Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Good afternoon and welcome to the Beam Global Town Hall Q&A style conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing star key followed by zero. Participants on this call are advised that audio of this conference call is being broadcast live over the internet and is also being recorded for playback purposes. A webcast replay of the call will be available approximately one hour after the end of the call through February 15, 2024. I would now like to turn the call over to Scott Gordon of CORE IR, the company's investor relations firm. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining today's conference call. Joining me from Beam Global's leadership team are Desmond Wheatley, Chief Executive Officer, and Lisa Potok, Chief Financial Officer. This call will be conducted much like a fireside chat that you might find at an investor conference with a moderated Q&A session with management. There will be limited opening remarks and then just a brief set of closing remarks at the end of the hour. In the announcing of and promotion of this event, we ask for questions in advance, and we are very glad to say that there were roughly more than a dozen investors who had questions and many more who submitted their questions and thoughts, and we're thankful to you for submitting them, and we're going to respond to them anonymously to protect your identities.
I would like to say that in responding to questions, management may be making forward-looking statements, including statements that address Beam Global's expectations for future performance or operational results. Forward-looking statements involve risks and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those statements. For more information about these risks, please refer to the risk factors described in Beam Global's most recently filed periodic reports on Form 10-K and Form 10-Q, particularly the cautionary statements in them. The content of this call contains time-sensitive information that is accurate only as of today, February 15, 2024. Except as required by law, Beam Global disclaims any obligation to publicly update or revise any information to reflect events or circumstances that occur after this call. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Desmond Wheatley. Desmond, please go ahead.
Well, Scott, thank you very much for that introduction, and thank you to all of you who have tuned in today to listen to this call and also to those of you, particularly, who have sent in your questions over the last couple of weeks. We had an awful lot of them, actually, and probably more than we can get to today, but what we've tried to do is distill them down, make sure that we hit everybody's answers. So even if you don't hear your precise question being asked, I'm hopeful that the combination of answers will get you where you were going. I'm very proud of Beam Global. I've never made a secret of that. I'm very proud of the team.
The Beam Team has generated tremendous growth over the last year, brought new products to market, won new patents, improved our profitability quarter-over-quarter, gross profitability quarter-over-quarter, even in the face of inflation, held our operating costs steady so that as a percentage of our revenues, they've come down quarter-over-quarter, and really continued what's been a multi-year trend for us, which is just growth, a lot of fiscal discipline, and creating what I think is a very, very exciting present and future for the company. We remain debt-free.
We're well capitalized, and we have a very, very disciplined cap table with a, I think, more or less uniquely low number of shares outstanding and low float within the market, which is to some extent a good news, bad news thing, and I'll touch a little bit later on that in answering some of the questions. But a lot of discipline remains within the company. As I've said many times before, if it doesn't make the product, makes the product better, or sell the product, we don't invest in it. That remains as true today as it has done throughout our history. I'm also aware that people who have been invested in microcaps have had a rough couple of years. microcaps, in general, are at 10-year lows, in fact, on a 22-year low cycle right now.
The whole market's been very tough for anybody in the microcap space, and I know that makes it tough when you've got money in it. I do too. You're not alone. I do too. I do have faith in the markets, though. I'm in New York City. I've spent the entire week here meeting with investors and bankers. In fact, this morning, I met with probably one of the most experienced bankers on Wall Street. He made a couple of really interesting comments, talked about the fact that there's somewhere between $5 trillion and $6.5 trillion in money markets right now because just a couple of months ago, you could get 5.4%, essentially zero risk in money markets. Hard to get people to invest in microcaps under those circumstances, but that seems to be changing. There's light at the end of the tunnel.
Nobody wants to call the bottom, and nobody wants to put a date on it, but it certainly looks like we're nearing the end of this cycle. If you look at previous cycles, and I'm a believer in history repeating itself, what tends to happen is just as what goes up comes down, so what comes down goes up. The last piece of advice that this chap gave me this morning was what I hear from institutional investors all the time: keep doing what you're doing. You're executing. You're growing. You have cost discipline. The markets will turn around, and when they do, they will reward people who have executed, who have survived, and who have thrived under those conditions. That's definitely Beam Global. But I'm not insensitive to the condition, and I recognize how tough that is for everybody.
And that's a big part of the reason I wanted to do this Q&A because I want to make sure that we dislocate the doubts and the fears and the rumors and everything from the facts. So we're going to go through and answer some questions, and I'm going to give you facts in response to those questions coming up. So with that, I'm not going to talk anymore because I'm not here to make a presentation. I'm here to answer your questions. I'm going to go back to you now, Scott, and hit it. And just so that everybody's clear, we have not sanitized this. I'm answering the good, the bad, and the ugly, and I'm not going to shy away from anything, and I'll give you my most honest response to it, whether you like it or not. So with that, back to you, Scott.
Thank you so much, Desmond. Our first question: when will Beam have a positive EPS, and when will the EV ARC be sold in Europe?
Okay. So there's another old Wall Street saying, which is, "Give a day or a time, but never give both." So as far as positive EPS is concerned, needless to say, that is our main goal in life. What I can tell you is what we're doing towards that. You can see this in our filings. We're improving our gross profitability while we're holding our overhead costs stable. At some point, that gross profitability is sufficient to pay for our overhead costs, and that translates to EPS. I am very happy and proud of what the team's done in terms of engineering cost reductions into the product. I'm happy with what the sales team has done in terms of the tremendous growth in sales over 300% or around 300% last year, and we are on a trajectory towards EPS. I'm an old-fashioned person. I actually believe in EPS.
The other thing for you to be aware of where EPS is concerned is because we have such a fantastically small float, about 14 million shares outstanding as compared to any of our peers who are five, six, sometimes some of them 10 times more shares than that. What that means is that the earnings that we do get will be divided into a smaller number of shares, and as a result, we will be rewarded from an EPS point of view. So we're moving in the right direction, and it's very much on the visible horizon, and we're going to keep executing on that.
