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spk04: Greetings, and welcome to the Vicinity Motor Corp Third Quarter 2022 Corporate Update Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. Before we begin the formal presentation, I'd like to remind everyone that statements made on today's call and webcast including those regarding future financial results and industry prospects, are forward-looking and may be subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the call. Please refer to the company's regulatory filings for a list of associated risks, and we would also refer you to the company's website for more supporting industry information. I would now like to hand the call over to William Treanor, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Vicinity Motor Corp. William, the floor is yours.
spk03: Thank you, operator, and good afternoon, everyone. I'm pleased to welcome you to today's third quarter 2022 corporate update conference call. The third quarter of 2022 was highlighted by strong momentum in our VMC-1200 Class III electric truck and Vicinity Lightning electric bus product lines. Additional sales and distribution wins of our portfolio of electric vehicles were propelled by intense customer demand for commercial EVs, particularly in the Class III segment with our VMC-1200. New government incentives for EV adoption in the pipeline are building interest and support from enterprise customers and government agencies as fleets seek to be part of our shared electrified future. The rising demand for our Class III EVs in particular was demonstrated through our further $100 million purchase order for 1,000 VMC 1200 vehicles from the Pioneer Auto Group, a transformational milestone in Vicinity's evolution from an internal combustion engine bus OEM to a multi-segment emerging leader in the electric vehicle space. The order validated the years of innovation, development, and strategy that we've invested into our EV product lines, all with the goal of expanding our capabilities into new markets. As a clear indicator of this momentum, our sales backlog grew to over $100 million, the vast majority of which are for electric vehicles. While the global automotive industry supply chain continues to impact our transit bus business, our VMC 1200 supply chain remains fairly insulated from these disruptions. Delivery of many bus orders have been pushed into 2023, but initial VMC 1200 deliveries began in October, and we expect these sales to to gradually ramp up and meet the immense demand we're seeing for this product line. Our first vehicles will be assembled here in British Columbia, Canada. And given that we believe we have solved the power switch issue, which we faced previously, by year end, we expect that our Ferndale, Washington facility will have received our initial certificate of occupancy with final Ferndale production expected in the first quarter of 2023. To support our growing production goals, we are increasing our credit facilities to support short-term working capital requirements for the rapidly ramping VMC 1200 production. Taken as a whole, we are confident in our ability to drive significant revenue growth in 2023. During the quarter, we continued our aggressive expansion of our distribution reach across North America, adding dealers in Toronto, Canada for our VMC 1200 Class III electric truck, and Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Alaska for the vicinity Lightning and Classic vehicles. We saw, as we saw from the Pioneer Auto Group's order, growing our distribution network is a key component of our future growth and our ongoing sales efforts. Now with that, I'll turn it over to Dan to review our financial results for the quarter ended September 30th, 2022. Dan?
spk01: Thank you, William. Good afternoon, everyone. I will keep my portion to a brief review of our financial results. A full breakdown is available in our regulatory filings and in the press release across the wire after market closed yesterday. Please note that I will refer to adjusted EBITDA and other non-GAAP measures. For the calculation of adjusted EBITDA and other non-GAAP measures, please refer to the Q3 MD&A, which is available on CDAR. In addition, all figures are in US dollars unless stated otherwise. Revenue totaled $1.5 million in the third quarter of 2022, as compared to $2.3 million in the third quarter of 2021. Revenue totaled $16.4 million for the nine months ended September 30, 2022, as compared to $39.4 million in the nine months ended September 30, 2021. The decrease is primarily attributable to lower vehicle deliveries due to global supply chain disruptions. Gross loss in the quarter ended September 30, 2022, totaled $0.2 million, or 15% of revenue, as compared to $0.6 million, or 25% of revenue for the quarter ended September 30, 2021. Gross profit totaled $1 million, or 6% of revenue, for the nine months ended September 30, 2022, as compared to gross profit of $4.6 million, or 12% of revenue, for the nine months ended September 30, 2021. Gross margins were affected by product mix and a low volume of buses delivered. with global supply chain disruptions affecting certain transit bus components continuing to delay deliveries. Cash used in operating