Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Lilium's Q3 2022 business update call. My name is Geoffrey Richardson, Chief Financial Officer of Lilium. Before we start, let me go through a couple of housekeeping items. This is a virtual conference call, and for the moment, all participants are in listen-only mode. Today, we'll give you an update on our progress since our last call in September. There will be time for questions after the presentation. We've scheduled the call for 45 minutes, including Q&A time. Please note that this conference call is being recorded. The recording will be placed on Lilium's Investor Relations page soon after the event. As a reminder, after yesterday's market closing, we posted our shareholder letter on our website. We have also posted the press release on the contract signature with eVolare. We invite you to take a look at it.
Before handing over to our Chief Executive Officer, Klaus Roewe, let me please give a reminder that our presentation will include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the United States federal securities laws that are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause Lilium's actual results to differ materially from such statements. Please refer to the cautionary statements in our shareholder letter and the risk factors discussed in our filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission for more information on these risks. With us on our call today are our Chief Executive Officer, Klaus Roewe, our Senior Vice President, Commercial, Sébastien Borel. Let me hand it over to you, Klaus, for some initial words.
Thank you, Geoff and great to join you all on this call. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm really excited to share with you our latest achievements. Firstly, we signed our first commercial contract with pre-delivery deposits. The U.K. operator, eVolare, has secured deliveries of 10 aircraft with the option to purchase another 10. eVolare will serve the Greater London area with it. As part of the agreement, eVolare will make a pre-delivery payment to Lilium to secure aircraft delivery slots. The deal coincides with the formal launch of the Lilium Pioneer Edition. Sébastien will give you the details about it in a moment. Secondly, we signed our first major commercial agreement in the Middle East with Saudia. Saudia will have the option to purchase up to 100 Lilium Jets and will establish an eVTOL network in Saudi Arabia.
With this, we have a total order pipeline of 603 aircraft. We will continue to convert MOUs into binding aircraft purchase agreements in 2023. Third, we successfully completed our fundraising on November 22nd. Thanks to further investment from existing shareholders, new investors and strategic partners, we completed a capital raise of $119 million. We also made significant progress towards certification. We have now submitted about 80% of our certification plans to EASA, up from 38% in September. Next week, we will conduct our third Design Organization Approval audit. Lastly, our flight test campaign is advancing. Flight tests have continued, including ground effects, downwash measurements, and further high-speed testing up to 120 knots, which is about 222 km per hour. Our second demonstrator aircraft is ready to join the campaign in early 2023.
Let me now hand you over to Sébastien Borel, Senior Vice President, Commercial, for a more detailed update on our commercial achievements. Over to you, Séb .
Thank you, Klaus. Earlier this year, we have clearly outlined our commercial strategy with a two-phase approach. A first phase addressing the premium segment, including general and business aviation, and a second phase to address the scheduled regional services for the mass market. To support the first phase, Lilium launched a limited series to address sales to private individuals, the Lilium Pioneer Edition. This limited edition come with a compelling service, tailored support, training packages, as well as exclusive cabin customization. The Lilium Pioneer Edition is limited to a total of 50 aircraft, all of which we expect to sell by the end of 2023, all of them with pre-delivery payments of at least 50% of the purchase price prior to delivery.
As Klaus mentioned earlier, in conjunction with the launch of our Pioneer Edition, Lilium has received its first binding contract with pre-delivery payments from eVolare, a subsidiary of Volare Aviation, one of the U.K.'s largest helicopter and private jet operator. With its base in Oxford, eVolare provide applications around the U.K., including the Greater London area. This partnership includes a firm commitment for 10 Lilium Pioneer Edition Jets, including pre-delivery payments, with an option to purchase an additional 10. Best is to hear from Volare Aviation directly.
