NFI Group Inc. (NFI) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning. Thank you for joining us for NFI's first-ever Virtual Investor Day. My name is Stephen King, Group Director, Treasury, Corporate Development and Investor Relations, speaking to you from Winnipeg, Canada this morning. While we would normally host our Investor Day in person, we are excited to be able to host participants from around the world joining us virtually for this year's event. I hope that you enjoy the sessions and learn more about our businesses and markets through today's presentations. A few quick housekeeping items. Today, management will be primarily focused on discussing our business, vision, strategy and future plans. As such, certain information provided today may be forward-looking and based on assumptions and anticipated results that are subject to uncertainties. Should any one or more of these uncertainties materialize or should the underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary significantly from those expected. You're advised to review the risk factors found in NFI's press releases and other public filings on SEDAR for more details. We undertake no obligation to revise or update publicly any forward-looking statements, except as required by law. We also want to remind you that NFI's financial statements are presented in U.S. dollars, the company's functional currency, and all amounts referred to are in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. The entire event today will be virtual with presenter slides on screen. A recording of today's event, including the presentations, will be posted on our website after the session. The event will be split into 2 90-minute segments. The first half will include a presentation on NFI's environmental, social, governance, or ESG, program followed by a general overview of our business and strategy by NFI President and CEO, Paul Soubry. We'll then hear more about our transformational NFI Forward initiative and conclude the first half with a panel of transportation and mobility experts to provide context on the transition to electric vehicles, including funding dynamics, infrastructure considerations and adoption expectations. We'll then have a bio break for a few minutes. We will kick off the second half with a presentation on the evolution to zero-emission buses, but we like to call as evolution, and how NFI is well positioned to lead and benefit from this transition. Following that, NFI's business leaders will provide updates on their individual business units and various end markets. CFO, Pipasu Soni, will provide financial guidance for 2021 and our longer-term financial outlook. Finally, the honorable Brian Tobin, Chair of the Board of Directors of NFI, will complete our session with closing remarks. To start things off, I'm proud to share with you our NFI group video, which shows who we are, what we believe in and where we're headed. Some of you may have already seen it at last year's Investor Day. This video was developed after an extensive project following the acquisition of ADL in 2019 to define NFI's why. We wanted to capture what drives us as a company, align our values and clarify how we strive to ensure balance and benefit to all of our stakeholders. We canvassed our entire global team, customers, suppliers and community partners, with the outcome being the definition of aligned mission, vision and values. At the end of this process, we discovered that NFI's why is simply to move people. Our employees are moved to create the industry's best products using innovations and new technologies. Our products move millions of people around the world every day, and we are driven to provide benefits to the communities in which we live and work. And we strive to continue to move our business forward to deliver long-term sustainable returns for our shareholders. This is NFI's why, and we hope you like it. [Presentation]

We thought it was best to start our Investor Day with a discussion around ESG and NFI. The principles of ESG are critically important to us as they guide our operations and drive us to build solutions that create economic, social and environmental change. As you just heard from my opening remarks and from our opening video, at NFI, our products are relied upon to transport people and their families safely, reliably and responsibly every day. We never lose sight of that fact, and it's what keeps us focused on the future of our business and what's next, not only in vehicle manufacturing and parts but in assessing the impact and influence our operations have on the world around us. Our organization is grounded in our core operating principles. The principles you see on the screen were developed by our people across the group and are critical to our operations. We share these consistently at all of our business units to ensure everyone is working from the same playbook. While Janice will touch on many of our internal initiatives, we want to start by focusing on the social and environmental benefits of our products, something we like to call the power of a bus. Buses and coaches can dramatically help cities reduce their carbon footprint and contribute to greenhouse gas reductions that are needed now. Buses take millions of cars off the road every year as a single-deck bus can take up to 40 cars off the road and a double deck bus can take up to 70 cars off the road. Buses are also fast-to-market. Compared to some other forms of public transit, buses are cost and time efficient. For anyone that lives in a city where a major LRT or subway project is happening, you'll know that the completion of these projects can take years and cost billions, while buses can be rolled out in 1 to 2 years at much lower costs. This is not a knock on the other forms of transit as together, LRTS, subways, buses and commuter rail all form the critical transit mobility ecosystem. It's just a testament to the impact buses can have on a community in a short time frame. As I mentioned, buses have a significant impact on emission reduction, and you'll hear a lot about this topic today as we discuss the transition to zero-emission buses. While great strides have been made in lowering bus emissions over the past 15 years, the step to ZEBs will be massive. Each zero-emission bus on the road will eliminate 3.3 million pounds of CO2 over their 12-year life. That's the equivalent to removing the emissions of 28 cars annually from our streets. In addition to their environmental benefits, buses are also economic enablers and spinal cords of major cities. Our products connect communities and provide transportation for people going to work, school, travel or visiting friends and family. Buses are especially important to members of our community with mobility challenges as they can often represent their primary method of transportation. As the stats on the screen show, investments in transit create jobs, drive economies, create safer roads and improve communities. It's the power of buses and coaches that pushes NFI Group to engineer progressive solutions that serve our communities and make our cities healthier, cleaner while safeguarding precious natural resources. You'll hear much more about these initiatives throughout today's presentations. I'll now pass it over to Janice Harper, who will talk about our internal ESG programs.

