Greetings, and welcome to Electrovaya's second quarter 2022 financial results and analyst conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Richard Halka, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Thank you. You may begin.
Thank you, Darryl. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on today's conference call to discuss Electrovaya's Q2 fiscal 2022 financial results. Today's call is being hosted by Dr. Sankar DasGupta, Chairman and CEO of Electrovaya, Dr. Raj S. DasGupta, Chief Operating Officer, and myself, Richard Halka, Executive Vice President and CFO. On May 10, 2022, Electrovaya issued a press release concerning its business highlights and financial results for the three- and six-month period ended March 31, 2022. If you'd like a copy of the release, you can access it on our website. If you wanna view our financial results, our financial statements, management discussion and analysis, and annual information form, you can access those documents on SEDAR website, www.sedar.com. As with previous calls, our comments today are subject to the normal provisions relating to forward-looking information.
We will provide information relating to our views regarding trends in our markets, including their size and potential for growth, and our competitive position in our target markets. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, such statements involve risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. Additional information about factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations and about material factors and assumptions applied in making forward-looking statements may be found in the company's press release announcing the Q2 fiscal 2022 results, and the most recent annual information form and management's discussion and analysis under risks and uncertainties, as well as in other public disclosure documents filed with Canadian securities regulatory authorities. Also, please note that all numbers discussed on this call are in US dollars unless otherwise noted.
Now I'd like to turn the call over to Sankar.
Thank you, Richard, and good morning, everyone. The momentum we were anticipating for fiscal year 2022 has started in spite of all the global supply chain issues we continuously hear about. Our March quarter was 47% higher than March 2021. Our purchase orders in hand are now over $25 million, which is over CAD 31 million. We are well on our way to substantial revenue growth over the next half of the year, doubling over last year's revenue and expecting the year to end with in the $21 million-$25 million range. Every week, orders from diverse customers keeps pouring in. Why? All of the company's five pillars are functioning in unison. The first pillar, technology. Our technology of the Infinity battery platform is globally relevant, highest safety, highest longevity without compromising energy or power.
Our technology is our advantage, which has made our OEM partner, largest in the world, sign the strategic supply agreement with us. The second pillar is producibility. We are powering over 3,000 vehicles today and have the capability in producing thousands of batteries. Producibility is not a risk anymore, although both COVID and supply chain continues to be challenges. Our third pillar, important to us, is the greenhouse gas reduction. Each of our electric vehicles work usually 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and on average, about 12-16 times longer than an electric passenger car, which means Electrovaya is eliminating greenhouse gases at a rate equivalent to about 50,000 electric cars every year. If I was the policy maker, I would give higher preference for climate change mitigation to these hardworking electric vehicles.
Our Infinity battery line has exceedingly good safety and longevity, and is the product going into electric forklifts and later into electric buses and other applications. We were an evangelist in climate change and delighted that finally the world is waking up. If they had woken up sooner, it would have been better for all of us and all other species. Better late than never. The fourth pillar, an important pillar, is the market. It's emerging. This calendar year, 2022, every week we are receiving purchase orders, and our purchase orders in hand exceed $25 million, and we are well on the way to doubling last year's revenue. As I mentioned earlier, we anticipate we'll come in at the $21 million-$25 million of revenue by the end of September 2022. The fourth important pillar is finance for growth.
We are delighted that our lender is generous enough and confident enough on Electrovaya that they have increased our line of credit by over 50% from CAD 7 million- CAD 11 million. This is critical oxygen for business growth and great for our shareholders that we did not have to dilute to an expensive equity raise. We are thankful to our finance partner. The fifth pillar of the company is our very dedicated people who are passionate in their fight for climate change mitigation. They came to work every day over the last two years of COVID, did not shirk, which could have easily done. They organized their work and premises carefully and scientifically such that to my knowledge, there was no workplace COVID transmission. Our battery cycle life and safety, our technology are critical differentiators for us.
