Electrovaya Inc.

Greetings and welcome to the Electro-VAIA first quarter 2020 conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Mr. Richard Hauka, Executive, Vice President, and CFO. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today's conference call to discuss ElectroVaya's fiscal 2020 first quarter financial results. Today's call is being hosted by Dr. Shankar Dasgupta, CEO of ElectroVaya, and myself, Richard Halka, Executive Vice President and CFO. On February 14, 2020, Electrivia issued a press release concerning its business highlights and financial results for the three-month period ended December 31, 2019. If you would like a copy of the release, you can access it on our website. If you want to view our financial statements, management's discussion and analysis, you can access those documents on the SADAR website at www.sadar.gov. As with previous calls, our comments today are subject to the normal provisions related to forward-looking information. We'll provide information relating to our current views regarding trends in our markets, including their size and potential for growth, and our competitive position in our target markets. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, Such statements involve risks and uncertainties and actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. Additional information about factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations and about material factors or assumptions applied in making forward-looking statements may be found in the company's press release announcing the fiscal 2020 first quarter results and the most recent annual information form and management discussion and analysis under risks and uncertainties, as well as other public disclosure documents filed with the Canadian's security regulatory authorities. Also, please note that all numbers discussed on this call are in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. And now I'd like to turn the call over to Shanka.

Thank you, Richard, and good morning, everyone. For the listeners in Canada who had Family Day yesterday, I hope you enjoyed the long weekend. I'm pleased to say that our order backlog continues to expand. As we reported last week, it now exceeds $12 million US or $16 million Canadian. We announced new lithium-ion battery orders worth approximately $4 million near the end of December, and we have subsequently received more. The orders for commercial battery products are coming from both new and repeat customers, and demand has been solid through both of our key sales channels, direct sales to large global customers and sales through OEM distribution. As you can see, we are building significant momentum and we expect our order volume to continue to grow. Our customers are pleased with the performance of our batteries and we continue to receive new inquiries from large global companies. As I mentioned on the last call, we moved into a new head office and manufacturing facility at 6688 Kitty Matt Road in Mississauga during the first quarter that comprises approximately 62,000 square feet of space. We are pleased with the new office, which provides us with the space we need to scale up production as customer demand increases. The new location also places us closer to key customers. The move during the last quarter, which ended 31st December, was done in rapid time, moving production, research, and equipment along with our office. Our team worked seven days a week around the clock to achieve this move, and the disruption in production during Q1 did, of course, take place, but we are pleased to report that the first batteries produced from our new location in Kitimat have been delivered. Back in November, we said we expect battery deliveries to ramp up in the fiscal second quarter, which is this quarter, barring unforeseen circumstances as we complete deliveries on our Walmart orders. Obviously, the coronavirus was an unforeseen circumstance. The outbreak in China has caused temporary disruption to the global supply chain, which is impacting our delivery schedule. We now expect some deliveries to extend into the fiscal third quarter ending 30th June, again barring further unforeseen circumstances. This slight delay is happening and we continue to monitor the situation and keep in close contact with our suppliers and of course with our clients. We still anticipate completing deliveries on approximately 10.8 million or Canadian 14 million of orders by the end of fiscal third quarter, which is June 2020. While we are focused on generating more order volume, we are also aggressively reducing costs to boost profitability. After excluding interest and stock-based compensation, we reduced overhead costs by 38% in the first quarter of fiscal 2020 compared to Q1 last year. This will continue to be an important priority for us going forward. Overall, we believe our competitive position is strong, our order book is growing, we are reducing our overhead costs, and we are scaling up to meet customer demand. Our customers, both through direct sales and through our OEM channel, are large, sophisticated corporations, and we believe they had a global choice, and their choice is a tribute to our technology, our team, and our products. We anticipate significant growth in revenue and profitability in the months ahead as we fulfill orders currently in our backlog and receive new ones. I will now turn the call over to Richard to review our fiscal first quarter results in greater detail.