Zapp Electric Vehicles Group Limited (ZAPPF)
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Investor Update

Feb 29, 2024

Mark Kobal
Head of Investor Relations, Zapp

Welcome everyone to Zapp's shareholder and analyst update call and webcast. We'll start with some prepared remarks from Swin and Dave, and then Jeremy and David will join for the Q&A portion of the presentation. During today's call, we will discuss our business outlook and make forward-looking statements. These comments are based on our estimates and expectations as of today. Actual results could vary materially due to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those described in our most recent filings with the SEC, which are also available on our website, ir.zappev.com. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Swin Chatsuwan, CEO of Zapp, for his opening remarks.

Swin Chatsuwan
CEO, Zapp

Thank you, Mark, and thank you to everyone for joining us on this call. A lot has happened ahead of our first year-end as a public company, and we've made more progress since then. I'd like to start with some recent developments first before recapping 2023 and then provide you with our outlook for the rest of 2024. We recently secured a standby equity commitment of up to $10 million. This will provide the capital for the start of production, or SOP, and for i300's commercial rollout in Europe. $10 million seems like a very small amount, but Zapp's asset-light business model centered around our flexible contract manufacturing agreement means we do not need hundreds of millions of dollars to rotate, unlike most other EV companies. I'll expand on that later. In December, we successfully completed all the vehicle tests required for EU homologation.

Once the production conformity audit part is complete, we expect to receive i300's European certification. After that, product will be delivered throughout the EU. Completion of the test is positive not just for our rollout in Europe, but also sets up our launch for key Asian markets. More on that in a bit also. Based on the funding available to us, we expect to start delivering bikes to our customers in the summer. Now let's double back to 2023. i300 won two more design awards. This brings our total to eight. We won the prestigious Red Dot in the motorcycle category, alongside Ferrari's new hybrid Purosangue, which was best of the best. i300 is now on display at the Red Dot Museum in Germany.

Zapp was also granted patents for two of i300's key differentiators: the weight and component-reducing exoskeleton that gives the i300 its distinctive appearance, and the interchangeable front fender. These features form a part of Zapp's design and brand DNA. In total, Zapp now has 16 IP registrations and patents granted around the world, and an additional 21 such applications appended. This is a significant amount of design and tech value added, both for a mobility startup and for a first single product. Market-wise, i300 also received its first peer review by the U.K.'s Electroheads. The video was watched over three million times within just seven days after upload. Commercially, we entered into a consumer financing partnership with Younited, a major European consumer finance company. Younited will provide a white-label link directly into our e-commerce stack. This will give our European customers instant credit offers on a one-stop-shop basis.

Zapp is now being closely watched. This state of readiness has now resulted in over 200 reseller inquiries worldwide. i300 represents a new category of electric two-wheeler, but at the corporate and business levels, we have also innovated. There are several things that differentiate us from other EV companies, both two and four-wheelers. First, Zapp was conceived from the beginning to scale as an asset-light business. Our contract manufacturing agreement is with a world-class, mature Tier 1 automotive partner based in Thailand. This dovetails with our receivable financing facility from the Export-Import Bank of Thailand, also known as EXIM. Both agreements were secured early in our development cycle. Our manufacturing contract has no minimums but can be scaled to hundreds of thousands of units quite quickly, without us having to invest in the CapEx for their fixed assets, which is unlike other EV companies.

At the OpEx level, the EXIM credit facility allows our contract manufacturing to scale in direct portion with purchase agreements which we receive from customers, again significantly reducing working capital needs. Next, on the retailing end of the business, we set out to correct persistent flaws in the existing two-wheeler purchase and ownership experiences. Our full-stack e-commerce platform creates a better one-stop-shop online user experience, or UX, within which we're able to incorporate upselling and brand extension opportunities. These include a high-graphics configurator that offers a comprehensive set of personalization and financing options. This not only benefits customers, but the upsell opportunity can increase the total value of each purchase, which can all be done directly on the stack. Our UX extends beyond the purchase experience. It also includes a premium drop-ship direct-to-customer, or DSDTC, delivery system.

