Ayro, Inc.
Q4 2020 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 31 Mar 2021

[Operator:]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Good morning and welcome to the AYRO, Inc. Fourth Quarter and Year-End 2020 Financial Results and Corporate Update Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After today’s presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Participants of this call are advised that the audio of this conference call is being broadcast live over the internet and is also being recorded for playback purposes. A webcast replay of the call will be available approximately one hour after the end of the call through June 30, 2021. I would now like to turn the call over to Scott Gordon of CORE IR, the Company’s Investor Relations firm. Please go ahead, sir.

[Scott Gordon:]

Thank you, Andrew. Good morning. And thank you for participating in today’s conference call. Joining me from AYRO’s leadership team are Rod Keller, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Curt Smith, Chief Financial Officer. During this call, management will be making forward-looking statements, including statements that address AYRO’s expectations for future performance or operational results. Forward-looking statements involve risks and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those statements. For more information about these risks, please refer to the risk factors described in AYRO’s most recently filed periodic reports on Form 10-K filed with the SEC later on today and AYRO’s press release that accompanies this call, particularly the cautionary statements in it.

[Rod Keller:]

Thank you, Scott, and good morning to everyone on the call. I am pleased to be able to recap 2020 and reiterate our strategy and path forward in our drive to become the leader in purpose-built commercial electric vehicles, or as we call them EVs. The fourth quarter of 2020 marked the fifth consecutive quarter of quarter-over-quarter revenue growth and helped our revenue for all of fiscal 2020 increase 80% year-over-year to $1.6 million. This accomplishment was a great way to end a fantastic year at AYRO. Our merger with DropCar was completed in May of 2020, and we began trading on the NASDAQ at that time with the focus on designing and manufacturing purpose-built EVs for the commercial market. Since the merger, we raised just under $40 million in gross proceeds from various equity financing in 2020, along with an additional $61.8 million in the first two months of 2021. We are well-capitalized now and have essentially zero debt, which will allow us to focus on strategy execution and growing our business. Along the way, we’ve developed strategic partnerships with best of breed established entities to help us build an ecosystem around our EV offerings, namely the 411 and the 411x family of light-duty commercial trucks. The strategic partnerships are imperative as we progress through the development of our next generation three wheeled vehicle in the last-mile delivery space. And I think it’s also important to remember that we are a B2B company, business-to-business, not a business-to-consumer company. These are important concepts at the heart of our corporate strategy that we believe distinguish us from other EV manufacturers. We’re looking at the bigger picture, which we believe sets us apart from competing EV companies, and we feel that ultimately, this is a key competitive advantage in our favor that will pay off handsomely with commercial customers.

[Curt Smith:]

Thank you, Rod, and good morning, everyone. Here’s a summary of our fiscal year 2020 financial results. Revenue for the year ended December 31, 2020 grew 80%, $1,604,000, up from $890,000 for the year ended December 31, 2019. The increased revenue was primarily due to sales of our cars with Club Car, the related powered food box sales and other vehicle options. Gross margin percentage for the year ended December 31, 2020 was a negative 10.4% versus 22.3% for the year ended December 31, 2019. The decrease in gross margin percentage was primarily due to the one-time sale of our remaining inventory of our original AYRO 311 vehicle as we progress with the development or next generation three wheeled vehicle, the 311x. The transaction generated $117,000 in revenue with a negative impact to gross profit of $259,000. This resulted in a 16.6% negative impact on our overall margin percentage and an overall loss on the transaction of $208,000.

[Rod Keller:]

Thank you, Curt. I’d like to take a second to sincerely thank all of our employees who’ve shown their commitment and dedication in helping build the foundation of AYRO. Obviously 2020 was a tough year for many people in more ways than one due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But despite that our team at AYRO showed really true character and resolve and going the extra mile to help keep our strategy intact and on track. I’d also like to sincerely thank all of our shareholders for their support. And I look forward to sharing additional accomplishments and developments as they unfold. And again, I can’t emphasize how pleased we are. We are very, very well capitalized. I don’t expect to do another raise in the near future, and it’ll allow us to focus on executing our strategy and growing our business. So, with that, I’d like to turn the call over to the operator, so that we can begin the question-and-answer session. Operator?

[Operator:]

The first question comes from Matthew Polishak, a private investor. Please go ahead.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

Hi, Rod. I got two questions actually. One, what is the current headcount of the AYRO employees? And secondly, what is the expected production of vehicles for this March? Thank you.

[Rod Keller:]

So, let me answer, Matthew. We have -- Curt, you can answer more correctly. I’m going to talk about contractors as well. What’s the full-time employees we have now?

[Curt Smith:]

Yes. We have 26 full-time employees. And then, you want to talk about the contractors?