My name is Dustin Dryden. I am the founder and chairman of Volare Aviation. Volare chose to partner with Lilium after looking at several of the other manufacturers in this sector. We felt that having looked at the Lilium Jet, it offered the best combination of beautiful looks, incredibly clever design, a lovely cabin, and above all, total redundancy and safety. Volare customers are gonna love to use the Lilium Jet. They're gonna love to use it because it's environmentally sensitive, it has zero emissions, it has very low noise signature and has a beautiful cabin, and above all, it has so much redundancy that safety is better than anything that we currently produce or operate. From a sales perspective, the Lilium Jet presents incredible opportunities.
It is something that will be attractive to people that own helicopters, because it can do everything a helicopter can do, but in a quieter environment. It's gonna be attractive to people that like supercars, 'cause the design is beautiful, and it's gonna be attractive to people that have never used private aviation because it's green, it's environmentally friendly, and it's noise sensitive. This product is gonna open a completely new marketplace. It is a great industry disruptor, something that I've enjoyed doing throughout my career.
The teams working together in Germany and the UK have come up with an absolutely fabulous product that our customers are gonna love. It really is a solution to the future.
Going back to October, Lilium announced a MOU with Saudia with intent to purchase up to 100 Lilium Jets and to deploy a high-speed eVTOL network in the kingdom. We believe that this partnership is the first of its kind in the Middle East and totally aligns with Lilium's premium lounge positioning. As part of the partnership, Saudia will support Lilium with local regulatory approvals. These two agreements, Volaris and Saudia, bring the total order pipeline to 603 aircraft. Lilium will continue to convert further of its existing commercial MOUs into binding aircraft agreement, sales agreement in 2023. Lilium also views pre-delivery payments as an integral component of our future capital structure. With this, more from Geoff on our finances now. Over to you, Geoff.
Thank you, Séb . This November, we announced the successful closing of a $119 million capital raise from existing shareholders, new investors and strategic partners. Participants included Aciturri and Honeywell, as well as LGT and its affiliated impact investor, Lightrock, Tencent, and B. Riley Securities. Lilium CEO, Klaus Roewe, as well as three board members, Barry Engle, David Wallerstein, and Niklas Zennström, also participated in the capital raise. We are pleased to have such a high quality group of supporters in a challenging macro environment. These proceeds will strengthen our balance sheet and allow us to proceed with the assembly and testing of our type-conforming aircraft, as well as reaching final agreement with EASA on our Means of Compliance. As we progress on our development, we are in active discussions to secure additional non-dilutive funding sources to finance our operations until type certification of the Lilium Jet.
These include grants and subsidies from governmental authorities, as well as pre-delivery payments, as discussed earlier on this call. Additionally, we terminated the credit line of credit facility in November. Overall, Lilium received proceeds of approximately $12.6 million from the ELOC. Let's take a look now at the Q3 financial results. Our total cash spend was EUR 69 million in Q3. The increase in cash spend compared to the previous quarter of Q2, EUR 63 million, was driven by a ramp-up in one-time supplier payments, which included the e-motor development and battery in-industrialization of approximately EUR 7 million. This is in line with our target budget of EUR 250 million in 2022. Our liquidity as of the end of Q3 and prior to the recently completed investment round, stood at EUR 160 million.
At the end of Q2, it was EUR 229 million. Looking ahead, given the macro environment, inflationary effects and market uncertainties, we've initiated significant cost conservation measures at Lilium. We are currently finalizing our budget for 2023 and expect it to be consistent with our 2022 budget. I'll hand it over to Klaus for the latest program updates.
Yeah. Thanks, Geoff. As I mentioned before, our certification program is making significant progress. Since our last update, we have submitted to EASA several more of our proposed certification plans, bringing the percentage of requirements covered to about 80% at the end of November, up to 38% in September. Lilium's remaining certification plans are largely drafted and ready for submission. 72% of the Means of Compliance are already agreed with EASA, and for the remainder, Lilium submitted its proposals to EASA earlier this year. Detailed discussions with EASA over the past month have led to significant progress on the remaining Means of Compliance. Based on those discussions, we anticipate that EASA will accept our Means of Compliance in the H1 of next year. In parallel with the type certification program, Lilium is working towards Design Organisation Approval with EASA.