As far as when the EV ARC will be sold in Europe, as you will all know, I think I made what I consider to be one of the best, well, in fact, actually the best acquisition I've ever made, and I've made a few of them towards the end of last year, getting us into Europe, the largest market in the world for our products by far. And I have a very aggressive and very capable team over there. And again, I can't get into specifics, and I'm not going to give you a date, but I am going to commit to the fact that you will see sales in Europe sooner than later and that those sales that we make in Europe are going to beat the socks off how long it took us to get to any kind of scale in the United States.
I'm very confident about that too.
Very well. Thank you, Desmond. Our next question is a multi-part question, and I'm going to take each part individually so as not to completely overwhelm. What, if any, effects are we likely to see with Beam Global's business if it's true, as the media is reporting, headlines such as, and I'll give you the first one, Hertz announced plans to unload 20,000 EV cars from their current fleet and scrap 65,000 EV orders from Polestar?
Yeah. I mean, obviously, that's not the kind of headline that we enjoy hearing. I don't like hearing that from a business point of view or just from a general direction point of view. But I do think it's worth looking under the hood a little bit on Hertz's announcements. The first question you got to ask yourself is, is that an indication to people that consumers don't want electric vehicles? I don't think so. In fact, I think this is more to do with the fact that Tesla are expensive to repair, particularly where bodywork is concerned. And as we all used to joke, I mean, a rental car is the ultimate off-road vehicle if you're the renter, so they get a lot of bodywork damage. And I think it was probably very expensive for Hertz to keep up with repairing them.
Also, lack of charging infrastructure meant that lots of Tesla and other electric vehicles coming back to rental lots on flatbeds because there's nowhere to charge them. That's what we're in the business to fix, folks. So we can read this as a doomsday thing. I don't think it's that at all. Consumer sentiment's still very positive about electric vehicles, or we can just recognize that this is early in the industry. There is not enough infrastructure. It's going to be a long time before there will be. I view that as an opportunity, and it's an opportunity that we're going to capitalize on.
Thank you. Same part of that question: what, if any, effects are we likely to see with Beam Global's business if it's true, as the media reports, that OEMs are cutting back on manufacturing EV lines?
Yeah. So again, this is just typical, not very helpful media stuff here. It's important to point out that EV sales are still growing year-over-year. They're not in decline. They're just not growing as quickly and not accelerating as fast as they were before. I've always anticipated this, and you will have heard me, those of you who've listened to previous calls, talking about lumpiness in order cadence and just lumpiness in adoption in general. However, I do not think that there's any indication that the long-term trend is moving us away from electric vehicles. Quite the opposite. It is still true that Europe has banned the sale of all but zero-emission vehicles in 11 years from now in 2035. American car companies will not be able to make internal combustion engine vehicles for North America and EVs for Europe, not profitably.
But beyond that, consumers will demand them, and there is still an awful lot of demand for EVs. The two things that consumers are upset about or cite being worried about is, number one, that EVs are too expensive. The media's not helpful here either because they keep reporting that average price of an electric vehicle is higher than an internal combustion engine vehicle, but not for comparably equipped. They aren't. They're already on par. From a total cost of ownership point of view, they're already cheaper. I think that will be overcome. Then the other one that consumers cite is lack of infrastructure. Again, that's the business we're in. I believe infrastructure will be playing catch-up for the next couple of decades because it's easier to put people in cars than it is to put chargers in the ground.
What that means is that even though we will see lumpiness in EV adoption right now, we've probably gone through the really enthusiastic early adopter, and now we're moving into kind of mainstream. We'll see lumpiness in that. But because infrastructure is always playing catch-up, I think we'll see less lumpiness in the infrastructure side of the business, and that's what we're in. I can tell you right now, none of our customers or our prospects are saying to us, "Hey, we're not going to be installing EV charging infrastructure because we think that the OEMs are slowing down production of electric vehicles." Not hearing that at all.
Well, and interesting you talk about that relative to what we're hearing with companies like Tesla. Battery performance is, in general, not doing well in cold geographies. Given your position with the acquisition on the battery side, how do you see if true, what does that imply?
Yeah. There is truth in it. Batteries don't perform as well when they're very cold. In extreme cold temperatures, they perform quite poorly. Again, everybody's got to remember this is the beginning of this industry. The batteries that have been developed to date have been developed for more mainstream use. They haven't been developed for edge cases. This is always the same with any technology adoption. What I believe you will see as the science and technology improves, and it is improving, is that those edge cases will be dealt with in good time. Again, not cause to suspect that EVs will not dominate because I'm certain they will.
Yeah. No, that's a great point. Again, in the context of your business, with EV price points being perceived as still too high for mainstream consumers, what do you think that trend is? What are the implications for your business?
Look, 47% of a typical OEM's workforce makes engines, gearboxes, driveshafts, and differentials. Electric vehicles have none of those things. The price of batteries is coming down, and the price of all the other components is going to come down too. And so at the end of the day, electric vehicles will not just be a little bit cheaper than ICEs. They'll be a lot cheaper than them and a hell of a lot cheaper to operate. So I think this is just it's fun to write headlines about, but it doesn't in any way impact the inevitability of the coming of the EV revolution. As I said earlier, for comparably equipped EV, already costs about the same, in some cases even less, than a comparably equipped ICE.
Unfortunately, we're always talking about average costs of vehicles, and that's not very helpful because there are a lot of much less expensive internal combustion engine cars out there than EVs at the moment, but that will change. So again, from a macro trend point of view, not concerned.
Yeah. Finally, on this part, government timeline mandates for EV adoption may come under pressure. How does that factor into your thinking and into your business perspective?
Yeah. Same thing. I think we're going to see I think we'll see, depending on which administration is in power, we're going to see more or less interest and more or less commitment. But the inevitability of it's here. And one of the big reasons that we're moving into Europe, frankly, is because there's less of that there. It's not to say it doesn't exist, but there's less of that there. The certainties around the laws of shifting to zero-emission vehicles are more stringent than they are here. And so I'm doing a lot a big part of what I view my job as right now is to diversify our revenue streams and mean that if we see a decline in U.S. market and I don't believe we will, by the way, but were we to, we're going to fill it with Europe.
