Workhorse Group Inc. (NASDAQ:WKHS) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Greg Lewis: Okay. Great. And then I was hoping you could provide a little bit more color around top you got a few units out in the fourth quarter. Any kind of color you can give around on how that ramp is going, maybe where we are as kind of — as we look at how things were on a production basis stand like as we think about February versus where they were last year and kind of how you think about the potential to scale that up as 2023 move forward?

Rick Dauch: Greg, that’s a great question. I’ll say two things. When we first got the vehicles and we experienced a little bit of shipping issues in terms of we got to do some repairs, we worked quickly with Green Power to get those taken care. Two, when we got some of the W4 CC chassis into the hands of the up fitters, we got some real feedback late December and in early January, and we’re making a few quick changes that they want to see. They like the base truck. They like the powertrain. They want some things that are better for the fit of the boxes, et cetera. The CAP chassis are coming over with what we call a cutaway back and they want a fixture across the back. So, our engineering team literally in less than three weeks, came up and designed a new back to put on the back of the truck that provides a much better fit for the up fitters.

We think they’re very happy with that solution. We just finished testing that on the test track last week, thank God, we built the test track. And we have already tooled up a supplier, and he is ramping up as we speak, and we’ll have a bunch of those back in with the liners in mid-March, and then we’ll be really go off and running. And I think that is indicative of the investments we’ve made, whether it’s in the technical team, the supply chain team and our test facilities in our manufacturing to be able to be so nimble to move that quickly, okay? And that was like seriously literally, we got some trucks out between December 15 to 31 by the first week of January, you got some feedback, hey, we got a few issues with you guys that we need to get addressed.

And here we are into February, I guess today is March 1, and we’ve already got solutions to get to the customers here between now and the end of the quarter.

Operator: . Our next questions come from the line of Chris Souther with B. Riley. Please proceed with your question.

Chris Souther: Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my question. On the 80% visibility to the low end of the range, I’m curious what the W56 contribution is there ahead of the commercial launch next week? Or is it really just for the W750 at this point? And then maybe what kind of contribution are you expecting from drones, contract manufacturing, other stuff for — as far as the guidance picture there?

Bob Ginnan : So, Chris, this is Bob. I would say that visibility is predicated on the W4 CC platform. And then from there, we anticipate the W56, W750, and then ultimately getting the drones contributing to the number as well. So right now, the visibility is on our really first launch, and then those will ramp it up from there.

Chris Souther: Got it. Okay. And maybe just on the — you talked about customer interest being pretty high. Could you talk about how you guys are reengaging with some of the legacy backlog customers, how that process is going versus kind of new customers that you’ve been engaging with some of the new team members you’ve added?