The DOA is a necessary prerequisite for any aerospace company to obtain a type certification of its aircraft. Lilium's third DOA audit is scheduled to take place next week, and the fourth and final audit is targeted for the H1 of 2023. On to our industrialization. With our first type-conforming aircraft due to go into assembly next year, our detailed design and collaboration with suppliers is accelerating. Strong partnership with tier one aerospace suppliers are fundamental to our path towards certification and industrialization. All the key subsystems of the aircraft need to meet the rigorous aerospace quality standards. Lilium has agreements in place for aerostructures, avionics, battery cells, energy management system, e-motors, propulsion system, aircraft interior, and landing gears, amongst others. In total, we have now selected or contracted about 75% of the total expected aircraft bill of material costs.
Right now, we are in the process of onboarding additional suppliers for the engine fans and the inceptors, the side sticks used for maneuvering the Lilium Jet. Turning now to our flight test activities. Our flight testing continues with a current focus on high-speed maneuvers, ground effect, and downwash measurements. Downwash measurements relate to the downward flow of the air from the aircraft are important to validate vertical operations. Let's have a quick look at some highlights since our last call in a little video. About demonstrating that the airplane can safely operate in certain phases, such as side wind during landing, ground effect, high-speed flight or failure phases. We also trained multiple pilots recently to fly the aircraft, so we can speed up our testing as we bring our second demonstrator into the test campaign.
We are now validating also our models and control software in these safety critical areas. We then use the validated models for certification of the production aircraft. For the moment, you will see us proceeding with high-speed flights up to 120 knots. In accomplishment of these latest milestones, the aircraft continue to perform precisely as predicted by our computer-aided flight models. The Phoenix 2 demonstrator enables us to verify in a real-world environment the flight physics underpinning our serious aircraft, the Lilium Jet, and supports our certification program. An additional demonstrator aircraft called Phoenix 3 is in the final stages of integration testing and due to enter flight testing in Q1 next year. Having two demonstrator aircraft at our disposal will give us additional support for testing and learnings before the first flight of our type-conforming production aircraft.
Let me please conclude with the following summary and outlook. We've made significant progress advancing our commercialization efforts in the Q3 with the signing of our first binding aircraft order, including pre-delivery deposits and a breakthrough in the Middle East with the Saudia MOU. Having successfully completed the latest fundraise, our teams are fully focused on achieving the development and certification of the Lilium Jet and building out our manufacturing and supply chain capabilities. We are confident we have the right technology and the right team to bring this transformational product to the market.
In 2023, we will be working full steam towards signing binding agreements with deposits, securing government loans and subsidies, starting assembly of our type-conforming aircraft, building and testing our first battery packs, further flight testing with both technology demonstrators, receiving the Design Organisation Approval, agreeing the full certification plan and Means of Compliance with the EASA, and last, preparing to meet first flight in 2024 of our type-conforming aircraft. Now let me hand you over again to Geoff, who will open the floor for your Q&A. Thank you. Geoff?
Thank you, Klaus. Now we have some time to take your questions. As a reminder to ask a question during the session, please press star 11 on your telephone. If you're watching the webcast in parallel, please mute the sound on your laptop while you're asking the questions. We will now begin the Q&A session.
Thank you very much. The first question comes from Colin Rusch from Oppenheimer. Please ask your question.
Thanks so much, guys. You know, moving from having LOIs into actual deposits with customers is a pretty important step, and I'm curious about the conversation with those customers. What's been the key levers? Are you looking at the subsystem testing? Is it around the redundancy that, like they mentioned in the video? How are you seeing folks evaluate the product and decide to get over the hump and start spending some actual cash here?
Séb, do you wanna take that, please?
Yeah, absolutely. You know, we've announced very early on this year our partnership with NetJets, we have engaged with a number of customers, you know, some of which we announced during Farnborough. It became very apparent that some of the unique features of our aircraft became a unique selling point. You know, we are the only one having a full wing and 30 engines. Yes, the redundancy and the safety aspect is absolutely a major component compared to conventional helicopters. As we progressed also through our own program in engineering and the confidence by which we can, you know, really provide everything you need to put into an agreement, which we know is, you know, performance related and warranties.
