Loop Energy Inc.

Good morning. My name is Mary and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Loop Energy Q1 2021 conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press the pound key. On the call today, we have Ben Nyland, President and CEO, and Darren Reddy, CFO. Thank you. Ben, you may begin.

Thank you, Mary, and welcome everyone to the Loop Energy Q1 conference call. We're extremely happy with the outcomes of Q1 and the progress the business has made and are looking forward to sharing some of the highlights with you today. On the financial front, We've successfully completed our initial public offering and with that secured the balance sheet strength required to execute our product launch and market expansion strategy over the next two years. On the business front, the execution against our business objectives is off to a great start. In spite of what you might believe based on recent activity in the stock market across fuel cell and hydrogen companies, the sector's market continues to grow and expand. Recent billion dollar announcements by Bosch, Daimler and Volvo are demonstrations of the opportunities seen in the global commercial vehicle markets. The commitment of regulators and governments to hydrogen infrastructure and fuel cell deployments continues to grow in China, Europe, and now North America. While there have been some understandable delays due to COVID and the resulting supply chain disruptions, the global resolve to deal with carbon emissions has never been stronger, and the recognition of the critical role that hydrogen and fuel cells will play over the coming years continues to grow. Our backlog is growing extremely rapidly as we are successfully transitioning from being a technology company to being a product company. We define our backlog as the combination of POs and MOUs, both contingent and committed orders. Our 24-month backlog as of April 30, 2021, is over $37 million, which is an increase of $21 million, or 129% over the previously reported value January 31st. We are extremely happy with the progress that has been made over the last several months and see this as a very strong market validation of our product's value proposition and the hard work that everyone at Loop is doing to satisfy the needs of our customers. Our backlog conversion to sales is on track, as at the end of Q1 2021, we've completed our first shipment to Europe against a commercial agreement contemplating over 50 units over the course of the next two years. During the first half of Q2, we've delivered our largest single customer order to date, 10 units that have now been integrated into a transit bus fleet in Nanjing, China. More on that in a few minutes. Our customer base is expanding. Our immediate sales focus is on high-growth vertical markets, each meeting three key criteria. One, multiple OEM customers with electrified product platforms. The second criteria, a strong business case for hydrogen. And the third criteria, a three-year serviceable, obtainable market in excess of 1,000 units. Our 2021 goal is to establish a diversified base of at least 10 customers addressing these target market applications. And as of today, we are well on track to complete this objective. All in all, it's been a very positive quarter for Loop Energy, and we expect more positive news as we continue to execute our business plan. For those of you just getting to know Loop, I'd like to take a few minutes to introduce you to the high points of the organization. At Loop Energy, we believe we have the team, the technology and the products to become a dominant player in the fuel cell market as it develops into more than a $50 billion opportunity over the coming decade. Our team is composed of seasoned executives with deep experience in fuel cell and automotive development, new product launches and high growth enterprises. We build fuel cell stacks and modules for use in zero emission commercial vehicles. We have a global footprint with headquarters in Vancouver, Canada, regional sales in Europe and China, and regional manufacturing with our joint venture partner in China. With an expanding customer base in North America, Europe, and China, we are positioned well to grow our market footprint over the next few years. Our products are based on our core proprietary and patent protected eFlow technology. eFlow gives our products competitive advantages in the areas of fuel efficiency, maximum power output, and durability. Our fuel cells have up to 16% better fuel efficiency than comparable competitors' products, leading to significant savings in the total cost of ownership for vehicle operators using Luke products. This advantage has proven to be compelling to the market as evidenced by our rapidly growing customer engagements. Our fuel cells further deliver up to 90% higher peak power than the same size competition. This benefit of putting more horses under the hood will help vehicle OEMs provide end customers with more versatile vehicles as the market grows and customer demand grows with it. Customers will demand greater versatility and power in their zero-emission vehicles, and Loop's products are well-positioned to deliver those benefits. And finally, eFlow delivers something that we call uniform current density. This balance of the fuel cell's production of electricity, heat, and water leads to a more stable operating environment that eliminates a number of known lifetime failure modes in fuel cells. Our technology has led to investments from leading industry players, first from InPower, a Chinese power electronics manufacturer with whom we now have a manufacturing joint venture in China. This was followed by two investments from Cummins, one of the leading developers and manufacturers of commercial vehicle powertrains. The first investment from Cummins was in the fall of 2019. Following a deeper due diligence process involving multiple site visits, a second investment was made in March of 2020. During the first quarter, as well as the first part of the second quarter and the run up to this call, we were able to establish meaningful traction in three of our target markets, transit buses, medium to heavy duty trucks, and stationary power applications. In the bus market, we recently announced the shipment of 10 fuel cell units to be integrated into Skywell fuel cell electric buses in Nanjing, China. This is Loop's largest shipment to date and will be