Good morning, everyone. Happy to join you this morning. Integral to our ESG framework is a deeply experienced Board and management team committed to conducting all business activities with the highest standard of fairness, honest and integrity. All of this forms part of our robust governance framework, complying with all legal and regulatory requirements with respect to employees, suppliers, competitors, government and the public. A robust policy, risk and governance framework is key. We focus on emerging and best practice considerations, and we are especially proud of the diversity within our Board. With respect to our Board makeup, we have a diverse global board with 4 Canadians, 4 Americans, comprised of 1 from the U.K., 1 from Brazil. 33% of our Board is comprised of women. And next, we're striving for BIPOC diversity as we move forward. Essential to our solid ESG approach is people, diversity and empowerment. Our purposeful-driven approach at this stage is focused on fostering a workplace culture that is inclusive, promotes continuous improvement and embraces efforts to empower team members through employee listing channels, such as surveys, 360-degree feedback, roundtables, introduction as well of employee engagement committees to make improvements in our workplaces through responsive actions. We conducted 2 COVID pulse check surveys this year in place of regular employee surveys to help understand the impacts of our safe work protocols, workplace changes related to the pandemic and to assess the well-being of our team members. Our December pulse check survey, the results just in, 56% response rate from our employees. 90% of our employees feel that NFI is a great organization to work for. 75% of our employees rated their well-being as good or very good through this time. That's very encouraging for us going through a very challenging year. NFI also measures our diversity to ensure representations is tracking in a positive direction. We're adjusting focus where required, and we're implementing actions more -- to be more effective and to inclusively manage a diverse workforce. Some of this work this year includes strong partnerships with COMTO, for many of you who don't know, that's the Conference of Minority Transportation Officials; and Latinos in Transit. We were involved this year, members of our teams, in the launch of COMTO's newest chapter in Canada this year with more than 50 supporting members now. We're really proud of that. The events of this year have also illuminated the urgency for all of us to do more. At NFI Group, we will heed this call by advancing workplace inclusion through developing a culture of belonging, promoting and requiring inclusive leadership challenging bias, nurturing diverse talent and committing to building upon our practices to progress to a diverse future. Safety is something you've heard a lot about from our team over the years, and safety is foundational to everything we do. Our focus on occupational health and safety has resulted in strong and continuous improvements over the past decade. We will continue to invest in our operations, our people, our processes to drive and sustain improvements in safety in our operations. We have dedicated commitment to safety and health improvements that is essential to the creation of a safe and healthy working environment for our people and our operations. Our New Flyer facilities are ISO 45001 certified. And we are looking to expand these best practices approaches across other businesses and other facilities within the NFI family. We track quantitative metrics for both safety and environment. We monitor them over time, and we set clear targets for those metrics. And we will define our plan for how to achieve them to enhance our disclosure to you. COVID. Well, no doubt about it, that COVID pandemic has changed everything in so many of our lives, and it is and remains a challenge for us all. We continue to undertake exhaustive measures to keep our facilities and our people safe, and this information is publicly available on our website under safe at work protocol. Our absolute focus remains on the health, safety and well-being of our team, which is why we have undertaken considerable efforts to keep them safe this year. We are navigating through this pandemic with great sensitivity and caution, ensuring adherence and exceedance, in many cases, to all government and health authority mandates. We understand that as a large employer, thousands of people count on us for their livelihood. And while absenteeism as a result of mandated COVID self-isolation, monitoring and quarantine continue to impact our operations, we are working hard to minimize the disruption for our people each and every day. In March 2020, we proudly launched a community benefits framework as a holistic and national approach to workforce and community well-being. NFI Group embeds itself firmly in the communities where we do business and where we work more closely with communities and industry groups on projects and the development of programs that support skill and career development for women and groups that are underrepresented in the workplace, such as women, indigenous and First Nation groups, visible minorities, newcomers, person with unique abilities preventing ableism, the LGBTQ2 community and of course, youth. This slide shares some of the important aspects of our framework, and this framework serves as the umbrella initiative under which local community commitments are developed, they're described and monitored to ensure benefits in the communities in which we work and operate. Local programs are comprised of a series of commitments, initiatives and partnerships that are shaped and tailored to a specific community or to a facility with their input and their participation. These programs contain many details but include pathways of crew development that can benefit the community and provide an avenue to sustainable development. These programs make us continually strive to do better as an organization and reach or surpass the targets that we've established. So a little bit about our environmental footprint obviously critical to our ESG journey. While our products have a massive benefit to the environment, we also strive to do our part in how we operate our business. NFI is committed to protecting human and environmental health within our facilities to understand the impact of our operations, our supply chain and use of our products and services on the consumption of natural resources of energy, water and the generation of waste. Prevention of pollution is a top priority, including waste prevention at source, characterization and elimination of wasteful practices and recycling. Responsible, efficient and sustainable use of natural resources, such as energy, water and wood products, is critical to our efforts. Our environmental disclosure journey started, as many of you know, in 2018 with our first ESG report. And now we continue this journey through participation in CDP, and we'll be reporting there in summer of 2022. So a little bit more about our ESG journey. We issued our inaugural ESG report in May 2019 to tell the story of our operations, our people, our communities and our stakeholders. As we got started, we focused on implementing reporting practices that disclosed our approach and efforts to manage climate, supply and our workforce to help us illuminate the company's impact on a broad range of stakeholders with attention to the environment and society. We issued our second ESG report in May of this year and continue to build upon our disclosure regarding oversight of our workforce, our environmental footprint and our business governance practices to ensure all readers develop a thorough understanding of our values and priorities. Our ESG disclosure objectives involve assessing ourselves to establish frameworks such as CDP and pairing with quantitative metrics that the company investors can monitor over time. We believe these efforts are critical to helping us meet and advance the societal focus on sustainability to empower our people and to protect the environment and preserve natural resources while operating a business that we can all be proud of. So where do we go next? Well, we have a busy year ahead of us. Our actions will focus on participating in CDB closure -- disclosure, as I mentioned and reporting commencing in July of 2021 to report information on a broader range of environmental areas to drive environmental disclosure that will help deliver sustainable returns, manage environmental risk effectively, identify cost savings opportunities and reduce reputational risks. We are evaluating UN frameworks, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to ensure minimum standards that are upheld through our business and as a benchmark to ensure appropriate measures and safeguards are implemented. We are ensuring successful implementation of our Anniston Workforce Development Plan in association with our community benefit framework. And alongside that, we are developing the next workforce development projects. We are also working with an external partner to develop a diversity and inclusion framework to help us move forward from our current progressing state to a more advanced state. This work will further transform our organization with the identification and removal of existing structural and behavioral barriers to improved representation and belonging, particularly in gender-balanced and BIPOC representation in our employee base and our leadership pipelines. We will, as you will be hearing, roll out our new zero-emission products that will benefit our customers and their customers. And we will steadfastly maintain our focus on safety systems and accountability that not only sustain our existing performance but will improve upon it.

