Xos, Inc. (NASDAQ:XOS) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

So in that case, margins on parts revenue is a little bit lower, but it is still coming in as we get more vehicles out into those markets.

Mike Shlisky: Great. I appreciate the discussion. I’ll pass it along. Thank you.

Operator: The next question comes from Donovan Schafer with Northland Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Donovan Schafer: Hey, guys. Congratulations on the quarter. And these look great. Good you guys have been sticking to things and you’re kind of putting up some numbers from the initiatives you’ve been working on. I want to start by, I dialed in late, so it’s possible I missed this if it was in the prepared remarks, but EV charging has been such a headache historically. So can we get an update on that? Is it something that you feel like at this point is actually kind of behind us or is it still touch and go enough that we could get quarters that run into those issues? Has something changed where that’s kind of in the rear view mirror or we’re not quite out of the woods yet per se? Any clarification on that?

Dakota Semler: Yes, charging infrastructure is a really important aspect of our customer deliveries, Donovan. I think, thank you for asking the question. As we’ve delivered more vehicles into the field and as our orders have shifted to be supporting more national accounts than small and medium-sized regional fleets, the infrastructure problems and challenges have lessened, but they are still very much there. As we’ve shared in previous calls, we anticipate that these infrastructure challenges will be there for years to come. I shared earlier in the call that there are different phase-in milestone requirements. In California, for instance, the first one is 10% of high-priority fleets by the end of next year. The next iteration is 25%.

So the infrastructure that will need to be deployed over the coming years will continually increase each year. And with that, we anticipate challenges, particularly for some of these large deployment sites where there might be 100 or 200 vehicles parked out. But that being said, our deliveries in the quarter were actually trending much more towards large national accounts, and we anticipate that continuing in the next 12 months or so, really because that’s where we’re seeing our strongest recurring order base right now. So with those customers, infrastructure problems generally lessen. They’re more proactive about creating long-term infrastructure plans. Generally, they have more sites to deploy their vehicles across, and so it’s not always constrained to a single or a few locations.

And it gives us more flexibility to work with those customers on long-term planning. So to answer your question, yes, we anticipate it being a problem, although the shifting customer mix will help somewhat in alleviating customer deliveries going forward.

Donovan Schafer: Okay, that’s helpful. And then turning to, when you talked about the off-road, I think it’s $160,000 per unit California credit, you mentioned Marine or Port Appleton, and you also talked about the powertrain business doing well and looking at strong or growth opportunities there, which of course makes me think of Wiggins Powerlift, which has been one of the powertrain customers before. So I’m curious, how much do you see the — I think in California, there’s a new law driving lower emissions at the ports. And then if you have these different, those would be, of course, applications that are not on roads, and so you could use the $160,000 credit and all this stuff. So how much are kind of those multiple regulations that would come into play in a port marine-type environment? How much of a driver and potential is there in that area? If you can give any color on that, that’d be great.

Dakota Semler: Yes, happy to. So as a category of top line, our Powered by Excess and our Excess Energy Solutions business still represent less than 10% of our overall revenues, but we anticipate them growing at an even faster rate next year than vehicle sales. And part of that is accelerated by those regulations that you touched on, requiring all vehicles operating in and around airports and ocean ports in the state of California to go to zero emissions for the next few years. We also anticipate a lot of the environments that are needing additional charging infrastructure that’s flexible to be able to support the needs of various types of equipment, from forklifts to reach stackers to yard spotters and all of the other associated port material handling equipment.