As we're also progressing with our supply chain, we are absolutely able to transform all of the work we've done this year with the first phase segment, which is really right now the general and business division segment, into a contract with deposits having binding, you know, terms on both ends. If that hopefully answers your question?
Okay. I'll take it offline and dig into it a little bit further. Geoff, you know, as you look at funding this business, obviously augmenting the balance sheet was an important step here. You know, could you talk a little bit about the key spend areas that you see over the next two years to really get ready for, you know, full commercialization and demonstration of the platform. As you look through some of these non-dilutive opportunities, obviously project finance is one element, and the customer deposits. You know, just trying to get a sense of the overall magnitude of the capital that you're looking for and where that would go, you know, from a business development perspective.
Yeah, great question, Colin. I think the headcount is stable so that we don't really need to add additional headcount. The main spend that we'll be looking to add is really related to ramping up the supplier base and moving towards assembling the type-conforming aircraft for the flight campaign, and then the working capital ultimately that we'll need to assemble the aircraft. So if you look at CapEx, you look at manufacturing, you look at green jobs, and you look at producing a product that customers want, that's why we're really focused on the subsidies and non-dilutive pieces from the pre-delivery payments that Sam and his team have been working on, to government loans and subsidies, and capital allows you to potentially add leverage as well.
The contracts are also quite important, Colin, as we look to that. Next year we're really trying to hold the budget consistent with what we did this year, with taking money out in the corporate, but also focusing a bit on ramping up the supplier base with non-recurring costs to get the supplier base going, Colin.
Great. Thanks so much, guys.
Thanks.
Thank you. We will take our next question. The next question comes from Alexander Potter from Piper Sandler. Please ask your question.
Great, thanks very much. Geoff, just to put a finer point on that, you mentioned you wanna keep the budget consistent. In 2022 it was a cash spend budget of EUR 250 million, and you're targeting the same number in 2023. Did I understand that correctly?
We're in the process of finalizing, Colin. Sorry, Alex, I guess I would say is we're looking at cost savings on the company, and we're looking at the supplier side so that that's a good assumption for now. The exact number, we'll give you guidance in our next call. We're kind of looking at cost savings versus the supplier side right now.
Okay. I see. Very good. All right, wanted to get an update on in-house battery testing. I believe that you're in the process of establishing maybe some of your own facilities to conduct those battery tests in-house. My understanding is that it takes a while to get things like that permitted in Germany. Just wondering how long it will take until those facilities are completed. Once they are, how is your battery testing going to change versus what you're currently doing with third-party labs?
Yeah, maybe I take it. Hi, Alex. Good to talk to you again. Klaus speaking. It's not that we have limitations here on in Germany to do those testings, not at all. We have our own test lab that we are using, by the way, since a couple of years, and we are using it to test out new battery recipes, but also cycling batteries. This is ongoing, and it takes long because you can run the battery about 8 times per day. If you would want to get into meaningful numbers of battery cycles, it always takes you months. We are doing it internally, but we are also using external labs like Energy Assurance, which is I think a renowned lab in the U.S.
You can see the results on our battery block, which confirms that we have the energy density but also the power density that we need for our missions. Secondly, we have also started external testing of our batteries with another laboratory, the Idaho National Laboratory, which is a very renowned laboratory also in the U.S., doing basically the same. We would want to have two independent sources of test-wise for sure. We are conducting our internal tests and also Ionblox, which you formerly know as Zenlabs for sure, and Zenlabs are also conducting tests.
Okay, great. Another question that I had, you mentioned that you've got your second test aircraft coming, Phoenix 3. How is Phoenix 3 going to differ from Phoenix 2 in terms of its capabilities? I'm just trying to understand if you're going to be able to do different kinds of tests with Phoenix 3, or is it more or less a carbon copy of Phoenix 2 and you're just gonna be able to do, I guess tests at twice as quickly now? Is it a different kind of capabilities that are coming with Phoenix 3?