Thanks, Janice and Stephen. I hope you enjoyed that piece by our team members at Anniston, Alabama. I'm incredibly proud of that team. Good morning, everyone. My name is Paul Soubry, and I'm the President and Chief Executive Officer of NFI. And as much as I'd like to, 2020 is a year that none of us will ever forget. As the pandemic took hold in our geographies in mid- to late March, few of us could ever imagine the dramatic impact it would have on our world. Coronavirus was especially disruptive to our customers. So while transit operators continued to deliver an essential service used significantly by frontline health care workers, they did so with varying their route structures and frequency and a heightened focus on sanitation and social distancing and a dramatically reduced fare box revenue. Private motor coach operators essentially saw their businesses grind to a screeching halt, with travel restrictions and shelter-in-place mandates ceasing nearly all leisure or discretionary travel. So as Janice discussed, we faced the pandemic in our facilities with the utmost seriousness and diligently focused on doing everything we could to ensure the health and safety of our team members, our customers and our supplier partners. Globally, we successfully navigated through over 600 positive test results of our team members compounded by stay-in-place orders and isolation mandates with unimaginable levels of absenteeism. I was, however, incredibly proud of the way our team responded to the challenges of COVID-19 and their unrelenting focus to ensure we supported our customers through the pandemic, including supporting vehicle inspections, revising our delivery schedules, spare parts support and maintenance assistance and providing an enhanced offering of Clean and Protect safety products. You'll hear more about the impact that COVID-19 has had on our markets during the business updates later in today's presentation, and you'll also hear about the opportunities that we see coming out of the pandemic. While Q2 2020 was a massive challenge, the second half of 2020 showed signs of recovery. And with our deliveries in Q4 '20 now behind us, we are able to reaffirm our 2020 adjusted EBITDA guidance of $145 million to $150 million EBITDA. Pipasu Soni, our EVP and Chief Financial Officer, will provide more details on our '21 guidance and our outlook later this morning. Now when the pandemic first started, we had limited information to assess how long or how deep the pandemic would be and what the impact specifically would be in our business. So we moved quickly in April with our credit syndicate partners to obtain covenant relief. And as we progressed through 2020 and developed our 2021 and longer operating plans, we begin to anticipate the strong cash flow improvements to provide us with the liquidity to fund operations and dividends and to pay down our debt. But we also realized very quickly with lower trailing results we would likely have covenant calculation challenges early in 2021. So again, we worked with our banking partners to develop another amendment to our credit facilities that would provide relief in '21 and more flexible covenants through 2022. The end result is we feel very well positioned to work through the market recoveries and the execution of our cost reductions across our business. While it was important to start today's discussion with some color on the impact of COVID pandemic, I think it's important to provide some context on NFI's history and where we're headed next. I've been lucky enough to be the President and CEO of NFI since joining the company in 2009. And during that time, we've been on an amazing journey, executing first on a strategy of product growth, diversification, vertical integration and geographic expansion. From 2010 to 2014, we implemented OpEx or LEAN operational methodologies across New Flyer, and we proceeded to consolidate the North American transit industry through the acquisitions of NABI and the Orion parts business. Plus, we enhanced our vertical integration through the addition of part fabrication capability and the one acquisition of our suppliers, namely TCB. The second chapter from 2015 to 2019, we focused on diversifying our product portfolio through the acquisition of North America's largest motor coach OEM, MCI; the leader in low-floor cutaway shuttle buses, ARBOC; and our main fiberglass parts providers. In 2018, we also opened KMG, a part manufacturing facility to adapt to the increased FDA Buy America content requirements, a significant step in our ongoing parts fabrication strategy to eventually manufacture parts for all of our products. 2019 saw us expand for the first time outside North America with the acquisition of Alexander Dennis, providing with leadership positions in the U.K., Hong Kong and New Zealand markets and customers in Europe, Singapore and Malaysia. Since 2012, we've invested USD 1.1 billion in acquisitions, USD 230 million in capital expenditures, and we returned more than CAD 370 million to shareholders through dividends and share buybacks. Now earlier this morning, Stephen mentioned the framework that guides our vision, our mission and our values. We have a number of elements of the strategic framework that are nonnegotiable. We want a diverse and inclusive culture that are -- and being an excellent or a great place to work. We want employees to learn, develop and grow at NFI, but we also need them to never lose sight of the fact that our customers and their customers rely on our products to transport people safely every day. We're committed to LEAN manufacturing and operational excellence. And for anyone that's ever been to our facilities, you've seen this commitment firsthand. And so while we've made great progress in driving operational excellence across our company, it's a never-ending journey, and we will continue to focus on the continuous improvement and leveraging our shared best practices across all of our facilities. We've continued to invest in world-class IT systems, and we differentiate our business through a laser focus on customer service. It's important to note that our critical component of our strategy and what provides us with competitive advantages is that we're not just a bus manufacturer. We're a solutions provider. We have the largest vehicle production capacity in North America and the U.K., the broadest propulsion offering. We also have the largest bus and coach aftermarket parts distribution network, plus an unmatched service and warranty offering that ensures our customers can rely on NFI to support them no matter where they're located. And as we look to the evolution of zero-emission buses, we found that a major hurdle was the evaluation and installation of charging infrastructure. So in order to help our customers navigate through this world, we launched our own infrastructure solutions business, what's been an incredible success. With an increased focus on EV vehicle performance, we've also seen increased usage of telematics for bus monitoring, real-time over-the-wire or over-the-air software updates and vehicle diagnostics. This is a space that we know well, and we've been introducing technology in our vehicles for years and now using the collected data not only to track performance, but also to help our customers with their route planning and their vehicle optimization. A fundamental differentiator of NFI has been that we are the market innovators. There seems to be misconceptions in the market on this point. Some see us as a legacy vehicle manufacturer that doesn't have the ability to change or innovate that will be disrupted by the change to EVs or promises by start-ups. Nothing could be further from the truth. NFI's history is painted with innovations. In fact, we've been consistently disrupting ourselves and our markets for decades. We were the first to develop low-floor buses in North America; the first for program into logic control and first for articulated or bendy buses; the first to offer compressed natural gas or diesel hybrids; the first with low-floor cutaway buses; the first with double deck, low-floor buss; and so forth. Innovation and disruption is what we do. This focus on innovation is especially critical now. As you, no doubt, have seen in the news, people are taking and talking about zero-emission electric vehicle revolution. We see this as not a revolution, but more an evolution or as we like to call it, a zero-emission ZEvolution. It's not a matter of if. It's a matter of when, and it will take time to transition to zero-emission buses. But we're excited about this ZEvolution as it's one we've been preparing for, for decades. We built our first electric trolleys, I think, for San Francisco in 1969. We built our first hydrogen fuel cell buses in the mid-2000s and put a fleet of them in service for a very high-profile contract in 2010 for the Vancouver Olympics. What we've seen, that the change to electric vehicles is coming, and we've been building capacity and capabilities to support that transition over the past 10 years. We've made -- already made significant investments that were already in our facilities, our engineering, our expertise, our supply chain. And now we have North America's largest zero-emission bus and coach production capacity. We also have more ZEBs in service in North America and in the U.K. than any other provider, and we offer what is the industry's best and broadest product. Now later this morning, I'll explain perspectives on our future and our visions of the future of mobility and the factors that will drive and challenge the adoption of zero-emission buses or quite simply, how and why NFI is going to lead this ZEvolution. I hope our session today leaves you with a much greater understanding of our electric vehicle strategy, the work we've done to prepare for the long-term transition and a strong potential growth we see from the electrification of bus and motor coach fleets. At our last Investor Day, we discussed our strategic imperatives and our group priorities. Those haven't changed: growth, cost optimization, innovation and adoption of new technology and customer employee satisfaction. So while COVID has definitely disrupted our plans for 2020 and impacted our results, our core focus has remained on those same areas. With respect to growth, we have no doubt that the bus and motor coach markets will recover. Look, they're the spinal cord of every city around the world. And as Stephen just outlined, they're also economic enablers. The government response to the pandemic may accelerate trends to zero-emission buses, and it could also stimulate additional short-term vehicle demand. We've seen numerous positives of late as it relates to government support. In the U.S., there was a busy end to 2020 with the announcements of additional COVID financial relief aimed at supporting public transit agencies. And for the first time, we just saw announcements to support more coach operators. While much of this will fund operations benefiting -- that will benefit our parts business, some of these appropriations will help and will be used for vehicle purchases. In addition to the relief funds, the U.S. government also approved a $1.2 billion capital program funding for 2021 bus appropriations. This is a critical component of the funding as many U.S. trans agencies rely on those appropriations to fund 80% of the capital cost of their bus purchases. We're also excited to see where broader long-term funding initiatives in the U.S. go with the new Biden-Harris administration and the steps they're going to take to evaluate the proposed $494 billion INVEST in America Act, which includes a 5x increase in funding for zero-emission buses from the previous FAST Act and additional funds for charging infrastructure upgrades and general bus procurements. As the U.K. government now moves past the successful and long and drawn-out Brexit, we expect continued momentum in their recent bus infrastructure announcements by rolling out more details on their long-term GBP 5 billion plus National Bus Strategy, which included the procurement of up to 4,000 zero-emission buses. In Canada, late last year, the government announced a $1.5 billion in financing to support the purchase of ZEBs through the Canadian Infrastructure Bank. And we are long -- looking forward to seeing that program finally be rolled out. Now as I previously outlined, NFI has grown organically and through acquisition. The majority of the acquired companies that we operated as stand-alone businesses under the NFI Group umbrella. And while there are benefits to that strategy, as we look to the future, we see significant cost saving and optimization benefits from having a more integrated business. As part of our original 2020 plan pre-COVID-19, we identified numerous projects that could achieve our goals of driving standardization, integration and collective approaches across the group. To realize on those goals, we launched the NFI Forward initiative in August. NFI Forward is a group of projects and initiatives to transform our company from a holding company into a far more integrated business. Once complete, NFI Forward will lower our annual overhead and SG&A by about 8% to 10% from 2019 levels. The results to date have been very, very impressive. So before we advance to the rest of today's sessions, let me quickly recap the key components of why we believe NFI is a strong investment today and for the long term. We're the #1 player in North American transit with New Flyer with a 41% market share in vehicles in the top 25 cities. We also have 46% share in North American motor coach market with MCI. Through Alexander Dennis, we're the world's leading supplier of double deck buses, and we have 72% market share in the U.K. transit. We have over 105,000 vehicles in service every day, built by creating long-term improving relationships with all of our major customers in our primary markets, and it represents a long-term replacement opportunity. We know how to produce highly customized vehicles in the manufacturing setting. This isn't an easy process to replicate, and it's taken us years to perfect. It's an area of competitive advantage and is one of the reasons we've been able to deliver for so many of our customers. While we have placed significant focus on zero-emission electric vehicles, we are propulsion agnostic. And we're the only manufacturer with the ability to produce clean diesel, compressed natural gas, diesel-electric hybrid, battery electric, hydrogen fuel cell electric and electric trolleys, all on proven and common production lines and platforms. We're the leading manufacturer of zero-emission buses in North America and the U.K. We offer the broadest offering of zero-emission vehicles, including battery electric, hydrogen fuel cell electric and electric trolleys. And we already have electric vehicles in 15 of the top 25 cities in North America, and a 70% share of U.K.'s electric vehicle market and now a growing presence in EV in New Zealand, Hong Kong and Europe. We have the ability today to produce between 6,000 and 7,000 vehicles per year of any propulsion type in our facilities. And we -- to prove that, we produced 5,600 vehicles in 2019. In addition to expertise in manufacturing, we have a nearly $400 million aftermarket parts business that provides a recurring revenue stream and support services for all of the largest transit agencies and operators in North America and the U.K. At NFI, we don't speak about hypotheticals or what-ifs or unfounded promises of growth or share or margin. We're the leaders, and we deliver upon our commitments. We've been innovating for decades, and we're excited about our position and what comes next. We look forward today to provide you with more insights and details on the projects, the initiatives, the product launches that will propel NFI's growth and profitability over the long term. As I've always said, we are proud of our history. But even more now, we're excited about our future. So now I'm pleased to turn the mic over to Ian Smart to walk you through our NFI Forward optimization initiative, a dedicated team of senior leaders and subject matter experts led by Ian, who was the previous President of MCI and the EVP of New Flyer Parts, now our EVP of Business Transformation. And with that team, they will implement and execute NFI Forward over the next 24 months. Earlier in his career, Ian managed the business transformation team as part of the significant and successful privatization of a major U.S. Air Force logistic center. Therefore, Ian is perfectly suited to lead this effort. Over to you, Ian.