In fact, I think we're going to continue to see growth in both spaces. It doesn't matter what administration's in. But yeah, you're going to see accelerating and decelerating, but I don't think you're going to see a move away from the growth trend.
Switching gears a touch and now kind of focusing more into DC fast charging speeds, can you discuss how the industry-wide adoption of Tesla's NACS charging port will impact Beam and how quickly can Beam and the EV ARC EV Standard systems adapt to users' growing expectation of DC fast charging speeds, abundant power reserves like they would get from a Tesla Supercharger?
Yeah. Well, first of all, let's not conflate the adoption of NACS, which, by the way, hasn't fully happened yet. But let's see, even if it does, let's not conflate that with fast charging. It's just a connector. It's capable of doing both things. I still believe that the majority of charging will actually be the medium-speed, Level 2 charging because it's just the most convenient by far. The only people who really want to see a lot of fast charging are people who don't own EVs and want a gas station experience or people who have just bought an EV and want a gas station experience. Anybody that's owned one for several months, if they have available slower charging, that's all they use.
Ask any Tesla driver how often he uses a Supercharger network, and most of them will tell you only when they go on long trips, even though it's magnificent. So let's not conflate those two things. I think this is a good thing. I think that connector's good. It's probably superior to the J1772 that the rest of the industry has been using up till now. But it's not going to have any impact on the requirement for charging infrastructure. Remember, we don't make chargers. We make infrastructure that makes chargers work. And I deliberately positioned our company in that way 10 years ago because I knew that there would be changes in the appliances and the connections, but everyone would need a mounting asset and a source of electricity. And that's what our products supply. We're agnostic as to the charger, the connector, or the service provider behind it.
Thank you. Next question. It seems to me that there should be ARC units in every parking lot in the world, and every small and large government should have at least several of these units for emergency purposes. This would mean tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of units, if not millions of these units in place. Is this level of demand realistic? And what is the number of units deployed that, if reached within the next five to 10 years, would mean you accomplish your objective?
Well, so first of all, I agree with the first premise. There ought to be in every bloody parking lot in the world. You're right about that. Look, the United States is going to need about 60 million plugs, Europe, 80 million, and across the world, over 400 million over the next few decades. What we're going to do is do everything that we can to get as large a piece of that as possible. We have lots of things going for us. We're faster deployed. We're more scalable. We're less disruptive. We don't rely on the grid, which lacks capacity. We're immune to blackouts and brownouts, and we're lower total cost of ownership. That doesn't mean that we're going to win all of these plugs, but it means that we're going to get a lot of it, I believe.
And then beyond that, we have been working hard with the U.S. government to recognize the vulnerability of the grid and blackouts and brownouts and how much more juicy a target it will become when electricity is fuel. And we're really starting to hear now people in D.C. talking about as much as 25% of all charging infrastructure being off-grid, locally generated, locally stored electricity. That doesn't mean we get all of it, but we're definitely got first mover advantage where this is concerned. We invented this space, and so we intend to take as much of it as we possibly can.
Excellent. Thank you. If this level of demand is realistic, how would you scale production financially and from a production point of view?
Growth's good. What we've seen is that the markets are prepared to finance our growth. We will continue to be incredibly disciplined with money and equity, as we always have been throughout our years. That's why we have no debt, and that's why we have such a low number of shares outstanding. I'm not afraid to use the financial markets to get the money that we need to expand. We have a $100 million line of credit already with OCI Group out of London, but I can tell you they're much more interested in doing $ billions' worth of business with us. We'll get it done.
And then follow up, if this scale is feasible from a market demand standpoint, how would you protect the company from competitive threats from a large-cap manufacturer such as a Tesla or other major equipment manufacturer?
Well, one of the questions I got asked a lot in Wall Street is what competitors am I afraid of? And my response to that, actually, is I'm afraid of a lack of competition. Nobody is going to be able to do this all on their own. And the biggest threat to the industry is that not enough people get engaged because there's just so much infrastructure that's going to have to be deployed. There's $6 trillion, according to Goldman Sachs, worth of infrastructure over the next few years to get deployed. And then from a point of view of just people trying to get us out of the way, we do have a good patent portfolio. We will defend it. We've continued to get patents. We don't rely on them, but we will defend it. And it's actually difficult to do what we do.
We've been doing it for a long time, and we're really good at it. I think if I'm Tesla or anybody else like that, I'd probably try and buy us before I tried to just steal our stuff.
Well, and interesting. That gives a good segue into the next question, which says, given that you have established proof of concept over these past 10 or so years, do you see any potential for the company to be taken over by or merged with a well-financed large-cap manufacturer who would bring it to scale?
Well, I'm not saying we need somebody else to bring us to scale, but I think we do get more attractive every day. The more of these acquisitions that we make, the more market share that we have, the better we get at doing what we are doing, the more vertically integrated we get. Things like the battery acquisition was a big part of that. Then yes, the harder it is to compete with us and the more attractive we get. If somebody wants to come along and give us a gigantic premium to a much better share price, then part of our job is to consider those things. And I'm sure I and the board will. It would go to a shareholder vote. Something like that was going to happen, so everybody will get a say in it.
But my job is to make us attractive, even if we don't get married.
Good point. Are your patents sufficient to create a moat?
I believe so. And so do our patent attorneys. Again, we don't rely on them. You're foolish to rely on them, but you're also foolish not to get them. And they do make us more valuable.
What do you see as the biggest threats to growth in the coming years?
Well, as I say, it's difficult to do what we do. There is a human factor in it, so we've got to get the right talent in place. That was another excellent reason why I'm doing the acquisition we did in Europe. I got 210 employees there, of whom 35 are advanced degree engineers, really, really great people. I couldn't be happier with them. I couldn't be happier with their attitude. So that was a huge force multiplication for us without us having to go through the lengthy process of doing all the recruiting and everything. So people will be a challenge. But mostly, it's going to be about just summing up some of the things we've already talked about in the call: people sentiment, the investment community sentiment, consumer sentiment. As this thing sort of squeezes and contracts and squeezes and contracts, people get nervous.
