Arrival SA (ARVL) 2021 Q3 法說會逐字稿

(Operator Instructions) We thank you for your attendance today. And now I will turn the webinar over to Mitesh Soni, Investor Relations for arrival. Mitesh, over to you.

Thank you all for joining us today for Arrival's Third Quarter 2021 Financial Results. My name is Mitesh Soni, VP of Investor Relations. And with me today is Denis Sverdlov, Arrival's CEO; Avinash Rugoobur, President; Mike Ableson, CEO of Automotive; and John Wozniak, CFO.

Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that certain statements made on this call today are forward-looking statements. These statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties and reflect our current expectations based on our beliefs, assumptions and the information currently available to us. Although we believe these explanations are reasonable, we undertake no obligation to revise any statements to reflect changes that occur after this call. Description of these factors and other risks that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements are discussed in more detail in our filings with the SEC and our third quarter earnings release issued today on the 8th of November.

During the call, we also refer to certain non-IFRS financial measures. This should be considered in addition to and not as a substitute for or in isolation from our IFRS results. For further information, please refer to our Investor Relations website at investors.arrival.com.

With that in mind, I'll turn it over to Denis.

Thank you, Mitesh, and thanks to everyone for joining us today. We are on a mission to replace all vehicles to electric. I would like to use this opportunity to remind everyone Arrival is unique. It is not an automotive business. It is a platform technology business. We have invested in enabling technologies, software, components, materials, robotics and microfactories that provide strong competitive advantages for us. We are doing things that have never been done before and expect our powerful technologies will change the fundamentals of automotive industry. These transformative technologies are coming together in our first microfactories, and we like what we see.

Our First Bus to be used for validation has been completed, which is an important milestone for the company, and I can share it is a remarkable product. We have hosted a number of events around the world, where the customers were able to experience our van firsthand. The car is progressing well, and this exterior has developed to the level where we are happy to share it today.

Start of production for the bus and the van are unchanged. We are currently developing 5-vehicle platforms: van, large van, bus, bus for emerging markets and car. But to achieve our mission to replace all vehicles with electric, we want to create tens of vehicle platforms and produce them in hundreds of microfactories.

We have revised our '22 expectations with a more conservative view. However, I'm very confident we are well positioned for significant growth in the next several years. We believe that the size of our business will be defined by the number of microfactories we deploy, and the number of microfactories is primarily defined by the capital we have access to. It could be tens of microfactories or hundreds. And for this reason, we withdraw our long-term forecast.

We have over 2,400 employees who share our mission and values and have a strong sense of purpose.

With that overview, let me now hand over to Avinash, President of Arrival.

Thanks, Denis. In Q3, our teams have been working tirelessly towards our product and microfactory launch dates. Alongside this, we have also been executing in other vital areas of our business as we ramp to first production. As we progress to launch, we wanted to update the market on changes to our 2022 forecasts.

John and Mike will go into the details, but the main message is we have decided to adjust the timing of our fourth microfactory as well as the launch of our large van to invest further in our platform technologies and start of production for our bus and van. Our current nonbinding orders and LOIs reached 64,000 vehicles, and we have added a number of high-quality customers to our pipeline. These otherwise continue to be weighted toward our van program at this stage.

As previously communicated, bus cells typically require public road trials. Our first of these will start early next year. We continue to build vans and buses as we prepare for launch. And today, I'm pleased to give you a first look at our all-new bus.

From the wraparound screens, inside and out, to the use of ambient lighting, reconfigurable seating and the ease of maintenance, to name a few, we believe the Arrival bus brings a whole new level of experience to the drivers, operators and passengers. Our bus, van and car use the same in-house developed components, composite material for body panels and are all connected through the cloud to our back-end ecosystem.

We believe Arrival's method creates truly compelling products for our customers at a competitive price point, and the feedback to date has been very positive. You will see these buses on road trials in the U.K. early next year. The Arrival car is progressing well, and we are also giving a first look today with our first prototype expected by the end of this year.

