Nuvve Holding Corp.

Good afternoon and welcome to Nuvi Holding Corp's second quarter 2022 earnings call. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Eduardo Royes. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you. On today's call are Gregory Poilane, Chief Executive Officer, and David Robson, Chief Financial Officer of Nuvi. Earlier today, Newby issued a press release announcing its second quarter 2022 results. Following prepared remarks, we will open the call up for questions. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that this call may contain forward-looking statements. While these forward-looking statements reflect Newby's best current judgment, they are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those implied by these forward-looking projections. These risk factors are discussed in Newby's findings with the SEC and any earnings release issued today, which are available on our website. NUBI undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements to reflect future events or circumstances. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Gregory Polan, Chief Executive Officer of NUBI. Gregory?

Thanks, Eduardo, and good day to all. Thank you for joining us as we review our results for the second quarter of 2022. I would like to start today's call, as I often do, by discussing some high-level secular tailwinds that underpin our enthusiasm about the outlook for vehicle-to-grid technology adoption. And now, through our platform, we believe that Nuvi is well-positioned to play a key enabling role in both vehicle electrification and improving grid resiliency. A few weeks ago, we were thrilled with the surprise news out of Washington, D.C., that the Climate Spend Bill was back on as part of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. Included in this package are not only proposals that will expand and expand credits for EV purchasing, thus making EVs more affordable, but also credits that should spur the continued build-out of EV charging infrastructure, which is critical to EV adoption. EV charging is covered by what is commonly referred to as a Section 30C tax rate, also known as the Alternative Fuel Vehicle Refueling Property Credit. Under the new proposal, tax credit that a qualifying business would receive for the cost of purchasing and installing charging station hardware would go up significantly. Further, and critical for newbie, the bidirectional charging equipment that allows for V2G is specifically named as credit eligible in the new bill, which was not explicitly the case before. Another very important tool for the potential faster adoption of V2G, and more broadly EVs, is the increased availability of grant funding. We are pleased that the second quarter saw important progress in that fund as well. On the back of the bipartisan infrastructure law of 2021, the Biden-Harris administration announced in May that the EPA was making $500 million available for school districts and other eligible school bus operators to begin replacing the nation's three top school buses with clean, American-made, zero-emission buses over the next five years. Our experience grants and fundraising team has been hard at work with partners and customers to assist them in applying for grants through the program. As of today, we have submitted 174 grant applications on their behalf, on the occurrence of more than 10 megawatts of capacity, with more in the works ahead of the EPA's August 19 submission deadline. While we do not expect all applications to receive the grants, the sheer number of partners we are working with leads us to believe that a fair share of them should be successful. By managing this process for them, we position ourselves well to receive the associated V2G charging hardware orders when they do win. We expect the EPA to announce the winner in the fourth quarter of 2022 and for the grant recipients to begin to place orders for the electric school buses and associated equipment such as V2G hardware soon thereafter. To summarize, it is no secret that the federal support can play a critical role in the speed with which electrification scales up. and political uncertainty and logjam can be the enemy of planning and decision-making for those looking to edify. With these developments of the past few months, the outlook for federal climate tech support over the near and long term in the U.S. truly does feel brighter today. Before turning to results, I would like to briefly address the rationale for our recent capital raise in light of where Nuvi stands today. Recurring capital needs are inherent to emerging growth companies. and we've met it before, winds typically take time to convert to revenues. The supply chain challenges over the past 18 plus months have drastically slowed the rollout of the necessary hardware, whether it be electric vehicles themselves or charging equipment, related to the planned and normalized production capabilities. Further, even once we have sold and sold and commissioned charging stations that are integrated with the new VV2G software, Generating revenue from any one-time sales of chargers must wait on interconnection queues and other elements of the broader V2G ecosystem to be in place before we can actually fully operate and thus generate material revenues from V2G activities. Despite this backdrop, we must continue to invest in and position our business for the future, whether outright through investments in key partnerships, sales, and marketing efforts, or by occasionally electing to strategically sell hardware at a discount because we see compelling monkey or recurring revenue opportunity once the entire V2G ecosystem aligns for that particular customer project. The equity market has not been kind for the companies looking to raise money in 2022 as a result of various microeconomic factors. However, we cannot risk jeopardizing our business plan and our path forward by waiting for a more favorable equity market backdrop. over which we have no control to make something critical investments. With the additional, capital allows us to expand our backlog and best earning potentials. As such, in the second quarter, we enter into an at-the-market offering program, or ATM program, as previously discussed, and to date have raised $3.8 million via that program. A few weeks ago, we announced that we closed a registered direct offering that resulted in an additional $13.1 million in cash to NUGIS balance sheet. Maybe we'll touch more on these in a few minutes. But the addition of this approximately $17 million is key to funding future growth. Turning now to a summary of our major announcements in the second quarter of 2022. Accomplishments during the quarter include, one, our qualification to start commercial operation in the Japanese energy markets. Two, our entry into an MOU with the U.S. DOE to accelerate B2G