I think it's inevitable, and fortune will favor the bold where this industry is concerned. There's no question about it. You've got to have some whatever they call it, intestinal fortitude in any new industry where you're using new technologies. We do. But I think that's really going to be the big thing here is just managing through the lumpiness, frankly, and making sure that we've got enough diversification and opportunity and everything else to bridge over any of it.
Thank you. How well do the ARC units function in less sunny environments? Do they still make economic sense from a purely free sunshine model when there is less sunshine?
The first thing you'd understand about the EV ARC is, in almost every instance where it's deployed, the cost of the EV ARC was less than the avoided cost of construction and electrical work required to make a grid-tied charger work in the same location. So from that point of view, even in less sunny environments, even where the performance is less and it is, of course, it is. It's a solar-powered product. They're all grid-connectable, by the way. You can run a grid connection to them. You can put power on the grid or take power off the grid. But it is a solar-powered product. If you get less solar energy, you're going to get less miles into electric vehicles.
But as long as it's putting enough miles into those electric vehicles, then what you're really looking at is comparing it to what it would have cost you to put the grid-tied charger in. And as I say, in the majority of our deployments, we're less expensive than the avoided cost of construction electric work. So therefore, the economics are good for whoever's deploying that charger right off the bat. And then, of course, after that, they get a lifetime of no energy, no utility bills. There's no unit cost for energy if you're not amortizing the cost of the equipment because you saved the money on the construction electrical equipment. So I guess that was a long answer to say yes. It's still a good product, even in places where it's not brilliant sunshine all the time.
I see. How much benefit will we get from the infrastructure bill and the electric charging infrastructure network?
Yeah. So actually, most of it will be fairly indirect for us, although we have had some direct stuff. We've had clients who we've even assisted in going after some of the grant money, and they have benefited from that, and we've benefited from the sales that we've made as a result of that. But I think just in general, a couple of things. Obviously, pumping $ billions into infrastructure means that there will be more opportunities for us, sometimes second and maybe even third tier. We'll pick that up in places where they can't spend the money on grid-tied infrastructure because it's too expensive or impossible or disruptive to connect to the grid. And then again, what I said about lack of competition, more charging infrastructure means more electric vehicles, means more demand for charging infrastructure. So there's lots of trickle-down benefits that will come from it.
Thank you. How did the EV units do in the recent atmospheric river storm that dropped 12+ inches of rain, major gusts of winds in San Diego and other regions in Southern California?
Jesus, that sounds like we wrote that question for ourselves. That's almost like a marketing pitch. EV ARC is floodproof to 9.5 ft and is stamped to withstand 160-mile-an-hour winds, has in fact withstood 185 mi an-hour Category 5 hurricane winds in the Caribbean. So it was a non-event for them. One of the other things that came up was just electric vehicles and how they fare in those types of conditions. And I can tell you I would much rather drive my electric Rivian through floodwater than any internal combustion engine vehicle because it's pretty much impervious to that kind of thing. So I think it was good news for EVs and good news for our infrastructure. I mean, not good news. Let me take that back. It's never good news when you get these types of extreme weather events.
Let's say it didn't hurt us, and we showed that we can survive them.
Thank you. Switching gears to touch up, why did you raise money to do the acquisition instead of using debt? Hasn't the dilution hurt investors?
Yeah, that's a question I've been asked a lot. Everybody's got their own views about this. I'll say this. It's pretty much divided right down the middle. We do get a lot of retail people who are concerned about dilution. I get no institutional people who are. There's a couple of reasons for that. First, let me more directly answer the question. If I had used debt to make the acquisition, I'd be facing about $1 million a year of interest payments right now. The first question we asked was about EPS. Essentially, that means being profitable at the bottom line. A million bucks of profitability at the bottom line is very meaningful and will be very meaningful, particularly if we're the first company in the space to get there. That's what we're working towards.
So it would have been a very poor decision to use debt to finance this acquisition. And that's partly particularly true because I have worked so very, very hard over the last 14 years to be very careful with how we use our equity. The result of that is that I have this incredibly low float, as I mentioned earlier, 14 million shares outstanding. That's after the acquisition, 14 million shares outstanding in comparison to all of our so-called peers who, as I say, have five to 10 and sometimes more than that shares outstanding. That gives us a bit of dry powder to do stuff without alarming the markets. And then there's just one other thing that I want everybody to understand. Everybody wants us to get large and muscular institutions involved in our business, and so do we. And I work hard.
That's why I'm in New York all week this week. Well, with the low float that we have, they congratulate me for that, but it makes it hard for them to trade the stock. So actually, dilution is not hurting us. It's probably moving us in the direction where those guys would like to see us, where there's a little bit more liquidity and a little bit more stock out there. And what I'm going to say to you is this, and this will sound harsh, but I mean it. My job is not to maintain anybody's percentage ownership of Beam Global. My job is to increase the value of their ownership. It's your job to increase or maintain your percentage ownership. My job is to increase the value of it.
I am absolutely convinced that it was right to use a small amount of our equity to get us into the largest market in the world, in many ways, make this company five or five times bigger with absolutely no negative impact to market cap at all and a very minor impact to the number of shares outstanding, which, as I said, if anything, will probably assist us in our efforts to try and get larger institutions into the business. So there was a lot. None of these things ever happened for one reason. They're all very complex. But that's most of it. We don't want a big interest burden. We don't want to have debt on the books. We have 0 debt right now. And we wanted to effectively and efficiently use our equity.
Remember, folks, that part of being a public company, one of the very few benefits of being a public company, is that you have your shares as a currency to do the right type of strategic growth moves for the business. And that's what we did. And by the way, we crafted an excellent deal. I don't have time to go into all the details right now. But if any of you've got specific questions, write to us about it. It was an excellent deal across the board. And so was the AllCell transaction, which was also a stock transaction. So I'm very proud of it, actually.
Well, and in follow-up to that, what other acquisitions do you have in mind? And would you raise money again?
