ECD Automotive Design, Inc. (ECDA) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Greetings, and welcome to the ECD Auto Design Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Chris Donovan of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to ECD Auto Design's Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. Today's date is November 24, 2025. And on today's call from ECD Auto Design are Scott Wallace, Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman; and Victoria Hay, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that this call may contain forward-looking statements as they are defined under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in forward-looking statements. For a discussion of such risks and uncertainties, please see ECD Auto Design's most recent filings with the SEC. All forward-looking statements made today reflect our current expectations only, and we undertake no obligation to update any statement to reflect the events that occur after this call. Also, during the course of today's call, the company will be discussing one or more non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in the press release we issued on Thursday, November 20, 2025. Copies of that press release are accessible on ECD's Investor Relations website, ecdautodesign.com. In addition, ECDA's Form 10-K and 10-Qs are also available on the Investor Relations website. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Scott Wallace. Scott?

Thank you, Chris. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us as we review ECD's third quarter results. I would like to begin with thanking my co-founders and friends, Tom and Emily Humble, who had the original vision for ECD 14 years ago. They have been critical in scaling the business, creating the brand and building some incredible vehicles with us. We wish them success in the future as they move to new opportunities, and we are grateful to retain Emily's knowledge and expertise of ECD as a Board member. The numbers this quarter reflect a period of transition, onetime impacts to the business and elevated costs from tariffs and shipping. I believe our recent decisions to reduce costs and diversify our product offering have positioned ECD on strong footing. Before I get into the details, let me take a moment to remind everyone of who we are and what makes ECD so special. ECD Automotive Design is a U.S.-based builder of fully bespoke restored luxury vehicles, combining classic automotive beauty with modern performance and customization. We participate in a $90 billion-plus global classic car ecosystem and operate capital-light model with scalable manufacturing and multiple growth channels, including retail and licensing. From our headquarters in Kissimmee, Florida, our master certified craftsmen and women and refurbish each vehicle. We also operate a logistics center in the U.K. that sources vintage vehicles and parts for transformation. Our core offering has expanded beyond our British routes of Land Rover Defenders, Range Rover Classics and Jaguar E-Types to include Ford Mustangs, Toyota FJs and boutique Porsche 911 modernization. Each vehicle is designed in partnership with the client through an immersive luxury design process that results in a one-on-one personalized vehicle. To date, we've completed almost 700 vehicles, each a testament to the skill, passion and pride of our team with average selling prices between USD 300,000 and USD 400,000. We've built a brand that competes among the highest tiers of luxury automotive market with craftsmanship, not mass production as our advantage. During the quarter, we focused on clearing our production of a number of older vehicles that we've been in progress for several months. These legacy builds impacted our gross margin, and now our production team is focused on new client builds with healthier economics. Macro conditions, including ongoing tariffs and logistics inflation continue to create pressure on our COGS this quarter. We are taking measures to optimize sourcing and reshape of our vendor strategy to blunt those effects moving forward. After dealing with these legacy builds as well as the cost structure reset, we expect margins to normalize. Since June, we've taken a hard look at how we operate and made changes that will make us stronger, implementing targeted cost savings, refined inventory management practices to improve working capital velocity, and finally, leaning into businesses that generate cash quicker, like our retail strategy and recent partnership with Chelsea Truck Company. These cost reduction measures will result in over USD 1 million in annualized savings with the majority reaching the financials throughout 2026. We streamlined overhead and simplified the organization without touching what matters most, our craftsmanship, production quality, customization and the customer experience. We're leaner, faster and sharper because of it. I'd now like to touch on 2 recent developments that helped to diversify our offering and expand the model range and addressable market. I'm pleased to share that our inaugural Porsche 911 build Project Gravette recently took on the best in show at the 2025 Festival of Speed. In October, we formally expanded into the Porsche market with a fully bespoke Porsche 911 restoration and customization through our boutique division. This move builds directly on the success of ECD's Mustang program launched earlier this year and represents the next evolution of ECD's strategy to selectively enter high-demand, high-value enthusiast segments where craftsmanship can truly differentiate. Porsche's 911s are among the most iconic and sought-after platforms for collectors and enthusiasts and a perfect fit for ECD's best-in-class boutique production focused on low-volume, high-touch vehicles that command premium prices. Expanding into Porsche's 911 resto mods allows us to further elevate our average selling price, drive efficiencies in our factory and extend the ECD experience to an even broader collector community. Project Gravette's award-winning debut helped us to quickly validate our approach and early conversations with prospective clients reinforce the strong demand we see building around this program. While still in its early stages, we expect to deliver additional Porsche 911 commissions next calendar year and believe Porsche 911s could become a meaningful long-term contributor to our boutique mix. In November, we were proud to announce the ECD and CTC brand and the U.S. distribution alliance with Chelsea Truck Company, a subsidiary of Kahn Design, create a new collaborative line of modern Land Rover Defender L663 and INEOS Grenadier builds. Kahn has been a long-time partner of ECD, and we found this to be a natural fit. The ECD and CTC collaboration combines CTC's British design and parts engineering expertise with ECD's full vehicle craftsmanship, performance integration and interior luxury capabilities. Vehicles will be assembled at ECD's facility using CTC's premium exterior and interior components. The result is a new class of modern luxury builds designed for faster delivery, holistic engineering and refined design execution. It is estimated that more than 100,000 new Land Rover Defenders and over 12,000 new INEOS Grenadiers have been sold in the United States since their introduction to market in 2020 and 2023, respectively. Adding modern trucks to our pipeline expands our total addressable market while allowing us to leverage existing factory capacity and technical expertise in a capital-efficient way with production cycles that can be completed in as little as 5 days. With pricing designed to be more approachable, ECD and CTC's SUV broaden our reach to first-time ECD buyers while remaining competitive with luxury SUV landscape where models such as the Mercedes-Benz G-Class start near USD 155,000. These customers will become part of our ecosystem and ECD family, creating future opportunities for upgrades, repeat purchases and retain them long term within the ECD product family. Finally, alongside our direct-to-consumer work upgrading existing vehicles, we are also opening a second channel through partnerships with dealerships, enabling them to offer ECD upgrade packages on new vehicle purchases. This strategy extends the reach of the ECD brand, integrates us earlier into the purchase journey and strengthens our presence within the broader luxury SUV ecosystem. We're also excited to continue expanding the ECD and CTC offering with additional vehicles in the near future. As we touched on in the last call, our jump into retail has been great for the ECD brand, serving as hubs for community engagement to build new client relationships. Our store within the store concept at One Driver's Club and West Palm Beach continues to draw interest, and we completed our first summer season in Nantucket. Based on this success, we will still plan on future standalone ECD locations now with the addition of ECD and CTC showrooms can be more impactful blending vintage and modern offerings in a single space to drive engagement and sales. With that, I will now pass the call over to Vicky to review our financial results. Vicky?

