunities, particularly in lighting and EV sectors, to complement organic growth strategies.
• Orion’s lighting projects typically result in a 50% reduction in energy consumption, with a payback period of one to four years.

Financial Results

• Trailing twelve month sales reached $79 million.
• Orion reduced costs by $6.5 million, aligning the breakeven point at around $80 million.
• The EV charging segment experienced significant growth, increasing from $7.5 million to $17 million in sales over recent years.
• The company’s share price fluctuates between 9% to 10%, with a market cap ranging from 32% to 34%.

Operational Updates

• Orion renewed a three-year contract with its largest maintenance customer, effective April 1.
• Integration of Voltrec enhances Orion’s project management services, scaling operations in the EV charging sector.
• The lighting segment benefits from diverse market paths, including distribution, ESCO channels, and direct sales to large industrial clients.
• Orion’s proprietary manufacturing in Manitowoc supports U.S.-based product lines, balancing cost management and competitiveness.

Future Outlook

• Orion aims to meet guidance in the EV sector despite initial performance challenges.
• The company is exploring M&A opportunities that align with its organic growth strategies, particularly in lighting and EV areas.
• Potential growth is anticipated from customers upgrading older LED installations to newer, more efficient technologies, with estimated energy reductions of 30% to 40%.

Q&A Highlights

• Market opportunity exists with a 40% conversion rate from fluorescent to LED in industrial and commercial sectors.
• Orion acts as a value-added reseller for ChargePoint, assisting customers in designing EV charging programs.
• Growth is expected across all segments, with maintenance growth potentially slower due to current trends.
• Orion remains open to acquisitions but prioritizes organic growth.

For a deeper dive into Orion Energy’s strategic plans and financial performance, readers are encouraged to review the full transcript below.

Full transcript - LD Micro Main Event XIX Investor Conference:

Per Brodine, Speaker, Orion Energy Systems: I’d like to introduce Per Brodine, of Orion Energy Systems. Good morning and welcome. Thank you, Dinah, and thank you all for joining us here in person and live streaming. For those of you that are live streaming and have the presentation, I think I’ll be going through through this pretty sensibly, so you’ll be able to keep track of where we are. Just a reminder of our safe harbor and a quick word about our organizational mission.

We help our customers achieve their sustainability, energy savings and carbon footprint reduction goals through innovative technology and exceptional service. And just Orion at a glance, we essentially have three segments that we operate in: lighting, which is LED lighting systems commercial and industrial EV charging systems and lighting and electrical maintenance. Some thoughts about why this might be an attractive investment opportunity. Our recent share price has been bouncing in the 9% to 10% range with the market cap then of 32% to 34%. Our trailing twelve month sales are $79,000,000 And our price to sales ratio is 0.34%, which if you look at the comps, we would think that there’s a lot of opportunity for that to increase.

We have a diversified revenue stream in all three of our segments. In some aspects, in particular, in our maintenance segment, we have recurring revenues. The rest of our revenues tend to be more project based. Late last fiscal year, we took out about $6,500,000 of cost from the business to bring down our breakeven point to approximately $80,000,000 which optimize the cost structure, we believe, give us incredible opportunity for leverage as we move forward and grow. We have a long term customer base.

You’ll see some of our customers, a lot of blue chip industrials that come back to us year after year for business. And we have a very nimble operation. We’re able to customize things for our customers depending on what they need from a lighting situation as well as installation on EVs. I mentioned our three business segments. On the lighting side, that’s our heritage.

The company was founded in 1996. We’ve completed over 25,000 projects. We have multiple paths to market, so that does not include, say, just product sales. The three paths to market that we have in lighting are through the distribution channel, through the ESCO channel as well as direct to our large industrial customers. And those customers we tend to do turnkey projects for, we’re working directly with them.

We also have deep control opportunities, options for our customers, which help with the ROI on these projects. An example of the most simple controls would be onoff, dim, but they go to as complex as being able to track traffic within, say, a retail big box. So you can see do a heat map on where the traffic is, or we’ve had industrial companies use that to track traffic within the plant with their forklifts so that they can optimize flow within the plant. On the maintenance and technical services side, the maintenance is both on a proactive and reactive basis. Meaning on the proactive side, we have a schedule.

Our clients will tell us they want us to go to each store. It’s typically heavily retail oriented. Each store, one, two, three, four times a year. So we’ll work out the schedule for that. And as we find issues on that proactive maintenance, we will address those issues.

If there’s a significant issue that occurs that needs to be addressed right away, We also respond on a reactive basis instantly so that they’re not suffering with outages at store and not having an optimal situation there. You may have seen it or not. We did announce that our largest customer overall and in the maintenance world just renewed our three year contract. So effective April 1, we’ll that contract will be extended another three years. So we’re very excited to be partnering with that customer for another three years.

On the EV side, it’s somewhat similar we have a somewhat similar approach to lighting. Our heritage, again, is on the turnkey side, working directly with the customer, designing the installation, helping the customer pick the product, procuring the product, managing the installation and construction, and then providing the ultimate commissioning of that project. This is picture of our plant in Manitowoc. We have a very nimble production facility, very flexible. One of our the heritage of Orion in the lighting space is that our products are some of the most efficient in the field in terms of lumens per watt.