Yes, I'm still acquisitive. There are still a couple of areas where we're not fully vertically integrated. And there are some other very exciting pieces of this infrastructure industry that I'd like to get involved in. And if we find the right target and I'm always looking. If we find the right target, then I will endeavor to do what I did with Envision Solar and with Amiga. And that is to craft the very best deal for our shareholders that permits us to grow the company in an aggressive way, both organically and inorganically. Will I raise money again? Yes, if it's right for the shareholders. This is not about just throwing equity around. Anybody can see I don't do that just by the number of shares. Look at any of the deals I've done historically. I have never been flippant with our equity, never.
I don't intend to start now. But again, part of the tool, the weapons that we have in our arsenal is the ability to use shares as currency to dramatically grow the company. As long as we get more benefit from those acquisitions than the equity we give up, we're doing the right thing for the shareholders. That will be my guide.
Thank you. When will the EV Standard be available? And what do you think it will mean to the company?
Okay. So again, giving the date thing, it's a development project. But I will say this. I bought the fourth-largest lamp standard manufacturer in Europe. So we are now Beam Europe is a significant player in that space. The engineering talent, the experience, the sales connections, and everything else that we got through that acquisition, absolutely fantastic where EV Standard is concerned. The collaboration between our engineers in Europe and our engineers in the United States is also fantastic. Work products, really impressive. And we're making tremendous progress. So you are going to see EV Standards, well, first of all, much sooner than you would have seen it had we not made that acquisition. And you're going to see it soon.
We're going to aggressively take it to market both in Europe and in the North American markets and, frankly, anywhere else where it makes sense, Middle East, for example. So soon.
I'm sorry. Back on to the equity question. Selling stock to buy other companies' suppliers has not unlocked value for shareholders in the past. Why is it different for Amiga?
Well, I don't know if that question is a general question for all companies or if that's specific to Beam. If it's specific to Beam, it's just not right. It has unlocked value. The Amiga acquisition is largely responsible for the gross margin improvements that we've had through improving our battery technology and everything. It's been a fantastic deal for us. And as I just outlined, having Beam Europe now being in the largest automotive market in the world where there's more emphasis on our types of products than anywhere else was a fantastic thing to do. So I'm sorry. I don't really understand the premise behind the question. But certainly not true to say that it hasn't unlocked value for our shareholders. It may not have worked for other companies. But we do a good job. Listen, anyone can do a deal. It's easy to do a deal.
Hard to do a good deal. That's all we've done.
The board of directors sold shares of stock three or several quarters ago. Why have they not replenished these sales with stock trading at their all-time lows?
I mean, again, that question is I don't have the exact time that board members have traded stock or anything else. But I think it's very unrealistic to say that the board sold stock at 30-several quarters. I'm on the board. I didn't. And the only time I've ever sold stock has been to cover tax liabilities associated with my compensation, much of which I get in stock. And when I get the stock, I get taxed. And I would be bankrupted if I didn't cover the taxes. So first of all, I think the question is inaccurate. But let's talk about just trading because this is another area where I get questioned a lot. And that is, for example, why are we not buying stock right now? And what I want to help people understand is that we are heavily restricted in.
Myself and the board and, in fact, any insider in the company is heavily restricted on when we can trade. In fact, there are only about three months of the year when I'm not in a statutory blackout. For example, right now, I've been in a blackout since December 16th. I will be until May 16th. That'll be the next time when I'm legally allowed to trade. This is because I have insight into what the full year and fourth quarter numbers look like. By the time we announce those, I'll have insight into the first quarter. So I'm just under a blackout. I'm not allowed to trade. Nor is the board. For anybody who thinks that we're not buying stock because we don't value the company, they just don't understand the regulatory environment under which we're operating.
Beyond that, during those three months of the year when I am allowed to trade stock, I'm only allowed to trade stock if I don't have any material, non-public information. And as all of you know, I'm constantly working on things like trying to acquire Beam Europe or trying to acquire AllCell or trying to sell the Army deal that we announced last year or something else. So if there's ever a time when I don't have material, non-public information during those three months, frankly, I'd be worried. I'd be worried about myself. That's part of running a dynamic growth and growing company. Large, mature companies who do deals, then it's business as usual. And so they aren't under the same restrictions that we who are running these dynamic and rapidly growing companies are.
But I cannot underline strongly enough to suggest that we're not buying stock in the company because we don't value the company. It's utter nonsense. It's the regulatory environment, which is what controls that. And by the way, same for selling. The only way we're allowed to sell is through something called a 10b5-1 plan. I have one in place. And as I've already stated, that is only to cover tax liabilities. It's just like withholding from your paycheck. You get paid a certain amount of money. The company withholds some of it to cover your tax liabilities. We do the same thing with the stock. Otherwise, we simply wouldn't be able to function.
Sure. That kind of shifts into an interesting question about the macro environment and where Beam has sat and responded or not responded to that. The question is, the macro environment shifted to the benefit of small-cap growth stocks late last year. Why did Beam not participate in the rally in small-cap growth? What is being done on the IR side of things to create visibility for new potential investors?
Again, I don't agree with the premise of the question. First of all, we're not a small-cap. We're a microcap. And there is a significant difference in the way the stock trades. But both small-caps and microcaps are about 10-year lows right now. There has been some slight improvement starting in about October of last year when some discussion around the end of interest rate rises and maybe even declines in interest rates have triggered some of a reverse of what we talked about earlier, people putting all their money into bonds and money markets, etc. But our chart looks pretty much exactly the same as the microcap chart averaging all of the microcaps. Now, you can cherry-pick a few that have done better. And you could equally find a whole lot that have done much worse than we have.
In fact, I just read an article in The Wall Street Journal the other day that the record number of highs companies trading under $1 today in history. What's indisputable here is that our operational results are not reflected by our share price, 300% year-over-year growth, gross profitability improving every quarter, operating costs reducing as a percentage of revenue, zero debt, strong balance sheet, $100 million credit line, low float, new patents, great acquisitions, and all sorts of other things. None of these things would suggest a declining stock price unless we're in a market where all of these equities are going down. And again, you can cherry-pick one or two. But the majority, and I encourage anybody, just look up trends of microcaps and even small-caps. Whoever asked the question said small-cap. As I said, we're not a small-cap.