powering the company's first true fleet of vehicles. This is the second phase of a multi-year project to deploy 300 fuel cell vehicles in Nanjing as part of an MOU signed in January of 2020 between the Lishui Economic Development Zone and InPower Renewables, Loop's joint venture manufacturing partner in China. We are looking forward to completing this pilot phase and moving into production. In further demonstration of its commitment to the project, on May 1, Skywell hosted an event in Nanjing displaying these buses and officially announcing the details of the bus route that they will be supporting. This is the first hydrogen fuel cell bus line in Nanjing and is officially starting service this month. The fleet is being serviced by a hydrogen refueling station capable of dispensing 500 kilograms of hydrogen per day. The fleet will include the initial bus commissioned last fall for a total of 11 buses servicing the Leashway number 12 route, which runs 20 kilometers each way between Jetang Station and Leashway Bus Passenger Transport Station with a total of 29 stops. There will be 120 daily departures with a total daily operating mileage per bus of about 220 to 250 kilometers. Powered by Loop's T505 50-kilowatt systems, each bus is capable of traveling up to 400 kilometers on a single fill. On the medium and heavy-duty truck market side of things, I would like to highlight our relationship with Reintalt, a heavy-duty fleet operator who is committed to turning over their fleet operations to be zero-emissions. This relationship reflects Loop's commitment to work closely with fleet operators as well as integrators and vehicle manufacturers to ensure that our products are meeting the needs of all customers in our value chain. Reinfeld's progressive approach to reducing their emissions footprint makes them an ideal fleet operating customer to work with as we continue to develop our understanding of how best to enable economically viable zero-emission heavy-duty solutions. We continue to be pleased with the performance of our fuel cells in the Peterbilt 579 operating in Southern California. This truck is equipped with two 50 kilowatt loop fuel cell systems, was integrated by Meritor, and will be operated by TTSI, one of the most progressive drayage operators in the Los Angeles area. With a fully loaded operating range of over 300 kilometers on a single fill, it is capable of performing all of the delivery runs that TTSI may require. illustrating the range-enhancing properties of fuel cells for electric commercial vehicles. This vehicle is part of a project sponsored by the Gas Technology Institute of California and funded by the California Air Resources Board. The second truck is planned to be built and commissioned over the coming months as part of the project as well. With recent policy announcements from California, we are excited about the opportunity this project gives us to showcase Loop's products and technology as California starts to take meaningful steps to reduce emissions from commercial vehicles over the coming years and decade. With the economics of hydrogen as a diesel displacement in the mobile and stationary genset market becoming increasingly more attractive, we are seeing continued momentum in the stationary power markets in both Europe and North America. Our relationship with eCubes, a provider of stationary power solutions in Slovakia, continues to develop, as we recently shipped them the first unit under our current agreement. This 50-kilowatt system is the first of 50 units to be supplied to a range of European customers, including the European Defense Agency's Defense Resilience Hub Network, also known as RISHUB. RISHUB aims to improve the energy efficiency of the European defense sector. We've also been working hard towards growing the ecosystem channel partners capable of supporting our customer base, as well as expanding the reach of our sales. In March, we announced our partnership with Bayotech. This partnership provides two opportunities to Luke. The first being the provision of our fuel cell systems as stationary power supplements to Bayotech's existing products. The second is Bayotech's ability to be a supplier of hydrogen to other Luke customers. This partnership is very well suited to Loop's objective of expanding the market for our current products while making fuel cell adoption easier and simpler for our customers. In early May, we have announced a partnership with Alliant Battery. Through this partnership, Alliant Battery will also become a value-added integration channel partner for Loop. On the one hand, providing engineering service expertise to Loop's customers, including hydrogen fuel cell and battery electric systems integration. and on the other hand, expanding the Loop Energy customer ecosystem by leveraging its market position to identify and engage with prospective vehicle OEM and stationary power genset manufacturers looking to transition their product portfolios to hydrogen electric technology. In addition to the Skywell fleet deployment, our scaling of the Loop China operations is proceeding according to plan. We will be announcing further detail in the future but we have secured a location for our China operation and manufacturing and are in the process of setting up the requisite legal entities. The Chinese market continues to lead in fuel cell and hydrogen activities globally, and we are confident that our presence in that market will yield strong results over the coming years. Development of our next generation stack is also on schedule, with the initial prototypes to be deployed in the field in the first half of 2022. This next generation provides a substantial increase in power output capabilities over our current products, while bringing the benefits of eFlow to a new set of applications, including long-haul heavy-duty trucking. We are in discussions with a number of potential customers and partners for these deployments, and will announce the details of these relationships as they progress. With all of these developments and our current opportunity pipeline, We believe Loop is very well positioned to achieve our objective to be a top five fuel cell provider to the zero emission commercial vehicle market. We believe Loop's value proposition is ideally suited to address the total cost of ownership concerns of commercial vehicle operators and to make zero emissions a viable economic solution