Sono Group NV (SEV) 2022 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the earnings webcast of Sono Group N.V. (Operator Instructions) Please note, this conference is being recorded. May I now hand over to Julia Szeszat, Director, Investor Relations? Please go ahead.

Thank you, Sandra. Welcome to Sono Group's earnings conference call. The press release, including financial information for the first quarter of 2022 was released this morning. It's available on our website and on EDGAR. The full interim report will be published later.

My name is Julia Szeszat, and I'm Director, Investor Relations at Sono Group. On today's call, we have our CEO, Laurin Hahn; our COO, Thomas Hausch; and our CFO, Torsten Kiedel. Laurin and Thomas will first provide an update on our activities of the past months, and Torsten will then review our Q1 financials before we open the call for questions.

Before we continue, please be reminded that today's presentation will contain forward-looking statements made under the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. As such, the company's actual results may be materially different from the views expressed today. Further information regarding risks and uncertainties is included in recent filings of the company with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, except as required under applicable law.

And with that, I will now turn the call over to our CEO. Laurin, please go ahead.

Hi, everyone, and a warm welcome to everyone here. As you know, we're working very hard every single day to deliver on our mission, solar on every vehicle. Today, I'm happy to share some insights on our achievements and milestones on both the business and the corporate side. So let's start.

We achieved major milestones on our growth path. In Q1, we signed 5 additional solar partner agreements. We now have over 18 arrangements with customers. Our revenues in the first quarter increased and are already slightly higher than the full year 2021 revenue. Still, we're talking about small overall numbers here.

One of our 9 filed patents year-to-date was done in the first quarter. Our cash balance showed EUR 103 million end of March, and we now have over 18,000 net reservations, which are equivalent to more than EUR 393 million in net sales volume.

In May, we closed the follow-on offering and raised more than EUR 40 million in a very challenging market environment. On top of that, we just announced the signing of EUR 150 million -- sorry, $150 million committed equity facility, enabling us to fund our planned growth. We have the first series-validation vehicles in assembly, and we will have our big release event with our customers in July this year.

As you might know, our business model is built on 2 pillars: first, the B2B solar tech business and licensing; and second, our solar car business for consumers. So now let me dive you deeper into the first one. We signed new customer agreements -- arrangements, growing by 50% in 2022. Until today, we have signed 18 partnership agreements. This means that today, we have 12 more partners than we had 1 year ago. We are really excited about the 2 new partners and names and logos you see on that slide here announced recently. First, French reefer trailer producer, CHEREAU; and second, a German logistic company, namely Rhenus. Let me give you a little bit more detail and color on those 2 names here.

CHEREAU and Sono entered the market for a solar-powered refrigerated trailer, a fully new industry with strong growth potential. CHEREAU is an industry leader and a premium manufacturer in reefer vehicles with over 3,500 vehicles produced per annum and more than EUR 200 million in revenue. We signed a contract with CHEREAU consisting out of 2 phases. First phase, we will equip a trailer with 54 solar modules. The solar power will potentially result in approximately 3,400 liters of fuel savings, incredible; and the trailer will premiere at the IAA Transportation Fair in September 2022 here in Germany.

The second phase is in an extensive several months-long trial phase, which will be used to evaluate a customized solar solution with -- for high-volume series production into CHEREAU's vehicle. In general, the refrigerated trailer market is expected to grow strongly due to increasing demand for online deliveries such as medicine, deep-frozen products and fast food.

The second new partner I want to talk about today is Rhenus. We signed a contract with one of the world's largest logistics companies. This partner opens the door to a huge sector, last-mile logistics. The Rhenus Group makes EUR 7 billion in revenues. And as a first step, we equipped a Rhenus truck in Berlin with our solar methodology to get real-time data from last-mile logistics in a city. These massive amounts of data are very valuable to us and to the improvement of our solar technology for the use on trucks and vans.

All right. So, so much about the B2B business. I'm really excited about those 2 new partnerships and 10 ways to announce actually more in the near term. But now I'm handing over to our COO, Thomas, who talks about the B2C business unit, the solar car business. Thomas, all yours.

Thank you, Laurin. On the Sion, we're making such good progress that we're not afraid to tease you with our planned release event for this summer. Our latest generation of solar body panels, the sixth, proves that our continuous improvement process on this patented technology works. Whilst they're being impressed by the progress we made from the fifth to the sixth generation of surface quality, we still need to overcome industrialization hurdles in the run towards SOP.

The assembly of our fleet is progressing in a timely manner to our summer event with the first bodies-in-white finished and e-coated. We have already received over 80,000 parts and components delivered for the first 16 series-validation vehicles. We're still planning to build overall 37 series-validation vehicles and bodies-in-white in that run. We're currently in the final steps of assembling the first complete vehicles of this fleet.