Even look at the chart and compare it to our chart over the last five years. You'll see that it's practically a mirror image. That's very unfortunate. As I said at the beginning of the call, the markets tend to go through these cycles. When they do, they tend to come back. I believe that we will be rewarded when they do. Don't think that we're some kind of special case. We are not. We're only special in that our operational results are much better than most companies that we're talking about. We are being, unfortunately, they say that rising tide raises all boats. Well, so a falling tide lets them all go down as well. I'm afraid we've been caught up in that. I believe it will turn.
That's kind of a nice segue into this question. These questions are all kind of similarly related in the following way. Stock was sold last July for a discounted price. Why was it not sold at a premium like discussed previously?
Well, whenever you raise money, there's going to be some discount. Actually, if you look at the transaction that we did last year, what you will find is that we raised money at less than a 9% discount. We raised money with no warrants attached. It was an all-common deal, less than 9% discount and no warrants attached at a time when, if you ask any investment banker, they will tell you that everybody was doing deals at around 25% discounts with warrants attached. It was an extraordinary deal. And Scott, you know very well that some of the investment banks that we've talked since that time told us that there was no way they could have got a deal done that was as good as that. It was a special deal, special timing. It was excellently executed.
I'm not sure what it means to say that we previously discussed raising at a premium. I don't think anybody would have suggested that. Maybe that means that previously, I had said I would only raise money if there was an acquisition or if the stock took a run-up. I'm interpreting that question that way. I don't mean to do that if that's not what the questioner meant by it. But in this instance, it was either we have an acquisition or the stock takes a run-up. The stock did not take a run-up. But we did have a very excellent acquisition. And it was absolutely the right thing to do to use our currency to make that acquisition happen.
Sure. Well, and I think as a follow-up to that, when stock was sold via Maxim, why did management choose not to tell the investment bank to contact key large investors to be taken over the wall so that they could participate in the offering? Institutional investors are key to defending and supporting the stock when it drops, especially ones that are big believers in the technology.
This person clearly knows some management that I don't know because management certainly did not choose to tell the investment bank any such thing. On the contrary, we marketed this to very good.
Let me clarify. It says, "Why did management choose to not tell the investment bank to contact key large investors?
Well, okay. Again, different management team. We did tell them to do exactly that. More than half the money that came out of the raise came from institutions. They're good institutions. I met with them. And they're believers in the company and the technology. And then the other half, by the way, interestingly, and this was a deliberate part of our strategy, largely came from retail investment in Europe. And that's a big part of my strategy to try and get some European money in this into the company because of some of the things we talked about earlier, the Europeans' appetite for renewables and electric vehicles and all that. I wanted to get some of that type of money in. But it's certainly not true to say that we didn't get institutional investors involved in it.
Even less true to say that we didn't ask the investment bank to do that.
Thank you. Does management have a true handle on the cap table and where the stock is being held?
Well, that's a good question. I mean, look, we know as much as we can. Obviously, we can pull Noble reports. We know who the large institutional investors are. We, in most cases, have relationships with them. But we can never know where all of it is. And actually, interestingly enough, one of the things that's going on right now is we have a few, very few warrants left over from our 2019 IPO. I stress we did not SPAC, remember? And I know where about half of the warrants that are left are out there. And obviously, with the stock being those warrants being in the money at the moment, those people are in a position to exercise those. But we don't know where all of them are. And I think it would be a shame for people that hold those warrants not to exercise them.
We want people to get value out of the stock and get value out of the transactions they do with us. They got those warrants as part of the IPO. They will expire in April. They're in the money. If you're listening right now and you're holding the warrants, then for goodness sakes, exercise them before they expire in April, if I'm permitted to say that. I think we have as good an idea as anybody does.
Thank you. In follow-up, management brought cash on the balance sheet from selling stock at a discount in June. As a result, management appears to be disincentivized to engage in supporting higher stock prices. Now that the money is on the balance sheet, what incentive does management have to promote a higher stock price?
I've really made somebody mad with these questions. I'm sorry, whoever you are. Well, what incentive do we have to promote a higher stock price? Instead of telling you what my incentive is, which that should be very obvious to anybody listening, look at what we do: press releases, non-deal roadshows, investor events, virtual tours, actual tours. We've got IR core fully engaged. Why am I in New York City all this week? Why are we doing this call to talk to investors right now? Of course, we care about the share price. And we're incentivized because we're growing a fantastic company. Raise money one time and then just say, "I don't care about the share price," ever again. My job is to increase the value, as I said, of people's positions in this.
I take it very seriously, all the way from the large institutions down to somebody's granny who's got the retirement nest egg in this company. I take it very, very seriously. So threaten or not, whoever you are, we are not ignoring the share price. I think you're getting confused between that and the fact that these macro market conditions, which I described a minute ago, which are clearly accessible by anybody with Google, don't conflate the two things. We're working hard. We care a great deal about the share price and about growing this company.
Thank you. In follow-up, there's two more in this theme. And then we can shift. Why are cash bonuses being awarded to C-suite management all the while long-term shareholders continue to see consistent declines in the stock and face dilution events to the stock?
Well, I think we've already covered the whole dilution thing. That's a non-starter. And they're not seeing consistent declines in the stock because of the way we were paid or anything else like that. Again, I think we've covered all of that ad nauseam. And obviously, I've made somebody very unhappy with us. But I apologize for that, but not for lack of trying on my part or on the part of the very excellent Beam Team. We do have excellent people. You have to compensate your employees. You have to pay something like market. Otherwise, you just don't get good quality people. And if you don't get good quality people, then you don't grow the company. And that will make the shareholders a hell of a lot more upset than us giving bonuses to people who have engineered 300% year-over-year growth and that sort of stuff.
It's absolutely the right thing to do to have people engaged in the growth and compensated for it. But I will tell you this: our compensation committee on our board engaged not one, but two compensation consultants who went out and looked at all the peers and studied all the companies like ours across the board and came back with a report. And the report, you won't be surprised, there was a range of compensation, cash, and equity, and everything else that we should be paid. We are consistently paid under the 50th percentile. That means to say that everybody, if you take the entire universe of companies like ours, more people make more money than anybody at Beam Global than less. We're under the 50th percentile. We take more equity than cash because we believe in the company and also because we believe in looking and guarding our cash.
