Nuvve Holding Corp.

Good afternoon and welcome to the Nuvi Holding Corp's first quarter 2023 earnings call. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Eduardo Royes. Thank you. You may begin the call.

Thank you. On today's call are Gregory Paulan, Chief Executive Officer, and David Robson, Chief Financial Officer of Nuvi. Earlier today, Newby issued a press release announcing its first quarter 2023 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 a forward-looking statement. 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 filings with the SEC and in the 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 Poulin, Chief Executive Officer of NUBI. Gregory?

Thanks, Eduardo, and good day to all listening in. We thank you for joining our first quarter 2023 results call. We are extremely encouraged by the improvement in the fundamentals of our business in Q1. 2023 is so far delivering the green shoots we have always felt were inevitable. It has just been a question of when, not if. This was evidenced by both record orders and deliveries for our DC chargers during the period. At the same time, we progressed on additional lumpy orders, which is helping sustain momentum in order flow and sales of our DC chargers in the near term and evolve our plans to boost megawatts under management and grid service revenue streams more quickly via avenues that are not dependent on large-scale hardware rollouts. To briefly summarize our key accomplishments in the quarter, while we do not get into specifics on orders and deliveries, we will note the following. On the order front, we saw a four-fold increase in order for DC chargers versus the fourth quarter 2022, and so another increase for more than 3.5X on a year-over-year basis. In terms of deliveries, we more than doubled our fourth quarter DC charge shipment sequentially and more than triple shipments related to Q1 2022. One big driver of the increase in both orders and shipments in the first quarter was the previously discussed record-sized order for 24 units from the Los Angeles Unified School District. Only a small portion of orders recognized in Q1 were affiliated with rebates to customers that we directly supported in the 2022 inaugural funding round of the five-year EPA Clean School Bus Program. We're also thrilled to report that our strategic initiative is aimed at quickly growing and scaling up our megawattnodder management by integrating into established third-party hardware networks led to the partnership we announced with Circle K in February. In summary, our agreement with Circle K is initially expected to yield an additional 40 megawatts under management from EV fast chargers at 50 Circle K service stations and three to five stationary storage sites in Norway and Denmark. Importantly, Circle K has more than 560 locations combined across these two countries. We believe that a strong demonstration in this initial program should bode well for expansion in the region. For perspective, if all 560 locations were hooked up, this would represent nearly 500 megawatts under management in the Nordics alone. And if you look even further out, we know that Circle K has an estimated 17,000 locations worldwide. We have been working closely with our colleagues at Circle K on integrations. As of today, we are integrated and ready to demonstrate our grid service capabilities on the stationary batteries, and we are progressing on integration activities with the charging stations. We expect to be generating grid services revenue from this partnership in the back half of the year. Turning to recent developments since our last call that underpin our optimism about 2023, showing a marked improvement in results for Nuvi over 2022. We are pleased to disclose today that in April, we secured a new record order from a large fleet operator with 25 DC chargers. We understand it's outward to be for a school district that has been awarded funds via the EPA Clean School Bus Program. Importantly, it is not one of which we were involved with in leading all supporting roles during the application process, so it is incremental. Looking ahead, we expect to receive the majority of the purchase orders for hardware associated with the EPA rebates during the second quarter. As we discussed in our March call, we have been working closely with our school district partners to help them strategically evaluate the optimal use of the government dollars, which include their hardware selection. At a high level, our words should translate to approximately 1.1 million Inuvia hardware sales affiliated with the 10 school district customers that we formally represented in the grant writing and submission process. In addition, We are receiving orders for other customers we have facilitated in the process. Further, we are pleased to see that in late April, the EPA opened up the second round of funding for the Clean School Bus Program. At least initially, they will be awarding $400 million as part of the 2023 round. Applications are due this August, with orders expected between November 2023 and January 2024. This is an elongated timeline for approval and reflects a change in the structure of the program related to the 2022 round. Round 1 last year awarded nearly $1 billion in rebates through a lottery system. With awards spreading out over nearly 400 school districts, the average number of buses per recipient was in the order of a single digit. Round 2, however, will be a competitive grant-based program, and awards will be for larger-scale programs. Grants will allow a minimum of 15 and up to 50 buses for applicant school districts. And unlike last year, third-party applicants such as transportation companies will be allowed to participate as well. They will be allowed a minimum of 50 and up to 100 school buses serving at least four school districts. The EPA ultimately plans to make only 25 to 50 awards in total in this phase. We believe this new format should play to our strength. Nuvi differentiates itself not only through its tech, but also via its ability to offer a turnkey solution and act as a trusted advisor for FLEETS as they electrify. We believe that applicants who have not only the desire, but who can demonstrate a plan for how to implement and scale up the electrification program efficiently will be the best positioned to win EPA dollars in this next round. With Nuvi's assistance, we can lead not only the grant writing initiative, but also advise on design, implementation strategy, financing, and project management as we interface with the variety of stakeholders involved in the process. We look forward to partnering with our applicants in the month ahead to build a pipeline for these award wins late this year and going into next year. Further, we believe our holistic solution will continue to position us to win new business outside EPA, and we are optimistic that we will have more to say on this in the month ahead. Putting together our solid improvement in Q1 with the continued momentum we are seeing so far in Q2 supports our confidence that 2023 can be an inflection year for our business, both in terms of a ramp in hardware sales and via non-hardware-related partnerships such as the one with Circle K. We continue to pursue large-scale programs where we can lean into our differentiated ability to offer a holistic solution while simultaneously pursuing other agreements with charge port operators that are reliant only on our ability to integrate and manage third-party hardware. All the while, we'll continue to be a leading voice for V2G and its benefits. On the March call, I discussed California Senate Bill 233, which aims to make bidirectional charging for electric vehicles a norm, and which, if passed, could facilitate widespread V2G adoption in the years ahead. In April, I testified before the California Senate Energy Utility and Communication Committee in support of this proposed legislation. The cost of a bidirectional capability is close to zero, as the hardware capability exists today in widespread patients. As this bill goes for appropriation and through the Senate, we hope the politicians that will recognize the transformative impact that B2G can have on grid resilience and EV total cost of ownership. And with that, I will now turn the call over to David to discuss our financial results.