While we are still gaining valuable insights assembling the vehicle, we are integrating it with our production partner, Valmet Automotive in our production concept planning phase. The fully integrated teams have already ordered the first machines and robots that need to be added to the existing manufacturing facility in Uusikaupunki, Finland. Supplier nomination and cooperation is also on track for the second half of 2023 SOP. We do have ongoing investigations to optimize design in certain areas to find the best compromise on cost and hold our timing. We still plan to achieve our cost targets with current and future cost-down processes despite a currently challenging market environment.

The pride of the Sion team is palpable when we assemble our first solar cars here in Munich, yet we have so many things to be proud of as a complete solar team. So let me give you a short corporate update. We have a continuously strong growth in many key areas like positive community feedback for the Sion, also in person in our Munich headquarter showroom. This is resulting, as Laurin mentioned, in over 18,000 active net reservations. We cannot wait to invite our existing and future community members to a Sono Day in July.

Just like our customers and community, our employee numbers have been growing fast. We now have 327 people that work at our company. This is an increase of 42% since the beginning of this year already and brings us closer to our goal to level off Sion team growth in the future.

In 2022, we had an even higher growth in patents and filed 9 new patents until today. We now expanded our portfolio to 16 filed or granted patents and 7 inventions being prepared to be filed, reaching 23 overall in the pipeline.

Closing on this relevant intellectual property news, I'm handing over to our CFO, Torsten, for a financial update.

Thank you, Thomas, and a warm welcome from my side. Most important in this challenging capital market environment is that we had and still have a strong cash position.

At the end of Q1, we had cash and cash equivalents of EUR 103 million. Looking at our P&L, we have already generated more revenues in the first quarter of 2022 than the total fiscal year 2021. This is still on a small basis, but important to see growth in solar projects and revenues here. Our operating expenses increased by EUR 18.5 million compared to Q1 2021, mainly due to intensified R&D for the Sion. Total cash outflow was EUR 29 million in Q1 due to further investments into Sion series-validation vehicles and operational expenses.

Despite the strong cash position, we try to be as efficient as possible and allocate financial resources prudently to the further development of our operations.

Let's take a look at what we've already achieved recently on the funding side.

Even in a challenging market environment, we have proven to have access to capital. We continuously are working on building trust in the Sono Group and Sono brand with all of our stakeholders. On the banking side, this is reflected by adding 3 strong names of well-established and trusted brands in our first capital market transaction this year. In addition to Berenberg and Craig-Hallum that took us public in November of last year, Cantor Fitzgerald, B. Riley and Wedbush comprised the banking syndicate of that transaction. We closed our follow-on offering in May, raising over USD 40 million. Last week, we entered into an agreement for a committed equity facility at very favorable conditions for Sono with Berenberg. This is securing us access to USD 150 million of funding over the next 24 months. We are now looking at 3 analysts covering the Sono Group and are expecting more to pick up coverage soon.

We've made progress on funding and have further options available. I mentioned the approximately EUR 30 million cash outflows in Q1 and the approximately EUR 40 million of successful funding in April. We still plan to raise EUR 160-plus million this year, and will make use of the USD 150 million committed equity facility as part of that funding plan. The expected cash outflow for the full year is still EUR 250-plus million, as mentioned in our last earnings call, so EUR 220-plus million for Q2 until the year-end. Vast majority of these cash outflows are onetime costs for development service providers, machinery and toolings and investments in the production setup. That will be incurred in the second half of 2022 and the first half of 2023.

Our strong cash position from the beginning of the year further reinforced by the capital raised and the committed equity facility potentially could cover the majority of our [Sion’s] needs for 2022. In 2023, the cash outflows will level off at a significantly lower rate. Hence, the funding needed for next year will be at a smaller scale.

Let me provide you some more color on our burn rate.

With moderate cash needs, a majority of one-offs and external expenses. In the first quarter, we spent approximately EUR 30 million. Hence, monthly cash outflow is averaging around EUR 10 million. As I've pointed out on the previous slide, that number will increase for the remaining quarters of this year. However, let's take a closer look at our cost structure of Q1.

You can see here that the current monthly cash outflow is mostly driven by one-off expenses related to R&D and production preparation for the Sion, while fixed recurring costs for salaries, rent and marketing remain low. It's therefore important for us -- for you to understand that we are in the driver seat for the majority of our cash outflows. And if we reflect potential further vehicles, cash outflows will decrease significantly while start of production has been achieved.

Let me wrap it up by repeating our outlook for the remainder of the year. We will continue our growth pattern and we'll continue to execute in 2022. This is mainly unchanged from our full year 2021 presentation. As we've shown you during today's presentation, we are delivering on our targets for 2022.

On the commercial side, the contracts and allies to the solar business are growing. We are on track to deliver the series-validation vehicles in the summer of 2022. The reservation numbers have been growing steadily, and we continue to expect to close to 20,000 reservations at year-end.

On the corporate side, we have significantly increased our number of patent filings and we are on a quite a promising way to achieve our employee numbers planned for the end of 2022. Employee growth for next year's same plan at a more moderate growth rate.

