GreenPower Motor Company Inc Aktie

Hello. This is Craig Brelsford with RedChip Companies. Thank you for joining today's event with GreenPower Motor Company, which trades on the NASDAQ under the ticker GP. With us today, we have Fraser Atkinson, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of GreenPower Motor; and Brendan Riley, President and Director. We will begin with a brief presentation in a moment and then we will answer your questions.

[Operator Instructions]

Before we begin, please allow me to read the safe harbor statement. This call may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements pertaining to future financial and/or operating results, along with other statements about the future expectations, beliefs, goals, plans or prospects expressed by management constitute forward-looking statements. Any statements that are not historical facts should also be considered forward-looking statements. Of course, forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties.

I now turn the webinar over to the GreenPower team. Gentlemen, please go ahead.

My name is Fraser Atkinson, CEO of GreenPower, and I'm joined today with Brendan Riley, President of GreenPower.

Hello, everyone.

The plan is to go through a presentation and then take questions and answers, which Brendan and I are looking forward to engaging with stakeholders and others that have an interest in GreenPower. As Craig noted, we seek safe harbor. So I won't reread what he's already covered. And for those that are new to the GreenPower story, we design, manufacture and distribute a suite of purpose-built, all-electric, zero-emission medium and heavy-duty vehicles. And we are focused on both the commercial vehicle market as well as the school bus sector, and we'll speak about both of those as we progress through the presentation.

The highlights for the company. We've delivered more than 700 of our Class 4 EV Star models, which cover everything from passenger to the trucking side, as well as our own cabin chassis, which other EVs have purchased and used for their particular product or product sets. And we also have a strong growing order book for GreenPower school buses. Of note is that we are -- and we'll probably mention this a couple of times today, we are the only OEM with both the smaller Class 4 Type A school bus, which you can see in the top left picture there, and the Class 8 Type D all-electric school bus. And the top one, we have named the Nano BEAST, and the bottom one is the BEAST, which is battery electric, automated school transportation.

Over the past year, there's been a significant slowdown with the adoption of electric medium- and heavy-duty commercial vehicles. Number one, regulations have been rescinded or postponed. Secondly, mandates have been relaxed or in some cases, just outright canceled. And thirdly, there isn't the same impetus or pressure to adopt electric vehicles. And whether that's by corporate resolution, stakeholder mandates or our government mandates, we've seen the pressure to adopt has really waned over the last year or so. At the end of 2024, GreenPower commenced to rebuild. Since then, the company has consolidated its California operations into one location, changed the commercial vehicle group with a focus on business development and reduce costs.

As we were going through this, the tariffs arrived. And when I say arrived, they arrived with -- to a large degree with a lot of uncertainty and the inability to make a quick determination as to how one should recast your business. And so during this rebuild, with the current administration when they announced the tariffs resulted in delays in the receipt of shipments that we had and as well as increased cost of building our all-electric vehicles. And by July, most of these issues have been sorted out, allowing GreenPower to recommence production of our all-electric, purpose-built school buses.

So where we see the strongest demand in the EV space for the products that we brought to market is in the school bus space. So unlike the commercial vehicles that I alluded to on the previous slide, the school bus sector just seems to be get -- be getting stronger and stronger. And Brendan and I will go through a number of the different aspects that really are not just driving that demand, but will maintain the strong demand over the next 5 to 10 years.

The graph on the left gives you an idea of the order books in terms of the vehicles that have been ordered or have been actually deployed and are operating. And as you can see by October 2024, the sum of those two categories was just over 12,000 school buses. Well, that's a drop in the bucket compared to the total school buses that are on operation in the nation, which amounts to 490,000 school buses. So there's a long, long way to go to electrify the school bus fleet in the nation.

Electric school buses are a great fit, because they have a very predictable route. It's generally at a much, on average, a lower speed than say, a commercial vehicle. And there's a host of other aspects that really provide for a great fit. There's state mandates, accelerating adoption, which we'll get into in terms of the details of those mandates. But at a high level, we're talking about some of the key markets such as New York, which has 50,000 school buses in California with 30,000 school buses. Just those two states alone account for almost 20% of the marketplace. Even capturing just 1% of diesel bus replacements equates to a $1.3 billion revenue opportunity per year. And as noted at the outset on this slide, the demand for electric school buses is expected to exceed industry production capability for years to come.