Thanks for the introduction, Paul. I'm really excited to be the leader of the NFI Forward initiative. You'll recall, we introduced this back in the August time frame as part of our release then. The commitments we made at that time were to save about $65 million -- or generate $65 million of additional EBITDA by the 2023 time frame and generate about $10 million of annual cash flow. Across the organization, we've developed and are executing on a number of different initiatives to do this. I'm going to talk a little bit about each of those initiatives and give you some background. So the first initiative that we're pursuing is to centralize and standardize the way we do things across the business. Today, in our business, we have a number of functional activities, finance, HR, legal, where each business unit operates using their own processes and their own staff to accomplish these activities. We're moving forward into an environment where those activities and those services will be provided from central organizations using common processes, common data sets and common software. We're well on our way with this. Our finance function has done a great job of centralizing a number of these functions. Our HR is moving to a shared services organization, and there are a number of other activities that we're in the process of pursuing. The second opportunity is the combination of the New Flyer and MCI businesses as well as 2 of the fabrication businesses that we operate today. Historically, each one of these businesses operated with their own leadership team, their own processes, their own software and managed themselves individually. Going forward, we're combining these 4 businesses into a single organization with a single executive team providing oversight over them. Common functionality and common processes across the individual business. We're well on our way with this initiative as well. The management teams have been combined. A number of synergies have been harvested out of the business. And going forward, we're well down the path to harmonizing individual processes and the software that the business is operate -- using. The next opportunity is the combination of NFI Parts and the ADL parts organization, or ADI organization, in North America. Historically, the NFI Parts and the ADI parts have operated completely separate in North America, different warehouses, different systems, different sales forces. Today, we're in the process of bringing those together into a single organization, taking our organization from 22 parts stocking locations to well below that and rationalizing the overhead and the SG&A to support it. Our progress to date is we've rationalized down from 22 to 13 sites, and we've got line of sight on a number of other opportunities. The organizations as of the end of 2020 are operating on a single system. So if you want to buy parts for any one of these logos that you see on our screen, you call the NFI Parts organization. The next opportunity is to rationalize the footprint -- manufacturing footprint in our United Kingdom or the ADL organization. In that environment, Falkirk and Scarborough have manufactured both chassis for vehicles as well as the finished vehicles, and the Guildford site has historically manufactured only chassis. As a consequence of the COVID downturn, we've taken the opportunity to stop manufacturing chassis in the Guildford site and absorb that workload into Falkirk and Scarborough. Going forward, when the COVID volumes come back, we expect to use our contract manufacturers to adjust our capacity to support those volumes. In the North American opportunity, we see a number of different manufacturing sites that have historically been aligned by individual business unit. We're now taking the opportunity to look at each one of those sites across the different business boundaries to see if there is an opportunity for efficiency improvement, footprint reduction or efficiencies across different types of manufacturing. We're in the process of executing on 2 opportunities right now: One, we're bringing 2 fiberglass manufacturing facilities together; and a second, where we're in-sourcing more materials into our KMG site in Louisville. We've got 2 other projects that are in the final approval process that we expect to begin to execute on in the early part of 2021. And then finally, in the sourcing savings, we have a huge opportunity to source across the business, looking across the individual products and businesses. In 2019, we spent almost $2 billion on the cost of goods sold that go into manufacturing those vehicles. In 2020, because of the COVID impact, that number dropped to about $1.5 billion. But when you look at our business, about 70% of the cost of our vehicles is the material that we put into them. Historically, each business has sourced individually, designed the vehicles individually. Going forward, we've got a sourcing team that looks across all the different businesses. That team is equipped with engineering teams to look at the different designs, look at the different parts that are required on all the different vehicles and optimize that across the business. We also have an opportunity in that the EV volume is growing. In 2019, about 5% of our production volume was electric vehicles. In a 2020 COVID-impacted environment, that number grew to almost 9%. And by 2023, we think that number will be somewhere between 25% and 30% of our volume. So the opportunity today to optimize those electric vehicles, to find the right suppliers to pay the right price for the components in those vehicles is very, very significant for us. And so our teams are very, very focused, in particular, on making sure that we've got the right parts and vendors to support our EVs going forward. And then finally, to summarize the entire opportunity. Again, back to the August time frame, we committed to a $65 million opportunity. That $65 million breaks down to $20 million of direct manufacturing costs, $25 million worth of manufacturing overhead and $25 million worth of SG&A as well as $10 million worth of cash flow. You can see in 2020 through Q3, we'd recognized $13.5 million. We're on target to deliver $18 million worth of savings through 2020. And in each of 2021, '22 and '23, those numbers will grow until finally, we deliver the $67 million that we committed to back when we announced the NFI Forward. So I'm really pleased and excited about the progress we've made on NFI Forward. Again, we're on the journey to move from a holding company to an operating company. And as things stand, we've got clear line of sight on delivering to those targets. Thanks. Back to you, Stephen.