There were several highlights in the quarter. But to pick a few, we provided UPS with vans to be used for deliveries at the Dubai Expo, where UPS is the official logistics partner. We were chosen as one of the green dozen companies at the Global Investment Summit in London, selected for our pioneering green technologies. The summit was hosted by the U.K. Prime Minister and supported by members of the Royal family, bringing together 200 of the world's most prominent decision makers.

We also announced the Arrival Service Network Program using our in-house digital service platform, which trains and certifies technicians to service our vehicles. The service platform uses data from Arrival's vehicles and proprietary algorithms to enable existing service providers to repair and maintain our electric vans and buses. We have recently announced 8 partners in the U.S. and Europe who have signed up to repair and maintain our vehicles through our program.

These initiatives serve to highlight the ways in which Arrival has captured the attention of large global companies and organizations around the world. We have also been ramping up our sales efforts and hosted a global tour of the van in the U.S. and Europe for our customer base. This was very well received and gave us a chance to showcase Arrival's unique vehicles and customer value proposition.

I want to remind everyone that Arrival is the only company with a new method in the whole industry. We are focused on developing enabling technologies, components, platforms, materials, microfactories, software and robotics. And we utilize these technologies in all of our products. We see Arrival as a pioneer in the EV space, leading the transition to EVs globally by creating products that are 0 emission, more desirable, more sustainable and more equitable.

ESG is at our core. And I am proud to say that in Q3, as part of our engagement here at COP26, from which I am currently joining this call, we have announced our pledge to reach a net 0 carbon position by 2040, helping to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement 10 years early. As the management team, though, we are looking into how we could do this even faster.

Our CEO of Arrival Automotive, Mike Ableson, will now give us an update on our program development and microfactory status. Mike?

Thanks, Avinash. I want to begin by reiterating that we continue to expect start of production for the bus in Q2 of 2022 and start of production for the van in Q3 of 2022. This slide shows our upcoming program milestones, and the milestones remain unchanged from when we presented them in our Q2 earnings call. It won't surprise anyone to hear me say these milestones are the priority for the entire Arrival organization over the next 3 to 4 quarters.

Equipment installation has begun in Rock Hill and will be substantially complete by the end of the year. Since Bicester is used as our process development microfactory, we've been installing equipment there for some time and expect it to be substantially complete by the end of Q1 next year. Charlotte will be our third microfactory in 2022. We started production there expected in Q4 of 2022.

Bicester is a unique facility because it serves a dual purpose as Arrival's global center for robo factoring and as the company's first van microfactory. As such, you can think of Bicester as our version 1.0 of van microfactory. One of the advantages of the microfactory approach is the ability to further optimize the layout, equipment and operations of each subsequent microfactory.

At Bicester, we are already installing the second generation of our composites manufacturing line and have recently installed 6 of our third-generation technology cells in the assembly area. We are now assembling our fifth generation of autonomous mobile robots, or AMRs, the mobile robots used to move vehicles and parts through the microfactory. This latest-generation AMR has a 2-tonne payload capacity, and it's capable of coordinating movements wirelessly so that multiple robots can be used to move a vehicle or a component that's too heavy or too large for a single AMR. Given all of this ongoing development, we know that Bicester does not represent an optimized van microfactory, but only the first version.

On the product side, as Denis and Avinash have already noted, we've completed assembly of our first gamma phase prototype bus. It's great to see the bus come to life. The impact of both the exterior design and the experience inside the bus are just as dramatic as we've always expected. This bus is the first of several that will be used for final product validation, and we have a number of buses and build right behind it that will be completed in the next few weeks. We've also completed the first accelerated durability test for our van and have completed 2 of the European certification tests for bus.

From a cost perspective, this slide highlights the cost we expect to incur at our first 2 microfactories, which include production equipment and nonproduction CapEx such as site readiness and logistics. Total CapEx for Rock Hill is expected to be approximately $50 million, and CapEx for Bicester is expected to be approximately $75 million.

As I said, Bicester is our first van microfactory. And because we've been simultaneously developing our product and our manufacturing process, spending at Bicester is now higher than we originally forecast. An additional contributing factor to the higher CapEx is the fact that we've decided to bring the majority of logistics operations in-house. Since logistics is such a key component of the microfactory operational costs, we prefer to have this under internal control for our first microfactory.