Zapp-branded and fully equipped vans and trained technicians deliver bikes directly to our customers' locations. Afterwards, the UX extends into ownership. Inspections, servicing, repairs are all carried out in the same manner. We'll also be having offline point-of-sale locations in case potential customers want to see an i300 and configure their bikes in person. The first one was opened in Paris. The stack is also used on-site there by customers and staff and ensures a seamless and consistent UX. In today's market for consumer durables, winning the emotional connection via design is key to securing the value purchase decisions even before the UX can commence. i300's design awards and early feedback give us a high degree of confidence. The Z-shaped exoskeleton has the added benefit of giving the i300 and Zapp a design DNA from which brand DNA and ultimately equity value can be created.

The key benefits of i300's new form factor are that it combines the performance of a step-through, commonly known as a scooter, with the accessibility of a step-over, more commonly known as a motorcycle. It is therefore the most fit for purpose for its use case as a premium city bike. Observers such as Electroheads and others believe i300 will establish a new category of product. To this, Zapp has led on proprietary technologies, engineering, and production methodologies. These range from the low-component whole-vehicle architecture, the virtuous circle of reduced weight and reduced number of battery cells, curated component sourcing, and a focus on sustainability, including recycled and upcycled materials and simplified assembly processes. These all provide practical and functional customer benefits. For example, the ultra-lightweight battery packs, born from our proprietary Cell-to-Pack technology, do not require any dedicated charging infrastructure.

Our patents on exoskeleton improve accessibility, maneuverability, and agility from reduced weight and lower center of gravity. It also makes it possible for modular under-seat storage. i300 will be priced competitively to capture gasoline riders who are either upgrading from lower categories or moving across from larger motorcycles straight to an EV step-through. This has become the ubiquitous trend throughout Asia. Here you can see the value of our low-component architecture: Gen 2 sustainable materials, simplified assembly process, quality control, and contract manufacturing in action. With the drawdown of the $10 million standby equity commitment, which Dave will talk about in more detail later, we have the financial resources to start production and execute the commercial rollout of i300. We expect to commence delivery in Europe in summer. First bikes are designated for our marketing fleet and early customers.

On the right, you can see the i300 on display at our first boutique in Paris. We'll be moving to a high-footfall location in central Paris by the summer to coincide with our first deliveries. The retail and display concepts you see are also a source of differentiation in the two-wheeler space. They are intended to mirror our online look and feel and to provide that seamless UX. Our boutique will be supplemented by pop-ups inside department stores. They too will also carry the same brand identity. So what does all this mean for Zapp in 2024? Firstly, a reminder that our fiscal year ended September 30th, so summer deliveries would equate to the last fiscal quarter of 2024. We want our initial rollout to create a clear understanding of our brand, product, and price positionings.

After homologation in the EU and parts of Asia, we expect a significant ramp-up in deliveries over the following 15 months. In terms of efficiency, our contract manufacturing agreement, in conjunction with our proprietary four-station dolly assembly system, means we can roll out production very incrementally. This avoids the potential production line-based issues and the costs associated with stopping and restarting and overruns. Production can closely track demand and can eliminate finished goods inventory and associated costs. Layer onto this i300's low-component architecture, an i300 can come off the dolly system every 30 minutes. To illustrate its modularity, a single five-man dolly team in a three eight-hour shift using only 3,000 sq ft of space could complete a run of 50 units per day for an annualized run rate of 4,000 units. When production needs to expand, teams and their dollies can be added quickly and cheaply.

At the other end of the scale, we have a commitment of up to 200,000 sq ft of space from our contract manufacturer. This would equate to a potential production capacity of up to 300,000 units per year with no significant CapEx required from Zapp. EXIM receivable financing would scale up commensurately. Further, our portable battery solution is not dependent on dedicated charging infrastructure. This removes the key scale-limiting factor and significant cost, so we can focus solely on the sale of the vehicles themselves. First-summer deliveries will confirm the functionality of both our omnichannel e-commerce stack and our DSDTC model. We'll be taking these European experiences and go to market in Asia. In terms of numbers, initial deliveries will be dependent on several variables, including supplier lead times and shipping from Asia to Europe.