[Rod Keller:]

Yes. One of the things we do, Matthew, which I think is a unique and very efficient approach is, as we work on the development of our next generation vehicles, we have a Head of Engineering who has a broad network of subject matter experts across a lot of different engineering disciplines. So, they’re not full-time employees, but we pull them in, use them as needed. So, we’re only paying for the time that we need them, rather than the full time expense that we have. But 26 full time and a fairly decent number, I would say as many contractors working on next generation development of our three wheeled vehicle right now. And I’ll have to defer to my CFO. If you ask how many units we shipped in March I know -- we can’t give that guidance yet because we haven’t -- I believe that’s correct, right?

[Curt Smith:]

That’s correct. We’ll be releasing that when we release our first quarter 10-Q further in May. So, we’re not in a position to be able to discuss that at this point.

[Rod Keller:]

Yes. I think, Matthew, as I mentioned though, in my comments though, we were pleased that the fourth quarter of last year represented the fifth consecutive quarter of quarter-over-quarter growth. So, we’re working hard to try to continue that track.

[Operator:]

Was there a follow-up, Polishak?

[Unidentified Analyst:]

No. Thank you.

[Operator:]

Excuse me, I see that we do have a question from , a private investor. Please go ahead.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

Yes. That’s correct. This is from Berlin Germany. I recently moved to Germany. And I’m follower of AYRO, a follower of EV sector altogether. Question is, on one of those last month’s video interviews, Rod, you have mentioned the new generation of batteries coming up, that would double approximately the length of the distance for the vehicles. Could you elaborate a little bit more about it? And I want to thank you very much for your great efforts.

[Rod Keller:]

Yes. So to-date, the light-duty electric truck, the 411 that we sell is, we refer to it as VRLA, it’s a lead acid battery, but much like a maintenance-free marine battery. And because it’s a lead acid battery, it has a maximum range of right around 50 miles before you need to charge. What we’re moving to -- and we’ll be moving to in the next 30 days. Remember, we sell this exclusively today through Club Car, it’s a next generation 411 that will still have VRLA, but it will also have an option of having a lithium ion battery. And that will increase its range from 50 miles to as many -- to as much as 90 to 95 miles. So, the other advantage of that is it also will reduce the charging time from six to eight hours for a VRLA battery to anywhere between three and four to fully charge a new set of lithium battery. So, you get more range and faster charging time with our next generation vehicle and these lithium ion batteries in there.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

Thank you very much.

[Operator:]

And I do see we have an additional question from Xavier Peralez, a retail investor. Please go ahead.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

Yes. I got two questions, one from an engineering perspective. Where are you focusing on? For example, are you focusing on trying to improve the structure of the vehicle or more on the actual electric motors or where’s your focus? And then, number two, what would you say is a gating factor for growth? Like, when we think about Tesla, they talk a lot about the availability of batteries. But, in the case of AYRO, I wonder if you had a different sort of challenges?

[Rod Keller:]

What was the second question, Xavier, what are we doing about growth? I missed that part.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

No. What’s the limiting factor to growth? What is actually holding you back from expanding at this point in time? And I was saying that in the case of Tesla, the availability of batteries is their limiting factor. They have to wait for that to be available to grow more. What is the situation for you?

[Rod Keller:]

I mean, if you’re referring the range anxiety that people have, because the range is not what people would prefer when compared to internal combustion engines. But, that’s not an issue for us and I’ll tell you why. If you remember, we focus exclusively on commercial applications for last-mile delivery, neighborhood urban delivery. So, the applications and customers we focus on typically don’t drive more than 80 miles in a day. From an engineering perspective, if there’s such a thing as a silver lining of COVID-19, it was the acceleration of delivery versus in-dining or in-store dining in restaurants. And as a result of that we’re seeing a huge increase in the demand for vehicles who can help restaurants reduce their operating expense of deliver, because many people may not be aware of this, but the aggregators like Grubhub, DoorDash, Uber Eats, they keep as much as 30% of the total cost of a delivery. So, on a $30 order, aggregators are keeping as much as 10%. Well, when delivery only made up 10% of your business, restaurants could live with that. But, with delivery now being as much as 50% of your business, it’s compressing their margins so much. So, they’re moving very rapidly to try to find a way to reduce their operating expense and their dependence on these aggregators. And rather than building general purpose vehicle and try to it into a delivery vehicle, we take a very different approach. We understand the market, we work with some of the largest quick service chains in the country, and we build a very specific foodservice delivery vehicle. In fact, our Head of Sales likes to say, we don’t build vehicles to deliver food, we build food delivery vehicles. So, from an engineering perspective, that’s why we like to say, we build purpose-built vehicles for a specific application. We don’t build a vehicle and then try to find an application for it. So, understand, and I’ve read all about it. And if you look at Porsche’s new high-end car, it only has a 200-mile range. So, there’s a lot of range anxiety out there, but that’s for consumer vehicles, not as much for the applications we target.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

Okay. Can I do a follow-up?

