Welcome to Virtual Investor Conferences. On behalf of OTC Markets, we're very pleased you joined us for our Small Cap Growth Conference. Our next presentation is from Sono Group. Please note you may submit questions for the presenter in the box to the left of the slides. You can also view a company's availability for one-on-one meetings by clicking "Book Meeting" in the top toolbar. At this point, I'm very pleased to welcome George O'Leary. He's the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Sono Group, which trades on the OTCQB venture market under the symbol SEVCF. Welcome back, George.
Hey, thank you, John. Thanks for having me again. Appreciate it. As John mentioned, I'm George O'Leary, the Managing Director and CEO of Sono Group N.V. We trade on the OTCQB under the symbol SEVCF. To start, let me provide the forward-looking disclaimer as we are a public company. Let me tell you a little bit about myself. My background: I was a CPA with Pete Maurer at Mitchell early on before it was KPMG, so I'm definitely dating myself. I was Vice President of Operations for Cable Vision Industries. I ran $125 million worth of business for Cable Vision until we sold to Time Warner. I started my own cable installation business and grew a business, Communication Resources Incorporated, from $5 million- $40 million in four years and sold it to a public company.
After that, I started my own consulting practice called SKS Consulting. What's interesting about SKS Consulting is my last name, O'Leary, in Gaelic translates to "Strong are the kings of the sea," and that's where I got the name SKS from. Anyone who knows me that's on the call, thank you for participating and listening to my call today. Anyone who knows me, you're probably noticing something you haven't noticed before, which is a mustache. I took a page from the Professional Athlete's Playbook, and I decided that I wasn't going to shave my upper lip until I get onto a national exchange. A little bit more about that as we go forward. Let me tell you about the company. Sono Group, we are a solar technology company based on solar mobility. We are headquartered in Munich, Germany.
We incorporated in 2016. Our management board and our supervisory board are all based here in the United States. I'm actually in West Palm Beach, Florida. We're quoted on the OTCQB, as I mentioned. Our focus is on integrating proprietary solar technology onto commercial vehicles, and our main focus is getting on the production lines of the large OEMs. We have nine patents, nine granted patents, and over 30 pending patents. Let me talk about our end-to-end solution for commercial vehicles. We start with our solar panels. Then we have our solar charge controller. We have a vehicle integration system that we've perfected over a very long period of time. We offer software and data analytics as well for both the driver of the vehicle and the whole fleet for the fleet operators.
One of the things about the solar panels is definitely, like, when you have stationary solar panels on roofs, you have very thick glass solar panels. With solar mobility, very lightweight, flexible, and high-efficiency solar panels that we use. What's interesting about our Solar Charge Controller is we have a proprietary controller, and it's very unique. It's one of our definite competitive advantages. By way of example, I'll go to the next slide, and we can talk about it. We service, for our solar solution, we service buses, trucks and vans, recreational vehicles, and refrigeration trailers. For buses, we offer 16, 12, and eight solar panel options. For the trucks and vans, four, two, and one solar panel options.
For recreational vehicles, especially the luxury market, Class A motorhomes, where the cost of solar on one of these motorhomes that have cost over $1 million is pretty incremental when you basically can get off-grid camping and energy independent, reducing your CO2 emission, prolonging your battery life, and really servicing all your appliances. Let me go through. How our solar solution works from a Solar Bus Kit, as an example. We put 16 solar panels on the top of the roof of a bus. We connect our Solar Charge Controller. It connects right into the low-voltage battery of the bus. At this point, we do not offer a battery solution, but we are working on getting one. We tie into any battery solution that any commercial vehicle utilizes.
We also have our telematics system where we provide useful insights for the performance of the sun and of our solar solutions. As I mentioned, our solar solution for buses, we have 16, 12, and eight solar panel options. Our solar charge controller is very interesting because it is proprietary and very unique. For example, on a bus where we have 16 solar panels, with our solar charge controller, we have eight zones. For every two panels, we provide a zone, and therefore we are maximizing the sun's energy as it is coming into the bus through the zoning system that we utilize. Our solution for trucks and vans, as I mentioned, just has fewer solar panels.
