Westport Fuel Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:WPRT) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Bill Larkin: Well, as you know, we do have seasonality in our revenues. And typically, our second quarter is kind of the highest quarter in terms of revenue during the year. However, as David mentioned, we expect the – we are seeing a little bit of a pause in the heavy duty business until the higher horsepower extended range comes online. And then of course, in the third quarter, we start seeing the dip because of the holidays. And then, we see the ramp up back in the fourth quarter. So, that’s how we are looking at the rest of the year.

Jeff Osborne: Got it. And then are you seeing any impact on the delayed OEM side or straight OEM side in 2Q, just given where fuel mix prices are?

Bill Larkin: I think, David, you can elaborate on this. And I think that’s one of our bright spots in the delayed OEM business. We have seen significant increase with DR. And that’s been really one of the bright spots in our business and we can seem to see year-over-year growth in our delayed OEM business.

David Johnson: And I think the element there, that’s hard for us to really put our hands around and be confident on is how many vehicles are the OEMs able to produce and ship. Like us, they are facing chip crises, too. And so far, that hasn’t adversely impacted our customer, DR, but our Korean customers have been affected, as well as our Japanese customers. So, it depends customer-to-customer, but I definitely see an opportunity in the near-term still for delayed OEM. These LPG price spreads are really a serious driver of our business right now, where frankly, they have never been as large as they are right now with the people able to save €50, €60 every time they fill up if they run on LPG. And frankly, a lot of jurisdictions around the world have backed off on incentives for battery electric and hybrid vehicles.

And so, now, those vehicles that looked attractive because of the incentives don’t look so attractive. And people are looking for lower cost opportunities, that points straight away to LPG, lower cost to buy and lower cost to operate.

Jeff Osborne: Got it. My last question, David, is just that actually one of your competitors on the spark-ignited presented sort of a vague timeline as to when they thought their solution would commercialize. And I think they talked about field trials, field testing in the second half of ‘25 and through ‘26, and then volume production for revenue in ‘27. Is there any rough timelines that you can put out there for your HPDI hydrogen solution? And when do you think you will start actually having field trials as opposed to testing that’s presented at shows like Vienna and others?

David Johnson: Yes. So, I think – what I would call is we will have maybe in the more near-term than you are just talking about demos of vehicles. So, we are talking with a number of different parties now about where we could demonstrate our technology in a larger way, 5 trucks, 10 trucks, 15 trucks, something like that. In terms of – and so maybe we call those field trials, too. We will see about the words. But fundamentally that is in the near future. In terms of production, I think this really depends more than anything else on availability of fuel in the marketplace. Frankly, we need green hydrogen. If it’s grey hydrogen, this might be good for a transitionary period. But frankly, we are making hydrogen from natural gas.

We shouldn’t bother. We should just make natural gas into LNG and use it in these trucks that very efficiently use our fuel system. So, that’s my view, it’s really the timing of production and volume is more driven by the availability of green hydrogen, affordable green hydrogen in the marketplace. We are ready.

Jeff Osborne: Got it. That’s all I had. Thank you.

David Johnson: Thanks Jeff.

Operator: The next question comes from Mac Whale with Cormark Securities. Please go ahead.