They are game changers and fundamental to our current and future success. Our addressable market as it emerges is several $10 billions and the sophisticated, knowledgeable corporations, the Fortune 500 companies are allowing Electrovaya to take charge of their mission-critical operations. I'll now turn the call over to Richard to review our fiscal 2022 and second quarter results in greater detail. Richard?
Thank you, Sankar. Revenue for Q2 fiscal 2022 was $4.3 million or CAD 5.4 million, compared to $2.9 million or CAD 3.7 million in the fiscal second quarter, March 31, 2021, an increase of 47%. On a sequential basis, revenue in Q2 fiscal 2022 increased more than three-fold compared to $1.3 million or CAD 1.6 million in the fiscal first quarter. It is anticipated that sales will grow rapidly in the second half of fiscal 2022 as production is ramped up to meet existing demand. As Sankar has mentioned, purchase orders in-hand for delivery currently exceed $25 million or CAD 31.5 million.
As Sankar also mentioned, the impact of supply chain issues and inflationary pressures is evidenced in our gross margin for Q2 2022 of 25% compared to 32% for Q2 2021. The decrease was due to a number of factors, including inflationary pressures on material cost, increased shipping and logistics cost, and foreign exchange movements. The company has taken steps to reduce inflationary pressures, such as ordering key components necessary for 2022 deliveries, thus locking in current prices and avoiding further component price increases. An additional factor which contributed to lower margin in this quarter was due to sales which had been priced using 2021 prices and now delivered in the first quarter prior to price increases which occurred in 2022 to offset inflationary pressures. Our objective is to maintain gross margin in the range of 30%.
As Sankar mentioned, we recently amended our credit facility. The working capital facility was increased from CAD 11 million to CAD 14 million. The increase supports working capital requirements in order to accelerate production to meet current demands. The company believes the available liquidity, along with the collection of $3.9 million of accounts receivable, the conversion of $5.2 million of inventory into saleable finished goods, as well as receiving an additional $3.7 million of inventory, which is in process for which deposits have been paid in the prepaid expenses, is adequate working capital to support our anticipated growth. I would now like to turn our call over to Raj for concluding remarks.
Thank you, Richard. As Sankar and Richard mentioned, our immediate revenue is primarily being derived from what we term our Infinity platform. This platform is based on a set of Electrovaya's proprietary cell technologies, which provides increased safety and cycle life over comparable lithium-ion technologies. This makes this platform particularly suitable for hardworking electric vehicles such as electric material handling vehicles, electric buses, electric automated guided robots, long duration energy storage, among many other applications. These are all rapidly growing multi-billion-dollar markets. That said, as we are all aware, the electric passenger car market is rapidly transforming with battery-powered electric vehicles replacing the internal combustion engine. For this market, Electrovaya's strategy is to successfully enter through a technology leap. Specifically, Electrovaya is working on a solid-state battery, which could become a disruptive technology in this sector. Our efforts are progressing well and quickly.
We are filing key patents and building up our IP base. We are making hundreds of coin cells and now have scaled up to larger single-layer and multilayer pouch cells. We are seeing excellent cycle life and performance, and the cycle life trend is anticipating exceeding the needs for the electric passenger market, which targets about 800 cycles or more with 80% energy capacity retention. We anticipate exceeding that target. Our pouch cell cycling takes place without the need of pressurization, which is quite significant. Finally, we have started designing the production process for the Electrovaya solid-state battery technology. In conclusion, the remainder of fiscal year 2022 will be key for scaling of our production for our Infinity platform products, as well as key for developing our next-generation battery technologies.
Over this period, we expect our revenue to continue to grow sharply as we ramp production and deliveries. That concludes our remarks for this morning. Richard Halka and I will now be pleased to hold a question-and-answer session. Operator, please open the line for questions.
Thank you. We will now be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star key. One moment, please, while we call for your questions. Our first question has come through the line. It's Jeffrey Campbell with Alliance Global Partners. Please proceed with your questions.
Good morning. According to the press releases in January announcing the $6 million in orders through the OEM channel, these were to be completed by 3/31/2021, which obviously didn't happen. I was wondering, was this due to the production delays that were noted in yesterday's press release or something else? Secondly, what's the current status of these orders, meaning have they been completed and delivered yet?
