The Lion Electric Company (NYSE:LEV) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Richard Coulombe : Yes, good morning, Chris. Yes, Chris, it’s going well. You will probably remember we have a manufacturing capacity of 1,000 buses in Montreal and we have a manufacturing capacity of 300 buses in Joliet and in Montreal we also add capacity for 1,500 trucks on an annual basis. So the cadence is going very well and there was no question yet on the supply chain but the supply chain is getting a lot more stable and that was a discussion we had probably for the last two years. So it’s getting a lot more stable and we’ve been working a lot on the redundancy suppliers as well. So it’s going quite well. So our goal is really to increase the pace as needed and that the goal is also to manufacture in the country where the buses are being delivered and we’re getting there.

So obviously we’re doing less buses in the US right now than we’re doing on the Canadian side but as Nick was saying earlier the US market is ten times bigger, the Canadian market and with the manufacturing capacity of 2,500 buses on the US side we’re very, very well equipped to increase the pace as we get more orders, we’ll be able to deliver.

Christopher Souther: Just to clarify then so like in the third quarter the deliveries by country kind of matched up with the geography of the manufacturing facility or are we not quite there yet on the US school bus side?

Richard Coulombe : By and large, yes, Chris.

Christopher Souther: Okay, got it. Okay. And then if I’m kind of looking at the margin increase, I think pricing had a big piece to do with that. As we kind of trend higher with, can you just kind of talk through what that premium in the US should be that we can kind of bake in as we have US kind of ramping up more. I just want to get a sense how much continued opportunity of price increase on the ASP side we have, and is there any kind of delta on the production cost side between the two at this stage? And then I’ll hope in the queue.

Marc Bedard: Yes. Chris, as I mentioned earlier, it really is about selling, it’s about the onboard energy that we have in the vehicles, it’s about the options that we have in there for an equal build, there’s no price difference or at least no material price difference between producing in Canada and producing in the US. So it really is about mix and options on the vehicle more than anything else. And I couldn’t point to a rule of thumb of US versus Canada.

Operator: We now have the next question from Rupert Merer of National Bank.

Rupert Merer: Hi, good morning. On working capital, your working capital increased a little bit in the quarter. I’m wondering if you can get some color on what drove that, I imagine, combination of batteries and vehicles. And how do you see that evolving over the next few quarters?

Nicolas Brunet : Rupert, thank you for the question. I’ll take that one. So obviously there’s a portion of the working capital increase that’s directly connected with the growth in our production, but also the introduction of the LionD, the Lion5, and also, we’re preparing for the integration of our batteries into our platforms. So this is somewhat driving some of the increase. I can tell you we’re very focused on working capital. One strategy we had in place was overstocking of inventory given the spike in prices that we went through in the last year or so. And today, as Marc pointed out, we don’t necessarily need this strategy anymore. So right now we’re very focused on really reducing working capital, and we expect to see working capital turning around in the next few quarters.

Rupert Merer: Is there much an inventory related to vehicles that are awaiting ZETF funding? And when you get funding, could you see some of that working capital coming out?