More equity and cash than was recommended by the compensation consultants. So I'm absolutely comfortable and confident that the way we are compensated is on the less expensive side of things. And as I say, we're under the 50th percentile across the board. I'm proud of my team. They work very hard. I've been at this company now since 2010 and have consistently taken less than market the entire time that I've been here because I believe in it. And it will pay me back one day because we're going to do fantastically well. But I could have done my family a few favors by going elsewhere. I elected not to because in the long run, I'm very proud of it. They're proud of me. They're proud of the company. And we'll do fantastically in the long run. Well, that's all I have to say on that.
Thank you. What is the Beam sales and marketing team doing to diversify its customer base? Being so heavily reliant on the massively indebted governments as your only key clients is very dangerous?
Well, okay. The government's massively indebted, yeah. But I don't think you need to worry about it going away. We've got fantastic customers like the U.S. Army, the U.S. Marine Corps. We're very proud to have them. I don't think we need to worry about the indebtedness of the government somehow preventing us from having a business here. But at the same time, it's a good question because we don't rely on the government, in fact. Prior to COVID, better than 50% of our sales came from commercial customers. COVID wiped all of that out. We didn't have a reduction in revenue because we backfilled it with government. And that's about diversifying revenue streams, which we're continuing to do. But we're seeing commercial sales roaring back. And our sales team's heavily committed to bringing commercial sales back. So again, fear not on that. We're pushing hard on that.
Also, the move into Europe and the diversification of products and new products that we're bringing to market like EV Standard, these are all just ways for us to continue to diversify our revenue stream opportunities. We're not in any way relying on one horse to win the race. In fact, we're backing as many of them as we reasonably can within our strategy. I mean, I'm not going to start selling dog food or something just because it's profitable. We are doing everything that we can to diversify. We're certainly not ignoring our commercial customers. The growth has been amazing, albeit from small numbers because, as I say, COVID wiped it all out. It's coming back.
On speaking of growth, here's a question on growth. Growth quarter-over-quarter declined last quarter. What is management doing to focus on domestic growth?
Again, that sounds like a very, very heavily loaded question there. We had 300% year-over-year growth last year. I think it's pretty clear that we're focused on growth.
What is the strike price of the options that are awarded to management from the bonus pool?
Well, if you understand the way these things work, you'll know that we have no say in that. The law requires you to issue stock options that have a strike price on the day of the grant. People are getting a lot of trouble for fooling around with that. I suppose there may be some mechanisms, but they're all complex. The answer is, whenever we give options to any employee, the strike price on them is based on the trading value of the stock on the day that the options are granted. We do nothing to try and fool around with that because it's a great way to get yourself into trouble.
And then lastly, in this vein, why are cash bonuses being awarded when the company is still burning cash?
Asked and answered.
Yeah. Okay. What do you expect your burn to be as you develop the product to reach commercial deployment for the EV Standard product line?
Well, we're not adding any material costs as we go through this development. So there will be some expenditure. We'll make a couple of betas and stuff like that. But it's not like we're throwing a whole new team at this. So don't expect to see our burn going up in any material way as a result of it.
Thank you. When you sell the EV Standard, who do you anticipate will be paying for their maintenance? And who will be doing the servicing?
I think we'll do the servicing in the same way we do with EV ARC and all that sort of stuff. The customer will pay. By the way, the only way that that will change is if we move to a model where we retain title. There's some very interesting models around that that we're definitely considering. People often bring up the fact that we have no recurring revenue because we sell everything that we can make. That's because that's what the customer wants. We're responding to what the customer wants. But I do see a future where we might retain title to networks of our products and generate a recurring revenue stream from those. In those instances, of course, we will be responsible for the maintenance and everything. But we'll price all of that into the fee.
I'm hopeful we'll be able to make that quite a profitable part of the business, looking forward to it, in fact. I have the capital to make it work because I've got partners like OCI, etc., behind us.
Well, when do you think EV Standard will have material sales?
Okay. So let me presell the negative on that. I think the sales cycle will be slightly longer because an EV Standard, you can't just drop it off in a parking space. However, I believe and it's only my belief. We haven't done this yet. So I'm just projecting and telling you what my thoughts are. I think that the sales cycle will be a bit longer. But I think that the sales volumes will be bigger. I don't think we're going to see cities deploying one or two of these things. I think we might end up seeing a lot of them being deployed in a mixture with our other lamp standard deployments that we're doing through our European division. And also the same thing in North America. So I don't know exactly when. But I've talked to a lot of our existing customers and others about this.
Everybody thinks it's a beautiful idea. Everybody wants them. It's just going to be a question of how quickly we can run them through the sales cycle. Listen, I expect it to be impactful to us in a time that's reasonable. It's not five years out or anything like that.
Thank you. I have about six remaining questions. We are coming up on the hour here. So I think we'll just extend a little bit. I think we can get through these relatively quickly. But I did want to mention that we have about six questions left. With that, when will Amiga's historical financials be disclosed?
With the K, we will disclose what we're required to. I think we will be incorporating some portion of the fourth quarter of 2023 because we closed on the deal into the fourth quarter. So obviously, we can't incorporate periods prior to that. And then that will be audited according to GAAP. And then the rest of their historical financials will do the statutory audits with that. I think we're required to give the full year. But I'm not certain about that, honestly. But anyway, you'll see what we're required to give you to report. And it'll be with the K. By the way, for anyone who's looking to know that, I think that's around March 27th, 2028, something like that.
Under what scenario will you use the credit line being funded by OCI?
Oh, that's easy. Anytime we've got a very large order and we require some bridge funding for cash flow management, that's when we would use that. And by the way, we'd try and take it out as quickly as possible because while that was a very good deal, SOFR plus 300 basis points, probably SOFR ain't what it used to be. Certainly isn't what it was when I closed that deal. I mean, SOFR was basically free money. So 300 basis points was pretty cheap. But now, you're up. You're ending up towards 10% when you put all of that together. So we'll use it so that we can execute on growth. But we'll take it out as quickly as we can as well.
Well, and then what level of EV ARC deliveries, sales, or units gets you over 10% in gross margin?
