Fisker Inc. (NYSE:FSR) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Dr. Geeta Gupta-Fisker: Quarterly. Quarterly.

Jeff Osborne: Quarterly. Got it. Perfect. And then speaking of quarterly, how should we think about the cadence of production through the year? Last quarter, you had given some helpful commentary on what you thought production would be by quarter. You obviously reiterated guidance for the full year. I assume we should be all on the same page, not assuming any deliveries in calendar Q1. And then, is the old production ramp still applicable or no?

Dr. Geeta Gupta-Fisker: Those are a lot of questions. So, let me take one by one. So deliveries have nothing to do with production. Deliveries have to do with homologation and getting the approvals to sell the cars. So, I want to separate the two. We can produce cars today. As long as we get — like I mentioned earlier, we are starting to get parts. I saw batteries last week. I’m seeing other parts coming in. So, as long as parts keep coming in, we can produce the cars, no problem. But what we need is the certification to sell the vehicles in Europe and U.S. And I think Burkhard went into great detail about that already. Now, let’s come to production itself. We can produce Henrik mentioned 20 cars a day, and we have a very clear plan with Magna Steyr on how to increase this production capacity week on week on week, all the way through to December this year.

So, the numbers we had — the guidance we had given hasn’t changed in terms of what we can produce. What we need to monitor, as I mentioned, is supplier ramp-up. So, as I alluded to, certain suppliers, they feel they need a little bit more time for their own feedback processes, high-quality feedback processes, and we will monitor what that means between March, April, May in terms of where they get to peak production. But I’m expecting that by June time frame, all the suppliers are fully ramped up to our production needs, which is more or less 5,000 a month at this point in time.

Operator: Our next question is from Dan Levy from Barclays.

Dan Levy: I wanted to ask about the R&D guide. So, your guiding to 2023 R&D is $160 million to $190 million. And this is a significant step down from the $400 million plus you did in 2022. So maybe you could just talk about, please, the underlying requirements or dynamics in R&D spend, why steps down? And maybe what R&D is required in the future for new product, be it PEAR, Ronin or Alaska? Thank you.

Dr. Geeta Gupta-Fisker: Great question, Dan. So Dan, when a company starts up operations, you have a certain level of inefficiency, and that’s why we have a lot of outside suppliers and we have relied on Magna to do some of the engineering. Also, we relied on certain suppliers do some of the engineering, which is why you saw a higher ED&D bill for Ocean. Now, as we go into the second vehicle, on one hand, we have enhanced our own internal team, including a pretty significant employee base in India which, as we know, is a much reduced cost than hiring here in California. So, that accounts for some of the reduced costs where we brought some of the R&D in-house. The second point is that we have certain areas where we don’t have to repeat the engineering.

Let me give you some examples. So for example, the OTA pipeline that Burkhard talked about, once those investments are in place, we don’t have to repeat them. Henrik talked about UI/UX, once the development, the base UI/UX experience is developed, now you’re doing a spin-off, you’re going to modify that. So, there are many, many, many areas, including, I can talk about in EE architecture where we have the capability to take over certain components from certain suppliers and carry over and use those over our second vehicle. And finally, we are more efficient. We have a team that works together, smarter, just far more efficient when it comes to next year.