The Lion Electric Company (NYSE:LEV) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Nicolas Brunet: Yes. Benoit, Nick here. Good to speak to you this morning. No — to answer your first part of your question, no, we’re not seeing a decline. I mean, it’s — there’s a number of factors influencing the order book. And when we look forward, obviously, the EPA program we expect will help with the order book momentum. We always have the smaller orders with a good number of operators that we’re working to gain, and there’s also the bigger contracts that we’re working on. So we continue to feel a bit about the order book going forward. In terms of — I think Marc addressed the question on trucks, but it’s still early stage, but the momentum is building well. And obviously, what we want to announce there is orders, but we remain excited about that.

Benoit Poirier: Okay, okay. Great color. And just on the liquidity front, you were successful to get over slightly over $100 million of financing in the quarter. If we look at 2023, you provided great color about Joliet also Mirabel. What about the acquisition of intangible and how should we look at the free cash flow burn for 2023 in light of the ramp-up in investment overall in your plants?

Nicolas Brunet: Yes. I’ll take it back here, Benoit. But when you look at the overall balance sheet, we had $88 million of cash on the balance sheet, and that’s as of December 31st. And then right after the quarter, we have the sale leaseback of $21 million, another $7.5 million from the over lot option on the December unit offering. We have the revolving credit facility of $200 million. There was about $7 million of capacity there at the end of the month, but — at the end of the quarter, excuse me. But we expect the borrowing base to continue to increase as we scale. And of course, we expect some upfront payments from the EPA for the purchase orders under that program, which will help significantly as we procure for those units.

Recall that we had secured 109 of those purchase orders at the end of the quarter. The specific guide that we’re giving for 2023 is really on $65 million CAPEX for the growth projects. Of course, we’ll need to continue to fund our operations, and there will be continued investment in R&D or in the acquisition of intangible assets. But with all that said, we feel that the balance sheet provides us with significant runway and flexibility. We will, of course, continue to explore alternatives to raise capital. We’re very mindful of the market conditions, and we’ll of course, try to use, as much as possible non-dilutive instrument. And recall, we still have $94 million remaining on the ATM. So that could be one of the tools that we have to fund our operations.

Benoit Poirier: Okay, thank you very much for the time.

Marc Bedard: Thank you Benoit.

Operator: The next question comes from Chris Souther with B. Riley. Chris, please go ahead.

Christopher Souther: Hey guys. Thanks for taking my questions here. Maybe a little bit more on the EPA program, 190 purchase orders. How many of those were applications that you’d file versus some of the free agents that were out there that are filed independently? And obviously, there was a really long waitlist of the program in the first round. And can you talk a little bit about the discussions with the EPA for what they might be looking for in the next round and the structure and timing that you guys think might be the case for that 2023 round? Thanks.

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