Lightning eMotors, Inc

Greetings and welcome to the Lightning eMotors fourth quarter 2021 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow a formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. I will now turn the conference over to our host, Brian Smith, Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you, Operator, and thank you for joining us. Hosting the call today are Lightning's co-founder and CEO, Tim Reeser, Chief Revenue Officer, Cash Sethi, and CFO, Teresa Covington. Ahead of this call, Lightning issued its fourth quarter 2021 earnings press release and presentation, which we will reference today. These can be found on the investor relations section of our website at lightningemotors.com. On this call, management will be making statements based on current expectations and assumptions which are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from these forward-looking statements due to risk factors that are listed in today's earnings release and in our filings with the SEC, which can also be found on our website. We do not assume the duty to update any forward-looking statements. Today's presentation also includes non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to the information contained in today's earnings release for definitional information and reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to the comparable GAAP measures. With that, let me turn it over to Tim.

Thank you, Brian, and thanks to everyone for joining us today. On today's call, we will be referring to the slides that were posted to the investor relations section of our website earlier this afternoon. I'll start off on slide four with today's agenda. We will begin with an overview of Lightning and how we continue to strengthen the company. We will provide a supply chain update and discuss our manufacturing expansion. Cash will then provide an update on products and markets, partnerships, sales and business development, and Teresa will wrap it up with a financial overview. Moving to slide six, we believe Lightning eMotors is the only full range manufacturer of class three through seven battery electric and fuel cell electric vehicles in the market, including ambulances, shuttle buses, utility trucks, school buses, and motor coaches. We're the only company currently shipping product in all of these classes. We started in 2008 with commercial vehicle hybrid solutions and have now shipped over 240 zero emission vehicles with over 1.3 million zero emissions miles driven by our customers. With every vehicle we ship and every mile our customers drive, our lead grows. Moving to slide seven. We have built a modular software and hardware architecture that allows us to serve a highly segmented and customized market with a cost-effective solution. Our high level of software and hardware customization that is required for commercial electric vehicles is something that legacy OEMs have not historically performed and are not well suited for. Companies like Ford and GM are building light-duty commercial trucks and vans in high volumes and do not have a business model that supports manufacturing electric vehicles for the medium-duty segment. Moving to slide eight, we recently announced our partnership with General Motors. The agreement covers a broad range of class three through six commercial vehicle chassis from shuttle buses to delivery trucks to school buses. This agreement broadens and diversifies our platform offerings as well as our chassis supply and expands our partnerships with Forest River and Collins school bus. GM has delivered a chassis and our engineering development work has started in earnest. We expect to receive production chassis in volume later this year and we'll begin to see the impact of this agreement within the next four quarters. Moving to slide nine, let's discuss the supply chain. We are experiencing strong and growing product demand. However, supply chain disruptions continue to serve as obstacles for our business. There is good news, though. The battery partnership agreements we have announced previously have put us in an excellent position regarding battery supply, with inventory on hand today. Major chassis OEMs like Ford have publicly announced lengthy factory shutdowns of their commercial vehicle chassis plants, limiting commercial vehicle chassis availability, and we expect these shutdowns to result in continued chassis availability constraints for the next few quarters. Limited chassis availability has been impacting both commercial ICE vehicles as well as electric vehicles, exacerbated by a lack of transparency regarding chassis ship dates. Our engineering, manufacturing, and supply chain teams have been taking measures to adapt to these circumstances with continued progress on our previously announced lightning strip chassis and cab chassis products that are not limited by chip shortages. We will be providing further details on our e-chassis in the coming months. In addition, we announced today a partnership with Forest River to supply factory-certified lightning repower powertrains to support over 50,000 eligible Forest River shuttle buses on the road today. This partnership validates the value of our unique re-power powertrains in a market where it is one of very few options for fleets to continue servicing their routes with reliable vehicles. Lightning is the only electric commercial vehicle OEM today to offer powertrains to replace and upgrade ICE and EV powertrains in school buses, shuttle buses, transit buses, and motor coaches. Finally, we continue to grow our lightning energy business, which is also not chassis-dependent. And we have a lengthy, healthy sales pipeline for our proprietary charging and energy solutions that are tightly integrated with our vehicles. Although our Q2 and Q3 2021 revenue was constrained by battery supply and other components, and Q4 revenue was constrained by chassis availability, we were able to mitigate several other supply chain constrictions and sell a record 146 complete zero-emission vehicles in 2021. It is important to note that we have not lost any sales due to the supply chain delays. Rather, revenue is simply being pushed forward to future quarters. Moving to slide 10, let me now provide an update on our manufacturing capacity expansion. We released a new video, we released a new press release and video earlier this quarter showcasing our manufacturing expansion and automation. In the video available on our website, you can see some of the automation and other factory improvements we made to reduce the labor cost per unit and improve efficiency and reliability as we drive towards an expected factory capacity of up to 3,000 vehicles and or powertrain systems per year. Specifically, we invested in advanced laser cutters, collaborative robots, and augmented reality software to improve both quality and productivity. We are renovating 3,700 square feet to create a research and development lab, which will include a vehicle dynamometer and battery test center. Lastly, we believe we can readily expand and add the additional square footage needed on our 1 million square foot campus that, along with our OEM customers' installation capabilities, will allow us to support capacity of up to 20,000 vehicles and powertrains per year. We believe we are one of very few companies in the U.S. zero-emission commercial vehicle market with a fully operational and scalable factory. And now I'll turn it to Cash to provide an overview of the order backlog, sales pipeline, and key partnerships.