We are still evaluating different operating models for logistics at future microfactories, and the optimal approach may actually differ by region. We anticipate that Charlotte and other future van microfactories will have a more efficient footprint and improved processes compared to Bicester. With the microfactory method, we have the opportunity to further optimize each microfactory as it's deployed. Charlotte will be the second version of our van microfactory process, and we therefore expect total CapEx to be lower than Bicester.

We've also decided to bring our battery module assembly in-house. As a reminder, in the Arrival battery architecture, battery cells are assembled into battery modules that are shared across all of our vehicles. The battery modules are then assembled into vehicle-specific battery packs at the microfactory. The first battery module assembly facility will be in the U.K. and will support initial production at multiple microfactories. To date, we've already manufactured more than 1,850 high-voltage battery modules to support our prototype builds.

I'll now turn it over to our CFO, John Wozniak, to go through our financials and provide more detail on how these updates impact our projections. John?

Thanks, Mike. I'll cover our Q3 financial results before moving on to longer-term trends. The loss for the period was EUR 26 million compared to a loss for the period of EUR 22 million in the third quarter of 2020. The adjusted EBITDA loss for the quarter was EUR 40 million compared to a loss of EUR 18 million in the third quarter of 2020.

Administrative expenses were EUR 38 million and noncapitalized R&D expenses were EUR 9 million compared to administrative expenses of EUR 20 million and noncapitalized R&D expenses of EUR 1 million in the third quarter of 2020. Capital expenditures in the quarter were EUR 81 million compared to EUR 21 million in the third quarter of 2020.

We ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of EUR 381 million or approximately $440 million. We expect CapEx for Q4 2021 to be between EUR 110 million and EUR 120 million and adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter of 2021 to be modestly higher than Q3, reflecting our head count.

We have decided to make additional investments in R&D and tooling to improve our platforms to bring battery assembly and logistics in-house to secure battery lines for multiple years through prepayments to our supplier and to add resources to our sales, finance and legal functions. We've made these investments in areas that we believe better prepare us for our first product launch and makes our business stronger and more resilient for when we scale. We are also experiencing price increases in certain raw materials, including aluminum and petrochemicals.

Because we are investing more in our platforms, we have revised our microfactory investments for next year. We now plan 3 microfactories in 2022, Rock Hill, Bicester and Charlotte, and have moved our fourth microfactory to 2023. We continue to expect van microfactories to produce 10,000 vehicles per year at full capacity on 2 shifts, though we are expecting a more conservative production ramp next year as we start each microfactory on one shift and are not planning to reach full capacity until early in 2023. As a result, we expect both vehicle volumes and revenue to be modest next year.

Revenue is expected to start in the second half of 2022 and be weighted towards the fourth quarter. As Denis mentioned, beyond 2022, revenue growth will be dependent on the number of microfactories we can deploy, which is a function of the timing and availability of capital, the quantum and timing of which is uncertain at this time. Given this and the rapidly changing nature of our business, we no longer believe prior long-term financial forecast should be relied upon. We will continue to update you on key operational milestones, including the status of our vehicle programs and our planned microfactory rollout, which we believe are the key indicators of the progress we are making.

We also expect future volume mix to be even more weighted towards van, which is consistent with the robust LOI activity we continue to see for this product.

From a cost perspective, we expect 2022 adjusted EBITDA and CapEx will be in a range consistent with the third quarter of 2021 on an annualized basis. We are forecasting marginally higher SG&A costs associated with adding sales and finance resources. Over the next several years, we will continue to capture additional efficiencies in our microfactories and expect to achieve total required CapEx per microfactory of approximately $50 million.

We will also continue to lower the OpEx requirements at our microfactories and expect long-term production and assembly OpEx of approximately $15 million per microfactory. Initial operating costs for logistics is approximately $10 million per microfactory. However, we expect to optimize our logistics model as we scale the number of microfactories to significantly reduce this cost over time.

From a working capital perspective, we have proactively secured 2 cell lines and are continuously evaluating opportunities to further derisk long-term cell procurement. In general, as we scale, we believe our working capital terms will improve through larger volumes and better leverage with our suppliers.