Thanks, Ian, for that detailed update. We're now at a very exciting part of our event, where we hear from industry experts in mobility and transportation. The panel will discuss several topics, including the impact of COVID-19; the current funding dynamics in Canada, the U.K. and the U.S.; their views on the transition to zero-emission vehicles; and the impacts of technology adoption within mobility. This panel was recorded virtually late last week, and we have chosen to air a shortened version as part of our Investor Day today. Following today's event, a full uncut version of the panel discussion will be available on our website. I encourage everyone to watch this full version as it is an excellent discussion that touches on many of the issues that investors often ask us about. Our moderator for this event will be New Flyer's Vice President, Sales and Marketing, Jennifer McNeill. Jennifer is a catalyst for the development of NFI's zero-emission vehicle programs and a dedicated contributor to transit through a variety of Board roles in Canada and the United States. Over to you, Jennifer.

Good morning. My name is Jennifer McNeill. I'm the Vice President of Sales and Marketing for New Flyer and MCI's public sector markets. Today, it is my privilege to welcome our panel of industry leaders and innovators, who've graciously offered to share their perspectives on the public transit industry in NFI's main markets: United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. I'm honored to be joined by Mr. Paul Skoutelas, the President and CEO of the American Public Transportation Association; Dr. Josipa Petrunic, President and CEO of the Canadian Urban Transit Research & Innovation Consortium, or CUTRIC; Mr. David Brown, Group Chief Executive of the go-Ahead Group plc, joining us from the U.K.; and Mr. Danny Ilioiu, zero-emissions fleet strategic planning manager for King County Metro in Seattle, North America's fourth largest transit system. Welcome, panelists, and thank you so much for joining us today. First of all, let me wish you all a happy new year. I have to say 2020 was quite a year, especially for those of us whose purpose in life it is to move people. When COVID hit and cities locked down, intercity travel and tourism came to a halt. But as an essential service, public transit has endured, providing transportation to essential workers, health care professionals and citizens who need it most. And at the same time, the industry was navigating to the early days of planning and deploying zero-emission technologies into their bus and coach fleets.