We aren't giving revenue guidance for fiscal 2024, as a portion of the first bikes are already booked out for testing and front-office use. For fiscal year 2025, however, which starts in October 2024, remember, we anticipate sales of around 5,000 units. We will be more focused to ensure that long-term value is created by the delivery of our brand and product position into the marketplace. Towards the end of 2025, production should ramp up further as we roll out across many more countries. We expect to finish the year at a significant run rate of 20,000 units for a revenue of around $170 million on an annualized basis. Also, keep in mind, as mentioned, these forecasts are much lower than the production capacity we have available to us, which is 200,000 units by 2025 and 300,000 units by 2026.

We would naturally ramp faster if demand for i300's innovative designs and technology are there. In summary, we believe we've taken a well-researched approach from day one, and now the start of production is a major tipping point for Zapp. The two-wheeler market is large and expected to grow. Zapp was conceived to maximize shareholder value from this global megatrend. The vote of confidence from Yorkville, with its $10 million standby equity commitment, provides a runway beyond start of production and paves the road for Zapp's launch, commercial rollout in multiple countries. We've also raised additional smaller proceeds from the sale of common shares priced at the market today in a separate private transaction. i300 is highly fit for purpose for its use case as a premium city bike. We believe Zapp can scale quickly to cater for rising demand in Europe and key Asian markets, including India.

These markets make up about half of all two-wheelers sold globally. For further perspective, our committed manufacturing capacity of 300,000 units by 2026 would only represent a share of 0.5% of the 60 million two-wheelers sold worldwide in 2022. With that, I'd like to hand the call over to Dave. Thank you.

Dave Sturgeon
CFO, Zapp

Thanks, Swin, and hello everyone. To start, I'll speak briefly about fiscal 2023, but as you can appreciate, the year was not indicative of what we expect our operating performance to be going forward. The net loss of $222 million in 2023 reflected primarily costs associated with the business combination that was completed in April, which totaled approximately $214 million. The company generated an operating loss of $7.8 million in 2023 compared to $3.6 million in 2022.

While both years included some pre-revenue production-related setup costs, the year-on-year increase was due primarily to additional staffing and other costs related to being a public company. There were also additional staff and marketing-related expenses as we prepared for commercial rollout. Much of the business combination charges were non-cash in nature, although there remain $18 million of unpaid liabilities. We agreed with many of the related suppliers to extend the due date for most of these, and given our current deliveries timeline, we will seek to amend the payment terms further and address those liabilities in a way that allows Zapp to execute on its business plan. As Swin has covered already, we are asset-light and don't need significant capital to scale.

That said, no one counted on the business combination last year generating negative net proceeds, and so even with the SEPA in place, we anticipate needing to raise limited additional capital to provide additional liquidity for commercial rollout beyond our initial target markets and to normalize our payables position. Turning to the top-line results, there was no revenue as we hadn't started production during the fiscal year, which brings me to the transaction we recently announced. We've secured a commitment from an affiliate of Yorkville Advisors to sell them up to $10 million worth of shares, and as Swin has said, we will use these proceeds to start production and the commercial rollout of i300 in Europe. Under the SEPA, we expect to receive an advance of $1.5 million. The first $500,000 is available now that we filed our annual report on Form 20-F.

The additional $1 million will be available to us once the related registration statement has been declared effective by the SEC. The additional commitment of up to $8.5 million provides the financial resources previously unavailable to us to initiate our supply chain and commence recurring production runs. We will have access to capital as and when it is needed, subject to certain limitations, while retaining sole discretion over the timing of such sales. Using these proceeds to start production also activates our existing receivables credit facility from EXIM, which meets our near-term needs for the financing of working capital. Taken together, we look forward to transitioning from a pre-revenue company in 2023 to an in-production company in 2024. As we look to begin generating revenue in fiscal 2024, there are a few more items worth bearing in mind.

Our contract manufacturing partner ships products all over the world and also handles shipping logistics for us, starting with the initial container deliveries by sea from Thailand to Europe. While shipping costs have declined significantly over the last few years, recent geopolitical events have contributed to a doubling in rates over the last several weeks on the route we will use. But even the present container costs work out to be less than $100 per vehicle or less than 2% of our landed cost. Also, while our arrangement with Summit minimizes our spending on capital expenditure, we do expect to make small investments in some additional tooling to take advantage of technical opportunities that have emerged in the last year, which are expected to reduce our overall unit costs. In 2023, Zapp implemented strategies to conserve cash, including delaying the launch of paid marketing activities while we were still pre-revenue.