This is a little graphic that an organization, healthy environment for kids. It's a Canadian organization, which gives you some sense that whether you're in the U.S. or in Canada, we're dealing with the same issues. And that's as noted by the headline or the slide -- at the top of the slide here is that the children's health is really one of the primary drivers of demand in this sector. On the left of this slide are all the different issues and reasons that the existing school buses that are in place are impacting in many cases, a very negative way with the transportation of kids to their respective schools. And on the right, number of the benefits of flow from electrifying school bus fleets.

So zero-emission school buses are the solution for the problems that I've just outlined. And it's worth noting at a high level, some of these and that the diesel exhaust, which contains harmful pollutants or specifically NOx emissions. These in particular, affect younger kids where their lungs are still developing. And the research shows that they have a much higher incidence of respiratory illnesses or even cancerous diseases.

Secondly, is that the PM 2.5, a particulate matter, gets into the bloodstream. And so you have a different set of health issues related to another emission from the diesel emitting school buses. And lastly, the actual transportation, the time spent in these older diesel emission or ICE school buses is that any prolonged transportation time when the kids get to school, they're tired. They just literally are -- can be worn out from sitting in an environment that is not beneficial to their health.

So the solution, as noted on the right-hand side of this slide is zero-emission school buses. And right now, there are no other school buses available other than battery electric that would be a zero-emission school bus. And of note is that the research in this area also shows that pre-1990 buses compared to electric buses saw a significant gain in test scores and attendance just simply by changing the mode of transportation to one that is more beneficial to their health and welfare. And this is also an investment opportunity in that it's healthier students means an improved learning environment and reduced absenteeism in addition to the actual cost structure, total cost of ownership of a school bus that's electric versus the traditional diesel.

And on that, I'll turn it over to Brendan.

Thank you, Fraser. When I first entered the commercial EV space back in 2011 -- middle of 2011, the real issue with commercial EVs was that the grid did not have enough power for commercial EVs. And that really hasn't changed. The grid -- actually, if it's changed, it's changed for the worst. So the grid has a huge issue in -- Fraser, if we could go back one slide, so the grid has a huge issue where it does not have enough power right now, enough electrons on the grid in either generated nor transmitted for all of the data centers we're building let alone for school buses and we were thinking, okay, well, school buses were part of the problem.

Along comes vehicle-to-grid technology, and that's technology where -- sorry, we lost the screen. Craig, Can you guys see me?

Yes, I can see Fraser's.

Nonetheless, what's going on is that the grid has an absence of -- we've had all kinds of electric generation shutdown with conventional coal and gas power plants and even some nuclear power plants. And with the advent of the data centers, the big issue is how do we make the grid resilient enough to really deal with the new demands on the grid. And school buses really provide an amazing solution for this. They're actually plugged into -- they're plugged into their chargers most of the time. So 90% of the time, they're actually plugged in. You need the school bus plugged into a charger to actually be able to export power. And the school buses are operating, let's say, for an average 2 hours a day, an hour in the morning, an hour in the evening. And the rest of the time, they're available to either give power to or take power from as utility demands.

So we really see an opportunity where we're deploying the school buses, where the school buses aren't really part of the problem, they're actually part of the solution and provide this fungible resource, this battery bank of electrons that the utilities can take or give depending on what they want to do.

So sorry, I'm going to rejoin here and see if I can get back in. I'm just going to keep on with my side folks. I apologize for this.

So the solution is the clean technology provides a fungible resource of power. It can provide grid stabilization. It can provide peak demand offset, and it also provides the opportunity for the school districts to do arbitrage where they buy energy when it's cheap, they sell it back to the grid when it's more valuable and can make the money. Now you do need some components on here. You do need bidirectional chargers, and you need vehicles that are enabled to do vehicle-to-grid, again with smart grid integration.

So the opportunity here for the vehicle-to-grid and GreenPower specific opportunity here with this new Mega BEAST product that we have, which is a school bus that has almost 400-kilowatt hours of batteries on board. We really have a compelling product where we have enough fungible power onboard that even though an interconnect and the hard working cost upwards of $70,000, $80,000, $100,000 per connection when you've got a big battery that you're leveraging like that, it's basically like having containerized battery storage.

Next slide, please, Fraser. Yes, I'm not online right now, folks. I'm just on this Zoom call. I don't have any screen here.

Brendan, I hate to interrupt. But one solution could be for you to display the deck on your screen, and we currently are on Page 7 of the deck.