These orders were for new distribution center sites. As we're all aware, construction schedules can change. One of those sites was not ready for delivery of our products. Essentially, it was mostly to do with that. At the same time, we did have some supply chain hiccups on our end.
Jeffrey, they didn't take it by March, but they're gonna take it?
They're gonna take it late, yeah.
No.
Okay. Let's ask that again. What's the current status of the orders, meaning have they been delivered yet? And if not, when do you anticipate them being delivered?
Their distribution center will be ready very shortly, and they will accept these orders. We'll deliver them at some point.
The overarching message here is that it's really been delays on the customer's side that has been the primary reason that the orders were not fulfilled in the time it was expected.
Jeffrey, we're doubling production and, I mean.
That's correct. Jeffrey, there's two distribution sites for that particular project, one of which was fully delivered, the other one was requested for us to hold back.
Got it. Okay. Regarding the supply chains challenges noted yesterday from a higher view, do you think these are more closely related to China's on-again, off-again manufacturing due to COVID, the war in Ukraine, maybe a combination of the two, something else?
You know, it's a global thing happening, and it's also related to shipping and so on. What we are seeing, Jeffrey, it's the challenges are getting less. We are feeling good about it.
Okay. Regarding the $25 million in the order book, what's your current timeline to monetize those orders? Meaning is this $25 million that might be completed by the end of the fiscal year? If so, that would seem like your guidance or vision is a little low. Or is this a 12-month rolling order book? Just to kind of get a sense of the timing here.
Sure. Jeffrey, it's moving well. It's moving well. You know, we are aiming to more than double our revenue this year. If some orders move from September to October, it does not really matter. We provide a very high quality product and the customers are really focused on receiving it. We don't see really any production challenges.
Jeff, that $25 million is, you know, it's within the 12-month period.
Okay, great. Thank you. Yeah, that's a help to all modelers out there.
Yes.
Turning to the outstanding performance of the Infinity forklift batteries and million-mile service projection, as I think you noted, this would seem to be ideal for heavy-duty transport such as buses. I was wondering, how is the current effort with this Infinity progressing and are you working on other relationships in that area?
Yes, Jeffrey, we're working on multiple relationships on the buses. Just today, the bus market, the electric bus market is a very small market compared to the materials handling market. The materials handling market, it's $10 billions. The bus market, I know the press likes it and people like it because they can see buses running around every day, but it's a very small market today. However, the market will grow quickly, we hope, Washington, D.C. and other places start opening up to the demand of the climate change various programs. Jeffrey, our feeling is, our technology should become the industry standard for any heavy-duty vehicles.
Okay, that since it's still a nascent effort, that suggests that the Infinity bus effort is not really yet competing with Raymond in the direct sales channel for materials. By the time you make more inroads in the bus market, do you believe that you'll have sufficient materials to be able to service both markets?
Yes. You know, we are planning to service both markets. We have separate engineering teams and we think this high voltage bus market is important to us, Jeffrey, because it also leads to these high voltage electric truck markets, and there's a number of high voltage applications coming up.
Okay, great. Finally, I didn't wanna ignore the exciting news on the solid-state battery front. Performance at room temperature with no external pressure seems like features that no current competitor can match. What's the timeline currently to finish constructing the patent portfolio to provide you the surety that you want and begin field testing the pouch configurations?
On the patent portfolio, we should have probably another six months for us to finish filing the key patents that we have on our roadmap. With regards to scaling this, our focus is our big efforts are being made on the pouch cells right now. We are slowly increasing the size of those pouch cells, making more, and characterizing them heavily.
in parallel, Jeffrey, we've also started the program for the manufacturing process. We are cautiously bullish on this program.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Shawn Severson with Water Tower. Please proceed with your questions.
Hey, good morning, gentlemen. My first question just is the economic sensitivity of electrification of the material handling market? I mean, I know this trend is in place and offers an ROI, and maybe this is a question better for your customers, but what do you think the economic impact on electrification, if any, you know, related to obviously the volatile global markets and things like that?