Looking forward, we anticipate normalizing our payables position, and marketing and selling costs will increase as we allocate more resources to brand building to drive the rollout in Europe. We have also kept our footprint and headcount to an absolute minimum during our transition to a public company. However, as we become an in-production company and ramp up customer deliveries, we will need to invest in more people and corporate infrastructure, although our utilization of authorized resellers, franchised DSDTC, and contract manufacturing will keep this required investment very low compared to traditional two and four-wheeler companies. As Swin highlighted previously, our asset-light business model was designed for efficiency in the deployment of capital. We anticipate achieving an industry-leading double-digit gross margin from each i300 sold.

Putting this together, we believe Zapp is well positioned to achieve positive free cash flow in the near- term, as we don't have the significant requirements for capital expenditures or working capital seen elsewhere in the sector. The eventual expansion into Asian markets, including India, is expected to provide the volume that will allow the business to scale rapidly. I'll now turn the call back to Mark so that we can take your questions.

Mark Kobal
Head of Investor Relations, Zapp

Thank you, Dave. That concludes our prepared remarks for today, so we'll move to Q&A. Sharon, could you please prompt for questions?

Operator

Thank you. To ask a question, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. If you wish to ask a question via the webcast, please type it into the box and click submit. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. I'll now hand the call back to Mr. Kobal to moderate Q&A.

Mark Kobal
Head of Investor Relations, Zapp

Thank you. Our first question today is coming from Tate Sullivan from Maxim Group. Tate, please go ahead.

Tate Sullivan
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Maxim Group

Thank you, and thank you all for having an update call today. First, can you review your comments on potential unit sales in fiscal year 2025? I think you said that was 500,000 of units, but then can you couple that? What was the comment about $170 million of annualized revenue based on, please?

Swin Chatsuwan
CEO, Zapp

Hi, Tate. Swin here. Just to correct you, if I may, we are expecting in the first year 5,000 units and in the second year 20,000 units.

And those 20,000 units should equate to a basic vehicle sales revenues of $170 million.

Tate Sullivan
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Maxim Group

Great. Okay. Thank you. And then, Dave, when you mentioned normalizing payables, are most of the payables related to contract payables to Summit or supply chain? Can you just provide some details for that balance, please?

Dave Sturgeon
CFO, Zapp

Sure, Tate. Yeah. No, the payables that we need to normalize still relate to the SPAC expenses that are obviously the ones that we deferred by agreement. We don't have significant obligations to Summit or to anybody like that. That's all taken care of. So as we said in the 20-F, we'll be starting those discussions to amend and extend in the coming weeks.

Tate Sullivan
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Maxim Group

And the EXIM receivables financing, did you say you can start to use that when you get the orders in the door, start to ship? What is the exact timing on that? Yeah.

Dave Sturgeon
CFO, Zapp

It's the moment we actually start to take orders from customers. So once we're actually in production, that then kicks in. So we are funding the initial production run, which we've already done, and once that actually starts moving, EXIM, then the flywheel starts going.

Tate Sullivan
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Maxim Group

Okay. And did you mention a last step for the EU certification phase, and what is that specifically?

Swin Chatsuwan
CEO, Zapp

Thanks, Tate. There's two parts to the homologation process. The first part is to review the vehicle itself, and it's a lot more detailed than the U.S. one. Then the second part is to do an audit of Summit's factory. So the first part is the most important because it's actually physical testing of the vehicle, which is very rigorous and multi-pointed.

Then the second part is a paperwork process to make sure that all of our goods in, work instructions, engineering change systems, and goods out, and quality control are in place. But clearly, Summit is a 70-year-old company with a lot of experience in the automotive sector with clients right across the U.S. and Japan and are very well-versed at this. So we are in good hands with Summit, for sure.

Tate Sullivan
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Maxim Group

Okay. And is the last step then the audit of their factory?

Swin Chatsuwan
CEO, Zapp

Yes. We are on the last legs now, indeed.

Tate Sullivan
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Maxim Group

And then last for me, please, and thank you for taking my question, is you mentioned India a couple of times entering, but I think one of your previous press releases maybe said that Thailand could be a market to enter. Did I read that correctly, or is India the first?

