Hyzon Motors Inc. (NASDAQ:HYZN) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

And additionally, launching the 200-kilowatt powertrain in the right-hand drive 64 caliber truck in Australia this past month, making all that progress while continuing to drive cash burn down, we think shows that we’ve been effective in maintaining and driving the commercialization of Hyzon, our technology, while also continuing to find opportunities to produce cash flow. So that remains our focus is driving cash burn, managing it. We have a clear view of the levers we can continue to pull to manage cash burn appropriately to make sure that we’re maximizing value for shareholders and how we’re advancing the business and being prudent with our resources.

Craig Irwin: Great. Thank you for that. So then as the focus of the company is shifting, right, moving from B samples to C-samples, moving from testing primarily on, I guess, rigs, I guess we call them, not big rigs, but benchtop rigs, right, to rolling this year ahead of all those efficiencies that you’ve achieved on sort of tightening the screws learn a little bit of savings on how you’re executing your strategy. Do those continue to translate through likely over the next number of months. Are those lessen things that are long-term applicable?

Parker Meeks: Yes. So that’s a really important topic to us, Craig. So how we think about testing, trialing is a comprehensive system. And I’ll give an answer and ask Dr. Mohrdieck to add any thoughts he may have. But it does run from the bench tests in our full-scale 250-kilowatt load bank testing facilities here in Bolingbrook, which is a lab that we think is a highly productive and a real showcase for the company that we love to show off any time people come to visit us to the on-track program that we run at the test truck utilized in Michigan here in the U.S., in test track in Europe and in Australia that we have to test each of our truck platforms and our customer trial programs as well. And what’s important is it’s a multistage program, the test durability, the test performance on the test fuel efficiency that allows us to optimize every element of the powertrain.

So it starts, of course, with the fuel cell itself — our 200-kilowatt fuel cell system, SOP is not just testing the system, right? It is testing single cell, there’s testing short stack and it’s testing full stack and is testing the full system is documenting learnings and integrating those throughout the SOP. So I can tell you that even in the 200-kilowatt fuel cell system itself, we’re already on multiple sub generations of that technology as we’ve identified and built in additional improvements in the design even over the past 12 months. And that is exciting about that is we are confident when we run that system to SOP here in Bolingbrook that we’re still on track for later this year, that system will not just be a high-performance fuel cell system that we think is ahead of others that are in trucks today, but it also is one that we already have started to go through cost performance and quality improvement in the also plants and the MEA the catalyst design as we’re optimizing and improving it based on the findings through our very rigorous A-samples through C-sample preproduction and SOP process.

And on the truck side, as I said before, all the testing that we’ve done now for tens of thousands of miles and kilometers look, in the grand scheme of this technology, we all across the industry, have a long way to go to test and validate and improve performance in the use case. But we’ve already shown so tremendous gains in the performance and the optimization of the powertrain and the performance of the truck, even going from the 110-kilowatt technology in the truck, the 200-kilowatt technology in the truck we’re seeing an expectation of 20% better fuel efficiency on the test track with that 200-kilowatt powertrain in the truck in the same use case, which by the way, that’s 20% better than diesel. And when half the cost of a truck of its life is fuel, that is a tremendous impact on our progress towards total cost of ownership parity with diesel.

So all of that learning applies and what’s also exciting for the company long term, so it’s directly impacted on the truck use case today, right? And that’s what we need to deliver to commercialize the technology. But when you look at the valuation of Hyzon, the option value and the upside and putting the same 200-kilowatt technology into ground support equipment at airports and the stationary and power concepts are relatively near term in the grand scheme of this industry evolving. And all those learnings on the fuel cell is performance, the powertrain integration have a real benefit to us in all these cases that will come as well. So — we’re excited. Our customers see it and that’s why they’re with us. And the other example that I’ll give you, which shows the progress, the first truck that we brought into trial with the U.S. 110-kilowatt truck in March 2022.

Since then, the U.S. truck has been through all the testing that we’ve talked about, the fuel cell testing that we’ve talked about. We’ve launched the truck in Europe. We’ve launched the refuse vehicle in Australia. That refuse big in Australia, I can’t underscore how excited we are about that enough. That truck ran four months with REMONDIS unconstrained, up and down 18% grades near Sydney, Australia and had zero unplanned downtime, which is a tremendous outcome for our technology at this stage and one that we’re quite state to build on, which we think shows the progression of not just our fuel cell technology, but our powertrain as well.

Craig Irwin: Excellent. That’s really impressive. So Parker, my next question, I guess, I should preface right? We all know that you are using very conservative accounting, right? Your customer acceptance tests are robust. When the customer accepts a product, it’s not coming back, right? But if we were to go to the other — the other end of the spectrum, if we were to maybe look at FOB, like if we were selling widgets, but weren’t this technology innovation that you guys have come up with, if we were selling simple widgets, what would revenue possibly look like for 2023? Would we potentially have seen something in the teens, mid-teens from the 19 trucks that you delivered? Just so we can scope out how the separation from shipments and revenue recognition works and understand how to compare this to others that might not be using its conservative account.