I'll now hand the call back to Avinash for our conclusion.

Thank you, John. To repeat our message, Arrival is unique. We believe our new method will change the fundamentals of the auto industry. We reconfirmed our key milestones for the bus and van. And today, we showed you the outstanding bus, the van, which is a great product the market needs, and gave you a first look at the Arrival car, which is an important vehicle for shared mobility.

Arrival is not a traditional OEM. We are developing technology platforms that allow us to create multiple products and build them in local microfactories with relatively small resources. Arrival is on a mission to replace all vehicles with electric. We continue to see strong growing demand from customers all around the world, and we expect this to continue as we bring our remarkable products to market in the coming months.

The commercial vehicle market is in the beginning of an enormous and imperative transition. And we believe we are coming to the market at the right time with our transformative new method of production and superior products.

Thank you. We'll now move on to Q&A.

(Operator Instructions) And Denis, if you'll go ahead and start your video for me, please.

Hello, everyone. I shared my screen. Can you see my screen now?

Yes, we sure can. Thank you, Denis. I appreciate it.

Yes. So actually, it's quite important for our company in Q3 because we didn't show the -- we're actually working -- we are working hard to develop exterior of our car, which we do together with Uber, as you know. And it's the first time we're showing the exterior of the car today. We're quite happy -- we're extremely actually happy about this product. And it's quite difficult to understand from this picture, but actually, the height of the vehicle is much higher like normal cars and which creates a totally different experience for the passenger side in terms of legrooms and the space overall.

And actually, in the left bottom corner, we have a stage of our bus for emerging markets. So it's a high-floor bus. It's a derivative from our low-floor bus platform, which we're developing now. We announced in Q2 that we started to develop this type of product using our Indian R&D center. And we are also very pleased to say that this product is developing really well. So that's probably -- yes, so this is the car as a big picture. So we are happy to answer your questions.

(Operator Instructions) We'll hear first from Jeff Osborne with Cowen.

A couple of questions on my end. One, what -- just in light of the slowdown of the build-out, given the capital situation as well as the bus market, can you give us a sense of future capital needs that you'll have? I was under the impression that, in particular, for the bus market, some of the municipalities would be participating in the funding around the world. Is that still an opportunity or not so much?

So in terms of the market, Jeff, absolutely. We -- fundamentally, I think we're going to be capacity-limited, not demand next year. We're still seeing enormous interest in it. And we just showed you a glimpse of our new bus. That's actually going to be going on to trials next year. Just to remind everybody, the sales cycle of the bus is such that the trials comes first.

So really, I think the bus market will continue to heat up. This transition is occurring right now. I'm at COP right now, and I'm sure we're going to hear further announcements from governments around the world about the need to electrify public transports and fleets in general.

And in terms of our capital needs, John, do you want to comment?

Sure. Obviously, we have a variety of financing options available to us, which we continue to review regularly. I think it's important for everyone to remember that unlike a traditional OEM, we don't have a significant upfront amount of capital. It's not billions of dollars that we need to put in the ground immediately, which gives us greater flexibility, which I think you've seen as we've prioritized capital this year and into next year. We've certainly accelerated some spending on our vehicle platforms, as we mentioned in the script, the purpose of which is really to make those platforms more resilient as we prioritize start of production next year. So we believe that we have a lot of flexibility as we look ahead.

As we think long term, our view of capital is that our growth is really tied to the amount of capital that we can raise to deploy new microfactories. And as a management team, we believe we'd like to be very aggressive in that deployment. And that will all be dependent on when we tap the markets, and we'll be opportunistic in that regard.

I also would like to give just a few comments, Jeff. The way -- how you asked the question, you mentioned about the market condition. Actually, market conditions are great. So there, we have a strong tailwind, and we still -- we see a huge demand on our products across all our portfolio. So that's not even a challenge like now.

In terms of our prioritization, we just -- like we had, as John said before, some events like when we did the advanced payments for the batteries to secure our volumes, you know that it's extremely important for any automotive -- any EV company today, and some other strategic decisions which we made.