Yeah, that's exactly the right view. Phoenix 2 and Phoenix 3 are really identical, and there was no need to change Phoenix 3 compared to Phoenix 2, because Phoenix 2 is already capable of basically performing all maneuvers that we would want to perform with such an aircraft, be it high speed testing, transition flights, downwash, ground effect. What you saw on the video, and Phoenix 3 is basically giving us additional capacity. We also have additional flight crews so that we can intensify the testing in 2023.
Okay, great. Maybe one last one, then I'll turn it on. I'll pass it on. You mentioned that you've got your third EASA audit coming up here next week. I'm interested in knowing the extent to which that upcoming audit is going to differ from the previous two, or the final one. Is there one out of these four audits that's more stringent or more difficult than any of the others? Are they all more or less the same in terms of hurdles that you're trying to clear? Just anything you can say about that upcoming audit would be, would be helpful.
Yeah. Thank you. That's a great question. They are building upon each other, and so, it's kind of continuous journey. The third audit will attest that we really have the capabilities to design an aircraft and the fourth audit, but you get the DOA only with a fourth and conclusive audit, is basically related more to things that you need to be able to do when you're in the service period. Content-wise, we are done to a large extent for the development part with the third audit. The fourth audit will be more for post-AIS activities, continuing airworthiness and so on. For sure, we'll be the conclusive one which enables us to be granted the final DOA from the EASA.
Okay. Very good. Good luck. Thanks.
Thanks. Thanks, Alex.
Thank you. We will take our next question. The next question comes from Bill Peterson from J.P. Morgan. Please ask your question.
Yeah. Hi. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. I'd like to follow up on batteries. Just to clarify, I might have missed it. Is the battery chemistry fixed, or I guess, are you still doing, you know, more process optimization? If so, what is the timing for fixing the process? I guess secondarily, the types of tests you're doing or whether internally or externally, what is the status of, I guess, re-performance, repeatability, you know, thermal characteristics, charging speed, you know, thermal runway, you know, cycle life, especially cycle life, what kind of levels are you able to achieve now?
Yeah. Also a great question. Thank you for that. Yes, I would say we are in the process of fine-tuning our battery recipe. We have confirmed internally but also externally, we have the energy density, which is essential for getting the range of the aircraft. There's a power density that we need to lift off and land the aircraft. We also have got confirmation that we get enough battery cycle life to enable our, I would say, extraordinary good cost position that we will have when flying the aircraft. We are doing these tests in a repeated way.
The test results are very consistent between our internal ones, between the ones of Energy Assurance, and with the Idaho National Lab, we are about 25% through the test program, which is going to be completed in early next year. From what we see from the first 25% of the test programs, they are absolutely coherent with what we have seen internally and also with the Energy Assurance lab.
Okay. Thanks for that color. Where did I get the latest thinking from Lilium on, I guess, its own network, the Lilium network? It seems like obviously you've done a lot, gotten a lot of pre-orders, 600 MOUs. Is this still, I guess, critical to the business? If so, like, what should we think in terms of timing? Will this be 2, 3 years after initial sales? Or how is the team thinking about this?
Yeah. It's certainly not off the table. We intend to pursue this, but our first intention, and all our energy is being put together today in getting our aircraft certified. For the first one to two years, for sure, we are largely serving the premium segment. We want to then honor our MOUs and agreements we have with more kind of general aviation type of customers like Saudia. Afterwards, difficult to give a timeline, but I would say not in the first three years. We also think about opening our own network. That's still the plan, but it has been really pushed behind the other two.
If I may add on this one, I think what's important to understand is that the premium, actually segment is helping us tremendously, as we are, you know, talking to authorities, as we are looking at the landing sites for all of those premium customers. It's actually helping us as well, paving the way for the network. It's definitely something we wanna do, but it's actually good to start with another segment which helps us developing it.
Okay. Thanks for that call. If I can speak one more in. One thing we haven't heard of recently is related to what Lilium is doing in terms of infrastructure development. You know, I think in the past, you've talked about Ferrovial. What are you doing with your commercial partners in terms of infrastructure? I guess, you know, you have a lot of agreements with private individuals. Will these use existing airports or heliports? Like, any specific infrastructure requirements for these applications?