Sean, that is really the fundamental thing the customer always looks at. What is the economic value? What is the return on investment? Our partner, OEM, has in their website a calculator which measures ROI, and you can put different items and different numbers there. In the present calculator, it shows it depends, again, on how long you're running the batteries and so on. It shows matter of months, you know, four months, five months, six months is the ROI. This is so amazingly good that I think it's almost end of discussion on which technology and how does people get into this materials handling structure and strategy. The ROI for the electrified product is very high.
Even if there's an economic slowdown, this probably stays towards the high end of the priorities because of the ROI.
Yes. Sometimes previously we've noticed that when there's an economic slowdown, that is the time people are more focused on getting higher efficiencies. Actually, because we provide ROI, we may actually see a higher growth of people moving into higher efficient ways of handling electric material handling vehicles by using the Electrovaya battery. We might see a growth.
Thanks for that. And Richard, you know, talking about the return to, you know, gross margin in the low 30s%, can you walk through the components of that? I know you touched on a little bit already in your commentary, but you're getting from today back to that number in the low 30s%, and if you may break it out by some components would be very helpful.
We don't provide the specific detail of the components. What I would say is that bulk order that we get that is currently on the way, that's locked in our pricing for this year is very important. That will be one of the major factors. The other factor that impacted this quarter in particular, the second quarter, was because we had fixed the pricing on some of those orders in 2021. Excuse me. We've had price increases since in 2022, so that will be reflected in our current sales.
Got it. Thank you. My last question is regarding the solid-state batteries and your go-to-market strategy. If you look at this in a perfect world and you say, "Here's how we would like this to you know roll over the next you know 12-24 months to roll out," what would be the things that happen there in terms of partnerships? I know you mentioned you got your patent portfolio you're still working on, but and looking for manufacturing. Can you help me better understand that 12-24 months rollout, interest in partnerships, et cetera?
In, Shawn, we are in the process of perfecting our patent position, our IP, as well as the technology. We are less worried on the partnerships. We are presently connected to pretty much major Fortune 500 companies both from the automotive and other space. It's very important that we are completely buttoned down before we launch.
Okay.
We're not gonna go into specific partnerships.
Okay. If we're looking at milestones and catalysts, let's say over the next 12 to 18 months, these are gonna be more internal execution at Electrovaya on the platform in terms of technology and manufacturing. Along those lines particularly, what types of things would be able to be announced during this timeframe? I mean, what?
Yeah.
Milestones should we look for?
Sean, we are in, you know, strategic partners are already in touch with us, so we're not discounting partnerships at all. I mean, these things are going to run in parallel. We are careful that the technology is not over exposed till everything is buttoned down. That's really what it is. I think you should see our big focus on the producibility starting happening in the next couple of months. You should see larger production coming through, and you will see a fairly large multilayered pouch cells being produced and so on. You know, the other interesting thing, Sean, Electrovaya has the experience in manufacturability of lithium-ion batteries.
That is an important experience which very few people, both in Europe and North America, have. We think it's very important that as you design the product, in parallel you are also designing the manufacturability. A lot of times in solid-state batteries, people have designed in the lab products, and then they found that it was very difficult to produce it economically. This parallel drive of designing and developing the technology as well as developing the producibility is, to us, very important.
By that, I assume you mean that you can really leverage a lot of the existing skill sets and supply chain for lithium-ion, right? That are being translated in the SSD, which you're not-
Correct. Correct.
Having to reinvent the wheel here in terms of manufacturing, let's say.
Absolutely, which is why, you know, the progress is moving quickly.
Great. Thanks, gentlemen.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the call back over to Dr. Sankar Das Gupta for any closing comments.
Well, that concludes our call. Thank you for listening this morning, and we look forward to speaking to you again after we report our fiscal third quarter results. Have a wonderful day. Thank you.
This just concludes today's teleconference. We appreciate your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Enjoy the rest of your day.