activities in the nine months ended September 30, 2022, totaled $5.2 million, as compared to cash provided by operating activities, $7.8 million in the nine months ended September 30, 2021. Net loss in the quarter ended September 30, 2022, was $7.4 million, or 19 cents per share, as compared to a net loss of $3.8 million, or 13 cents per share, in the third quarter of 2021. Net loss for the nine months ended September 30, 2022, was $14.1 million, as compared to net loss of $2.5 million for the nine months ended September 30, 2021. Adjusted EBITDA loss for the three months ended September 30th, 2022 was $2.7 million as compared to an adjusted EBITDA loss of $2.8 million for the three months ended September 30th, 2021. Adjusted EBITDA loss for the nine months ended September 30th, 2022 was $6 million as compared to an adjusted EBITDA loss of $0.5 million for the nine months ended September 30th, 2021. Cash and cash equivalents as of September 30th, 2022 totaled $1.1 million as compared to $4.4 million as at December 30th, 2021. Subsequent to the end of the third quarter, the company fortified its balance sheet through an opportunistic $4.8 million raise utilizing the company's at the market program. We are currently working on expanding our existing credit facility to support a quicker ramp up in BMC 1200 production and further support our working capital position. We are well positioned to execute and the fundamentals of our operations remain strong. While we have suspended guidance for the full year 2022, given an uncertain supply chain environment, demand remains very strong and we are well positioned for a high level of operational execution in 2023. I'd now like to pass it back to William to offer some closing remarks, after which we'll begin our question and answer session.
spk03: Thank you, Dan. Looking ahead to 2023, we are incredibly well positioned for success, particularly as supply chains normalize and we can resume full-fledged transit bus production as we deliver upon our $190 million order backlog. Given the VMC-1200 doesn't face the same supply chain pressures that the transit bus do, paired with the significant incentives and subsidies available to end users, seeking to electrify their fleets, we expect they will prove to be a significant contributor to our revenue growth and profitability. I look forward to providing additional updates in the months to come as we build the foundation for our customers to create a more sustainable public transit system and what I believe will be a record 2023. Now with that, I'd like to hand it back to the operator to begin our question and answer. Session operator.
spk04: Thank you, William. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then 1 on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then 2. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question is from Poe Fratt with Alliance Global Partners. Please go ahead.
spk00: Great. Good afternoon. I just had a quick question about just your production capability, you know, and the timing of fulfilling the order, especially the, you know, the 1,000 BMC-1200 trucks. My understanding is you have 50 per month potential out of Aldergrove. and then fully configured as a truck capacity, Ferndale should be about 10,000 a year. Can you confirm those numbers and then also give us an idea of sort of how we should be looking at deliveries over the course of 2023? Sure. It's going to be, you know, we look at ramping up.
spk03: We'll start delivering here out of our Aldergrove facility. which is correct. We can do about 50 per month out of this facility. But the real numbers are going to come out of Ferndale, Washington. And yes, we could, if we're running on full capacity down there, get it up to around 10,000 trucks if we're just doing straight trucks alone. We set that facility up down in Ferndale to actually run dual lines, to run bus and truck lines. So it's very well set up for that.
spk00: And when you do dual, can you give me a flavor for the mix between trucks and buses?
spk03: Yeah. You know, we can do – Dan, you probably got the numbers better than I do. I think the numbers are – if we're running both at the same time, I think we'd be close to 6,000 trucks that we'd be able to do out of there and about a couple 300 buses, somewhere in that mix.
spk01: Yeah, the majority for next year would be trucks coming out of that facility. Yeah.
spk00: And congratulations on getting the switching equipment issue resolved. Can you just highlight, you know, what additional costs we should expect in the, it sounds like maybe in the fourth quarter bleeding into the first quarter of 23?
spk01: Sure, Dan, you want to take that? Yeah. So the facility is basically complete at this point. So we'll see maybe an extra million dollars of completion for the facility since Q3. But at this point, the landscaping is even complete. We're just waiting on the switching gears. There is still some equipment that will need to be purchased for the facility, but that will all be done through either leasing or equipment financing. So there shouldn't be a cash outlay from working capital for that portion of the facility. But that would be in the neighborhood of another potentially $3 million.