Swin Chatsuwan
CEO, Zapp

You did. The world currently buys about 60 million motorcycles. 17 million of those are sold in India, but more so, 2.8 million of those are in our space, which we call the premium space. And they actually make up over 50% of the total sales revenues of motorcycles in India. So India is clearly the biggest country. But Southeast Asia, or as we call it, ASEAN, is also big, and that we really mean Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines. Together, they're not quite as big as India, but the depth of purchase is greater. So between those two regions, you've got not only a big but also a very fast-growing market. So absolutely, the opportunity for two-wheelers is really clear in those markets. Europe is stable, a big replacement market, so we're not forsaking that.

But we will be distributing ourselves between Europe, India, ASEAN, and the rest of the markets. We call them rest of the world, ROW, which will include Chile, Colombia, Brazil, Mexico, Taiwan. These are the next biggest ones.

Tate Sullivan
Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst, Maxim Group

Thank you very much.

Swin Chatsuwan
CEO, Zapp

Thank you.

Mark Kobal
Head of Investor Relations, Zapp

Thank you. Our next question is coming from Poe Fratt from Alliance Global Partners. Poe, please go ahead.

Poe Fratt
Equity Research Analyst, Alliance Global Partners

Yeah. Good afternoon. I had several questions, the first of which, Dave, I think you mentioned that on top of the Zapp raise of $550, that you raised additional capital in a private transaction. Could you just comment on that?

Dave Sturgeon
CFO, Zapp

Sure, Poe. Yeah. Yeah, no, that's right. We've raised a few hundred thousand dollars earlier this month at the market private equity transactions, and we continue to have discussions with people about potential similar issuances at the moment.

So that was a little under 1.9 million shares that we issued earlier this month.

Poe Fratt
Equity Research Analyst, Alliance Global Partners

Through the SEPA?

Dave Sturgeon
CFO, Zapp

No, no. This is in at-the-market private transactions. So the SEPA will be, so it's active now that we filed the 20-F on Monday. We'll be getting the initial advance shortly, we would expect. And then the next million comes out of that once the F-1 that we are preparing is declared effective by the SEC. So there's nothing from Yorkville yet, but that's all yet to come.

Poe Fratt
Equity Research Analyst, Alliance Global Partners

Yep. And then the roughly two million shares that were issued to Swin, was that a grant in January, or was that bringing some?

Dave Sturgeon
CFO, Zapp

Oh, no, no. Yeah. That was Swin exercising some options that he'd had from a long time ago. So that was actually Swin exercising vested options. It wasn't a new company.

Poe Fratt
Equity Research Analyst, Alliance Global Partners

Okay. And then if you could just review the total business combo costs, I mean, I'm getting to a $19 million number, and it looks like the majority of that is within accounts payable, but then there's $3.1 million that's in current debt. Is that correct?

Dave Sturgeon
CFO, Zapp

Yeah. No, that is right. Yes. So there's about $18 million that's within accounts payable. There are some debt-like items that are in current debt that we inherited on the merger, some promissory notes that were in the SPAC when we merged with it. So that's most of the 3.1 that you referenced.

Poe Fratt
Equity Research Analyst, Alliance Global Partners

Okay. And then just to clarify, when is that due? And is it due on the first anniversary of the business combo, or when is all that due?

Dave Sturgeon
CFO, Zapp

Yes. The terms that we had agreed to with the largest providers around the business combination extended that until just after the anniversary of the business combination. So that would be in a couple of months' time. But as we said, we are starting conversations to extend that in a mutually agreeable manner in the coming weeks because obviously, two months comes around quite quickly. So that's front of mind now, for sure.

Poe Fratt
Equity Research Analyst, Alliance Global Partners

Yeah. Agreed. And then just the EXIM receivable financing, as I recall, that's 80% of your BOM or your production costs?

Dave Sturgeon
CFO, Zapp

Yeah. No, that's right. So essentially, it's a revolving facility that, as we said, you come with customer orders. Therefore, EXIM will pre-finance 80% of the value of each individual order.

