This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

REE Automotive Ltd.
11/16/2022
Thank you all for joining our third quarter 2022 conference call. We hope that you have seen our press release and investor presentation issued earlier this morning at investors.ree.auto. We will be referring to the presentation during the webcast today. I would like to remind you that today's call may include forward-looking statements. Any statements describing our beliefs, goals, plans, strategies, expectations, projections, forecasts, and assumptions are forward-looking statements. Please note that the company's actual results may be different from other anticipated by such forward-looking statements for a variety of reasons, many of which are beyond our control. Please refer to the company's form 20F filed on March 28, 2022 with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which identifies principal risks and uncertainties that could affect our business, prospects, and future results. We assume no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements, except as required by law. In addition, we'll be discussing or providing certain non-GAAP financial measures today, including adjusted EBITDA, non-GAAP net loss, and non-GAAP EPS. Please see our earnings release for a reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to their most directly comparable GAAP measures. Joining me today as our co-founder and CEO Daniel Burrell, who will provide a commercial update, Josh Tech, our Chief Operating Officer, who will update you on operations, and our Chief Financial Officer, David Goldberg, who will conclude the company's prepared remarks with a discussion on our financial results and outlook and initial margin guidance. At this point, I will turn the call over to Daniel.
Thank you, Kamal. Good morning. and welcome to our third quarter 2022 earning call. I will begin the call with an update on the progress we are making towards commercialization of our multiple P7 programs as we focus on converting our pipeline into backlog. We are operating in a challenging, unpredictable, and very dynamic microeconomic environment that requires us to double down on our focus and discipline as we continue to execute our business plan both operationally and financially. We have grown our headcount judicially and have been sticking to our game plan, and we believe that we will continue to achieve multiple milestones on time and on budget. We believe we have a winning strategy, designing native modular EV platforms that allows us to address multiple use cases. Not only we have not deviated from this strategy, Our CAPEX Lite model and the favorable unit economics of the segments we are targeting mean that our P7 platform and its Class 3 and 5 variants are fully funded through commercial production. With a global market of medium-duty commercial vehicles of approximately 1.4 million vehicles annually and approximately 600,000 vehicles annually in the U.S. and Europe, the classes we are initially targeting with our P7 programs represent immense opportunities for REE. As is customary in the commercial vehicle segment, REE is offering power by REE vehicles directly to potential fleet customers in distinct product offerings ranging from a cab chassis EV-based on our P7B box truck, or a strip chassis to be completed to a full vehicle by a partnership with body outfitters such as Proxima powered by REE. REE believes pursuing this distinct go-to market path will significantly accelerate the adaptation of EVs by commercial fleet owners and operators. The company's approach is a strong competitive differentiator, allowing it to address a larger market and bring superior commercial EV solutions with a complex slot manufacturing approach. During our last earning call, I made it clear that we would only be announcing firm customer orders, and I am pleased to be in the position to share with you that we have received our first contractually binding orders. Importantly, we have received orders for each of our vehicles. Unique to RE, we have been able to leverage a technology platform, the P7, to develop two vehicle variants with distinct use cases, in a fraction of the time and cost that developing unique vehicles has taken historically. These initial orders are validating in two distinct but related ways. First, the vehicles themselves are performing to our expectations and are being received very positively by both new and prospective customers. This is, of course, essential. Just as importantly, customers have the confidence in our ability to deliver on time and with competitive pricing. Purchasing decisions have not been made simply on the back of test drives. There is significant due diligence that goes into these decisions. To put a finer point on it, customers need to have confidence that we cannot just deliver an initial batch of vehicles, but can deliver them at scale. These are decisions that often require the highest level of approval by a customer. I will briefly share our progress on current P7 programs, Proxima Powered by Reef and the P7B. As I just mentioned, we recently received our first orders for Proxima Powered by Reef Class 5 walk-in step vans and P7B Class 3 box trucks. These orders follows successful demonstration event held in the past few months in the U.S. and Europe, and extensive due diligence by our customers. REE has commenced building its production-intent P7 chassis, and together with EAVS, we intend to deliver Proxima, powered by REE, Tesla, as a fully homologated vehicle for use on public roads in the U.S. We will also be providing test vehicles to some of the world's largest rental fleets and commercial truck retailers in North America. We believe that these orders will be the first in a series that we expect to announce in the coming months as discussions continue with multiple delivery, logistics, and e-commerce prospective customers. The importance of test fleet orders. I mentioned during our last call Some of our prospective customers have very large fleets that will not be electrified all at once and without significant testing. We believe these initial orders will mark the beginning of multiple long-term relationships and that REIT will receive larger orders after customers collect validating data and positive driver feedback. Delivering these initial fleets to customers is a crucial milestones on the task to scale adoption of power by rear vehicles commercial owners and operators are highly sensitive to vehicle uptime durability and efficiency introducing new vehicles into sleep has to make sense from a business perspective and the only way to reach scale adoption of a new vehicle is by introducing test leads and have these test lists operate as well or better than current options. To be very clear, we're not talking about prototypes. These are roadworthy vehicles that customers will be putting to the test in their duty cycles. Our customers will be devoting significant time and resources to understand how our technology fits into their fleet and overall operations. And we will be working alongside them to ensure we are meeting their requirements. I look forward to sharing more updates with you as we head towards commercialization. With that, I would like to pass on the call to Josh, who will describe how we are getting there from an operational and engineering perspective.