technology, which I discussed in my opening remarks last time. Three, an agreement with Power Electronics to add Nuvi B2G certified capabilities to their bidirectional chargers. Four, an alliance with Centro to bundle Nuvi charging packages with their U.S. commercial feed product lineup. And five, executing a collaboration agreement with 2021.ai. We provided more color on each of these announcements during our May earning call. Since then, in late June, we announced another exciting partnership, this one with Switch, a leader in charging infrastructure operation and maintenance software. This is yet another example of us investing in the future to ensure that we extend our lead and further build our competitive advantage in V2G. Switch has developed an operating system that goes inside the charging station that we believe is far more advanced than anything else in the market. The cloud platform is built on the latest Open Charge Point Protocol, or OCPP, which is version 2.0.1. As a result, they have the world's first and only charging platform that is native to plug-in charge and is equal to everything of E2X. We have been working with Switch for the last three years with a goal of solidizing charging solutions and have elected not only to integrate our GIF platform with our platform, but have also made a strategic investment in the company. We believe that getting further upstream and into the infrastructure as we are doing here can only help our ability to scale up faster and by in effect sponsoring them, we are not only moving upstream, but we are also building a competitive moat against other V2G experience. Lastly, We believe Switch is a great channel partner for us to expand our reach with OEMs and other players in the V2G value chain. Moving along, the momentum has continued in the third quarter as last month. We disclosed an agreement with San Diego Gas and Electric, SDGA, that pairs our V2G platform with the Utilities Emergency Load Reduction Program, or ELRP. Recall like in July of last year, We disclose that we have been chosen as the V2G platform provider for the Calhoun Valley Union School District school bus program. Since then, six high-capacity chargers were installed at their bus yard in San Diego. This achievement shows what can happen when we partner with utilities. Through the ELRP program, electric school bus fleets equipped with V2G charging through our GIF platform are capable of and permission to provide energy back to the grid during emergency load reduction events, helping to avoid costly and inconvenient rotating outage and ensure service reliability for SDG&E's customers. In return, qualified SDG&E customers can receive $2 per kilowatt hour for verified export load slash load reduction. The LRP program represents a potential revenue opportunity per bus of $7,200 per year or $100 annually. per kilowatt year. For some background, the California Public Utility Commission, or CPUC, created the ELRP in 2021 to pilot a new demand response approach during peak summer electricity usage periods from May through October for both commercial and residential customers. Our partnership in the Cajon Valley districts marks the first school bus fleet to be integrated into the ELRP in California. With all of the infrastructure and paperwork in place, we're able to start generating grid service revenues immediately, although at marginal levels given the relatively small size of the project. Combined with deployments underway at Cajon Valley, Ramona, and San Diego school districts, this is about 1.7 megawatts of capacity that is planned to be available over the future months. We see a great set of opportunities elsewhere in California and eventually across other states that are likely to implement similar programs in their efforts to combat the increased strain on the country's aging grid and the worsening impact of climate change on grid operability. Building on the momentum with Sunday of Gas and Electric, we have just disclosed a partnership with Vistra Corporation, one of the largest energy generation and reseller headquartered in Dallas, Texas. This partnership aims both at creating channels for new energy-provided charging management systems to EV owners and drivers, as well as creating access to multiple value by providing grid services focused in Texas. As you might be aware, the energy market in Texas has been extremely volatile, with peak consumption achieving levels never reached before. Nuvi and Vistra are initially targeting school districts in the Vistra territory, and we are jointly developing programs using both EPA and local subsidies, as well as financing package. The goal is to deploy 250 school buses over the next 18 months of 15 megawatts of power capacity, which provide us the ability to generate future fleet as a service and grid service revenues. Finally, earlier this week, we announced entry into an MOU with the Maine Maritime Academy to collaborate on a framework of V2G across maritime applications. As part of the program, they will expand their current academic and certification programs to include delivery of workforce training in V2G-related data science, operations, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence. Vessel-to-grid solutions could enable ships and other vessels to soar and give energy back to the grid via ports, islands, and waterways. This builds on commentary made in recent quarters about continuing to build out academic partnerships and consistently exploring new market opportunities for V2G. Turning now to megawatts under management, which we view as an indicator of the potential revenue growth embedded into our commercial winds. As of June 30th, 2022, we had 16.1 megawatts under management installed. This reflects roughly 10% increase from March 31st, 2022 megawatts under management of 14.7 and 133% increase over the 6.9 megawatts under management on June 30th, 2021. To wrap up, over the past several quarters, you have heard us discuss the various partnership types, commercial, operational, technology, And we are incredibly excited about the long-term opportunities that each of these announcements provides as vehicle electrification and V2G adoption play out over the years ahead. Each of these agreements is foundational for the growth that we believe lie ahead of Nui. We continue to execute on the recently and previously announced agreements and partnerships as all of the pieces of the V2G puzzle come together. At the same time, we continue to chase additional partnerships and customers that we believe will further strengthen the outlook for our business. We look forward to working with current and prospective partners and continuing to have exciting news to disclose in the future. I will now turn the call over to David to discuss our financial results before I wrap up with some prepared remarks, and we open to Q&A.