Electrovaya Inc.

Greetings, and welcome to Electra Via's Q1 2021 Financial Results 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. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Richard Halka, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today's conference call to discuss Electrovia's Q1 2021 first quarter financial results. Today's call is being hosted by Dr. Shankar Dasgupta, CEO of Electrovia, and myself, Richard Halka, Executive Vice President and CFO. On February 10th, Electrovia issued a press release concerning its business highlights and financial results for the three-month period ended December 31, 2020. If you would like a copy of the release, you can access it at our website. If you want to view our financial statements and MD&A, you can access those documents on the SADAR website. at www.sadar.com. As with previous calls, our comments today are subject to the normal provisions related to forward-looking information. We will provide information relating to our current views regarding trends in our market, including size and potential for growth, 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 first quarter 2020 results and the most recent annual information form and management's discussion and analysis under risks and uncertainties, as well as other public disclosure documents filed with Canadian security regulatory authorities. Please note that all numbers discussed on this call are in U.S. dollars, unless otherwise noted. I'd now like to turn the call over to Shankar.

Thank you, Richard, and good morning, everyone. Q1 2021, the December ending, was the most important quarter for Electrovia, perhaps one of the most important quarters in Electrovia's history. After years of validation in the laboratories and intensive field operations in over 40 locations in the USA and Canada. Finally, the largest OEM in this sector, Raymond Corp, part of the Toyota Group, signed a strategic sales agreement with Electravia in December 2020. Now, we have the most important company in this sector, Partnering with us started selling the battery fully integrated in their lift trucks a Totally different arrangement than before This is the company builder Which transforms electro via into a globally important lithium-ion battery producer Under this recent agreement we have started to deliver a And the first set of batteries were delivered in late January to a Fortune 100 company, a big box retailer, a retailer with several thousands of stores, each with multiple forklifts. Raymond and us are now receiving inquiries from places like Argentina, Australia, and that is just countries starting with the letter A. But the real market is the other A country, America, the United States of America. Raymond Corp is a premium electric brand and the largest player in this commercial electric lift truck or electric forklift sector in the U.S. Just a few years ago, the largest electric vehicle sector in North America was the electric lift trucks. larger than the electric passenger cars. Over 2.6 million lift trucks operate in the USA, and about 1.5 million of them are electric, mainly powered by lead acid batteries. Our mission is to transform this industry and have them be powered by our lithium ion batteries. This journey has just started. Our batteries are uniquely safe. We have recently received the UL2580 listing for over 25 models of our high energy density battery. I gather this UL2580 listing for high energy density NMC lithium ion battery is difficult to get. and ElectroVIA may be the only high energy density battery which has passed this UL listing criteria. A great kudos to our technology and to our team for this achievement. We now have the tools of deep channel distribution and a rare UL safety listing as ElectroVIA works to transform this industry in the next few years. Our revenue did triple year over year in this December quarter, but that was just scratching the surface. The real market domination game starts now. We might have had higher revenues in this quarter. However, for many e-commerce and retail distribution, The December quarter is where they make most of their revenues, sometimes 60% to 80%, and prefer not to have any new products come into their premises as they focus on their revenues and deliveries. Additionally, our new strategic sales agreement has just started. Richard may say later a few words on this. We believe that our lithium-ion batteries have extraordinary performance and extraordinary performance in safety and longevity, or cycle life, along with industry-leading energy and power, which is why major Fortune 500 companies have started to use the Electro-Vaya battery inside warehouses, e-commerce, distribution, logistics, and manufacturing. As a technology-intensive company, we have increased our personnel by over 60 to 80% in the last 12 to 14 months, added more resources to research and development as we expand our technology focus to areas of solid-state battery, toxic solvent-free processing, new iron-conducting materials, system design, software, and firmware. We expect major products to evolve into the electric bus, electric truck, electric robots, and automated guided vehicles. Thankfully, the lithium-ion battery is still evolving, and the Electroviya team has some rare and unique understanding of this technology, and indeed, its evolutionary path, where we can leverage our intellectual property and create technology breakthroughs similar to what we have done in the electric lift truck industry. On financing, after this quarter, we did raise some Canadian 8 million from a small equity and exercise of some warrants. And Richard will perhaps go deeper into this. Regarding COVID, We are an essential service and our very dedicated and courageous team comes to the factory every day carrying out vital production, operations, engineering, research and admin tasks. We are focused on the health and safety of our employees to mitigate any potential spread of COVID-19. The company has implemented a number of common sense initiatives at its plant including increased sanitation of frequently touched surfaces, use of masks, portable air purifiers everywhere, and social distancing. The company's air handling systems are continuously flooded 24-7 with high-power ultraviolet disinfecting lamps. Our customers are growing. They all tend to be large, sophisticated companies. In many of their locations, we are replacing the lead-acid battery usage, and in one location, we have replaced the hydrogen fuel cell. Most of our clients have multiple locations, tens or hundreds of them. Hence, being able to seed our technology has been important. We are now seeing repeat orders from many of our Fortune 500 companies. We believe we must be providing exceptional technology in terms of cycle life, safety, energy, power, and fast charging. Otherwise, these Fortune 500 companies would not have chosen us, and neither would our strategic partner. I will now turn the call over to Richard to review our fiscal second quarter results in greater detail.