And answering your question directly about other funding opportunities, we obviously -- every microfactory could be SPV in some way, right? So -- and actually, we have a lot of different opportunities how the capital for microfactories can be raised. It's not necessarily the capital coming from the public markets for that.

Got it. And very quickly, could you just give a few examples of the 10 million in OpEx for logistics at each microfactory? Why bring that in-house? What are some of the things you'll be doing that you were using third parties for?

We just need that -- Mike, I'm sorry.

It's okay. So Jeff...

Yes, please, yes.

To your point, we've had a lot of questions about logistics because the microfactory model is different from a logistics standpoint than a traditional model. And so as we looked at how we're moving parts and subassemblies around on-site and microfactory, how they get presented to the automation inside the microfactory, even how we receive them from suppliers, working with suppliers on packaging that's friendly to automation, they're just -- we saw so many different aspects of logistics that we thought we could do better if we had direct control over them that we could optimize it for the microfactory method.

Obviously, when we go out and talk to 3PLs, they don't know what we know about the microfactory method. So that was why we decided we really did want to bring this all in-house. The 10 million covers a variety of expenses, obviously, heads, but also other expenses around packaging and so on.

I would like to add here that, as Mike said, first of all, we want to control that process now because it's the first time we're running that, and we just want to control every aspect of that, reduce our risks to run first factories. And the second one is, which is also quite important, is that we like -- obviously, if logistics is done with an external company, we're reducing our margins on the product. So for us, it's actually a better decision to make a bit more CapEx but actually have better margins.

(Operator Instructions) And we'll now move on to Michael Filatov with Berenberg.

Just a quick question on the nonbinding orders and LOIs. You provided a little bit of detail, but maybe you could talk about sort of the time line for some of those LOIs and orders and maybe potentially what the sort of revenue opportunity would be for those.

Yes. So we've announced 64,000 LOIs to date. It's probably worth just reminding everybody that for us, LOIs aren't early-stage conversations. They're still nonbinding, but they're typically more extensive discussions that have gone on where we signed contracts from both parties with a number of indicative terms such as the type -- the range of volumes over how many years, the base pricing and when the vehicles would be due. And then we move them to vehicle agreements where we have the pricing laid out and also the spec and the timing.

So to answer your question, when we look into -- without giving the exact numbers, when we look at next year, as I mentioned earlier, if those LOUs convert to orders, we've essentially sold more than we can produce next year. So we're in an extremely healthy position on demand. In the longer term -- and those LOUs typically span anywhere from 3 to 5 years in terms of the range and the timing for the orders.

And if you look at what's happening in the market with, as I mentioned earlier, not just governments but companies themselves needing to transition, I think we are just in a very healthy place on demand. So next year, in terms of orders right now, we're very healthy. And it's only just going to grow. I really believe we're fundamentally right in the early years capacity limited. So our role is to really bring out as many microfactories as we can and increase capacity.

Got it. Another quick question. One of your competitors sort of on the bus side puts out sort of a public market bid universe for the buses. And I'm wondering if you could comment on sort of the pipeline of bids in the bus universe that you're seeing, right, and how that compares to sort of the volumes you're expecting over the next couple of years.

Yes, it's a great question. We are seeing that many companies had the RFPs out for the bids. We did just announce, for example, that we won the Anaheim contract. So we're going to see more and more of that. Our team is heavily at work in submitting for bids, organizing trials for customers. Our first trial is early next year. And so in terms of, I would say, the amount of RFPs coming out right now, it's quite significant because the bus operators are needing to shift.

That could be driven via government mandates or incentives, but it's also the fact that -- one of the interesting things, for example, if you look at the Arrival bus and its price point, which is extremely competitive, well, we believe it's fundamentally the best-priced electric bus on the market. It also means that the residual value of the diesel buses over time will go even lower. And so it's forcing -- I believe it's forcing more higher turnaround in the early years.

I'd just add on the pipeline. Obviously, in the Build Back Better bill here in the U.S. and to Avinash's point at the COP26 conference, we expect to see a very sizable upswing in support for electric bus fleets. But as far as talking about specific RFPs on the horizon, we haven't named those. There are associations both in Europe and the U.S. that when you join, you get a view of the entire RFP pipeline across all municipalities. So basically, every bus manufacturer has access to that same information.

