Dakota Semler
Analyst · ROTH Capital Partners. Please go ahead
Thanks Christen, and thank you everyone for joining us. On today's call, I'm thrilled to share the highlights from the third quarter of 2024 during which we generated $15.8 million in revenue, delivered 94 units and achieved a gross margin of 18.1%. Xos is one of the very few electric vehicle manufacturers delivering double-digit gross margins on our products. This marks the fifth quarter of delivering consecutive positive gross margins. In addition to our improved margin performance, Xos continues to focus on improving year-over-year growth and liquidity. In my remarks, I plan to cover some of our achievements in vehicle deliveries, the hub product ramp up and shifting market conditions in the commercial electric vehicle market. Then Gio and Liana will then dive deeper into our operational and financial achievements. Of the 94 deliveries this quarter, we've seen growing momentum with increasing customer and product diversity. This quarter we began shipping hubs in significant volumes with nearly 12 units shipped through the end of the quarter, underscoring the rising demand for our rapid deployment mobile charging solution. Overall, unit deliveries increased by 4.4% compared to the second quarter while topline revenue increased by 1.6%. In our StepVan business, we are seeing positive shifts with an increase in strip chassis deliveries relative to completed vehicle deliveries. This drives substantial improvements in our working capital turnover. By delivering strip chassis units ahead of the bodying up process, we accelerate our delivery cycle and better ensure quicker turnaround times relative to completed vehicle deliveries. While not all of our deliveries will transition to strip chassis, we believe that a rising proportion of these orders will positively impact our cash flow and inventory turnover. We also made significant strides in our powertrain business, delivering our first powertrain product to be utilized in a Blue Bird school bus. This short wheelbase Type C school bus is an exciting product offering as Blue Bird continues to lead the market with its electric school bus solutions for districts nationwide. The product provides school districts with a durable and reliable Type C commercial chassis frame on body school bus while meeting the constraints of narrow streets and tight turning radiuses that are typical of many school districts. This quarter marked a major milestone as we reached low volume series production with our hub product, and by the end of the quarter we were building approximately two units per week delivering this valuable tool to our customers. Regarding our hub deliveries, we delivered several units including to top tier companies like Waymo, a leading self-driving car operator. ABM, a top facility service provider and Loomis, one of our valued fleet customers. We also delivered units to other key customers such as Xcel Energy, which is one of the largest investor owned utilities in the country and SSA Pacific, a subsidiary of SSA Marine, one of the largest terminal operating companies and stevedoring businesses in the world. In short, hub deliveries are being put in the hands of well-regarded companies and excitement around the product is growing. While charging infrastructure continues to be a challenge and fleets such as FedEx ground contractors face continued delays, we believe that the hub can offer a solution. As mentioned, we've already seen adoption from some of our largest customers. Such momentum reflects the strong demand for our hub solutions not just across fleet operators, but across a range of industries. In light of the hub's success and growing interest in the product, we ramped up demonstrations of the hub in Q4, evaluations are intended to showcase the hub's versatility and ability to provide diverse fleet charging, mobile charging and events, and crucial disaster response charging infrastructure during storms and public safety power shutoffs. Beyond our deliveries, we've secured several million dollars in new incentives, providing critical support to small and large national accounts. Such incentives, available in key states like Texas, New York and California, help enable a more seamless and affordable transition to electric vehicles. Despite these new incentive applications and a growing number of approvals, incentive collections on delivered vehicles continues to be a challenge. There are several state programs and agencies that oversee the disbursement of such funds, and the processes vary significantly depending upon the state agencies involved. Incentive collection has become a primary focus at Xos and the backlog of delivered incentives in our accounts receivable is exceeds $25 million. Fortunately, we've developed several new processes to streamline the incentive application process and the redemption, approval and collection workflows. These efforts are a key step in accounts receivable collection. I want to personally thank all of the Xosians who have worked tirelessly to help customers receive incentive benefits and to streamline Xos collection of such incentives. While we do not anticipate collecting 100% of the over $25 million in backlogged incentive receivables this quarter, we do expect these payouts to accelerate which would improve our cash position and access to working capital. We have also begun to improve our inventory carrying costs and better ensure our customers receive vehicles as needed by increasing our sales through dealer partnerships. This helps us manage inventory carrying costs and better ensures our customers receive vehicles as needed. We found dealers to be supportive in delivering vehicles and providing ongoing maintenance services. This is especially true for our dealer partner, Thompson Truck Centers in Tennessee. Just as the year started, we continue to be sharply focused on the reduction of operational expenses. Gio will detail our efforts in reducing facility based operational expenses. We also reduced a portion of our overall headcount in the quarter and subsequent to the quarter end. While this decision was difficult for Xos and all of the impacted employees, we believe it puts us on a better trajectory towards achieving positive free cash flow in the near term. We continue to be excited about achieving free cash flow through increased revenues and reduced operational expenses to bring this goal within reach. With that, I'll hand it over to Gio for more on our operational updates.