Monday, Ballard Power Systems, Inc. (BLDP, BLD.TO), a provider of clean energy fuel cell products, said it intends to discontinue the joint venture with Ohta-ku, Tokyo-based EBARA Corp. (EBCOY.PK, EBCOF.PK), a manufacturer of environmental and industrial machinery.
The company also said that the decision is not expected to materially impact its current-year financial outlook, amid low growth projected for the residential cogeneration market in 2009.
Fujisawa-shi, Kanagawa-based EBARA Ballard Corporation is a joint venture focused on the development, manufacture, sale, and servicing of stationary power systems for the residential cogeneration market in Japan, Ballard said.
President and Chief Executive Officer John Sheridan commented, "As we've said in the past, we see residential cogeneration on a longer timeline to commercialization. This, combined with an increasing investment requirement for continued system development work, has impacted the business case for this program."
Ballard and EBARA are to work together over the coming 90 days to finalize details of the dissolution. The company added that EBARA Corp. will continue to service the EBARA Ballard Corp. fuel cell systems that are already in the field.
Further, the company said it will continue to sell its FCgen-1030v3 fuel cell product for applications like residential cogeneration, including supply of this product to Baxi Innotech GmbH for German Callux Project.
On April 28 that Burnaby, British Columbia-based Ballard reported a net loss for the first-quarter. Net loss was US$18.6 million, or US$0.22 per share, compared to a net income of US$81.0 million, or US$0.87 per share, in the year-ago quarter.
Normalized net loss for the quarter was US$17.5 million, or US$0.21 per share, compared to a normalized net loss of US$15.9 million, or US$0.17 per share, last year.
Quarterly revenues dipped 50% to US$8.1 million from US$16.0 million a year ago primarily due to the continuing slowdown in the automotive sector negatively impacting the supporting business segments.
BLDP ended Friday's trading at $1.87 on the Nasdaq. BLD ended Friday's trading at C$2.12 on the TSX.
EBCOY ended Friday's trading at $32.10 on the OTC. EBCOF last traded at $2.35 on the OTC.
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