Excellent question. Thank you. We are still actively working with our partners on the infrastructure. We're actually looking at, you know, a few others in different region of the world to accelerate. This exactly what we just discussed. If you look at Florida, I know there are places where we like to have a scheduled service with a higher network. You know, it takes some time to get some of the permitting, to get some of the, you know, land.
Agreement in place. We are actually working with them. However, as you just mentioned as well, for the private individuals, much easier. You're looking at private estates, you're looking at luxury resorts, golf clubs. We are actually in talks with many, many, I would say, you know, tourism industry and luxury industry players that have existing helipads where we can upgrade them into a vertiport, really with a charging station on top and looking at some of the ground side. It's much easier to go from a private general segment than it is to go from a commercial aviation segment. Yes, it's absolutely right. We'll work with them, without sharing their location with us, and we're working on it.
Thanks for that. Thanks for the color.
Thank you. We will take our next question. Next question comes from Adam Forsyth from Longspur Capital. Please ask your question.
Good morning. Just on the Pioneer Limited Edition, great to see that launched, obviously. In terms of sales going forward, are we likely to see these as single aircraft sales, or are we going to see something more similar to the Volare deal? You know, numbers of aircraft being filled through a kind of dealership type structure.
Good question. We're looking at both, to be honest with you. We do have direct sales discussion, and we have also reseller type of people that can look into aircraft and have it in a specific location. What's important for us is we have the right ecosystem around our end customer to make sure they have the maintenance, that they have people to fly the aircraft, et cetera, et cetera. You always have, you know, most of the time you always have someone helping us out with the end customer. We do have interest going directly to us.
Okay. Just as a slightly technical one. I just, you mentioned ground effect issues in terms of the testing that's been going on with Vectored Thrust, have been an issue around ground effect, and I wondered if it has any particular advantages in that area and within your design?
On the aircraft side, first of all, we have what's, you know, called a D-value, which is the diameter of the aircraft, really, of 14 meters. We can actually use most of what's called a TLOF. Most of the helipads in Europe have at least 14 meters of a diameter, we can use them now. We have to look at the ground effect and the downwash. There are ways for us to actually look, you know, from a trajectory perspective, to look at how we can accommodate this with each specific terrain. We're doing a lot of analysis right now on some of the, you know, vertiports or helipad upgrade to fit our aircraft.
It's something which we can manage, like I said, from a trajectory perspective, and that we're not too concerned about.
Great. Thanks very much.
Thank you.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you do wish to ask a question, please press star 1 and 1. The next question comes from the line of Cuesta Gavila from Barclays. Please ask your question.
Hey, afternoon, and thanks for taking my question. This first one is around the Means of Compliance and the band of H1. It's, you know, seems a little bit on the wide side not to make light of, you know, the significant challenge and uncertainty that's going on there. Just wondering, you know, what are the key drivers or levers that could cause it to go, you know, one side or the other as you're working with EASA on that?
It's basically the workload. As I said, we have submitted our proposals. They are at the EASA and we are discussing them. It's basically working through the pile of documents. I'm not foreseeing any technical, I would say, surprise or uncertainty. It's just getting the work done. As you can see, we have also progressed significantly on the certification plans. It's the two which we are working through for the moment. And we have decided together with the EASA to keep this pace. We are in permanent exchange with them and by the way, also with the FAA. It's just getting the work done and balancing out the completion of the MoCs and of the certification plans.
That's helpful. You know, looking at the flight demonstration, it seems like it's not designed as a range flight, but with the advent of Phoenix 3, can you just discuss, you know, what you've gone as far as range on the flight so far and what the plan is to convert to maybe a little bit more of range testing in 2023?