Now, our solar solution for refrigeration trailers, as you can see here, we provide solar panels, obviously, on the roof of the trailer, but as an option, we also provide solar panels on the sides of the trailer as well to, again, to maximize the sun. In November 2024, we were honored with an award for green innovation in Italy at one of our trade shows in Italy. This prestigious award recognized excellence and sustainable innovation within the transportation sector. In January of this year, we received a first national-type certification for our Solar Bus Kit from the German government. What's interesting about this, or what makes this exciting for us, is one, it took a very long time. It's really a regulatory breakthrough where the first company in Germany needed to receive official approval for this, streamlining adoption for public transportation.
Bus operators can now integrate solar solution without requiring individual case-by-case approvals. We could actually do a whole bus fleet without having to get each individual bus approved. It provides significant efficiencies for the bus operators and also, you know, as a competitive advantage from our perspective as well. In March of 2025, we partnered with Merlin Solar Technologies to expand our global solar solutions. Basically, what we are looking to do is expand globally without incurring a significant amount of cost. We were partnering with some large OEMs. Actually, let me say it this way. We were working independently for some large OEMs, and we kept running into each other. It seemed to make sense for us to do a co-marketing partnership.
We have a mutual distribution agreement for global expansion, both in North and South America, as well as here in the European Union, and enhanced customer offering with a full end-to-end solution. The way I call it is we offer a best-in-class co-marketing partnership with Merlin's best-in-class solar panels with our best-in-class solar charge controller, proprietary controller, and our integration know-how from years of experience. How are we driving growth since this is a Small Cap Growth Conference? The way we're driving growth is, as I mentioned, our focus is on the large OEMs getting on their production lines. We also have an option with the fleet operators. Our OEMs' customer base that have existing fleets, especially now in Germany that we have that certification, we could do their entire fleets for them and provide cost savings and sustainability benefits from day one.
Our other piece of our growth is with strategic partnerships. As I mentioned, the Merlin Solar Technologies, not only are they working with us in the EU, we're working with them in North America. It's expanding our revenue and our growth opportunities. We're also looking at other global joint ventures, new product offering partnerships like batteries and that kind of thing, as well as other geographic partnerships we're looking at as well. Sono Group, we combine the U.S. growth and entrepreneurship with German technology innovation know-how. As I mentioned, I'm here in West Palm Beach, Florida. Our whole Supervisory Board are all in the U.S., and that comes into play a little later in the presentation. I'll share what we've done, what recently changed too. Our subsidiary, Solar Motors GmbH, our two Managing Directors are based in Munich, Germany.
I would be very remiss not to speak about our most valuable resource, which is our dedicated team in Munich, Germany. They are very focused on reducing the carbon footprint and are such believers in what we do and what we offer. The entire, a lot of them are vegan, and also they all ride their bicycles to work. They do not drive cars. Every time I show up in Germany and I go to the parking lot, it is filled with bicycles and not a car to be found, which, again, they are big believers in what they do and in reducing carbon footprint for certain. Let me talk about our year-end financials. We just reported our 10-K at the beginning of the year. We profited EUR 65 million and strengthened our balance sheet.
EUR 65 million primarily was driven by the gain from reconsolidation of our GmbH into our holding company. We significantly reduced our net equity from a negative $88 million down to a negative $23 million. On top of that, we entered into an exchange agreement with our main investor to convert their entire debt into equity. When we get onto a national exchange, reducing our liabilities and improving financial stability. Lean operations, we reduced our expenses by 65%, our G&A expenses. Our development costs we reduced by 93%. We strengthened liquidity, and our net cash flow decreased by 71% as well. I mentioned it early because the Managing Director myself is in the U.S., and our whole supervisory board is also in the U.S. We transitioned from a foreign private issuer to a domestic filer. With that, we transitioned from IFRS to U.S. GAAP.
GAAP, with also a planned uplisting from our OTCQB to a national exchange. A little bit about that. From IFRS to U.S. GAAP, the real differences are accounting for debentures, derivative accounting, and leases from a foreign filer to a U.S. filer. In 2023, we filed our 20-F report at the end of June 2024, so six months later. For 2024, we just filed our annual report on Form 10-K, and we filed it two and a half months earlier in mid-April. For the six-month report in 2024 prior, when we were a foreign filer, we filed that on the 6-K in December 2024. Now we are filing 10-Qs on a quarterly basis, and we filed our first 10-Q in mid-May. Basically, we are filing much more timely, providing our shareholders much more timely information.
