Vicinity Motor Corp.

Greetings and welcome to the Vicente Motor Corp third quarter 2023 corporate update conference call. At this time, all participants are in 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 the webcast, including those regarding future financial results and industry prospects, are forward-looking. and may be subject to a number of risks and certainty 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 would also refer to your company's website for more supporting industry information. I'll now like to hand the call over to William Treanor, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Vicinity Motor Corp. William, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Operator. And good afternoon, everyone. I'm pleased to welcome you to today's third quarter 2023 corporate update conference call. The third quarter of 2023 was focused on the build out of our VMC 1200 dealership network across Canada and deliveries of our VMC 1200 electric trucks and transit buses. During the quarter, we made 26 successful deliveries of our VMC 1200 electric trucks to eager customers, as well as eight transit buses. To meet growing demand during the quarter, we announced a new VMC 1200 dealership partner in Quebec, and we have several other additional LOIs in place to formalize new EV-specific dealerships, expanding the VMC 1200 sales and service coverage in strategic markets across Canada. Our new partners have strong fleet service know-how that supports local businesses and government customers, making them well suited to drive the future electrification of our clients' commercial fleet needs. Their customers are attracted to the VMC-1200 by an extremely competitive price point, inclusive of tax incentives. In addition to delivering immediate cost savings and contributing to carbon emission reductions, the VMC 1200 also qualifies for a federal rebate nationwide of $40,000 Canadian from Transport Canada. For our company, the VMC 1200 carries a healthy margin profile, and the year-round purchasing habits of the diversified customer base helps us smooth out traditional revenue lumpiness of our established transit bus business. We also announced exciting news for our Vicinity Lightning EV Transit Bus. During the quarter, we partnered with an automated driving software platform provider, Adestech, to create an SCE Level 4 automated variant of our upcoming Vicinity Lightning EV transit bus, which will be called the Vicinity Autonomous Lightning EV for the North American market. Over the last year, we worked very closely with Adaztech, recognizing our leading position in the industry to formalize our partnership agreement while jointly pursuing opportunities to deploy automated solutions. The collaboration marks a substantial leap in the realism of transportation with strong emphasis on automated, connected, and shared solutions, driving innovation, accessibility, and sustainability. The partnership brings together our expertise in medium duty, accessible, fully electrified low floor transit vehicles with ADEVTECH's SAE Level 4 automated driving software platform. Together, we aim to revolutionize the mobility sector and make a lasting impact on communities and passengers. To this end, we will jointly deploy initial vicinity autonomous lightning electric transit buses at Michigan State University and the Buffalo Medical Campus in mid-2024, making history as the one and only full-size automated bus deployed on public roads in the U.S. to transport passengers within their communities. Our AdazTech partnership has allowed us to accomplish exciting new applications for our all-electric vicinity lightning bus, powering the next generation public transportation system, a forward-looking organization nationally. In the transit bus business, during the third quarter, we continue to see strong demand for our vicinity classic transit bus line. As it continues to help grow our backlog and serve as a foundational building block of our revenue mix. Orders during the quarter included a seventh reorder with Simcoe County, Ontario, illustrating our commitment to building long-term multi-order relationships and why we continue to serve as a dominant Canadian supplier in the mid-size heavy-duty bus market, as well as an order from the village of New Square, New York, demonstrated our ability to serve both large public transportation systems and small communities, fulfilling immediate needs and positioning us to address an incredibly wide variety of customer needs. As supply chains have improved, we've restarted delivery of our transit buses to customers as of spring 2023, with eight delivered in the third quarter. We believe our ability to offer both legacy and next generation electric vehicles in a variety of classes and configurations positions us to address an incredibly wide variety of customer needs. Our new manufacturing campus in Ferndale, Washington initiated production during the quarter, which we celebrated with a grand opening ceremony in September, attended by Washington Governor Jay Inslee. We are now ramping up our production rate to tackle the fulfillment of our growing order backlog, which as of September 30th, exceeded 150 million USD, the vast majority of which are for electric vehicles. The facility is designed to meet our current and our future production needs with annual capacities of up to 1,000 buses or over 6,000 VMC all-electric trucks. With a new U.S. $9 million credit facility with the Export Development Bank of Canada, complementing our previous $30 million credit facility, we now have greater financial flexibility to invest in vicinity's next phase growth with the VMC-1200. As we stand today, We are aggressively building out our VMC 1200 dealer network continent-wide and are ramping up production in our Ferndale manufacturing facility. Our Vicendi Lightning next-generation electric bus continues to attract attention from industry players, and our classic bus line continues to drive sales as the leading Canadian supplier in the mid-sized heavy-duty bus markets. In summary, we're executing across our product line and positioning vicinity for future success as we deliver against our incredible $150 million backlog. Now with that, I'll turn it over to Dan to review the financial results of the quarter ended September 30th.

Dan?