Yeah. We haven't done a lot of range testing and Phoenix, both Phoenixes are demonstrator aircraft. They don't have the batteries that we are using now on our test facilities, and we are going to use in Pegasus. We would not be able to take a one-hour flight with them. It's also technically it's kind of meaningless to do it because you don't learn anything by flying straight away. We are rather spending our time on making maneuvers like the ground effect, which as people from the vertical take-off and landing business know it's very delicate business. We could be flying some 15 to 20 minutes with this aircraft, given the batteries which are installed.
We may do it at one point in time, but we feel from a technical learning perspective, it gives us nothing, whilst what we are doing now, tuning our flight control laws, and the likes, what we have seen on the video for us is much more fruitful, so we have preferred to do this. We may do longer, and we may also do much faster flights, in next year when we have the second aircraft available, so that we have more capacity and bandwidth.
Helpful. For Geoff, you did disclose in your most recent filing that, you know, there's significant capital and, you know, appreciate the discussion on, you know, how you plan to fill it. I guess I'm wondering why you would choose to terminate the ELOC though, given that that was an option. You know, what the thinking was behind that?
Yeah. I think Given the size of this offering, we wanted to let the market settle and send a message that we weren't planning on utilizing that. That's one. We also found that an ELOC is something that you put in place before you're a seasoned issuer. Some of the mechanics were a bit suboptimal. We didn't get out of it as much as we could from a mechanical perspective, but we really wanna let the market settle, given the most recent deal is the main reason.
Great. Thanks much. Appreciate it.
Thank you. We will take our next question. The question comes from the line of from Raymond James. Please ask your question.
Thank you. Good afternoon. Can you talk a little bit about the PDPs, like how Pioneer Jets is just, you know, the at least 50%, the timing of those, like when you expect those to start flowing in or, how the agreements will be done?
Yeah. I mean, they are very much in line with industry standard, whereby we have, you know, the first deposit and then a schedule until delivery of the aircraft. You can imagine the kind of milestones we're gonna have in between, you know, the time of delivery and the first deposit. It's a spread, you know, PDP schedule, you know, based on some of the milestones. Like I said earlier, we're gonna be getting more than 50% of the aircraft purchase price prior to delivery.
Does that mean you're seeing some, kind of, PDPs coming in 2023, or is that more of a 2024?
There are definitely deposits coming in 2023. Correct.
Got it. I thought the kind of the first support and training package being included was interesting with the Pioneer Jet, and I was wondering if you could provide a little bit more color on, you know, how that's set up, you know, in terms of, you know, are you doing a lot of that in-house? Are gonna kind of partner with it, and just how you might have gone around kind of setting pricing around that given, I mean, all the uncertainties around training and things like that still?
Yeah. Absolutely. First of all, you know, the Pioneer Edition has a comprehensive service package to make sure that we can take care of everything A to Z type of solution, right? It's talking about maintenance, we're talking about flight training and so on. We do have like, I would say two different packages depending on the type of partner we're going to have. If they are certified for maintenance and flight operations, obviously they can do things on their own. Going back to flight training, we do have an agreement with Lufthansa Aviation Training, and we have an MOU with FlightSafety International.
I'm not able to comment more on this, but we do have partner working on the flight training side so we can provide trainings to the crew, but also to the mechanics and so on. It's really, you know, the Pioneer Edition comes with training package, tailored services, and maintenance services along with, you know, of course, cabin, you know, quite a bit exclusive cabin and customizations options.
That's helpful. If I might just ask a quick follow-up question. Geoff, can you talk about the cost savings that you're kind of looking to do? Could you describe a little bit more about kind of where that's coming from?
Yes. Cost savings for the company.
In
I think we reviewed all external spend, reviewed all necessary activities. I think a lot of it is really as the program has progressed, really defining what really needs to be happening and eliminating anything that isn't nice to have. It's spending a lot of time really sharpening the goals and reducing any kind of extraneous spend is the best way I could describe it.
Got it. All right. Thank you.
Thank you. At the moment, there are no more questions on the line. I give back to Geoff.
Okay. With that, I think we've come to the end of our Q3 2022 business update. Thank you once again for joining us. We look forward to speaking with you again next year. Everyone have a great break and a great start to the new year. Cheers.