Yes, that's what I've done. Thank you for that recommendation, Craig. I'm sorry about this guys. I have technical difficulties here. So the state-led momentum driving electric school bus adoption. Previously, we had the EPA bill, which is really a nationwide program. Maybe not set up in the most efficient manner, and I know a lot of the school bus manufacturers haven't been very pleased with the way that program was not only set up and administered, but even deployed.

We, at GreenPower, are really looking at the two markets that are going to be driving electric school bus adoption here. One is New York, which has 100% zero-emission school buses is on their road map by 2035. It's about $15 billion of market opportunity. And currently, they've got NYS BIP vouchers. They've got a $0.5 billion Bond Act and $100 million in 2025 budget just for electric school buses alone. And they just announced at the end of last month, an additional $200 million.

So we really see a lot of opportunities in the New York market. They also have opportunities where they're incentivizing V2G, giving you more money towards the purchase of a school bus if it has V2G capabilities, and schools are eligible under this program to get the chargers installed or partially paid for.

Now in California, where we've had really a long-standing electric school bus program, there is an assembly bill out there, 579, which again mandates 100% zero-emission school buses by 2035. But there, it's about a $10 billion opportunity all in. And they've got $500 million in the zero-emission school bus initiative. They've got a school bus set aside program or money specifically set aside just to be spent on the school bus program. We have HVIP, which is the hybrid and electric vehicle incentive program, which basically pays immediately the dealer or the OEM for a portion or all of the vehicles. We got AQMD programs and the VW Mitigation funds that we can draw from also.

Next slide, please. So we want to look at the competitive landscape. Again, Fraser earlier went on to say we make a Type A and a Type D school bus. The Type A is a Class 4 school bus that we make actually on our own platform. If you go across other manufacturers, there's no other platform -- there's no other manufacturer that uses their own platform. They buy somebody else's platform and they modify, they convert it. So we have a native EV platform that we build our body on, which is, we believe, incredibly compelling as far as warranty coverage and exposure longevity, durability, compelling nature of the vehicle. There's a lot of -- I mean, or is it something that was changed in essentially a garage at some point.

The other thing that GreenPower has that none of the other competitors really meet in this space is we got all four items checked here. We've got the HVIP eligible vehicle, New York School bus contract. We've got really, really big batteries comparatively to a lot of the folks in Type A school bus space, which enables us to have a range or this vehicle-to-grid capability, and we have the battery capacity listed below.

In the Type D school bus or the Class 8 school bus, that's a flat nose school bus. And a lot of people here might not realize that with these flat nose school buses, the safety factor for the students and everyone on the road is increased immensely. They also refer to these as transit style school buses. You don't have this nose in front, this hood in front of you as a driver. So you really cap forward, your seat is at the front of the bus. You have full front control and your visibility is really right down to the street in front of the vehicle without this huge blind spot in front.

California has largely adopted this type and actually on the West Coast, they've been largely adopted mostly due not only to pass new capacity at the heavy-duty nature of it and the way they ride. There are a lot of benefits of the transit style bus. But the visibility for the safety of the students crossing in front or being in front of the bus is immensely compelling.

And if you look at our product compared to the others, it's our purpose-built chassis. We're on the HVIP eligibility. We're on the New York school bus contract. Again, we've got very large batteries that make them incredibly compelling. The bus seats up to 90 students, which is the highest capacity of any school bus in our class. And we really have industry-leading battery capacity with almost 400-kilowatt hours in the Mega BEAST and just under 200-kilowatt hours in the BEAST. And the next slide, please, Fraser.

I'll just speak to this slide and then turn it back to you, Brendan. GreenPower in its most recent fiscal year ended March 31 or ending March 31, 2025, we delivered 34 of the larger BEAST school buses and 2 of the smaller Type A Nano BEAST school buses, which gives you some idea that the Nano BEAST is early days for GreenPower. As we build up our book and our production capabilities, we expect to see, I would say, a higher -- disproportionately higher number of the Type A school buses in relation to the overall market. And if we went back to that number, on our previous slide of 490,000 school buses nationwide, there's almost 100,000 of those that are Type A. So that gives you an idea of we are just started on this market. And in fact, to give it some context, we have our first delivery that -- where we have the Nano BEAST organized for the state of New York, and are really excited about not just that delivery, but really getting that whole market going in terms of our offering, which is the only purpose-built Type A school bus.

