Nikola executive chairman Trevor Milton on the company's public debut — Transcript

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1. 0:00of course trevor you described the
2. 0:01company uh as a technology
3. 0:04energy company uh and we
4. 0:07learned along with our viewers in terms
5. 0:09of your uh efforts
6. 0:11in trucks and the hydrogen cells and
7. 0:13well the whole vertical integration
8. 0:16but let's talk finances now since you
9. 0:18are now going to be judged on your
10. 0:20ability to continue to grow you lost 89
11. 0:22million dollars last year
12. 0:24you're going to lose money this year
13. 0:26when are you going to start to see real
14. 0:28revenues
15. 0:29our revenues all come about the middle
16. 0:31of next year is when our big uh is when
17. 0:32our revenues really start rolling in our
18. 0:34factory home germany comes online next
19. 0:36year
20. 0:36um so the pandemic has slowed us down a
21. 0:38couple months with the cova virus
22. 0:40europe still shut down we still can't
23. 0:42get to our factory in europe so
24. 0:44once that opens up in olm germany we'll
25. 0:46be able to get going so we're probably
26. 0:47looking like just a couple month delay
27. 0:49next year
28. 0:50so probably third quarter we'll have
29. 0:52trucks rolling off the assembly line
30. 0:53out of old germany
31. 0:57um you know when we last spoke again as
32. 0:58i referenced uh in early march when you
33. 1:01joined us the new york stock exchange
34. 1:02you talked about an 800 million
35. 1:04order from anheuser-busch you also
36. 1:07mentioned that there are orders that are
37. 1:08many times bigger than that is
38. 1:10is that still the case and can you tell
39. 1:12us about any other orders
40. 1:14yeah there's a lot of really good uh
41. 1:16good interest in a lot of good
42. 1:17uh customers that are wanting uh wanting
43. 1:19the trucks the hardest part we have
44. 1:21right now is trying to figure out how to
45. 1:22deliver them
46. 1:23um with the infrastructure going up at
47. 1:25the same time so for your audience real
48. 1:27quick we have both a hydrogen electric
49. 1:28truck
50. 1:29that requires the hydrogen network to be
51. 1:30built simultaneously with those orders
52. 1:32and then we also have the battery
53. 1:34electric truck which does not require
54. 1:35the infrastructure because
55. 1:37they can just put chargers on site so
56. 1:39the battery electric trucks coming off
57. 1:40the assembly line next year will be
58. 1:41delivered to customers
59. 1:42kind of throughout the country the
60. 1:44hydrogen trucks we're working on
61. 1:46those locations and why the difference
62. 1:48well hydrogen goes further
63. 1:50than a battery electric truck does and
64. 1:52it's a lot lighter to operate so they
65. 1:54hit two different markets
66. 1:55so ultimately it's just a lot of like
67. 1:56juggling these different things but
68. 1:58we're
69. 1:58we're pretty close we just ordered the
70. 2:01largest order ever of electrolyzers that
71. 2:03i know of it was a
72. 2:04an ordered yesterday was over 30 million
73. 2:06dollars for to produce over 40 000
74. 2:08kilograms of hydrogen we just made that
75. 2:10order yesterday from now
76. 2:11out of norway so we're already prepping
77. 2:13our first five stations to be up and
78. 2:15running um
79. 2:16we're breaking ground we should be
80. 2:17breaking down this year on these
81. 2:18stations
82. 2:20okay at what point would you share with
83. 2:22us then uh what you
84. 2:24again had told me that you were ready to
85. 2:25announce some orders many times bigger
86. 2:28than the 800 million order with
87. 2:29anheuser-busch
88. 2:31uh we're close and uh i'll tell you what
89. 2:33as soon as we're ready to
90. 2:35announce that i'll give you we'll give
91. 2:36you a ring so you can uh we can
92. 2:38we can revisit that in person as get
93. 2:40again but it's it's close it's really
94. 2:42close we're just trying to deal with a
95. 2:43lot of logistics around
96. 2:44um with the customers the pr the
97. 2:47everything else so it's it's coming soon
98. 2:50uh all right um you know clearly from
99. 2:53what you just discussed in terms of your
100. 2:55purchases it's a capital intensive
101. 2:56business
102. 2:57uh you've raised a good amount of
103. 2:59capital uh trevor but are you gonna need
104. 3:01to
105. 3:02consistently hit the market in terms of
106. 3:03selling stock and or raising other
107. 3:06uh capital yeah it is a capital
108. 3:08intensive market but what a lot of
109. 3:09people don't know is this so we we don't
110. 3:11the most expensive part of our business
111. 3:13model is the hydrogen network right it's
112. 3:15also our most valuable aspect of our
113. 3:16company
114. 3:17because we're an energy tech company so
115. 3:20these hydrogen these hydrogen stations
116. 3:22we don't just go put them up on
117. 3:23with speculation what we do is we
118. 3:25pre-sell a route so we'll sell like
119. 3:27500 trucks on a route with that route we
120. 3:30can afford to we
121. 3:32we sign the customers up with leases on
122. 3:33the trucks we sell the leases off
123. 3:36and then we can pay for the network with
124. 3:37cash so we definitely will have to go
125. 3:40raise money again down the road
126. 3:41we raised a billion dollar almost a
127. 3:43billion dollars through this ipo and the
128. 3:45um
129. 3:46and some of the other offerings so we we
130. 3:48have a lot of money in our account we
131. 3:50have no debt
132. 3:50but no doubt we're going to have to uh
133. 3:52we're going to have to raise more money
134. 3:53that'll come down the road once we hit
135. 3:55benchmarks
136. 3:56and then the investors are like you know
137. 3:57once they know that you've hit your
138. 3:58benchmarks they just open up their
139. 4:00they open up their pocketbooks when at
140. 4:02that point it's just it's just all
141. 4:03execution and that's
142. 4:04we're right on the edge of that right
143. 4:12now
144. 4:19you