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

Parker Meeks: Yes. Look, it’s a great question, Craig. I do appreciate you recognizing that we always are driving to achieve transparency and appropriate accounting principles. I’ll give a high-level answer and then hand it over to Steve. But at a top level, you’re correct that as we’re deploying vehicles this year — sorry, last year and this year, we are deploying it into a commercial construct, which typically will reflect the commercial agreement that we have with Performance peer group of PFG in the U.S., which is a multiyear commercial agreement with a total in PFG’s case 50 potential vehicles total across three stages where the first five are what are binding and the next tranches unlock as we deliver the prior tranche.

And we said before, that first tranche of deliveries, we typically will have some kind of a risk share mechanism in place in the commercial agreement like a buyback provision that drives us more towards operating lease accounting when we look at that financially. Even though the cash may come in all upfront, which is very important to us, obviously, and we’re happy to have that happened. The accounting itself is a bit more conservative, given some of those risk share mechanisms that are in place in most of our — not all, but most of our contracts. So when that flips, when will that flip, we will see — our hope is that after the first tranche is delivered to a fleet and proven and the technology is proven in the use case, that second tranche, we’ve been able to release those buyback provisions at more of a traditional sale, but that’s all to be proven as we push towards second orders that we’re hoping to achieve from our early fleets this year, do you want to add.

Stephen Weiland: Yes. Thanks, Parker. I’ll just add a few things, Craig. Of course, here Hyzon, we take compliance and are accounting and reporting very seriously, right? So — we’re following all the appropriate rules. We’re recognizing revenue and working closely to orders to make sure everything is solid there. So I don’t want to necessarily say what pro forma revenue could have been like from a 2023 perspective. I guess the best I could do here to help you out is maybe just point you into the financials and take a look at our remaining performance obligation, right, on the balance sheet, it’s about $14.8 million and our disclosure that about — we expect 72% of that to translate over the next 12 months. I think you can kind of take a look at that and get an idea.

Craig Irwin: Fantastic. That was what I was looking at. So that’s good to hear. Last question, if I may. President Biden’s support in the IRA for hydrogen infrastructure, the $7 billion we’ve seen awarded for infrastructure hubs, not something that was anticipated a year or two ago, right? So really positive and helpful for the long-term development of the market. Can you talk about whether or not this is widening the circle as far as the fleets that are taking a serious look at hydrogen. Is this changing the tempo of activity in some areas of the country? I know in the short term, it does impact deliveries as people figure out where they get the best funding opportunity. But can you maybe unpack for us what this has done to change the long-term future for you guys?

Parker Meeks: Yes. No, I would love to because it’s a really exciting future when you look at how this technology and the decarbonization of trucking is going to grow across the United States. And that hub program is critical to it. What it’s done for our fleets, right? What’s fantastic is really over the past 18 months, once we started our trial program in R22 and start to start to progress it. We have a very clear picture as to where the fleets would like these trucks to go. California, everyone is focused on that because of very deep funding, like I said before, $300 million available and a voucher, which pushes the price the truck nets the customer in a place where economics are feasible today. But they all want to run trucks — most one of our trucks in Texas, most on to run trucks in the Midwest or trucks on the East Coast as well, wherever they’re located, where there’s volume.

The Texas Triangle, Houston, Dallas, often San Antonio is a great example. That triangle is perfectly suited for fuel cell technology at today’s stage. It’s about 200 miles per leg of the triangle fits very well within the current range of our truck — and there’s initiatives already ongoing. There are small scale to go in, for instance, Interstate 45 between Houston and Dallas is a federal hydrogen highway with three hydrogen stations that are already insighting under a prior funding mechanism. And as I mentioned before, Port Houston has been quite aggressive in driving decarbonization grant applications like the one that we’re very fortunate to have been selected with our partners at their application going in under the Queen boards funding.

And so what we see that the sub program is doing, as one example, the Houston-based High Velocity Hub is one of the 7, right? And so that hub is a tremendous opportunity, we believe, for fleets to put in projects with us and fueling providers to be a part of that hub and to drive trucks once that hub is ideally funded and deployed into that Texas triangle with a significant freight demand and opportunity. So what it’s done is it’s given our fleet customers a tangible visibility into how they can run trucks outside of California relatively near or midterm timing given that those funds we do hope start to flow certainly in the decade. And additional thing is when you pair that with the other driver for fleets, which has been the performance of fuel cell trucks versus the performance and availability of battery trials.