Lion Electric Co (NYSE:LEV) Q1 2023 Earnings Conference Call May 9, 2023 8:30 AM ET
Company Participants
Isabelle Adjahi - VP, IR & Sustainable Development
Marc Bedard - Founder, CEO & Director
Nicolas Brunet - EVP & CFO
Conference Call Participants
Chris Souther - B. Riley Securities
Michael Shlisky - D.A. Davidson & Co.
Rupert Merer - National Bank Financial
Craig Irwin - ROTH MKM
Dan Levy - Barclays Bank
Michael Kypreos - Desjardins Securities
Tamy Chen - BMO Capital Markets
Operator
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and a warm welcome to the Lion Electric First Quarter 202 Results Conference Call. [Operator Instructions].
I would now like to turn the conference call over to Isabelle Adjahi, Vice President of Investor Relations and Sustainable Development. Please go ahead, Ms. Adjahi.
Isabelle Adjahi
Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Lions First Quarter 2023 Results Conference Call. Today, I'm here with Marc Bedard, our CEO and Founder; and Nicolas Brunet, our EVP and CFO.
Please note that our discussion may include estimates and other forward-looking information and that our actual results could differ materially from those implied in any such statements. We invite you to review the cautionary language in this morning's press release and in our MD&A, which contains important information regarding various factors, assumptions and risks that could impact our actual results.
With that, let me turn it over to Marc to begin. Marc?
Marc Bedard
Thank you, Isabelle. Good morning, everyone. We are pleased to share with you today our Q1 results and to report that Lion is showing great progress, setting a strong foundation to execute our plan. There are three main items we will be talking about today. Number one, we continued our sequential growth in vehicle production and deliveries, announcing today our sixth consecutive quarter of delivery growth. Number two, manufacturing operations at both our Joliet vehicle plant and our battery factory are now underway and will gradually ramp up over the course of the year. And number three, with production ramping up in all three of our plants, we are focused on achieving profitability and are putting the right elements in place to achieve this key objective. We will now provide color on each of these items before we open the line for questions.
Let's begin with deliveries and orders. During the quarter, we delivered 220 vehicles. This is the sixth quarter in a row of sequential growth in vehicle deliveries. We delivered more vehicles in Q1 than we did in all of fiscal 2021, the year in which we became a public company. We now have more than 1,100 vehicles on the road in real-life operating conditions. Our purchase order book currently stands at 2,565 vehicles, for a total order value of $625 million. It includes orders for 2,270 electric school buses. We secured 289 orders in the EPA Clean School Bus Program, representing a total order value of approximately $105 million, and we are working to obtain additional orders from awardees who have obtained extensions from the EPA. Nicolas will provide further details regarding this program, including the upfront payments that have been made and are expected to be made by the EPA. I am also pleased to announce that the EPA recently released guidelines for the second round of the Clean School Bus Program, which I will discuss in a moment.