Ballard’s future bright despite tough 2020

Fuel cell manufacturer extended losses due to the pandemic but has recently signed a heavy-duty railroad deal

Vancouver-based Ballard Power Systems may have missed analyst estimates in the fourth quarter and 2020 as a whole, but the company’s stock price continued to rebound with the release of its financials on 10 March. The day before, Ballard announced a hydrogen fuel-cell deal with Canadian Pacific (CP), one of the two largest railroad companies in Canada. Ballard reported total revenue of $103.9mn last year, a decline of 2pc compared with 2019, with business retarded by the global Covid-19 pandemic. This in turn contributed to a net loss from continuing operations of $49.5mn in 2020, compared with a loss of $35.3mn the previous year. The company’s valuation is approximately 70 times revenues—de