I think now we're at that kind of volume where we can do that. This is more about the savings that I've mentioned to you in the past that our engineering teams and our operations teams have evoked. So I guess the right answer to that is the current level can get us there. We just got to make sure that we get these engineering and other sales in place. And then don't forget, we've got the price increase as well, which should start to impact us in the second quarter and into the second half. That's an 8% over our base model. So that's going to be really impactful there. So current would be the right answer to that. And then, of course, with more growth, we should get better and better at this.
Sure. The next question, I think you've touched on largely. But I'll just put it out there. What is the real reason you don't have a recurring piece of service revenue to go along with every ARC you sell? Will you consider a recurring service revenue model for the EV Standard? I think you've touched on that a touch. But I'll give it to you.
What's the real reason? It sounds as though we've tried to give some kind of unreal reason. Well, the reason's the same. Yeah. We're just responding with what the customers have wanted. They wanted to buy them. But as I say, yes, we do have plans to bring other recurring revenue streams into the company. And I'm excited about those.
Great. With all the recent orders, has the factory moved beyond one shift per day?
No. There have been times when we've gone to a shift and a half. And there have been times where we've even had a second shift. It depends on the rush that customers had and all that sort of stuff. But my instructions to the operations team, which believe me, they love hearing this, is, "Great. Now figure out how you can do all of this with a single shift because I'm certain that there's a whole lot of efficiencies left out there." I'm really very excited, by the way. I haven't touched on this. But I'm very excited about this new hire, Mark Myers, as Chief Operating Officer. I was trying to do that in my spare time. I enjoy it. But this guy's a consummate professional. He's a machine. He's an ex-nuclear Navy guy, very well trained.
And he's had lots of commercial experience too, by the way. But I tend to get along well with people that went to sea because I did. So I think there's an awful lot of room for more efficiency. We're built to pump a lot more units out. And there have been some days in the last couple of months where we've pumped so many EV ARCs out of our facility. And my ops guys hate it because I go down to, "See what you can do now when you see" that just shows you what we're able to do from an efficiency point of view. But the ambition is to pump more and more units out with the same number of shifts and then increase.
Well, and that's a tribute to the optimization that you've achieved in your operation and then the cohesiveness of that effort that you're operating with.
By the way, thank you for mentioning that. Yeah, thank you for mentioning that because I do want everybody to understand that 300% revenue growth last year means 300% in the number of units pushed out of the same factory. And I talked a lot in the past about the fact that we'd invested in facilities for growth. Well, we proved that. And by the way, we still have masses of available expansion overhead as well. So really, really, I feel great about it.
Well, that certainly room and capacity utilization is a real plus. Our final question of the day kind of talks a little bit further about that. When will we see revenues pulled through with the previously disclosed price increases on the EV ARCs?
Yeah. I apologize. I don't have exactly when we run out of the previously contracted backlog. Obviously, all the sales that we're making now and you've seen some announcement going out have new pricing involved in them. So those units will be going out in the next quarter or so. So you'll start to see the impact in the next quarter or so and certainly into the second half. So certainly into the second half is where we'll get the major impact from it.
Fantastic. Well, Desmond, I want to thank you. I want to thank all of our attendees. We had a very robust attendance today in excess of 100 participants. In this particular kind of format, we were really able to take on questions from everyone, all comers, and provide a level of access to Desmond as the CEO and as the steward of this company in a way that I think is unique and very transparent and really engaging. Thank you for that. Desmond, I'm going to pass the call over to you for some closing remarks. At the conclusion, operator, you can close the call.
Yeah. Thanks, Scott. And thanks, everybody, for your questions and for listening today and for supporting us. And if you're a shareholder, thanks for owning our stock. We work for you. We know that. People often thank me for taking the time to answer their questions. I'm like, "Every price increase, I work for you." I get that. I'm also acutely aware of the fact that we, on the inside, because we know everything and we know we're well-intentioned and we know we're hardworking and we know our products are great and all that stuff, it's easy to fall into a trap of assuming everybody else knows that. And I get that everybody else doesn't know that.
I also get that at times when, as I mentioned earlier, the stock market's been very tough on growth companies and microcaps in particular, not knowing what's going on on the inside and seeing the value of your shares going down, that's a bloody horrible combination. I'm with you. I'm an investor too. And I've suffered horribly as a result of this market move as well. However, I have confidence it will change. But mostly, the big part of the reason I did this call today is because I don't want you not knowing what's going on on the inside. I don't want you thinking we're shying away from anything. I don't want you thinking that we're anything but proud of what we're doing. Could it be better? Yes. I will never say anything else. There will always be room for improvement.
Would I be much happier if the stock market was trading like it did in 2021? Yes. In 2021, at the end of 2020, our stock traded up to $75. It's trading at less than a tenth of that today. We are 1,000 times the company we were at that time, more than that. So all we can do is impact the things that we can impact. I've already illuminated those: 300% year-over-year growth, operating costs, growth coming down, gross profitability going up, new patents, new products, no debt. Those are the things that we can impact. We are impacting them. I wanted to do this call because I wanted you to have a chance to ask me the questions. You clearly did. Some of them have obviously come from people who are not even very happy with me. I get that.
I'm sorry. I can't affect that either. All I can do is do my job and make sure the Beam Team does their job. Our operational results speak volumes where that's concerned. Please do look up what's been going on with microcaps and small-caps so that you understand that it's not just your shares in Beam that have been negatively impacted. Please also look at what happens historically where this is concerned because they have historically always come back. I'll just leave you with one quick anecdote from another banker that I talked to on Wall Street who said to me, "Look, we're at 22-year low with microcaps right now. They've always come back. If they don't, that's the end of the world. And that's a bet I'm not going to make today." Well, I'm not making that bet either. I'm bullish.
I'm very bullish about the company. I believe that we will be rewarded by the markets as we move forward. What you can count on from us is that we will continue to operate honestly and with a great deal of discipline with cash and with a great deal of discipline with your equity and that we will continue to do everything that we can to grow this company. With that, I thank you very much. Stay tuned.
Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's call. You may now disconnect.