Lightning eMotors, Inc

Greetings and welcome to the Lightning eMotors first quarter 2022 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star 0 on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Brian Smith, Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and thanks for joining us today. 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 first quarter 2022 earnings press release and presentation, which we will reference today. These can be found on the investor relations section of our website. 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 press 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 today. I'll start off on slide four with today's agenda. I'll begin with an overview of Lightning and a supply chain update. Cash will then provide an update on products and markets and sales and business development initiatives, and Teresa will wrap up with a financial overview. Moving to slide six, we believe Lightning eMotors continues to be the only full-range manufacturer of Class 3 through 7 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 products in all of these classes today. We started in 2008 with a commercial vehicle hybrid solutions that have now shipped over 280 zero emission vehicles with over 1.6 million miles, zero emission 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. Earlier this week, Bluebird unveiled its new class five through six commercial electric truck chassis that will be sold into the step van market for applications such as parcel and delivery, linen and uniform, and bakery fleets, and also into the motorhome market. We are proud that they have chosen Lightning to be their electric powertrain provider for this platform. This new chassis expands the market for both Bluebird and Lightning. Bluebird has a long history of making school buses, and this is their first truck chassis. And because the chassis does not originate as an ICE chassis, the chip shortage will not impact their availability. Moving to slide nine. We also announced earlier this week that we are partnering with Peron Robotics to offer their autonomous driving technology as an integrated feature option package for all of our commercial zero emission vehicles. Our autonomy solution is available today as a vehicle option package for commercial vehicle customers looking for added safety features such as LIDAR and radar-based front collision avoidance, as well as level four, which is driver optional autonomy for campus and terminal fixed routes. Lightning's strategy is to continue to innovate with autonomous technology partners to provide commercial fleets with solutions they can leverage today to improve their efficiency and safety. Moving to slide 10, let's discuss the supply chain landscape. Customer demand remains robust, but supply disruptions continue to limit our ability to service the demand. As we stated previously, Batteries, which were supply limited last year, are in much better shape due to new battery partnership agreements, and we have inventory on hand today. However, major chassis OEMs have continued to struggle with a new round of publicly announced lengthy factory shutdowns of their commercial vehicle chassis plants. Because of these shutdowns, we expect these chassis availability constraints will continue for the next few quarters. Our sales, engineering, manufacturing, and supply chain teams have been taking measures to adapt to these circumstances with announcements in the last quarter of certified repower products, as well as new platform options with Bluebird and GM, and continued progress on our previously announced Class 4 Lightning eChassis. While these new chassis and platform investments generally require long development cycles, several of our investments are already maturing, as we expect to be in production with our GM offerings still this year and our Bluebird powertrain and Lightning eChassis in 2023. Our recently announced factory-certified repower offerings are seeing strong customer interest in the market with few alternatives, and although it is early in the sales cycle, we already have orders from five fleets and a growing pipeline. Finally, we continue to grow our lightning energy business, which is not chassis-dependent and has a healthy sales pipeline for our proprietary charging and energy solutions that are tightly integrated with our vehicles. Over the last year, Lightning has made significant investments to diversify our supply chain through engineering and validation of new suppliers and components, and we've improved our supply chain management through additional team members and MRP systems, and we've worked to bring some component production capabilities in-house. Despite these investments, though, risk remains in the supply chain, such as unexpectedly long lead items for supply of components like wire harnesses, electric power steering components, and thermal management parts. Despite these limitations, though, we sold a record number of vehicles in Q1. It is important to note that we have not had any orders canceled due to the supply chain delays. Rather, revenue is being pushed to future quarters. And now I'll turn it to Kash to provide an overview of the order backlog, sales pipeline, and key partnerships.