On the financing side, we are advancing in our funding activities. In terms of revenue development over the course of the year, we still intend to generate revenues towards low 1-digit million-euro amount. We expect the overwhelming share to materialize in the fourth quarter when business with our solar customers fully pick up. However, like the overall automobile and solar industry, we are facing some challenges in the supply chain and try our best to solve all of these. Our expected cash outflow for 2022 remains unchanged. Overall, we are maintaining our guidance for 2022 and are making consistent progress towards our milestone.

Now we are happy to take your questions.

(Operator Instructions) And the first question comes from the line of Eric Stine from Craig-Hallum.

It's Aaron Spychalla for Eric. Maybe first on the production side of things. Can you just give us an update on how things are progressing with Valmet and you kind of mentioned some of the supply chain challenges. Just a little more details on what those are and how you're managing those?

Yes, absolutely. So as I mentioned, we are in our first cooperation phase after we announced the cooperation with Valmet Automotive. That phase is progressing as planned, the production concept planning phase. We actually already can say that we have ordered the first machines and robots, which means that we're making significant progress.

The cooperation is good. We're working there with a professional team. The integration is good. We are, despite corona times or traveling issues regularly in Finland or the Finnish colleagues here in Germany. And even the buildup of our series-validation fleet and our cost improvement measures, for example, on the body structure is already fully integrated with the Valmet team.

Supply chain management issues, the situation today, it's getting a little bit more challenging than 3 months ago based on the inflation discussion. So raw material cost increase drives, of course, also potential logistic cost increases and so forth. And at this point, it's too early to change our guidance for our first big volume year in 2024. But it's something we are, of course, having a serious eye on regarding our forecast.

All right. And then maybe second, good to see the B2B programs on the solar side with Rhenus. Can you maybe talk about the next milestones to look for to move to that next phase, kind of time line there? And just what that opportunity might look like down the road?

Sure. Happy to do so. So the first phase is collecting those data with that truck in Berlin in the next phase then is looking at potentially a bigger fleet and equipping them with solar. So there is a potential of a bigger contract behind Rhenus. The team of Rhenus is very interested in our technology. And they just wanted to have this first prototype with methodology technology equipped in order to see the potential. And as soon as we have proven that, they will move over to a bigger contract.

Next question comes from the line of Eric Look from Berenberg.

This is Eric on for Michael from Berenberg. I was just wondering if you could provide a little bit more color on the production time line of the Sion. Like, for instance, is the production still on track to begin in the back half of 2023? And also, is the expected volume per year still the same as expected before? I believe it was like 43,000 Sions per year and around the low 4-digits volumes for 2023?

Yes. So for 2023, we're still confirming launch in the second half of 2023. We're also still planning with our max production capacity of 43,000 units that will be reached in 2025. So second half of '23 is the start. Parts of '24 are still ramp up, but 2025 is the first year of full production going for 257,000 unit life cycle volume that we also have not changed.

Okay. That really helps.

(Operator Instructions) And the next question comes from the line of Andres Sheppard from Cantor Fitzgerald.

I wanted to see if there was maybe an update regarding the Sono app? And again, the driver's potential to use the vehicle, not just to charge but also to discharge and whether there's any updates in terms of the talks about monetizing that as an additional revenue stream?

Yes, happy to take that question. Look, it's going good. We are continuously working on the app. It's in the App Store available. You can download it. The service is live in Germany. People are using it. Our communities are already using it, giving us feedback. We're continuously improving the app, having updates on a frequent basis. And we are planning on working on the convenience of the service.

Why? Because it's a B2C service where you have still the handover of the key as we don't have access to the vehicle data, because they're -- the community puts in their random vehicles. And what we are doing is we're working on the convenience of that key handover and soon going to launch here something that makes it more convenient for the customer to use the app.

Soon or I mean, in the future, with the Sion, you will have a huge advantage because we have all the data. We have a super convenient app because it's natively integrated in the infotainment, in the app. We have access to all the data, and that gives us great potential to monetize this at a great scale.

Got it. That's very helpful. Maybe one quick follow-up, if I may. Can you just remind us what is the current status of the government grants and subsidies in Germany as it relates to purchasing EVs?

Yes. It's called the BAFA program. And today, it is granting a customer EUR 6,000 financial support from the state. If the manufacturer gives EUR 3,000 of list price discount, for our pricing, we did not. For Germany, calculate the EUR 3,000 off. But if that program still exists when we launch our car, we can easily do that. So we are fully competing with the existing car manufacturers.

There is, however, a political discussion, very actual in Germany within the governing coalition, if or if not, they should continue. Regardless what happens, our vehicle will stay competitive to the established players and to new players.

Wonderful. I'll pass it on. Congrats on the quarter.

There are no more questions at this time. I would like to hand back over to Julia for final remarks.

Thanks, Sandra. If you need more information, please have a look on our website or reach directly out to the IR team. Thank you all for joining the call today, and have a great day, and goodbye.

Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.