for the replacement of internal combustion engine vehicles. The next two years are foundation building years for Loop. We have industry leading technology, a great team, and great products. Over the next two years, we'll be working with customers to refine and improve our product capabilities while we put in place the manufacturing capacity to grow with the market as demand scales. As we've discussed, our focus will not be on growing top-line revenue over the next two years, but rather on building a solid customer base and product offerings, which we believe are foundational for Loop to capitalize on the rapid growth that we anticipate the industry will experience in the years to come. Having said that, we recognize that there is tremendous value in having clear metrics to guide our business and for investors to be able to measure our performance. So I'd like to give you some insight into how we will be measuring our progress through the balance of this year and to the end of 2022. In almost every customer and prospective customer we are engaging with, we see a three-phase process to the development of each relationship. The first phase is a product and vehicle design validation and typically involves the customer ordering one or two units. The second phase is the deployment of a pilot fleet and typically involves ordering approximately 10 to 20 units. The third phase is the commercial launch of the customer's product. While the size varies based on the customer, at Loop our rule of thumb is that on average the transition to phase three involves an order of approximately 100 or more units. We measure our success based on how many customers we are bringing into this process over time. and how well they are progressing through the phases. Depending on the customer size and type, each phase can last anywhere from nine to 24 months. The metric that we will be using as we progress through 2021 is that by the end of the year, we expect to have a total of 10 customers actively engaged in this three-phase process, with at least one of them transitioning to phase two. As of today, we're pleased to report that we're well on track to meet the subjective We're looking forward to checking in with you at these quarterly calls to update you on our progress towards these goals. And now I'd like to hand off to Darren so that he can take you through the Q1 financials.

Great. Thanks, Ben. Good morning, everyone. So I'm going to walk through the Q1 2021 financial numbers. During quarter one, we spent a total of $4.7 million in cash to support the overall operations of the company and with close to $3.3 million of this related to prepaid costs, capital asset deposits, and $1.1 million in inventory scale-up costs. Approximately 62% or $2.9 million of the overall costs were related to product development initiatives. Cash and non-cash items to support the IPO totaled an estimated $2.1 million, with $1.6 million of this related to advisor warrants, with an estimated $500,000 for various IPO-related professional fees. Within our product development, BD, and operations groups, one of our main focuses in Q1 was on proceeding with the new hiring recruitment as planned and the scaling up of that process internally for Loop. Thus far, the recruitment process is going very well. During Q1, the company also invested $1 million into test and manufacturing facilities in Vancouver to bring the total invested capital to date to $3.8 million. We currently have close to $5 million in capital equipment POs and quotes into vendors, and we expect to receive this capital equipment over the course of 2021 and into early 2022. In terms of the outlook for the remaining portion of 2021, with the successful completion of Loop Energy's $100 million IPO, the company plans to focus throughout 2021 on the heavy duty medium duty mode of applications including bus commercial truck as well as the stationary material handling markets with a goal to continue to increase geographic penetration in china and europe while continuing our successful presence in california the company has also received several inbound opportunities in additional geographic markets and we will continue to nurture those markets throughout the year these markets are over and above china and europe and are becoming more and more prevalent to our sales channel. In terms of the investment for the remaining part of 2021, in terms of product and technology development, in Q3 and Q4, Loop will continue to invest into technology and product innovation and development across bus and truck markets, as well as stationary and material handling markets. Part of investments will go into research and development of the next generation MEA and bipolar plate technologies for use in eFlow. We will also look to expand our product development team as we look to increase our fuel cell offerings into larger power applications. In terms of the China market, during the quarter, the company started the process to complete the registration in China, and we are currently well underway to have the Wolfie in China incorporated shortly. The goal being to have admin and sales team continue to operate remotely out of China while the manufacturing team builds out the assembly line, which is set for completion towards the end of 2021. In Europe, Loop has been successful in the deployment of fuel cell modules into that market and expects to deliver more modules to support deployments of fuel cell electric buses, material handling units, and fuel cell modules and stationary applications in various countries across Europe. The company anticipates increased market activity for the EU markets for the remaining part of 2021. This can be expected to result in additional module purchase orders for the delivery in future years. Within North America, Loop expects continued market activity for fuel cells and fuel cell power trucks, which can be expected to result in albeit smaller targets in China and Europe, as some additional module purchase orders are expected to come in future years. Consistent with the company's practice in this early stage growth of the hydrogen fuel cell market development and adoption, and in view of the ongoing uncertainties resulting from COVID-19, Loop is not providing specific financial performance guidance for the upcoming year. This concludes the formal part of the presentation. I'll now open it up to questions from analysts.