So David, the U.K. public transit model is a very different model than North America, with private companies operating public routes and a more focused reliance on the fare box. Can you share with us your experience over the past year and your view on ridership recovery in 2021 and beyond?

Yes. I mean it's a very similar picture. One of the things to be clear, we run in the U.K. a combination of regulated and deregulated services. So in London, they are regulated by Transport for London. I used to run all the buses in London, for instance. And outside of London, they're deregulated. So you set up a bus route and you take the risk in terms of the fare box basically. But in the end, it doesn't really matter. It doesn't matter whether you're a public sector or a private sector. You have to have customers, and you need that customer income in order to survive, whether you're trying to run buses publicly in Transport for London or myself commercially outside of London at this moment in time. So we're all dependent on customers, end of. And what we've seen is in the U.K., we've had -- this is -- we're now in our third lockdown, and the fluctuating numbers of passengers reflect what's been going on in terms of government messaging, what's happening on lockdowns, what's happening about the local environment. And we've also had regional variations as to -- dependent upon how strong the virus has been in those different areas. So we went down -- in March, down to about 25%. This is on buses. And as Paul said, we had a similar experience on trains, except it went down 90% on the trains. And then it's fluctuated as the lockdowns have changed and government messages have changed. So we did get up to, in the early autumn, up to 60% to 70%. And we started to feel more confident at that point. There is a relationship with the amount of service provision we're putting out. So the service provision we're putting out is: a, enough to take all the key workers. So we're key workers taking key workers. And b, enough to do social distancing because we wanted people to feel comfortable and confident about traveling by buses; and C, also, we've been relying upon government funding. So in the end, the government has stepped up and actually contributed to both public sector and private sector in providing key services. So we're really pleased that we've been -- seem to be a key service. And I'll just repeat all the issues that Paul has said. Everybody stepped up, whether it's been the trade unions, whether it's been our drivers, whether it's been local authority people, whether it's been people providing money. People really have stepped up and played a brilliant role in making transport work. So the question is, what happens next? That -- how quickly and how many are going to get back on traveling on buses? Now I think this -- there is going to be a difference between buses and trains. And on the bus side, people are dependent upon buses. Key workers are dependent. The demographies are different and so I'm confident that we will get that ridership back. It won't be to 100% during '21, but we will get that ridership back. But it is so dependent upon government messaging. If we can't get government messaging right to tell people it is safe now to travel on public transport, then it is a much, much harder uphill battle. So we need this combination of more service provision plus government messaging, and we would do the rest is my sort of view at the moment. The positive side of all of this is that there is -- the car traffic has gone back to its previous level, if not worse. And what we -- the messaging we're trying to say, you cannot have a car-based recovery. Car-based recovery will just bring all the problems that we've had before. And what we're hoping is the government will stick to its promises of saying we want to invest in buses. We want air quality issues, and we recognize the benefits the public transport bring also for air quality, but also for health and well-being because people get exercised by traveling by public transport. So we're hoping that the wider government messaging will come back plus government messaging about being safe to travel, and we're ready and waiting to take people and get that ridership back.

Looking forward, and I think it's safe to say that future policy decisions and the mobility investments also need to have this longer view to help the communities navigate through, not just public health but also social, environmental and financial shocks. I'd like to turn my next question over to Dr. Josipa Petrunic, President and CEO of CUTRIC. So Josipa, the Trudeau administration recently announced the Healthy Environment and Healthy Economy plan, which includes additional investment in zero-emission public transit. Can you share your perspective on how this plan aligns with CUTIC's 5-point plan to build back better public transit? And what additional actions are needed to accelerate zero-emission bus adoption across Canada?

Yes, absolutely. It's a loaded question, but there's a lot of answers there. And I'm sure that David, Paul and Danny have a lot to add to that query as well. I mean, in general, to build on what David noted and Danny and Paul, the federal government in Canada has most certainly given the right signals to transit agencies in the last 12 months during the pandemic, handing over a lot of money to municipalities so transit agencies could continue thinking about zero-emissions transit, new technologies like automated and smart vehicles without having to worry about how they're going to pay for their systems and their regular operations. Now it's not to say there's not a concern, but there has been a lot of money and a lot of signaling from the Canadian federal government that general operations will stay stable. And so that's allowed agencies to really think about zero-emissions buses and fuel cell buses and the new zero-emissions technology of the future. The federal government also released at the end of last year an environmental plan of action that identified public transit as critical and core to greenhouse gas emissions reduction. But even more importantly, for the first time ever, it identified transit as a place where there could be a hot bed of technology innovation. So it was a place where jobs could be created in Canada in greenhouse gas emissions reduction technologies, and transit could be at the forefront of that. So those are all the right signals. Now having said that, government plans really have no meaning or weight unless there's cash behind it. And heading into the next few months, as we head into what is Canada's budget cycle, we're going to find out how many billions of dollars are going to be pumped into this sector. And certainly, we've been advocating for several billions of dollars towards zero-emissions, trans electrification. So thinking about that, we have a 5-point plan out there. And we've said to the federal government, look, it's pretty basic. After these years of experimentation, we know that you have to pump some money into very specific areas. One is feasibility planning. You could put all the cash on the table that you want, and lots of transit agencies don't know what to buy because it's not a one-to-one bus replacement. It's a systems engineering issue. It's an energy overhaul. It's a deep technology transformation. So put billions of dollars out there, and most of our transit agencies actually don't know what systems to buy. Battery electric chargers, fueling cell systems, demand management systems, it's a lot of technology. So that was point #1, fund the feasibility stuff because that's the cheap stuff to get to the more expensive stuff, and that's going to save us all a lot of headache down the road. And then the next points that we raised with the federal government was basically you have to set some targets. So it's not enough to say, "Let's all go green and hope that we're green by 2025." You have to say, "Here's a bunch of money and here's a target, and you have to show us a plan of how you're going to achieve this target, and then we'll hand over the money." So you have to associate the money with the targets. And if there's no money and there's no target, there's no action and there's just failure on day one. So we believe it can be successful, but there has to be the targets, and that's feasible these days. And the last items that we raised with the federal government was you also have to recognize that all these innovation funding programs we have out there have historically been tied to automotive, aerospace, not transit. So open up your R&D funding programs and allow transit as a technology hotbed, the manufacturers, the integrators, the transit agencies, to apply to all this IR&D funding, this research and development funding, meant to build out intellectual property, allow us to go in and apply for that stuff as though public transit is any other industry player. And that will allow us to meet those targets using Canadian technology, achieving GHG plants, using the money that you're going to put hopefully on the table most effectively. And within that, you're going to get a whole bunch of zero-emissions technology. So that's essentially a 5-point plan that we put out there, and all of the strategies that the federal government has released in the last 6 months, 8 months during COVID has indicated that they're walking along the pathway that we have tried to clear for them. So those are all good signals, but time will tell in the next few months. Now having said that, to the second point of your question, Jennifer, about what is needed to go to zero-emissions buses, there was a time back in March last year when there was a little bit of talk in the transit world of a return to diesel. Everybody was worried about the loss of revenue and fare and ridership and should we go back to cheap diesel? And how are we going to get to all this expensive zero-emissions technology? Happy to say that, that has disappeared. I think Danny, probably you'd agree, that was like a momentary brief, an existential crisis, but that has disappeared, and I don't see any city in Canada or the United States that has a climate action plan reversing course. If anything, there's mostly cities and Mayors and Counselors and transit agencies saying, "Okay, maybe we modify the time line." But nobody is going backward and saying no to transit electrification. But having said that, they are facing the ongoing issues and the ongoing issues are systems overhaul, the systems engineering issue, the fact that you can't get away with a one-to-one bus replacement. Very few communities will so that systems overhaul is a big problem. We've got to hire some new people, got to do a lot of feasibility planning. It's a lot more complicated than everybody had hoped for. And then the last thing that everybody is facing is now we have the standards for high power charging and low power charging, but standards on a piece of paper are very different from interoperability in real life. And now we have the demonstrations showing us that we've got the standard. We have the SAE standard. But even if we follow it to a tee, getting these buses and chargers and fueling systems out on the road functioning is going to take a couple more years of hard work, lessons learned, lost leadership and all of the headache that comes with adopting new technology that, hopefully, and we all know, will one day save our lives. So that's essentially where we are. Good news from the federal government, good indications from the cities, good signals from our public policy leaders, but now the technology hard work is ahead of us.