In terms of our order book, we have approximately $60 million of orders for both the BEAST and the Nano BEAST. And a significant chunk of this is at various stages of production for customers in the states listed on this slide. And we also have an active qualified pipeline that in addition to the states that we have the order book includes half a dozen other states. So we see growth both within the core states that we've talked about so far in this presentation being New York and California, but we also see a geographic spread in terms of a number of other states that have a significant desire to adopt electric school buses.

Mentioned tariffs at the beginning of the presentation, and I didn't really do a justice in the context that the tariffs hammered us not just in terms of the uncertainty of how they would play out with our supply chain, ultimately the costs and the timing of production. But in our case, we had parts that we needed for ongoing production that sat in ports for months. And Brendan and the team were able to get these issues substantially resolved by -- through last month. So from sort of the March, April time frame till halfway through July. In some cases, we had a complete stop in terms of our production. We're now able to resume. And we also have a plan in terms of the tariffs as they sit today in terms of how green power should best produce a vehicle given the current regime of tariffs.

And lastly, as a bit of a departure from just building and delivering a school bus to school bus operator, it's called district or a dealer for deployment with one or the other is today, we announced a contract that we signed with the State of New Mexico for more than $5 million for an electric school bus pilot project. And the first phase, which plans to start the middle of September will involve three of our Type A Nano BEAST, and those will be -- each of the three will be deployed for 6 weeks in a school district and moved on to the next and then the next.

And so the first year, our focus is around the Type A school bus. And then the second year, the plan is -- and after the first year, they'll -- State of New Mexico will determine how they want to use those three on an ongoing basis. But each location we go to, we'll be setting up charging and we're going to be using different types of chargers, both Level 2 and Level 3. So they really get the full experience and the reports that we help generate for the state will give them an incredible database in terms of how they can further the adoption of electric school buses.

The second year will involve two of our BEAST and one of our Mega BEAST. And as Brendan noted, the Mega BEAST, the objective there is to also involve that vehicle with V2G. So once again, in the same spirit as the Nano BEAST is that we'll be -- we're not going to move that vehicle around to different school districts, it will be set up with just one. But the other two BEASTs will move around to school districts similar to the Nano BEAST, giving us a very thorough coverage of the state and a great database for them to work with on the product. And we're back to Slide 10 for...

Yes. Thank you, Fraser. And we've done -- we've conducted these pilot projects, namely the one in West Virginia to where we really got the fact that the school districts participated in the project -- in the program, and we're able to operate the vehicles. You could really understand their sweet spot, what routes they could possibly electrify and how this gets incorporated into the fleet. The project is, we think, is destined to be very successful as was the West Virginia project.

So we were talking about our platform, GreenPower's platform, that's really one of our main differentiators from all of the competitors in the space. And this is our EV Star platform. This is an incredibly compact, but with high load capacity, long range. And again, it's purpose-built. We build this vehicle from ground up as an EV. It has some of the best cargo capacity, so low payload capacity, allows us to put 7,000 pounds of body and passengers on this vehicle, which is really industry-leading and is really our leg up on the competition with those converted vehicles.

And this purpose-built vehicle has both Level 2 and Level 3 capabilities on it, including V2G. We've built and delivered over 700 of these. So we've got the parts worked out. We've got all -- everything worked out as far as the supply chain, parts, service, integration. And again, with that size battery, we do have leading range of 150-or-so miles on a single charge. Next slide, please, Fraser.

So the reason we show this platform is that this is our fungible platform that we use to build our school bus. We also use it to build our trucks, our stake bed, our reefer unit, our Mobility Plus, which is our cutaway shuttle bus product. It's a very versatile platform and has really allowed us to pivot and refocus more focus basically with the same thing into the school bus space. When we've built these, they could have been used for trucks. But now we really see the truck market softening, and it allows us to use the same product for the school bus market.

And again, the design is industry-leading. What we haven't discussed yet here on this call is the bodies that we produce. Fraser likes to say they look futuristic and they do, and they do have the most room inside, the best space inside. But it's space age aluminum superstructure that we use for these vehicles. So it's not -- it doesn't corrode, it's lighter weight, it's stronger, it will last longer, it's a higher durability standard.

Our medium-duty vehicle has a heavy-duty body on it, which is also a first and really gives us this incredibly nice handling, long lifespan. We have the rooftop air conditioning and heating unit on it, which creates a very comfortable cabin, highest headroom in the Type A class. And again, it shows well, it presents well. It lasts longer. It requires at least maintenance. Again, no corrosion, all that stuff. Ideal for the Northeast where the lion's share of these, we're anticipating them to be deployed.