spk00: Okay, but again, financed against the equipment or asset-based. When you look at your expansion of your working capital facility, can you just give a flavor for how much you're looking for as far as expanding the credit facility? And then once you have Ferndale's CEO, would you potentially use that as a you know, a way to raise capital?
spk01: Yeah, so that's a good question. I'm not ready to answer yet the size of the facility. We are working on a couple of different options right now and, you know, one of them is just amending our current ABL to fit a little bit more within the truck side of the business. But that's definitely a top priority for us right now is We want to be able to ramp up the truck production as quickly as possible, which is why we're looking at increasing the facility and really changing how it works. But as for the Ferndale facility, you're correct. It's unencumbered right now. So we have a potential asset that is worth somewhere in the range of $15 to $20 million. that we could finance against as well.
spk00: Okay, great. And then, you know, on the truck side, the deliveries there, I'm sorry, on the bus side, the deliveries have been impacted by supply chain issues. Can you just talk about when we should see a recovery or a ramping up of bus deliveries? You know, is Is it fully resolved so that you should see a pickup in the fourth quarter, or is it something we should expect in the 2023 timeframe? Thanks. You want me to take that?
spk03: Yeah, it doesn't matter. Yeah, we see the, you know, we see a lot of the bus delivers that we currently have being able to be delivered through Q1, you know, starting in Q4 and being Q4, Q1, You've got to remember, we have a considerable backlog of buses to deliver here, but we do see the supply chain issue being addressed and being able to deliver those buses. We're not immune to – everybody realizes that the industry has faced some great difficulties with the supply chain on the bus side. That's why when we look at the truck side, what I like to say is we have anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 line items on a bus. when we're building a bus. We have about 500 on a truck, so the supply chain on the truck is a lot simpler.
spk00: Great. Thanks for your time.
spk04: Again, if you have a question, please press star, then 1. The next question is from Robin Cornwell with Catalyst Research. Please go ahead.
spk02: Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. I was I'm wondering if the electrical fix on the plant, that's a full fix or still a partial fix?
spk03: No, it is a partial fix, Robin, but it does allow us to start the factory up. The main switching gear should come in, and I think it's scheduled to come in in March sometime. So it would be up and running by April, but we want to start producing the trucks down there as soon as we can. So that's why we've got a temporary power solution coming in there. It'll allow us to basically operate in there, but there's some things that we won't be able to operate, like the major cranes and the paint booth, but we're not foreseeing that holding up our truck deliveries.
spk02: So that will, as you say, allow you to get occupancy.
spk03: Occupancy and usage of the facility. OK.
spk02: OK. I want to go back to the optimum truck. There's chassis. Is there any update on the chassis that you were in short supply?
spk03: No, we really don't have any update on the off mode at this point.
spk02: So there is no likely production of that that you foresee in 2023?
spk03: Yeah, no, just at this point in time, I can't give an update on it. I don't have any comment on that at this particular point.
spk02: And tell me, are the margins for the trucks going to be similar to the buses? Is there some economics there that you can share with us on that?
spk01: Yeah, so margins on the trucks are higher than our regular bus margins. Right now, we're expecting margins that could range from the low 20s to around 30% for trucks. And it's dependent on a few factors, really, but foreign exchange being one of them. But right now, it's definitely a very, very positive product for us.
spk02: Okay. Okay. Sorry. I think that's all for me. Thank you.
spk04: Great. Thanks. This concludes our question and answer session. I'd now like to turn the call back over to Mr. William Traynor for his closing remarks.
spk03: Thank you, Operator. And I'd like to thank each of you for joining our earnings conference call. We look forward to continuing to update you on our ongoing progress and growth. If we are unable to answer any of your questions, please reach out to our IR firm, the MZ Group, who would be more than happy to assist. Thank you.
spk04: Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's teleconference. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time and have a wonderful day.
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