And then obviously, before we ship the bike or before we actually deliver the bike to the customer, we actually get cash in, which then cycles back through to EXIM to repay the advance that they've made to Summit, and the flywheel continues to turn. And that is the mechanics of that, and that scales as we grow. Obviously, it's the purpose of EXIM to encourage local manufacturers. And so it's in their interest to keep that going as we grow and grow.

Poe Fratt
Equity Research Analyst, Alliance Global Partners

And then if I look at the just to clarify the numbers, I understand the 2025 exit rate of production capacity available at the end of 2025 of 20,000 units, $170 million annualized. The 2024 number, is that a 5,000 units run rate at the end of either calendar or fiscal 2024? And then would you be able to apply the same ASP so that it would be an annualized run rate of revenues of about $43 million? Is that?

Swin Chatsuwan
CEO, Zapp

Hi, Poe. Not quite. We are deliberately trying to start slowly just to make sure everything works: goods in, goods out, shipping, logistics, clearing customs, and all of that. And we've only just received the funding, and as Dave said, we're in process on selling a few more shares at these prices. So we're looking to get the system ready. And David, our Chief Commercial Officer, who's here with us today also, also needs some lead time to execute some of the relationships and some of the points of sales that we need to give us that customer-facing channel to bring in the orders. So we're looking to get to answer your question, rather, in a roundabout way.

We're looking to get to a monthly revenue equivalent to about 1,500-2,000 bikes a month towards the end of the last quarter of 2025. So 2026, we're going to see it continue to grow. But in the last quarter of 2024 and a big chunk of 2025, the volumes will still be in the hundreds per month as we sort of self-check everything and make sure that everything works properly.

Poe Fratt
Equity Research Analyst, Alliance Global Partners

Great. Okay. So really, it's the production okay. That's helpful. The real revenue ramp would be then 2025. And that leads me to the next question, Dave, on what's your current cost structure look like? I know that you haven't reported the December quarter, but can you give me an idea of what your either monthly or quarterly burn rate is right now?

Dave Sturgeon
CFO, Zapp

Yeah. Well, obviously, we're still pre-revenue, pre-production, pre-market launch.

So we're very slim at the moment. I think we said we incurred an operating loss, which is up to all operating costs, $7.8 million for last year. And that includes costs of being a public company. So our monthly run rate in cash terms is going to be sort of 500-ish a month. Dollars at the stage we are in at the moment. And that will increase when we actually start to incur marketing and selling and more public company costs. So you'd be going nearer towards a million a month once you factor all that sort of stuff in.

But I think what I would draw back to is we said our expectation once we start shipping bikes and from the beginning, when we start shipping bikes, is we're looking to expect margins we said double digits, but actually margins towards the high teens on an incremental basis almost from day one based on the selling prices that we're going to be targeting and the current BOM that we have. And the BOM obviously only goes down as the volumes increase because you get economies of scale and better purchasing power. So we can expect double-digit margins on a gross level pretty much from day one.

Swin Chatsuwan
CEO, Zapp

Dave, if I might give Poe a little bit of perspective on our economy, if Dave is correct and our run rate increases to our burn rate increases to $1 million a month, based on the gross margins we're expecting, we would only need to sell a few hundred bikes. The gross margins of those sales would take care of that burn rate quite quickly. So we're not a company that needs serious sales numbers, serious utilization achievements to get past that burn rate at the OpEx level.

Poe Fratt
Equity Research Analyst, Alliance Global Partners

Okay. And did I hear correctly that your landed costs your shipping costs would be about $100 per vehicle or per motorcycle or two-wheeler, and that that would be about 2%? So your landed vehicle or your landed costs would be in the $5,000 range?

Swin Chatsuwan
CEO, Zapp

Sorry, Poe. Let me just start over.

One of our sustainability commitments is reducing our shipping overheads. We've actually created proprietary technologies there as well. We're able to pack 48 bikes into a 40-foot container. Therefore, including the metal frames that are used to rack up four bikes per set times 12 sets equals one container, works out at less than $100. Yeah, it's less than 2% depending how you calculate it. The landed cost should be, yes, in the $5,000-ish range. I'm putting words in your mouth here, and you know what our retail price is. Take 20% sales tax in Europe away from that, 10% import duty, and you can see that right from bike number one, we're into positive margins. Clearly, we won't be cash flow positive immediately. Of course not. At least we're gross margin positive immediately.

