Electrovaya Inc.

Greetings. Welcome to the ElectroVio Q2 2024 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 keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, John Gibson, CFO. You may begin.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining today's call to discuss Electrovia's Q2 2024 financial results. Today's call is being hosted by Dr. Raj Dasgupta, CEO of Electrovia, and myself, John Gibson, CFO. Today, Electrovia issued a press release concerning its business highlights and financial results for the three- and six-month period ended March 31, 2024. If you would like a copy of the release, you can access it on our website. If you want to view our financial statements and management discussion and analysis, you can access those documents on the CEDARplus website at www.cedarplus.ca or on the SEC EDGAR website at sec.gov forward slash EDGAR. As with previous calls, our comments today are subject to the normal provisions relating to forward-looking information. We will provide information relating to our current views regarding market trends, including the size and potential for growth, and our competitive position within those target markets. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, they do 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 its Q2 2024 results and the most recent annual information form and management discussion and analysis under risks and uncertainties, as well as in other public disclosure documents filed with the Canadian Securities Regulatory Authorities and the U.S. Security Regulatory Authorities. Also, please note that all numbers discussed on the call are in US dollars, unless otherwise noted. And now I'd like to turn the call over to Raj.

Thank you, John, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our fiscal Q2 2024 call. Electrovia continues to make great strides in strengthening our business, including a new supply agreement with Sumitomo Corporation Power Mobility, or SCPM, improved non-dilutive working capital availability, and progress with regards to technology developments and cost optimizations. We delivered significant improvement in profitability and margins, despite less revenue growth than anticipated due to delays driven solely by our customers' delivery schedules shifting. In our business, there can be uncertainty with respect to delivery dates of our battery systems, as customer sites are often newly constructed and they are thus subject to potential delays. Broader foundations are now in place to ensure continued and stronger financial performance going forward. We continue to see increasing reception of our products from major Fortune 100 customers. We expect our revenue growth to accelerate in the second half of this fiscal year and into our next fiscal year. While our revenue continued to demonstrate growth year over year, The most important area of financial progress is with our gross margins and overall profitability. Our gross margins increased to 35% and this helps support growth in our adjusted EBITDA to about $1.5 million and an operating profit of $700,000. In the current era of high interest rates, profitability is paramount and we are firmly focused on increasing our margins and ensuring our working capital is spent effectively. During the quarter, we increased our working capital facility from Canadian dollars 16 million to Canadian dollars 22 million, with accordions in place to go to Canadian dollars 26 million. This increase in working capital is important to support a growing business size. Currently, we are actively focused on reducing our cost of capital And I believe with our strong trailing EBITDA figures and good projections going forward, Electrovi is in a position to have Tier 1 bank lending at more reasonable interest rates. We are actively in discussions with several banks and are optimistic about completing a refinancing this fiscal year. I'd like to reflect on a few of the key milestones we achieved over the quarter and our vision going forward. First, we signed a key supply agreement with Sumitomo Corporation Power and Mobility, a 100% subsidiary of Sumitomo Corporation. This relationship has been growing over the past 12 months, and together we have closed our first supply agreement with a leading Japanese construction equipment OEM. This OEM who has major operations in both North America and Europe, will need volume deliveries of batteries to his Japanese manufacturing site starting in 2026. This is significant, as overall there have been very few, if any, North American battery companies with exports to Japan. It doesn't stop there. We are also in discussions with multiple other OEMs in the construction, equipment, and mining industries with Sunitomo. Our relationship with Sumitomo opens many doors from sales to finance support. And this relationship is going to be one of the central aspects of our strategy to expand our geographic and application diversification. Secondly, our core market, the material handling industry, remains robust and is where we have the strongest set of end customers and OEM partners in the industry. Our backlog remains robust and growing despite economic and interest rate headwinds, and we have a good line of sight with regards to demand for the foreseeable future, including into fiscal 2025. This strong base provides us with the platform for growth while enabling the company to spend a greater share of its resources on product development and research and development. We have continued to make traction with existing Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies while also adding additional enterprises in a seed stage. Furthermore, Electrify continues with our OEM partners on next generation Electrify platform and other improvements in our offerings, which we will expect to generate further increased interest in our products, especially in late fiscal 2025 and onwards. We've also worked with our partners to provide the longest warranty in the industry, a testament to the cycle life and quality of our battery systems. This recent update will likely lead to higher levels of adoption, especially with regards to leased battery systems. Our first Infinity battery systems for material handling were deployed at Mondelez in 2017 and then at Walmart in 2018. And they are all still in operation, outlasting the vehicles they were originally installed in. These are some of the reasons ElectroBio can continue to generate high and growing margins from our products. We simply have the best product offering in the market. Thirdly, our product development efforts are moving forward. Our high voltage battery systems launched last year are continuing to be tested with initial customers with positive feedback. Given our battery technology's ability to sustain higher levels of safety, cycle life, and overall performance than typical lithium ion battery systems, we are seeing certain applications where we stand out even further and thus can continue to garner the premium we have established in the material handling industry. Some verticals that are particularly interesting are defense, mining, and hybrid applications, and we are engaged in multiple opportunities with each. Importantly, these are applications where we sell on performance and are not dependent on government incentives, which are unpredictable and subject to change. The overall electrification rates for bus and truck applications have been less than anticipated, and this can be seen directly from the results of some of our peers who have targeted these markets, whether they be battery companies or electric vehicle companies. One thing that we have continued to focus on are applications that sell on their own merit and are not dependent on government subsidies. The material handling market is a good example of this, and so are the other verticals I mentioned. Our customers purchase our products purely based on the return on investment that they obtain from operational and lifecycle cost efficiencies. If a new subsidy becomes available or is canceled, we are immune. I believe this is especially important given the uncertainty of our political and geopolitical landscape. Despite this, we remain confident that our technology will be utilized in the all-electric bus and truck markets. We have started two research and development programs with two major bus OEMs. In the hybrid truck market segment, we are very well positioned, and we are actively in discussions on some projects. Our solid state battery research efforts have reached some key milestones, and we plan on announcing our progress at the company's battery technology event on June 12th. Finally, we continue to make progress towards securing financing for investment in our project to expand manufacturing and cell assembly in Jamestown, New York. As mentioned previously, We anticipate the financing will have a government-backed component which requires a higher level of due diligence on the part of the lenders. This is still progressing but has been slower than we anticipated. That said, given improvements in supply chain and operations at our current facilities, we will not need the Jamestown output until 2026. With that, I'd like to pass the call back to John Gibson, who will go into the financial results in more detail.