Nikola Founder Trevor Milton on first earnings report as a public company — Transcript

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1. 0:00nicola reporting his first earnings as a
2. 0:02public company last night with
3. 0:04no revenue or physical product to show
4. 0:07at this point
5. 0:08how does it stack up against its
6. 0:09competition well joining me now is
7. 0:11trevor milton he's nicholas founder
8. 0:13and executive chairman he's going to
9. 0:14give us an update discuss the outlook
10. 0:15for the company
11. 0:16trevor always good to have you um you
12. 0:19know on the
13. 0:19conference call yesterday after you
14. 0:21reported earnings your ceo is not
15. 0:23particularly forthcoming
16. 0:24i think to the frustration of some
17. 0:26analysts in terms of
18. 0:28hoping for more guidance on some of
19. 0:30those milestones out there so i'll go
20. 0:31through them with you
21. 0:32and see what you can tell us if anything
22. 0:34uh let's start with the announcement of
23. 0:36a significant commercial agreement
24. 0:38for nikola zero emissions you say it's
25. 0:40in the works by the end of 2020.
26. 0:42is it still yeah it is it's uh
27. 0:45there's a lot of really good things
28. 0:46going on in the background the hard part
29. 0:47is you know with analysts you really
30. 0:49need to manage your expectations i'm a
31. 0:51little bit more of a
32. 0:52um an outspoken uh communicative type of
33. 0:56executive chairman my our ceo is very
34. 0:59and cfo were very very methodical and
35. 1:01and they're all about managing
36. 1:02expectations with analysts so
37. 1:04um you know it's it's definitely we have
38. 1:06a variety here at nikola but it's in the
39. 1:08works for sure yeah i'm excited about it
40. 1:10um yeah i guess you know let me come
41. 1:12back to that i mean how does that work
42. 1:14as you say you come on tv with us we
43. 1:16talk
44. 1:17uh you're an outgoing personality you're
45. 1:19willing to say things you're very active
46. 1:21on twitter and then you've got these
47. 1:22buttoned up ce the ceo and cfo
48. 1:25is that an arrangement that's going to
49. 1:26work long term for you given
50. 1:28you are still a development company that
51. 1:30doesn't you know that we're all focused
52. 1:32on milestones because it's not like you
53. 1:33have any profits
54. 1:35yeah i think it's good you know you need
55. 1:36balance in life i'm a lot to handle i
56. 1:38know that
57. 1:39and it's good to have a cfo and a ceo
58. 1:41that are very uh
59. 1:42um very methodical and and you know
60. 1:45they've ran publicly traded companies
61. 1:47before
62. 1:48you know mark was the was the president
63. 1:49of worthington industry so
64. 1:51he's a lot more i guess you could say
65. 1:53like uh
66. 1:54thought out like very very buttoned up
67. 1:56like you said and look i'm very
68. 1:58i'm very open good or bad i get i get
69. 2:00hammered and i get love it's like a
70. 2:01love-hate relationship with a lot of
71. 2:03people and
72. 2:04what's that's why we like to have you
73. 2:05and that's why i've enjoyed getting to
74. 2:07know you a bit
75. 2:08let's go back to the list though an
76. 2:10announcement of an oem partner for the
77. 2:11nikola badger by the end of 2020.
78. 2:14that's still uh on track absolutely um
79. 2:17you know i had three term sheets on my
80. 2:19desk
81. 2:19uh three of them to choose from and um
82. 2:22unfortunately they have uh the oems have
83. 2:26made me not
84. 2:27speak about what we're doing so i can
85. 2:29give you just a little bit i can give
86. 2:30you
87. 2:31a lot um what i can say is that we are
88. 2:34in
89. 2:35very very deep definitive discussions
90. 2:37with um
91. 2:38with um oems i had three of them on my
92. 2:41desk i had to choose
93. 2:42which one we were going to go with and i
94. 2:44think everyone's going to be very very
95. 2:46excited about that and i
96. 2:47will tell everyone as soon as we can
97. 2:49this is the one that is hard for me
98. 2:50because
99. 2:51the badger is so awesome and it's such
100. 2:53big news and what we're doing is so
101. 2:55revolutionary like when it comes to the
102. 2:56idea of
103. 2:57how big oems can work with
104. 3:01new upcoming awesome brands it's kind of
105. 3:03like what everyone wished
106. 3:05someone you know tesla would have done
107. 3:06with with an oem we have
108. 3:08we you know we have done so it's going
109. 3:10to be very exciting when that news comes
110. 3:11out unfortunately i just
111. 3:13i get it handcuffed me you know yeah
112. 3:15well i guess so all right how about the
113. 3:17announcement of a hydrogen station
114. 3:19collaboration by the end of the year
115. 3:20that's still on track
116. 3:22it is yeah we've given you know they
117. 3:24wanted to beat expectations
118. 3:25and it was really painful look i know
119. 3:27yesterday was was tough i wasn't on the
120. 3:28call i was
121. 3:29i was here in phoenix but i let i'll let
122. 3:31our ceo and cfo
123. 3:33um you know manage the call because
124. 3:35that's that's their job you know
125. 3:36and i wanted them to feel like they have
126. 3:38a voice in the company and um
127. 3:40and so it was it was really hard for me
128. 3:42you know because i i
129. 3:43the way i would go about things would be
130. 3:45a little bit different but that's also
131. 3:46what's
132. 3:46what's good about the company is that in
133. 3:48the long term
134. 3:50you know the big institutional funds
135. 3:51want to know that you have very very
136. 3:53like
137. 3:53like rock solid methodical
138. 3:56you know executive team right and then
139. 3:58you also have me who's very
140. 4:00vocal and innovative and creative and
141. 4:03and uh working on huge deals
142. 4:05and so you really do get the best of all
143. 4:07things but they they wanted to manage
144. 4:09expectations they put it out to let
145. 4:11people know look by the end of the year
146. 4:12my goal is to go and blow it out of the
147. 4:14water now