From a planned uplisting perspective, working with Nasdaq since our reverse share split in January 2025. Let me mention about our market cap when I talk about that. We are focused on meeting all the criteria for uplisting using the net income standard. The Nasdaq Capital Markets and the New York Stock Exchange American Markets are similar exchanges. I mention that for a reason I will talk about later as well. One of the things, when we did our reverse share split in January, our market cap went up to about $25 million because people were expecting since we did a reverse that we would be on a national exchange. That is what they believe our business is really worth. Since it has taken six months, our market cap has come back down to about $10 million now.
From my perspective, you know, our market cap is way undervalued, and it's a great buying opportunity because once we do get to a national exchange, I expect it to go right back to where it is. That is really just a starting point. When you talk, when I talk about our growth and what things we're working with with our large OEMs, I think you'll see why. Our Q1 profit, we reported a profit of $8.8 million and our lean operations. Again, our net equity from $23 million down to $14 million. The debt-to-equity conversion is still in place.
We had our first revenues recorded for the first quarter with a large OEM, Thermo King, and we're very excited about that and look to do a lot more business with them as well, as well as with much larger OEMs or other large OEMs as well. We continued our lean operations. From a funding perspective, we have a $5 million commitment for funding for this year. $2 million we already got funded in Q1, $1.25 million in Q2 as we reduced expenses. We have an additional $1.75 million pending our upcoming uplisting to a national exchange. Our outlook for the end of 2025 and 2026, we're building on our 2024 and first six months of 2025 momentum. We're focused on advancing our OEM integration strategy. Again, we're looking to get on production lines.
a matter of fact, we just released or mentioned in social media at one of our big trade shows that MAN Truck and Bus, which is one of the largest bus truck manufacturers in Germany, has us now on their production line as an option. That is very exciting, very innovative, is having solar as an option on the OEMs. That is really what we are looking to do as part of our growth strategies. We are expanding our global partnership. Again, we could get into global markets without increasing a significant additional cost and continuing to innovate solar mobility solutions for commercial transport. When I say innovate, very interesting. We also have recently, through, it is called Solar Moves. It is a project funded by the European Union.
We teamed up with Ford Motor Company to put solar on one of their commercial vehicles, a commercial van, really to get real-life applications for solar. So, we're working with large OEMs. We have Ford Motor Company. We have MAN. Thermo King was our largest, our first revenue stream. We're very excited about the large OEM market. That's really when we talk about our future growth and what our future opportunities are, our focus is large OEMs that want to drive solar into their commercial vehicle fleets. We're also pursuing an uplisting to a major national exchange, improve visibility and enhance liquidity, drive long-term value for shareholders, create larger business opportunities through M&A. People ask about the discontinuance of the U.S. tax credits for solar. If that happens, what impact will that have on Sono?
First and foremost, the most important part of that is Sono Group is not impacted because most of our business currently comes from the European Union. As we grow in North America with our partnership with Merlin, the commercial business tax credit is phased out over three years and does not go away immediately. The residential tax credit of 30% is proposed to be eliminated at the end of 2025. No impact on Sono at all. Commercial business investment tax credits are proposed to be phased out over a three-year period. It reduces to 60% in 2026, reduces to 20% in 2027, and reduces to zero by the end of 2028. Again, because most of our business is in Europe, it does not impact us. As we get into North America, it is still phasing out over a three-year period.
We definitely have opportunities for growth both in Europe and in the U.S. as well. Key takeaways and closing before I get to questions and answers. One, solar is the largest and most affordable renewable energy source. It makes sense to be investing in solar. What I like to say is solar bridges the gap between the conventional vehicles of today, the diesel commercial vehicle, and the electric vehicles of tomorrow as charging stations catch up to the EV demand. They say it is going to take 15 years-20 years for that to happen. You are talking about a very large runway for us to generate a significant amount of revenues before that happens. We also have an EV solution with high-voltage batteries as well. We solve it today and we solve it tomorrow.