And I'd also add just to end on that, Michael, that, I mean, this is global. The interest in our products, bus, van and microfactories, it's -- our team is covering, I would say, every inch of the globe right now.

And Rod Lache with Wolfe has the next question.

I think you can hear me now. Can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay. Great. Look, it sounds like there's absolutely 0 question about the demand for the buses and vans or, frankly, any of your products at this point. I just wanted to -- I was hoping you can maybe elaborate a little bit more about, firstly, what has led to the slower ramp. I didn't quite understand that. And maybe what kind of volumes do you expect to hit at your -- maybe your exit rate from next year?

If I may, I'll probably start with the answers. So first of all, what is important is that the document which we were referring before, it was -- we were creating this in the middle of 2019. So it's actually like 2 years ago. And of course, during those 2 years, we've learned a lot about like the process and other things. So that's the important point here.

And the second part of the point is that, look, we obviously want to produce as much as possible. And we're putting the capital in -- for the parts like to procure and like receive all those parts available for us like to produce as many products as we want -- as possible. But because we're just starting those operations like the first time, so instead of pushing the quality -- quantity, we want to kind of focus on the perfection of the process and do it -- first, we want to kind of do everything perfectly and then like scale after that.

So that's like a major reason why we've taken a bit more conservative view on 2022. I would not call it as slowdown, I would say. It's just more careful, I would say, approach to the start of production.

And I think 2022 expectations, we should not imply from that or overestimate its impact on future periods. Once we ramp the microfactories, particularly the van microfactories, to full production, we still expect to be able to produce 10,000 vehicles at full capacity on 2 shifts. Next year, we're just taking a more conservative view of our initial ramp because, as Denis mentioned, we want to make sure we get it right.

That's absolutely the most important point that we have here, is it's about getting it right so that we're in a good position to scale. And post 2022, our expectation is that we would like to deploy microfactories as quickly as we can.

So with the run rate, if you're successful, it sounds like it's just you have better visibility on what it's going to take in the initial ramp, not any kind of real technical issue or supplier development issue.

Absolutely.

If you were to exit -- if we think about your exit rate next year, would you -- would we be thinking that maybe your -- with one shift, you're at a run rate of maybe 5,000 or so per microfactory, something like that?

Correct.

And I was hoping maybe you can just clarify for us how we should be thinking about whether -- the extent to which the economics at the plant are changing. So you're saying that the 15 million of OpEx, that sounds to me like that's sort of comparable to the 12 million that you were originally thinking in your plan. The 10 million of logistics, is that sort of shifting from one bucket to another? So really, the economics aren't changing? It would have either been in your suppliers' cost and bill to you or you're taking that in-house? Can you just maybe clarify that aspect?

I think it's important. You mentioned 50 million. That's not OpEx, right? That's our -- continues to be our expectation for CapEx. So...

I said 15 million, 1-5.

Absolutely, yes. So 15 million is our OpEx expectation relative numbers we published a couple of years ago, which was 12 million. We continue to expect to have very competitive OpEx in the microfactory. We are seeing higher initial logistics costs. And I think it is fair to say that when we were initially thinking about that, we were expecting a large portion of that to be outsourced and potentially come back to us in the form of component part, if you will, or inventoriable cost.

So we do expect that there is a large element of that which is moving between buckets. But also, we believe that, that cost will reduce significantly over time as we scale. And we would have expected to see the same thing even on an outsourced basis.

And I think the last point, Rod, that John made is an important one that with us handling a lot of this in-house, we also then can study how to bring it down quickly. Whereas when we looked at the 3PL model, it wasn't as clear to us how we establish a path to continue to work on logistics going forward.

Okay. And just one last thing. One of the things that is really interesting about your business model is it's so much less capital-intensive than any other manufacturing of similar products. And that kind of leads you to the conclusion that it just doesn't take a lot to get to cash flow breakeven. But you're going to go through this period -- and I just want to make sure I understand kind of the investment phase.