Poe Fratt
Equity Research Analyst, Alliance Global Partners

That's very helpful, Swin.

And then, Dave, I sent you an email, but you kept on—did you refer to a presentation that you were following? If so, would you please send that out?

Dave Sturgeon
CFO, Zapp

Yeah. There's an earnings call deck that the webcasts can see. So we will get that circulated, yes.

Poe Fratt
Equity Research Analyst, Alliance Global Partners

Yeah. I'm sorry. I didn't see that because I'm not on the webcast. Okay. Great. Thank you so much. Congratulations on getting the funding.

Dave Sturgeon
CFO, Zapp

Thanks, Poe.

Swin Chatsuwan
CEO, Zapp

Thanks, Poe.

Mark Kobal
Head of Investor Relations, Zapp

Our next question is coming from Pavel Molchanov from Raymond James. Pavel, please go ahead.

Pavel Molchanov
Equity Research Analyst, Raymond James

Yeah. Thanks for taking the question. I think it was last September you guys announced the equity financing deal in the European market. One thing we've been hearing more and more about Europe is a flood of cheap Chinese EVs, mostly that refers to passenger cars. But I'm curious if the same sort of competitive pressure is coming in the motorcycle segment as well.

Swin Chatsuwan
CEO, Zapp

Thanks, Pavel. It isn't. And I think if I didn't read it wrong, the European Union is now trying to implement some kind of upstream tariff system where it wants to see the provenance of battery cells that are in cars. That has not applied to motorcycles yet. Actually, electric two-wheelers, particularly scooters or step-throughs, as I define it, as the industry defines it, they arrived before we did. But they were cheap and commensurately not that great quality or performance, and they retrenched. And what's happened in Europe now is very exciting for us in that to give you some context there, BMW launched a pretty top-of-the-range commuter product, and it sells for about EUR 14,000, which is very close to the price they sell their top-of-the-range gasoline superbikes.

Yet, it proved to be a bestseller. They sold over 2,400 of those in 2022 just in France. Now, you've got to remember that i300 is no slower, has bigger storage, much more maneuverable. We think it's a great product, but we're going into the market at EUR 8,000-something . So we're going to be nearly 50% cheaper than them for the same kind of product. Right now, 50% of the value, for example, in France is that one product. And 75% of the value of the two-wheeler electric in France is just two products: CE04 BMW and SEAT, which is part of the Volkswagen Group. They have a little thing called Mó, which is the same price as ours. So yeah, the market is still there to be had very much. COVID kind of put paid to a lot of the two-wheeler companies.

So the really industrial companies today are SEAT, and they acquired a company like ours, and BMW. And the Chinese have gone away because the Europeans, as I mentioned, won't buy the sort of baseline, what we call standard segment products, which cost between EUR 2,000 and EUR 4,500. It's too basic for them.

Pavel Molchanov
Equity Research Analyst, Raymond James

Okay. Interesting.

Swin Chatsuwan
CEO, Zapp

Welcome.

Pavel Molchanov
Equity Research Analyst, Raymond James

One other thing we have been watching is the kind of meltdown in the cost of lithium-ion batteries, I mean, even compared to a year ago, to say nothing of pre-COVID. And for the price point that you are sort of aiming for, are you seeing potential savings compared to maybe the economics that you had been kind of originally envisioning in your cost of goods?

Swin Chatsuwan
CEO, Zapp

You'll be surprised when I tell you not so much, but we designed that in.

Our council may not want me to say that, but I personally claim that we use the least number of battery cells per vehicle and per mile traveled. I can't prove that. Suffice to say that we use very few battery cells, and the battery packs, which are Cell-to-Pack, are unique and therefore represent less than 10% of the value of our BOM. Therefore, the battery cells themselves are less than half that. Actually, we're both cell-agnostic and not at all sensitive to the value or the price, rather, of lithium-ion battery cells.

Pavel Molchanov
Equity Research Analyst, Raymond James

Got it. Perfect. That's it for me. Thank you.

Mark Kobal
Head of Investor Relations, Zapp

Okay. Thank you. It looks like we have no further questions. So thank you, everyone, for joining us today. Please remember, you can keep up to date and follow Zapp's progress through the investor portal on our website, zappev.com.

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