[Rod Keller:]

Sure.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

So, I was more focused on, right now, you could have a significant demand, but you’re not able to produce a 100,000 vehicles. There’s something that limits your growth today. What is that factor? Is it the fact that you still need to look at the whole ecosystem before you expand, or is it because you want to go slow, just testing the vehicles? What is limiting your growth today?

[Rod Keller:]

Good. That’s a great question. And let me paint that -- let me give you a very direct answer on that. A little over two years ago, we had a concept vehicle three wheeled electric vehicle. We tested it with a decent sized restaurant chain here in Austin, and they loved it. It reduced our operating expense by as much as 49%, but it was missing four key features. It only had a 50-mile range. If you’re going to drive it in the south in the summer, it had no air conditioning; it had no windows. And yet remember, we were a private company until May 28th of last year. So, we learned what the deficient suites we had in this first vehicle. And when we closed on May 28th, as Curt mentioned, our first financing was for $5.5 million last June. And then we raised $15 million and another $9.25 million in July and then another $10 million in the fall and then $61.8 million in the first quarter of this year. So, the limitation was, we didn’t have the funding to go develop the next vehicle. So, in September, actually in late July of this year or last year rather, the Board approved us to go off and conduct what we call a sprint project. And what came of that was a very, very clear understanding of what was needed in the market. And we’ve been working around the clock to develop our next generation vehicle, specifically for last-mile delivery, restaurant delivery. And we’re working with some of the largest quick service restaurants, which likely will be our first customers. But, the speed at which we’re developing this is far faster than the speed at which you would see a new vehicle come out of one of the big automobile manufacturers. So, there’s not a limitation right now. But remember, again, we had no capital to go do this before last summer. So, we will have a vehicle in 2022, which means we’re going to start from the summer of 2020, and in less than two years later, have a vehicle in the market that I think will address, hate to call it a niche, because it’s a very, very, very large market. I mentioned $169 billion market by 2025. And we don’t expect a delivery. We’ll go back to the mix of delivery versus in-store or in-restaurant dining than it was before COVID, we expect it’ll still be a very large market. And I don’t think anybody’s taking the approach that we are in understanding it, talking to the customers and then building a vehicle to solve a very specific problem.

[Curt Smith:]

Yes. Xavier, let me expand on that real quick. You asked what’s limiting your growth. I would say, we’ve -- the executive team here has been in this kind of situation before where we were bringing a product to market from just right out of the gate. We’re going into this with the expectation and with the -- and developing our supply chains, our various supply chains for this to support -- where we’re not limiting the growth where we don’t -- we’re not picking a smaller supply house that can only supply a certain quantity that all of a sudden stifles our growth going in year two, three, four, and five. So, that’s key here as we go through our supplier validation.

[Rod Keller:]

And I think this is important, because I -- and I hope everyone on the call will listen to this, because as you look at -- you look at companies that aspire to be a large supplier of fleets to large companies, vehicle is actually just one small piece of it. Because imagine if you’re the decision maker at Subway, for example, and you show up with a vehicle, the question you’re going to get asked is not just about the vehicle. It’s how do I store it? How do I charge it? How do I finance it? How do I maintain it? How do I repair it in the field? How do I insure it? And then, how do I dispose-off it at the end of life? And the only way that you can do those is you need partners like we’ve been fortunate to have with Element to build an ecosystem like that. And if you don’t build that ecosystem with that capability, you’re not going to sell tens of thousands of vehicles. You cannot scale. And that’s why we were so excited when we announced our relationship with Element earlier this morning.

[Operator:]

And Mr. Keller, I see that that was the last question. I see that someone actually has just joined. If there is time for another question?

[Rod Keller:]

Sure.

[Operator:]

We have a question from Venkat Jay, a retail investor. Please go ahead.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

Well, I hear this, the recent times, the EV Show, which is happening in Georgia and Florida and California, on what is the expected like the agreements with the federal government in terms of the COVID vaccine EVV? Like the contract -- when we can expect the contract is going to be happened? And I see, there is a lot of volatility for the stock and it seems to be short sellers for the AYRO. Well, can you elaborate when we can expect that federal contract, with the state, for the EVV?