And so we play at the higher end of LED lighting, and those are the products that are made in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. We also introduced a sourced product a couple of years ago that isn’t quite as efficient but is more cost competitive, let’s call it, in the middle tier, and that has had very good uptake for us over the past couple of years and continues to grow. Because we are a U. S.-based manufacturer, we are BAA compliant and BABA compliant, our products can be. It costs a little more to be compliant because the componentry needs to be of a certain percent in The U.

S, but we have that capability, and that is certainly an advantage to us from a competitive standpoint. You’ll see it later. We have a blue chip customer base that I referred to, and they while some of that is not necessarily recurring business, it’s repeat business that some of them come to us year after year for different parts of their industrial footprint because it’s so large throughout The United States. In Manitowoc, our manufacturing capabilities is a proprietary approach. We maintain significant componentry for the product that we manufacture in Manitowoc, which means we can be very responsive to customer needs with unrivaled lead times if they’re buying The U.

S. Product. The sourced product is not quite as good, but we still maintain stocks and what we think are the movers so that we can respond to our customers’ needs as appropriate. In the maintenance and managed services standpoint, as I mentioned, that is a recurring maintenance revenue. These products are typically three years in length.

And as I mentioned, the latest one we just renewed with our largest customer is a three year of three year in duration, so we’re excited to have them with us. The other nice thing about the maintenance business is it adds to the stickiness of our relationship with the customer so that beyond the maintenance, you know, we have people in their stores on a regular basis. So there are times when other projects will come up that they ask us whether or not we have the capability to do, and it simply adds to the diversity of the projects that we can do for them. On the EV charging basis standpoint, we acquired a company two years ago known as Voltrec, and they’ve grown from $7,500,000 to 12,500,000.0 to 17,000,000 last year. They’ve been in business for seventeen years, so a long standing company in the EV space, which is not necessarily all that common.

So we are excited of how that acquisition is working out. We’re in the midst of starting to do some additional integration with them into our project management services so that we can use that integration to further scale the operation there. I talked a little bit about turnkey capabilities, and that’s a real competitive advantage for us. And I’ll just walk through a little bit about what that means. But for a project, we’ll get an opportunity, we’ll go out with our audit staff and audit the facility to see exactly what they have and then what they have said they would like to do.

We design the system to replace what they have currently, then we either manufacture or source the product and manage the installation, manage the any rebates that they might be due, warranty. And then ultimately, if they ask for it, we’re happy to provide the maintenance services as well. So it’s a kind of a A to Z services in the turnkey side, which we think sets us apart from a lot of our competitors. Here’s an example of some of our customers. And as you see, I think you’ll recognize most of those.

Here’s a case study of someone a project we did for Clarios. This was about a $400,000 project, which resulted in 500 thou $54,000 of savings per year for that. Another example is a big DC fast charger project that we did at Haverhill High School for their EV transit vans. The level three is fast charging. We did six ChargePoint fast charger systems, and then again, it was about a $400,000 project.

In summary, how we achieve our mission. We are a one source solution for both LED and EV charging projects. Our lighting projects usually result in about a 50% reduction in energy consumption, an average payback of one to four years, depending on usage and cost of the energy with advanced design, very efficient products, flexible manufacturing and supply chain and multiple go to market models, which I think gives us a lot of flexibility. Start senior management, Sally Washlow, newly appointed as CEO in April. I’ve been with the company five years.

And Scott Green, our Chief Operating Officer, has been with the company since we acquired his company in 2013. So very deep lighting experience there. That’s my prepared remarks. Are there questions? In terms of the market, that’s available market?

Yeah. Right now, the estimates for industrial and commercial are that it’s probably at about 40%. And that’s, I’ll say, on a conversion from fluorescent to LED. We’re getting to a point where it’s been long enough for early adopters of LED that they’re starting to come to us and say, I’d like to swap out my Gen one LEDs for current, and they’re still seeing a 30% to 40% reduction LED to LED. Can you give us a little more insight on ChargePoint and potential profile?

Well, we’ve been a long standing partner of ours, very supportive. Think, you know, I’d say one of the anecdotes I can think of in meeting with them is, you know, because we’re a value added reseller, we can help their customers design the program that they would like to install because that is just not something they do. And that’s, again, the advantage of having turnkey project management capabilities is it gives us the opportunity to help the customer, you know, define their needs as well as then, you know, because of that, win the job. We think each of those three segments can grow. The maintenance might be a little slower growth than the other two.

In the current year, we’re being conservative on the EV side just because there was a lot of noise as we came into the year about sustainability and those type of things. So our first quarter was a little slower, but we still expect, I’ll say, to hit our guidance in that area. So but then we think that because of the infrastructure need that exists and people are still buying EV cars, even though they might not be buying them at the rate that’s unpredicted, there’s still a huge infrastructure need, and that’s where we play. So no active M and A looking or On the M and A side, we’re going to always have our eyes open. And I’d say that the most likely thing that we talk about is if there’s something adjacent in lighting or if there’s something in EV that makes sense.

But there’s also plenty of or a number of things that we can do organically, we think, to grow, and that’s we’re pursuing those as well. And those have a much less significant investment. Anything else? All right. Well, thank you for your interest in Orion.

It’s been a pleasure talking to you. And if you have any follow-up questions, we are always happy to talk at any time. So thank you.

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