So David, the U.K. government has also recently announced significant short-term support for private operators to adopt zero-emission buses. How effective do you feel Prime Minister Johnson's green funding scheme will be? And what's your view on zero-emission bus adoption rates across the U.K.?

There's a lot in that question as well. A lot of the proposals were this time last year, and it seems an awful a long time ago now that I put some bids in for zero-emission buses. I completely agree with Josipa that people aren't going to go back. There's only one way, and it's going to ZEBs into the future. It's not going backwards towards diesel. That's just not on the agenda. We are confident that the money that was being allocated this time last year is still going to be there. That was GBP 5 billion for bus strategies, GBP 120 million for ZEBs, and zero-emission buses and then electric city. So yesterday, literally yesterday, we had an announcement of an electric city funding, which is one of the cities I operate in, which is Oxford, and then another one is Coventry, which we have to bid for. And this is now where it becomes the crunch time because the rules of the game that were there last year can't apply anymore. And I've been saying this for the government. I was up for it last year. There are different circumstances. And you need to tell me how this funding is going to work. So where I am in my mind is split in between the CapEx costs and the OpEx costs. So no government likes to provide operational cost, but they're really happy to provide CapEx cost. So I'm trying to get into a position where it is the CapEx cost that the government funds, and there are means and mechanisms which we're trying to encourage them to think about doing this. So it doesn't have to -- it could be done on a leasing basis. You could get other operators in the market that currently do rolling stop on trains to do something on buses. You can change the business model that exists if you want, but you've got to fund that CapEx because the jump from Euro 6 to electric is double the price for anyone. It's 200 to 400 roughly. There's no way you can pay for that in the current climate. And then we will look after the operational cost, and we need to work through understanding those operational costs of ZEBs going forward. I think one part of your question was, is it going to happen? I did use to work for Boris Johnson when I was working with Transport for London. I actually introduced his Routemaster Buses Forum. I saw him recently. I think one of the second things he said to me was, "4,000 buses, David." But it's still 4,000 buses. So he is -- he's got that in his head. It's going to be 4,000 ZEBs, and my job is to work with government officials to try and find a way of delivering that. And I think it will happen, yes.

I think so, too. But I do think that flexibility is going to be really key. Now in the United States, the U.S. federal government funds a large percentage of public transit capital and operating expenses, with each surface transportation bill having nuances that reflect the priorities of the current administration. So Paul, the Biden-Harris transition team has a stated goal of providing every American city with 100,000 or more residents with high-quality, zero-emissions public transportation options through flexible federal investments. Can you tell us a little bit about your initial conversations with the transition team and what we can expect to see over the next year?

Sure, Jennifer. It's interesting, and I'm afraid we've been in the news much too much here in the last couple of days about what's happening with the presidential elections and such in the U.S. But we will have a new president in Joe Biden. He takes office on the 20th of January. But we also have a new Congress, since Congress concluded its last session at the end of December. So we have a totally new Congress with many new members. And we have -- given the elections that just occurred in Georgia, we will have 2 new U.S. senators, both Democrats. So it really sets up a very interesting set of dynamics politically for us. We are very enthused about the outlook. Joe Biden has often gone by the nickname of Amtrak Joe. I don't know if that means much to everyone. But in the States, Amtrak is our intercity rail. And in the States, they are best we can do for high-speed rail at the moment until we get a new line built or two. But he very much has embraced and does embrace public transport and rail. So we are looking for an administration that will have public transport investment as the centerpiece of its infrastructure plan. We have met with the Biden review transition team twice now. In fact, we were the first organization to meet with them. We're greatly encouraged with the dialogue that we have. First of all, Phil Washington is chairing that group. Phil is the CEO of L.A. Metro. There are a number of participants on that review panel that are active at APTA. So they understand our issues extraordinarily well. We have let them know that our biggest priority here in terms of the dynamics of it all is to come out early with an infrastructure plan and to make this because we believe this is a once-in-a-generational opportunity to make this a very bold set of proposals around public transport. And we've gotten very positive signals about that. Specifically, we have shared with them the details of our priority recommendations that as an association we've been working on now for 2 years. It's a very detailed set of proposals, but they also include very targeted investment in buses. And that's where I think that we're going to get quite a bit of support. So we're looking for dramatic increases in bus investment and likewise, complementary, significant increases in low- and no-emission bus fleets. So I think electrification is very much on the minds in the states of our elected officials, our communities and certainly our transit operators because they want to make sure they're meeting the needs of their communities. It's interesting to note. California is typically the bellwether of the states. They're usually a few years ahead of the rest of the country. They've got a 2040 mandate, of course, to go to fully electric. We'll see if that can be achieved. I think our agencies, by and large, are very much supportive of moving forward. The question always is how rapidly can they do so, when they do have to deal with the economics and the realities about what buses cost and the like. But I think the federal investment and the priority that we're looking to see highlighted will go a long way to picking up the pace in the states for that investment. And as others have talked about here, clearly, it's not just the acquisition cost of the vehicle itself, the rolling stock, which is significant, at least a couple of times more, but the infrastructure to support it, the charging. And then from an operational standpoint, the reality that the operators have to face with the range of limitations at the moment that exist, how quickly that can be solved and brought about to a more acceptable range. These are all the things that everyone is dealing with. But I think in the states, it's happening at 2 levels. There's a technical level, which you have to deal with the reality of getting the service out and trying to do it cost effectively. And there's the second piece of the marketing. Nobody wants to be in the corner not moving forward aggressively in terms of meeting some of the climate issues and the sustainability issues that electrification provides. So interesting time, I think we will see a pickup in the pace in the states here very shortly.