[Rod Keller:]

Yes. I wish I had an answer to that. And I’m probably as impatient as anyone is. But remember, our press release announcing this was March the 8th, so about three weeks ago. We showed it for the very first time on Tuesday, March the 9th in Atlanta. And we showed it to -- we have showed it in Atlanta, in Orlando, in Dallas, we were in San Jose yesterday, and we will be in Orange County, California, and Irvine the next two days. And as you might expect, the sales cycle, when you’re dealing with governments, is much longer than it would be, obviously with consumers would be the fastest. So, I don’t expect that when we contract a sale here, it will be for one or two vehicles. It will likely be larger than that. I can’t speak to that yet. But, again, it’s only been out for three weeks, and we’ve showed it to -- I guess this will be our sixth city, we’re going to be in Boston next week. So, I don’t have an answer. I’m optimistic. I think, the timing is right for this. There’s a need for it. We are doing something in Austin on the 24th with the local government working with one of the Austin public health. But, in terms of orders, it’s a little premature to say exactly what we will see. I also think it’s important to note though, in working with Gallery Carts, one of the other silver linings of COVID is, as you might expect, universities are faced with the challenge of how do I get food and beverage to my students without forcing them in the dining halls. And we’re very fortunate to have the relationship with Gallery Carts, who is one of the preeminent or the preeminent supplier of what I’ll call, mobile hospitality solutions for universities and both college and professional sports stadiums. And what they’re able to do is through a number of large food and beverage providers, some of the companies you’ve probably heard of Sodexo, Chartwells, Aramark all have large contracts. They’re able to strategically position these food or mobile hospitality vehicles, if you will, strategic places around a campus. So, when students come out, they can grab and go hot and cold beverages, coffee, pre-packaged sandwiches and deal with the pandemic that way, rather than forcing them in the dining halls. So, we’re beginning to see demand for that increase. And you’ll hear more about that in one of our future press releases. But, we’re very pleased with the relationship. They are also a Club Car dealer, but they’re much more than that. They’re the preeminent supplier of what I described, the mobile hospitality vehicles as well. So, my point being is, the EVV is not the only application for our vehicle in terms of delivery, but foodservice delivery is very significant as well.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

Just a follow-up question, Rod. Is there any proposal going on other then federal government project for the EVV, especially in vaccination?

[Rod Keller:]

I’m sorry. Can you ask one more time? I didn’t hear the whole question.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

Okay. So, in terms of the EVV vehicle, other than the feral government, is there any other private vendors planning to acquire the vehicles?

[A - Rod Keller:]

Well, like I said, we’ve only showed it for the first was March 9th, which was three weeks ago, Tuesday, three weeks ago yesterday. But, we were showing it to local, state and federal as well, CDC obviously one of them, team is looking at it. And some of the feedback we’ve gotten so far is that it won’t -- the EVV is not the only application for this vehicle, because it could also be used for future applications within medical for local, state and federal too. But again, we’re just a little bit earlier. I wish we’d had more time. I think, if we looked 60, 90 days from now, we’d have a little more progress under our belt, but it’s just too early. It’s just been about three weeks.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

Okay. Thank you very much, Rod. And one last question. So, can we expect any new models from AYRO going forward quarter, next quarter?

[Rod Keller:]

I can tell you this, we exclusively sell our light-duty electric trucks through Club Car. And we are working on a next generation vehicle with Club Car. And what I can tell you is a Club Car, it has a schedule to announce that vehicle in the second quarter. And I don’t want to steal their thunder, so to speak, but let them announce it when they’re ready. But the expectation is they’re going to announce in Q2. And as I mentioned, we’re working on what I think will be a very disruptive industry changing vehicle for a restaurant delivery and last-mile delivery. But, we will announce that vehicle later this year, and it will be in production in early 2022.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

All right. Sounds good. And one question. So, can we expect the AYRO share price can hit $20 coming 2022?

[Rod Keller:]

I wish I had a crystal ball. I’d like to think so, but I’m not going to try to forecast that. I know this much and it’s worked well for me most of my career. If we execute our strategy, we do the right things and we leverage our competencies and build sustainable advantages, we can achieve anything. So, whatever that price is, that will be dictated by what value people see with voting with our stock and buying our products. And with that, I think I’ll just trust that that’s worked well for 40 years and I expect it will continue to work.

[Unidentified Analyst:]

All right. Sounds good. Thank you very much.

[Operator:]

And I’d like to turn the call back over to Mr. Keller for any closing remarks, please.

[Rod Keller:]

All right. Thank you, Andrew. I’d like to thank all of you for your interest in AYRO and participating on our call today. We look forward to sharing our progress on our next quarterly conference call. One of the things we do now is we issue a monthly newsletter and it’s -- we’ve only done it for the last couple of months. I encourage you to follow that because it’ll provide you some of the insights we have on what we’re doing and what we think is unique and disruptive in the market. And I think we’re leading in that space right now. I realize many of you would like to see higher revenues, so would we, but I expect that we will. But, that’s as we execute. And we’re very fortunate to raise the money that we raised since last June. So again, I think we’re very, very well capitalized. We’re heads down focusing on this. The relation we’ve got with Club Car couldn’t be better right now. And I think there’s more good things to come. So, with that, thank you again for your interest in us. And I hope you have a wonderful day.

[Operator:]

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect your line.