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

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Marc Bedard: Yes, good morning Kevin, this is Marc. So if I’m talking about the Montreal factory to start with, the manufacturing capacity for buses is 1,000 units. We add the equipment and we have the people to manufacture those units. So we’re — we have a good pace right now. And the supply chain has been an issue and as I said just earlier, I mean, it will remain an issue probably for next year, maybe in the next 18 months. But we’re able to navigate through that. You saw the Q4 results, and you heard my comments about the trend that we’re going through. So is labor a challenge? Absolutely. I mean, are we doing fine? Yes. We do have the people we need on the bus side. On the truck side, we do have the equipment we need to manufacture the 1,500 units a year, but we are ramping up the labor as need be.

Because obviously, the — well, you saw the order book at 300 units. And also, we need to match this with the timing of the launch of the new products. So we don’t see a specific challenge or with respect to having the right labor on the truck side in Montreal. Right now, let me speak about Joliet. In Joliet, we’re doing fine. We have about over 100 people right now and we’ve invested. And if you — in the CAPEX that Nick was mentioning earlier, the manufacturing capacity we will have at the end of this year will be 2,500 buses. So our decision with respect to the trucks is remaining the same. We will not start investing in more truck capacity, I mean, on a short-term basis because we have manufacturing capacity of 1,500 units on — at the Montreal factory.

So right now, we’re ramping up the labor in Joliet as need be, but we have over 100 people right now and we’re doing fine. We’re doing fine. And as I said earlier, I mean, we will be doing a modest number of vehicles in Q1, and we will ramping up — we will be ramping up the output in Joliet throughout 2023. So that’s great. We started manufacturing in 2022 and this is going to be a constant ramp-up. So you’re going to see that in our results, I mean, for the whole year, but this is exactly what we’re expecting. And you can expect this number to go higher than the over 100 that we have right now. But we — it’s always a challenge to recruit the right people, but we are able to hire the people that we need right now in both countries.

Kevin Chiang: That’s excellent. Maybe my second question, the vehicle order book almost 2,500 vehicles. Obviously, some of these orders came in during various points in the cycle in terms of supply chain issues, commodity cost inflation. And I’m just wondering how you protect the gross margin here as you deliver into that order book? Do you have a — is there an inflation adjustment factor or some sort of indexing so at the time of delivery or when you put this vehicle into the production line that you get made whole on maybe unexpected costs that may have occurred over the past year or two or are these like fixed price contracts where you essentially have to manage the cost and the price lever is essentially fixed?

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