Blue Bird Corporation (NASDAQ:BLBD) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Craig Irwin: Okay. And then an adjacent question to that. Congratulations on your collaboration with Generate Capital. Jigar Shah is also a visionary on clean tech finance and has executed impeccably in his many different business ventures. Do your competitors, the companies that have aspirations of leadership in the EV school bus market have access to the funding out of Generate or would they need to go and find similar partners to set those up and offer that kind of financial support to some of these low-income disadvantaged communities that the President is really focused on giving the opportunity to?

Phil Horlock: Well, our venture with Generate — and by the way, I agree with you fully, Jigar Shah is a fantastic guy. I’ve met him several times over the years in on different events even prior to this joint venture here. But I will tell you that I think we are really well prepared on this. As I look at it — one second. Yeah, I should say I just lost a tone the question I’d explain all my knowledge of Jigar Shah just as you were doing. But I think the unique thing for us, we have the exclusive relationship with Generate Capital. They want to work with us. They see our leadership in this space. They have fantastic access to things that we don’t really access today in terms of tax credits, getting to every sort of corner of utility understanding better than we do around the price of electricity and what it really means to a customer.

So, the answer to your question is quick. We are the only ones who can do this deal with Generate Capital, and so we’re very proud to have that unique relationship. The goal for us now is to train our entire dealer network of what this is all about, what it means, the advantage it gives and give a chance for all of our customers to get a zero emissions school bus as fast as possible.

Craig Irwin: Great. Well, congratulations on fantastic performance. It’s got to feel good to come back to Blue Bird to drive this level of success.

Phil Horlock: This feels great. Thanks a lot, Craig. I appreciate it. It’s all a team effort though. Thanks a lot.

Craig Irwin: Absolutely.

Operator: Thank you for your questions. There are currently no questions waiting at this time, so I’ll pass the conference back over to Phil Horlock for closing remarks.

Phil Horlock: And thanks to all of you for joining us on the call today. We appreciate your interest in Blue Bird and we look forward to updating you again on our progress next quarter as we always do. As you saw today, we’ve completed a significant transformation, well ahead of schedule, and it clearly shows in our record fiscal ’23 fourth quarter and full year results. We have a really strong momentum going into fiscal ’24, and consequently, we raised our fiscal ’24 guidance significantly, projecting a 10% adjusted EBITDA margin, which is 2 percentage points above what we achieved in fiscal ’23. And we’re confident in achieving an 11% to 12% margin within a couple of years as industry supply chain constraints continue to ease. So, should you have any follow-up questions, please don’t hesitate to contact our Head of Investor Relations, Mark Benfield, and thanks again from all of us at Blue Bird. Have a great evening. Good night.

Operator: That concludes today’s conference call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect your line.

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