So you mentioned a run rate of $40 million of EBITDA per quarter. So am I correct in thinking about a $200 million negative EBITDA over the next 5 quarters? And it sounded like you referenced $80 million per quarter of CapEx. So another $400 million from that. So I guess between those 2 and a little bit of working capital, is that sort of the capital needs as we think out over the next...

I think it's important that the numbers you referenced, so we're clear, are euros, not dollars.

Sorry. Yes, sorry. Euros.

But roughly, that's our expectation.

Yes. And actually, what is important about our business model is it's very modular. So you're absolutely correct to at least those elements of the module. So one part of the economics is the unit economics at microfactories, and we're extremely focused on that. Microfactory is a product for us, and we see it not as one less attribute in terms of production rate but also every cent we are spending there in terms of OpEx and CapEx. It's very much controlled.

Other things which are related mostly to R&D budgets, we're also controlling that very well. And our method is supporting -- producing many models and variants at the same time. So because we have like our method of design mix in the way that we have, like practically less people involved in developing of the particular products compared to what the industry does today. So broadly, you're right with the way to see our finance, yes.

Our next question will come from Brian Johnson with Barclays.

Given so much that could be unique about Arrival is around the microfactories, the last question pointed out, can you give us some anecdotes or metrics from last quarter that gives us a sense that the microfactory composite production approach is still on track?

So Brian, absolutely. I referenced in the script, we're actually installing right now an updated composite manufacturing line in Bicester. But even on the line that we've had, we've produced over 1,400 composite panels to date. So the composite is absolutely delivering what we knew it would as far as both the product attributes that it brings as well as the manufacturing process.

Again, one of the advantages though of it being Arrival IP is our ability to continue to improve it. And we're going to continue to work on the process to make it more efficient with higher throughput.

Yes. And just to give you a bit of color here is that we just finished the development of our new forming stations. And on the new line, which Mike was referring to, we're already putting this new generation, which have much better attributes than we had before. And of course, this process is so modular, so we have this flexibility on the same composite factory to have like a previous one. It's a one line and the new one is a new line and then updating the previous one like not stopping the production. So that's also advantage of our method as well.

Anything else, Brian?

Yes. Just as a follow-up, so the composite panels are produced. How about the process of actually joining them at scale into a van? How do we kind of get some insight into that? Because your competitors would point out that panels are panels and complete vehicles are complete vehicles. So just wanted to get a sense of how that production is going.

So...

Yes. Please, Mike. Please.

So Brian, when we talk about this composite manufacturing line, the last station or the last cell in that line is a bonding cell. We use that to assemble, say, an inner panel to an outer panel or any other sort of panel assembly. It's a very flexible cell. It's done in the Arrival way, so it's very highly automated. And then the panels get assembled to the vehicle in the tech cells in the actual microfactory assembly area, again, with very high automation and a lot of work on making sure the process executes to the throughput in the quality that we need.

So yes, panels are only panels, but we are already assembling them into vehicles. I mean we're using these processes already to assemble our prototype vehicles. So we're already getting a lot of practice with it.

Brian, I would say that I expect others to say that because it's the old method, right? So in their mind, it's just, okay, you're replacing x with y. But fundamentally, that's just not true at Arrival. We've designed the composite panel to work with the systems that we've developed with the chassis. And then you've got the components, and you've got -- it's all designed in-house technologies that all work together.

So you can't take an existing vehicle, replace all of the body panels with our composite and expect it to work that way. It's fundamentally different. It's a total step-change in how you think about a vehicle and how it's engineered. I want to make that point.

Denis, I know you want to say something there.

Yes, absolutely. Because what I wanted to say is that I want to refer to the car, which is behind your -- which is behind you, is that it's quite amazing in the way that it was designed in the way that we put interiors inside the car robotically, which have never been done before in the industry. And again, like our composite panels and the way how we do the bodies allows us to do that. And with unibody with the current manufacturing, you get -- like traditional companies, it's impossible. With this type of design we do, it's possible.

And with that, everyone, that does conclude today's webinar. We thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect.

Thank you very much for your...

Thanks, everyone.

Thank you. Bye.