Electrovaya Inc.

Welcome to the Electrovia Q4 year-end 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 at Electrovia. John, you may begin.

Thank you. Good evening, everyone. And thank you for joining today's call to discuss Electrovia's Q4 and full year fiscal 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 12 month periods ending September 30th, 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, management discussion and analysis, You can access those documents on the new CEEDARplus website at www.ceedarplus.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 their size and potential for growth, and our competitive position within our target markets. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in such forward looking statements are reasonable, They do obviously 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 Q4 and full year fiscal 2024 results and the most recent annual information forum and management discussion and analysis under risks and uncertainties. as well as in other public disclosure documents filed with Canadian security regulatory authorities. Also, please note that all numbers discussed on the call are in U.S. dollars, unless otherwise noted. And now, I'd like to turn the call over to Raj.

Thank you, John, and good evening, everyone. It is a pleasure to address you today as we discuss one of the most transformative years in Electrovirus history. Fiscal year 2024 was marked by several groundbreaking milestones. that underline the strength of our business and our trajectory for growth. Let me highlight the key achievements. We delivered record revenue and achieved our sixth consecutive quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA, signaling sustained operational and financial strength. For the first time, we generated positive cash flow from operations and significantly improved our gross margins to over 30%. showcasing our commitment to efficiency and profitability. We secured a $51 million direct loan approval from the Export-Import Bank of the United States under the Bank's Make More in America initiative, a pivotal step towards expanding our lithium-ion cell manufacturing in Jamestown, New York. This move will not only increase capacity but also improve margins and enable larger scale projects. And most importantly, we set ourselves up for what we anticipate will be a record 2025 with revenue growth expected to exceed $60 million with profitability driven by robust customer demand and expanding opportunities in both existing and new markets. These and other accomplishments that we will discuss reflect the dedication of our team and the trust of our partners, positioning us to lead in mission critical and heavy duty energy storage solutions. With that, let's delve into the details of our fiscal year and our vision for the future. First of all, on November 14th, we received approval from the Export-Import Bank of the United States, or EXIM, for a direct loan of nearly $51 million to fund our Jamestown, New York Gigafactory. A lot of time and effort went into the process, including three levels of credit review and approval, and business, technology, and customer due diligence before receiving final approval from the bank's full board. I believe Ex-Im's approval represents an incredible endorsement of Electrovia and our capabilities to succeed in this strategic and highly competitive industry. We are currently in the process of finalizing the loan documents and expect to close and have access to begin drawing funds next quarter. The EXIM loan covers equipment and construction costs for the site, and when combined with incentives from the state of New York and county, provides nearly $60 million in non-dilutive financing to enable us to turn our vision into reality. We anticipate starting commercial cell manufacturing operations in the Jamestown facility in the first half of calendar 2026 and battery system manufacturing in 2025. The Jamestown facility substantially expands our capacity and will enable us to pursue an increasing number of larger opportunities that can drive higher revenues and profits. Furthermore, We believe that with domestic and vertically integrated manufacturing, we will be able to increase our gross margins, reduce lead times, and ultimately facilitate larger purchases from customers that are more sensitive to manufacturing origination, like defense. We are also experiencing increasing demand for our material handling battery products. Over the last several years, most of the orders for our products in this sector stem from newly constructed distribution centers, and we continue to have strong demand from these types of opportunities. However, one trend that is very encouraging is a ramp up in demand for retrofit or brownfield opportunities. With far more existing warehouse sites than those under construction, there is a much larger addressable market opportunity. We recently announced one of these orders from one of our largest end customers, a leading Fortune 500 retailer, to equip two of its distribution centers. This particular customer has indicated plans to convert at least another four distribution centers in the near future with potential plans for an even larger implementation. Also significant is renewed demand from our largest end customer, a Fortune 100 e-commerce company. During fiscal year 2024, we had significantly less revenue from this end customer than previous years. Despite this and delays from other customers, we delivered revenue that was essentially flat, not a little bit higher. While this was a disappointment and does not reflect our future growth potential, overall, it is a testament to the higher degree of customer diversification that we are starting to achieve. we are already seeing renewed demand from this customer and are anticipating a return to at least our historical rates from them for fiscal year 2025. With regards to our core material handling battery vertical, we recently introduced in partnership with one of our OEM partners, Toyota Material Handling, a high residual value leasing offering. This was achievable in part to the strength of our position with more than five years of outstanding performance data related to battery systems in the field. Initial feedback from this offering has been terrific with significant customer interest and anticipated orders from customers who would not normally move forward with our pricier energy storage solutions. We have a number of material handling OEM driven development projects that are scheduled to move into production in 2025. This includes a high profile electrified industrial forklift, which traditionally has only been powered by internal combustion engines and is used in some of the toughest applications, including ports and lumber yards. We are also working on customized battery systems for new autonomous vehicles, which are also scheduled to launch in 2025. Over the last year, Electrovia has also successfully seeded multiple other verticals with similar mission-critical requirements. Our partnership with Sumitomo Corporation has led to the establishment of a supply contract with a global construction equipment manufacturer for which we expect to start initial shipments in February 2025. Our high voltage battery systems have been validated in one of the toughest defense applications with a year of testing completed. That customer, a global aerospace and defense company, recently placed follow on orders and we expect to establish a growing supply of battery systems to them. This success validates our solutions and creates strong referenceability that helps us secure other opportunities. Recently, we established a supply agreement for our high voltage battery systems to be used in electrified locomotive applications and are in discussions with other applications, including trucks and mining vehicles. We believe that the combination of these additional verticals will lead to meaningful revenue contributions in 2025 but especially 2026 and beyond, which aligns nicely with our Jamestown operations ramp up. Electrovi continues to develop new products based on our Infinity technology and also continues to progress with our solid state battery development. On new products powered by Infinity technology, I expect us to launch a product for airport ground equipment in the near term. We see growing interest in that vertical with a fair bit of commonality with our material handling products. We are also launching a stationary energy storage product in 2025 to meet some of our existing end customers' demands for safe and reliable energy storage solutions. With respect to our solid-state battery development, we have made good progress over the last several months. Our ion conducting ceramic separators have improved performance, and we have started a lab scale continuous processing system, which is increasing our consistency. We were recently awarded additional grant funding to support this work, and we are being considered for a larger grant as well. I would expect us to provide a more fulsome update as we make more progress. With that, I would like to pass the call back to John Gibson, who will go into the financial results in more detail.