Josh? Thank you, Daniel, and good morning, everyone. As Daniel mentioned, we are moving quickly to have expected capacity established by the end of this year. After finalizing the build-out of our first engineering and integration center in the third quarter of 2022, I am pleased to report that all major equipment is in place. Also, our core engineering competencies have been built out with all functions in place at the required capacity from both a product and process standpoint. As a reminder, we're deploying robotic assembly cells, end-of-line electrical tests, and auto-boxing stations in these assembly cells. An assembly cell is an alternative strategy used in manufacturing that can provide much greater flexibility and scalability than a traditional production line. These cells will make up our re-corner production line in our facilities, where autonomous guided vehicles will move the work-in-process product between stations for both automated and manual assembly, while autonomous mobile robots will bring sub-assemblies to the lines. There are several advantages to this approach. First, it provides the ability to validate all assembly cells quickly by testing and optimizing one cell and then implementing best practices across all the others, which reduces the time to design and develop these assembly lines. Second, the modular production line is also highly automated and flexible, meaning that we can scale up or scale down on a future variance and demand. Finally, assembly cells and production lines can be efficiently lifted and installed at future integration centers as required as we apply one global standard using the plug-and-play format. We are working with top supplier partners on the assembly line and line side controls. This allows us to use cloud-based solutions, giving us complete visibility into all production operations and enabling us to scale manufacturing locally and across global integration centers. These integration centers will be linked to our central control where we can achieve an overarching view from a build perspective along with full traceability of our re-solutions. Unlike many other companies, to optimize the size and requirements of our facility, we are deploying our production line to integrate pre-assembled subsystems provided to us by our third-party partners, such as American Axle and Brembo. It's a CapEx light approach that significantly de-risks execution and allows for a far greater degree of flexibility. As we shared before, REE is establishing itself as a manufacturer of record for our vehicles, making us responsible for the homologation and certification of the electric platform. Homologation and certification activities are progressing on track at the vehicle level. Additionally, core control system software and functional safety development, key elements for the development of mission-specific variations enabled by ReCORNERS are progressing according to plan. In the meantime, our engineering test fleet in the UK continues to accumulate testing and validation miles in anticipation of the start of design intent production in the fourth quarter. In addition to actively running our test fleet through complete vehicle test levels, REA is currently building winter test vehicles for validation in early 2023, which will take place in Sweden. Our winter test vehicles are production intense and will be the first vehicles produced on Reeve's modular production line comprised of 13 automated manufacturing cells. We're excited to be able to begin to validate our assembly line as we remain on track to commence scale production in the second half of 2023. In order to ensure a highly efficient assembly line that meets quality, safety, and financial expectations, We plan to methodically ramp production as we evaluate and optimize processes with the end goal of operating a highly efficient and safe integration center at capacity. I would like to thank three teams across the world for their hard work and dedication towards making this a more sustainable, carbon-neutral world as we rapidly move towards a fully electric vehicle future. With that, I will hand the call over to David Goldberg, RE-CFO, to discuss our financial results. David.
You're reading a preview of the REE Q3 2022 earnings call.
Free account.