This platform was tested also independently by the federal government under the FTA at the Altoona testing ground or the Altoona proving ground in Pennsylvania, where it received 92.2, which at the time was the highest score for any EV or medium-duty vehicle. But it's still among the highest scores ever tested at Altoona. And that includes the maintainability, the durability, all the different aspects of the vehicle. That test has been designated. So the government knows what they're spending their money on. So it used to be a buyer beware test. Now it is a pass fail test and does have a score given to it. Not only did we pass, we got an incredibly high score. Next slide, please, Fraser.

So Fraser was talking about some of our issues we're having with tariffs and the new normal here with what's going to happen with cost of goods and our cost of components for supply. One thing that GreenPower has always leveraged but will continue to leverage is our manufacturing light approach where we have the ability to not only build and assemble here in the U.S., but we can leverage our contract manufacturers in Malaysia and other places, which allows us to get vehicles produced in a more scalable manner where we can have higher throughput capacity without necessarily creating -- the business is still lumpy, so you can't really expand. The roadside is littered in our industry with companies that just had too much capacity, too much space, too much overhead. And the business, again, was too lumpy and it just was unmanageable.

At GreenPower, not only have we made our U.S. operations more cost effective through consolidation and really minimized areas where we thought we could really cut in, but leveraging our international contract manufacturing has -- we believe, still has the winning formula and allows us to really build and scale up and scale down when our orders are -- as our order book develops.

And with that, I will turn it back to Fraser. Thank you, folks.

Thank you, Brendan. So quickly with regards to our recently completed and filed year-end, being the year ended March 31, 2025. We reported revenues of just under $20 million, which was down from the previous year. If you took out the Workhorse, the cab chassis that we sold to Workhorse in the previous fiscal year, we actually had an uptick in the rest of the business. And so that gives us some idea of the base that we're working with moving forward as the March 31, 2025, is more representative of where we're going over the next year or 2 as we complete the rebuild that I've referenced at the outset of this presentation.

But one of the things that we've always been able to accomplish is we continue for the vehicles we sell quarter after quarter, year-over-year, generate a gross profit. And if I look -- we've shown this chart for a couple of years now, and it seems like all the ones in red, we have to change because one or two of them go by the wayside. And that really is that if you can't define a sustainable business model in terms of generating gross profit on your sales of products, that eventually, you have to either increase your prices, change your business model or you're not going to be able to continue.

The 9.7% was the gross profit for the year for GreenPower. I should note that in the fourth quarter, the gross profit was 10% -- I think, 11% to 12%. And that's after all the adjustments that were posted for the -- for both the quarter and as well for the year. So if you backed out the year-end adjustments or realizable value adjustments or inventory write-downs, some of which are -- you might reasonably expect to recur, others that are onetime, then before all those adjustments, our gross profit was in the 22% to 23% before adjustments. And that is our ongoing target as we get the business focused on the core parts of our order book, which right now is our school buses, both the Type A and the Type D. And as noted on the right there, the rest of the companies other than Tesla are as shown on this slide, have significant gross profit losses being that the cost of goods sold substantially exceeds the revenue that they're attaining on their sale of their vehicles and products.

Capital structure. Total issued shares at the end of July was just over 30 million shares. We had the incentive stock options and warrants, which at today's price would either -- would largely be out of the money for the incentive stock options and almost all of the warrants would be out of the money as well. But fully diluted would be 36.7 million shares. We have an operating demand loan with BMO for up to $6 million. We also have a revolving loan facility from the Export Development Bank for up to $5 million, and that's for production financing, not working capital. And lastly, strong support from the directors of the company with an aggregate of more than $5 million of funding by the directors that is subordinated to the two senior positions.

So I'd like to get to Q&A. So I'm not going -- I think we've covered most of these items already in our presentation. But at this juncture, Craig, can we open it up for questions?

Absolutely, we can. [Operator Instructions] Fraser, there are already several questions in the queue. Would you like to choose and read them aloud or shall I?

Happy to do so. I just pulled them up. So first one is a tariff question. So we'll go with how does, if at all, does tariffs on Canada affect the company? Lastly, how much of an influence is BYD in your production? And can you see this growing in brackets their influence?