Thank you, Scott. Before going through today's results, I would like to address our NASDAQ compliance status. In September, we were granted an extension into January '26 to solve our bid price and shareholder equity deficits. We have diligently been working through this and still remain confident that we will be fully compliant early in 2026. Now to discuss third quarter results. ECD reported third quarter revenue of $5.8 million, a $1.2 million decrease compared to Q2 2025 and a decrease of $0.6 million year-on-year. Gross profit for the quarter was negative $1.7 million, down $3.1 million from Q2 2025 and $3.7 million from Q3 2024. The negative gross margin primarily reflects the completion of several older builds, which resulted in a onetime release of $3 million in labor and consumable allocations from the balance sheet. In addition, a $0.5 million out-of-period adjustment was recorded in Q3 2025 to release inventory tied to transactions completed and recognized during the first 2 quarters of the year. These items represent onetime cleanup adjustments that are not expected to recur. As a result, you will see inventory decrease from $7.9 million to $3.8 million quarter-over-quarter. We are also continuing to experience elevated shipping and tariff expenses and are actively evaluating opportunities to reduce these costs. Total operating expenses were $3.4 million, a $0.6 million decrease on the prior quarter and a $0.8 million increase on Q3 2024. The quarterly decrease reflects the impact of our continued cost reductions and rightsizing. The year-over-year increase is driven mainly by higher G&A expenses, including a noncash stock-based compensation expense of $0.4 million associated with the rollout of the company's employee stock plan introduced to acknowledge and reward our SaaS contributions. Loss from operations was $5.1 million, an increase of $2.5 million from the prior quarter and $4.5 million from the prior year period, primarily driven by the previously discussed impacts on gross margin. Net income was $2.2 million compared to a net loss of $4.3 million in the prior quarter '25 and a net loss of $2.6 million in Q3 2024. Positive net income in Q3 2025 is attributable to noncash fair value gains recognized in connection with the conversion of debt to preferred stock. I'd like to close by discussing some subsequent developments. During the fourth quarter, several transactions were completed to support both our compliance efforts, liquidity position and broader growth strategy. These include the receipt of $1 million of cash for the sale of Series C preferred stock and the conversion of $1.5 million of convertible notes to common stock. In addition, following the filing of the registration statement on Form S-1 on November 3, 2025, the company commenced sales of common stock under the equity purchase facility agreement. The agreement provides capacity for up to $300 million in common stock sales and offers increased flexibility in our treasury strategy, including the potential use of Bitcoin for inbound and outbound transactions, along with general corporate use. In the fourth quarter, we took additional cost saving actions from those previously announced in June that are expected to bring an incremental $1 million annual saving that will be realized in 2026. Collectively, these efforts are intended to restore and maintain compliance with NASDAQ, strengthen our balance sheet and combined with continued G&A streamlining and planned margin improvements position us well as we exit the fourth quarter and move quickly into 2026. Our focus remains on executing our growth strategy and delivering long-term value to our shareholders. This concludes my prepared remarks. I'll now hand it back to the operator to open the line for questions. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] There are no questions at this time. And I'll hand the call over to Scott Wallace for closing remarks.

We appreciate everyone's time today and your continued interest in ECD. Please visit our website, ecdautodesign.com to stay up to date on our latest projects and feel free to reach out via our IR site if you have any questions. Have a great day, and happy Thanksgiving.

This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and we thank you for your participation.