Awareness for solar benefits is growing, increased customer demand, again, on the large OEMs. We are working with large OEMs. We have a very nice sales pipeline with large OEMs as well. Our patent portfolio, our data-driven dashboard, and our solar mobility know-how set us apart from all of our competition. When I say solar mobility know-how, we really understand how mobility works with solar. It is very complicated, and we have the expertise to provide it. Sono Group N.V. is on track for our planned uplisting to a national exchange. We are excited about that because I am really looking forward to shaving this mustache. With that said, let me turn it over to any questions that the listeners may have. Okay, quite a bit. Can you speak to the demand you are seeing in the U.S. and Europe from OEMs for solar-powered vehicles?
Are you operating in Asia? We are not operating in Asia as of yet. We are in conversations about it. Again, part of our partnerships that we're looking at would touch in Asia. The demand with the OEM markets, both in Europe and in the U.S., is strong. Our partnership with Merlin, one of the benefits of it, instead of us being seen as a European company and them being seen as a U.S. company, we really want to be seen both of us as a global company. When we deal with the large OEMs where they're global, we can provide them a global solution. We are not just doing one-off in different countries. We are looking at offering them a global solution. I think that's a real benefit with our partnership with Merlin. Next question.
How fast can you actually install a solar kit on a vehicle? Is that something that can be scaled quickly? That's a great question. We could do a complete installation on a bus, by way of example, in two or three days. Now that we don't need each individual bus approved, we could actually do an entire fleet in a few weeks' time. That's a big competitive advantage, as I mentioned. Can you discuss how you expect revenues to scale over the next few years? This is what I'll say.
We don't provide forward-looking revenue projections, but I will tell you that with our OEM market and with our large OEMs we're currently working with, one, they have significant projects that we're working on right now that will definitely be scaling over the next two or three years, significant revenue growth over the next two or three years. We're not just dealing with one large OEM. We're talking about multiple large OEMs. It is a fairly substantial opportunity for sure. Let's see. Do your solar panels a vehicle or a hybrid model? Do your solar panels, oh, do your solar panels fully power a vehicle or is it a hybrid model? It's a great question. Solar provides an incremental benefit. It's not a full solution like an EV is, but EVs are going to take forever to get to an entire marketplace.
What we do is incrementally, we reduce the CO2 cost. We reduce fuel costs when it comes to diesel vehicles. We're impacting the carbon footprint immediately. That's the benefit of going with solar as the EV market catches up to, as the charging stations catch up to the demand of the EV market. As I mentioned earlier, the company's market cap seems quite low right now given the progress you've made. Any thoughts on why that is and could it change going forward? I'm a big believer. Our market cap, again, I'm the CEO of the company, so I'm sure I'm going to say this, but our market cap, I believe, is very, very low right now. I believe the reason is because we're not on a national exchange.
I am working very diligently to get on a national exchange, and I believe we will be on a national exchange very shortly. Now's the opportunity in my mind to be buying the stock because once we get to national exchange, as I mentioned, when we did our reverse split in January, our market cap was $25 million. That is just a starting point from my perspective. Once we get to national exchange, the opportunities are endless. Now our market cap is about $10 million. There is a huge gap there. I believe filling the gap right now would be prior to us getting to a national exchange because once we get there, we will not be looking back. That is what I would say about that. Let me see. Last question, and it ties right into this. I got a few more minutes.
You mentioned OEM integration and one of Sono's key growth pillars. Can you share more about the types of projects you're currently working on with vehicle manufacturers? Maybe give us a sense of showing who's showing interest in these collaborations typically start. I mentioned the Solar Moves. It is an EU project that we're working directly with Ford Motor Company. Very exciting. Very large OEM. There are other opportunities with Ford Motor Company as well that we're looking at and we're working with Merlin on. We do have, as I mentioned, at the most recent trade show, MAN reported that we would be on their production line as an option for their commercial vehicles. We are very excited about that. MAN is the largest truck and bus company in Munich, Germany.
We're excited to work with them in all of their locations throughout the EU and the world. I mentioned our first revenue streams came in in the first quarter with Thermo King. This is what I'll say. We're doing pilots for them. There's a tremendous amount of opportunity for us to be expanding our revenue and our growth with them and other large OEMs. The interest for large OEMs in solar is now. It's not something in the future. It's now. We definitely have the competitive advantages to deliver on that. That's why I believe this market cap is quite low for what we're able to accomplish. Once we get onto the national exchange, we're just getting started. That's how I would end it. I would say thank you very much for having me today. Thanks for listening.
I really appreciate everyone being on the investor presentation. Thanks.