I'll deal with the first part, and I know Brendan will be able to provide some commentary on the BYD portion of the question. The tariffs on Canada, to the extent that the current automotive agreement that is -- and I call it the automotive agreement, but the U.S., Mexico, Canada auto agreement does exempt all transactions that are pursuant to that agreement from the proposed 35% -- I shouldn't say proposed, but the 35% tariffs on goods flowing from the U.S. into Canada -- sorry, from Canada into the U.S.

We don't have as definitive a table in terms of goods flowing the other way. So right now, as it's structured, we don't have anything that we're manufacturing in any capacity in Canada that we'd be shipping to the U.S. So both in terms of the auto trade agreement as well as the general tariff rate is that we're not caught by that. But it does shine a very bright light on a sector that could result in changes ultimately that impact on our ability to complete the manufacturing process of a product in the United States and then ship it up to Canada. So that's sort of the concern that we have going forward as opposed to what's in place right now.

And Brendan, did you want to speak to the influence of BYD?

Well, BYD has a lot of influence. I don't know how BYD -- I don't have the inside track on what their plans are to deal with these pretty egregious tariffs on their products and their supply chain, which is almost entirely from China and now being incredibly heavily tariffed. I think the consensus is that BYD is waiting for the Chinese trade deal to get hammered out, and then they're going to decide what they do. We would -- GreenPower likes to see a fairly level playing field, and we think a lot of healthy competition in the EV space is good. So we're not rooting against them, and we're hoping that trade normalizes and that that's good for everybody.

And I would certainly agree with that. Is GP considering full autonomy? And that's certainly become back -- that's become topical again. It was certainly a big topic 5 or 6 years ago and then seemed to have faded off into the sidelines, but now it's back to some degree. We had done a project down in Jacksonville, where several of our vehicles were deployed with a company called Perrone Robotics that did the stack, and it was a Level 4. So still the steering wheel and all the other -- the necessary elements that a human could jump back into the seat and drive the vehicle if necessary. And they had set it up where they had sort of a concierge or pilot approach.

And we also -- Perrone has used a couple of our EV Stars on another project, but I think that kind of indicates that it's very much a science project still. And so we're very cautious about our involvement because it just suck up a lot of the resources, both not just financial, but much needed engineering time that we need with product deployment that we might not be able to afford to devote to projects like that.

I think the other thing is we're waiting to see how these lawsuits against Tesla and others shake out. Uber, Waymo and other companies that have gone the autonomous route and have had some incidents really to see what their level of exposure is, are people really blaming the vehicle or the autonomy for the incidents when frankly, they probably weren't the fault of the vehicles, but we'd like to see what that is because that will give us an idea of exposure and really what type of insurance we're going to need if we're even going to be able to get insurance. There's still a lot of open issues there.

Next question. It's a good one, not that the others aren't good, but this is one that we -- is going to be a real indicator as to how quickly we can achieve cash -- positive cash flow in terms of our changed business model. Question, I know it's tough to pin down an exact number with different vehicles in play. But if you had to estimate what's the highest number of Nano BEAST you could produce in a year, assuming everything runs at peak efficiency. And right now, we're working on the reality that doing a Nano BEAST as we build up production, given that last year, we delivered all of just two Nano BEAST. We've got our work cut out to really scale that up is that on a practical basis, initially, it's one every 2 weeks. And we believe that within the first 8 to 10, we can get to where it's one a week in a location. So if we have two locations, then there's the opportunity to get to 8 a month or 100 a year. And to give some context is that with the cab chassis that we have available to us, we can -- eight a month is pretty close to being positive cash flow.

And related to this, please give us an update on the California production facility output at this time. What is the expected monthly unit output? And I think we answered the second part in that if we're -- we could certainly do more than just Nano BEAST. We could be building reefers and BEASTs, the larger school bus all at the same time. So there's the -- it's not as if there's a sole activity that can only occur at one point in time.

But getting Riverside up and running has -- the majority of the spring was spent getting everything organized from all the different locations that we were either supporting vehicles, producing our vehicles or in the case of GP truck body, doing body building. So getting that all under one roof through the spring was about the time period that tariffs hit and shipments were being held at port that directly impacted on our throughput through Riverside. So I wouldn't want to speak to the historical through the summer to date. But once we get fully up and recommencing production is that we'll have a better sense of what the throughput will be in Riverside.

Two questions on West Virginia that are somewhat related. What is the status of GreenPower's relationship with the State of West Virginia? And what is the status of negotiation with West Virginia?

We don't actually have any -- there isn't any negotiation, but the context of that is that some of the press in the state has talked about a whole host of issues relating to manufacturers of electric school buses. The issues and troubles of Lion Electric have been front and center in that dialogue, as well as our position that having earned the employment base and the attendant offset to our rental or lease agreement as well as the original deal, which provided that we would have both the facility and additional land base that would assist us in -- for a number of different related activities on that production that was not forthcoming and did not end up in the deal.

So it's been unfortunate that the state sort of shot first and talked after they had decided to shoot, but we are in discussions with them. And I would say that right now, what it is in their court in terms of the position that we presented. And so we'll see what ultimately their response is to what we view as a fairly straightforward interpretation of both the contract to lease purchase we entered into as well as the original memorandum of understanding that was signed at the beginning of 2022. Brendan, anything that you think we should add on that?

No, that was complete and thorough. Thank you, Fraser.

Okay. And sorry, there's a question that said should have read diluted my question earlier. So let me find your original question. Do you see shareholder value be further diluted in the future?

We never ignore the capital markets. We do the best that we can under the circumstances. Having a steady stream of companies go bankrupt or into receivership is not helpful. Probably one of the most frequent questions that Brendan and I get, whether we're dealing with dealers, customers, school districts or potential partners, such as some of the largest school bus operators in North America, they all have a common basis, which is, are you folks going to be around? So that's -- our focus has been, well, we need to rebuild, do a rebuild using a sports nomenclature. And our view was that we could do this fairly quickly and not take 3 to 5 years to completely rebuild the company because we already have the great set of products and one market in particular, being the school bus market that is well positioned to -- our product set is well positioned to take an ever-increasing demand in that sector.

So what we believe is that rebuilding our business, getting our cost structures changed to be focused on the immediate sales opportunities that we can deploy profitably gives us an opportunity to get to positive cash flow by the end of this year. And we believe doing that, that the capital markets will recognize that because everybody else is struggling to figure out their business model on how they can make money on the sale of products. That's not been a problem with GreenPower. We've got to get our business aligned so that we're generating positive cash flow.

Great question. Can you speak to any ongoing efforts on a federal legislative front, which GP is involved with? And secondly, what is your opinion of how it is being received? I'll let you start on this.

So currently, we are working with a group of school bus manufacturers to really target the tariffs. It's our position that the tariffs on school buses are counterproductive. School buses are largely bought by governments and both federal and local governments being school districts and again, various funding mechanisms through public entities, and that the tariffs are essentially a tax and they're basically taxing themselves, which is problematic. A lot of the contracts that are in place that are these public contracts don't permit for price increases under these circumstances. And the costs are going up fairly dramatically for a lot of the school bus manufacturers leveraging a lot of the components, items that we buy that are heavily tariffed.

So our position is go to the legislature and anyone else will listen and tell them that they shouldn't be taxing themselves or their cousins in local government and that this is just doing damage, which these tariffs have been doing damage. So the honest answer is it's not been received well. We've not gotten a lot of traction. We have had audiences, but we don't know that there's going to be any minds changed about tariffs regarding school buses. And that's where we sit right now.

And if you want to know my -- and this is Brendan Riley's humble perspective, but I think that the tariffs are going to really start doing some damage to the economy. We're going to start seeing these numbers. And I believe this administration is going to quickly and quietly shut the tariffs down to maybe 10% across the board or something of that nature and things will settle down.

I'd add two things. One, that the -- normally, you could go and push forward this kind of a lobbying effort, if you will, with the federal government on the basis that school district shouldn't be taxed. But in this case, the current administration has no appetite to hear that tariffs equate to taxes. We tried that on. It went over like a lead balloon. And when I say the we, I should give credit to a gentleman who's not on this call, that's part of our core team is Mark. And Mark was instrumental in getting the New Mexico pilot project moving forward and working with the state and done a great job on that front.

Mark's also been front and center on our lobbying efforts and spends time in Washington, D.C. with organizations like ZETA, Zero Emission Transportation Association, which is lobbying on behalf of dozens and dozens of OEMs as well as a working group that is working with some of the senators on, okay, how do we restructure federal money and just not make it -- just not waste what's been done to date. And so it would certainly be -- need to be rebranded in order to accomplish that. So that is bearing some fruit. So it's not all lost, but on the tariff front, as Brendan says, this has not been something that we see any changes in the immediate future and our current -- the changes that we've made and the rebuild that we're largely through is on the basis of what we have to deal with today, not a hope or a wish that it changes at some point in the future.

And then the second thing related to this is that we've -- on the EPA front, we've always had a very careful or cautious approach. So we don't get heavily too much exposure to the one form of funding, given that the Feds don't have the same kind of mandates that the states do. So what both Brendan and I talked about earlier in the presentation in terms of the extent of funding in New York and California and in particular, New York right now, we don't see that at the federal level. So what we are trying to do with legislative that Mark sort of leading the charge is how do we get that buy-in? How do we get the federal government supporting an adoption strategy. So we think that, that is having some success. And we do see or expect to see some positive announcements probably not in the immediate future, but over -- later this year, early next year.

Next question. What do you see as your major advantages and conversely obstacles in the next 5 years? And generally, how is the product being received?

Well, I think Brendan and I sort of break things down as 30, 60, 90 and 180 days. So 5 years is -- that would be an absolute luxury. But within the time frame that I'm talking about, which you do have to plan and do your best to say, okay, where are we going to be a year or 2 years out. Where we are with our product set, there's a few specifics that we'd like to see, but the school buses are there. They represent the best of breed. The Type A school bus, we didn't mention in our presentation. The year it came out, STN awarded -- gave it its Best New Technology of the Year award. It is one of the vehicles that Brendan and I would love to drive. It's so easy to drive. It's very different than any of the competition or even in the traditional ICE Type A school buses. It really is what you would expect for an electric vehicle that it's step forward in terms of the technology.

So we have the product set. We've got a market that's developed. And in our case, instead of trying to do too many things in too many markets, the approach we've taken is to narrow it down to the ones that where the demand and the funding is available. And from that, we see the opportunity to get to positive cash flow and then build out or further build the company on those building blocks, if I can explain it that way. So our time frame is more in the magnitude of quarterly and up to the next 18 to 24 months.

And if we did talk about where this industry could be 5 years from now, you're getting into, well, what changes might occur in battery technology. Brendan more so than myself keeps tabs on what's happening in the market. A lot of exciting developments, nothing that's going to hit in the next few quarters or nothing that we want on corporate because we got to focus on delivering the orders we have in hand, not building the next best school bus. But there are a lot of potential developments that could really further help accelerate demand in our industry.

Yes. And what I would add to what Fraser said, I'm absolutely aligned with all of his statements. One that he didn't specify on is commercial goods movement. Those mandates have been incredibly relaxed, if not disappeared, and that's going to really soften that market for those vehicles. Hopefully, it will give the folks that can install the infrastructure, some time to start putting in chargers and really start developing our infrastructure network, which is critical for deployment and where we will be 5 years, 6 years from now.

And what I'm really looking at right now is the manganese-rich chemistries for basically iron phosphate with a manganese-rich component to that chemistry should decrease the price, increase the energy and power density by 50%. So really compelling technology. And once that's manufacturable and hits the market validated, we could see a strong rebound because the compelling nature of the vehicles are just going to get greater and greater, lower cost, better range, better capacity, payload, all that. And then the advent of semi-solid solid-state batteries are going to be pretty impressive. But we don't see or expect those for the foreseeable future. So we're just keeping our eyes out looking for those. Those will be game changers.

I can see we're -- we've run over time here. And there's still a few questions that we had to go. So apologies that we're not able to cover all of those. But the press release that went out this morning, Brendan and my numbers are on there. And likewise, we're pretty easy to track down. Feel free to either e-mail or call us if you have any follow-up as we'd be happy to go through each and every one of your questions. But we appreciate the support of our stakeholders and look forward to giving you -- watch the developments over the next few months as we move out of this pause that we were in as a result of the initial round of announcements on tariffs and as we build up our business.

Thank you very much, Fraser and Brendan. And just a few more notes here. For more information on GreenPower Motor Company, you can, of course, also reach us at 1-800-REDCHIP or e-mail us at [email protected]. Please visit the information page created by Redchip for GreenPower. It's greenpowermotorinfo.com. There, you can view and download the investor presentation used today and the fact sheet and sign up for news alerts on GreenPower. Watch Small Stocks, Big Money, RedChip's program featuring exciting small-cap companies every Saturday night at 7:00 p.m. Eastern on Bloomberg U.S.A. And finally, join RedChip's next webinar with Connect Biopharma Holdings tomorrow at 4:15 p.m. U.S. Eastern. Register for all RedChip webinars at redchip.com/events. Thanks again to our many participants today, and thank you, Fraser and Brendan.