So Danny, King County Metro has actually been on the forefront of zero-emission public transit, beginning with the deployment of electric trolleybuses more than 75 years ago. During the last few years, King County has been testing multiple vendors of battery-electric buses. Can you tell us a little bit about how KCM has approached the vehicle assessment and transition, including maybe some of those key lessons learned and major areas of concern related to adoption at scale?

Well, that's quite a bit to unpack there. But I'm glad that I also got started a little bit earlier with some of the complexities and -- well, we operate battery-electric buses. We operate electric trolleybuses, and we operate diesel-electric hybrid buses. Through all the bad that happened in 2020, one of the good things that happened with us is we retired our last straight diesel buses, and that was a big moment for us. And of course, we [ couldn't ] celebrate the way we wanted to. So maybe we'll do something in 2021. That being said, in order for us to prepare to evaluate the technology, we try to look back at our experience with introducing diesel-electric hybrid buses into the fleet. And that was a much smaller transition than battery-electric buses or for the full cycle with hydrogen will be. But then when we did this, so we looked internally. We leveraged our knowledge from our trolley system, which has infinite range. Trolleybuses can operate 24/7. They never really have to come back to the basics after they get cleaned. So that's kind of like a weird model that there's not a lot of experience in the transit world with, unless you go to Europe, of course. And then we looked at what do we currently do with our hybrid buses. What do we want to do with the battery-electric buses? Is hydrogen a good fit [indiscernible] at this point in time? And the answer was not really, not at this time. It's in our tool box. It's something we're going to review periodically to see if it makes sense at some point in time. But currently, battery-electric buses can meet about 70% of our range requirements with the current technology. And of course, we expect the technology to get a little bit better. So again, when we found that number, that 70%, that's also tied into a mileage, 140 miles. We also have, in hours, about 6 hours of service. So we started putting all these things together, calling them KPIs, key performance indicators. And then what we did is, most recently, we did an 18-month lease with the New Flyer, which is one of our major providers. Our trolley fleet is with New Flyer trolleybuses, and they've been operating very well for the last 5, 6 years since we last refreshed the fleet and 2 other manufacturers. And what we did is we took these KPIs and we had also other areas of concern. But we did an 18-month lease. And we wanted to say, "Hey, can these buses do this at a 140-mile range? And what can we learn in the process of trying to operate them for this 18-month period?" And we were pleasantly surprised that most of the equipment out there can get close to or exceed that range requirement in our service profile. That's going to change from city to city and from geographic area to geographic area. But what we also learned is the importance of our strong partnership, and New Flyer has been a very good partner to us throughout this lease. And it's very, very important because what happens after you buy the bus? What happens after you put the infrastructure in place? You really need to have a strong partnership with a company that has the resources, the will and the ability to support the product because we all know that every time we deploy a new technology, they're going to be kinks and glitches for the first couple of years of building these new buses. So based on the outcome of these tests, based on these KPIs that we put together and which products were able to meet them, we decided that we're going to purchase 40 buses from New Flyer, 20 standard length 40 footers and 20 articulated or bendy buses for you, David, 60-foot buses in order to go to the next level of scaling up. And yes, we are building currently the infrastructure for those 40 buses. But we're also designing infrastructure for layover charging or unrecharging, as Josipa called it earlier, because we understand that, that's one of the critical components for battery-electric buses is, it gives you better flexibility, it eliminates some of the deadheading time, it allows you to keep the buses out on the road. And then if the base is away from the routes or from the terminals, it allows you to switch routes and switch operators without really having to bring the buses back to the base and recharging them again. So that's kind of like where we are right now with our battery-electric buses and our program.

So David, Go-Ahead has been one of the early adopters and the leading zero-emission bus operator in London and the U.K., for that matter. You currently have 200 zero-emission buses in your fleet and a further 70 on order. What are the key lessons Go-Ahead has learned about range, charging strategy, driver performance and maintenance?

I'm going to be saying some of the -- somewhat similar things, actually, but they all sound a very familiar story. And we started in 2016, converting a whole depot at Waterloo into electric buses, and we were the first to do it. We were the early adopters, and we took all of that heat of trying to work out how you're going to do it. I think some of the lessons we would learn, I can succinctly say them really. One, you take up depot space. You've got to think laterally about how you're going to put the infrastructure into a depot, and you've got to recognize that you -- certainly in London, depots are all different sizes, shapes and everything because they're fitting into the real estate that's there, and I guess more difficult when you lose space. So if you lose space, you're losing income, is my view as a private operator. So you have to reconcile yourself with that and how you're going to fit all the infrastructure into the depot. The second thing is actually, in terms of drivers, in terms of customers, it's all upside. Drivers love it. It takes very little for them to actually get used to driving electric buses. I did have one amusing story that came from -- with Boris Johnson in the very early days, and I said something almost flippantly. And I said, "They're so quiet, we're going to have to put some artificial noise on them," which he thought was absolutely hilarious with why I should do that. And I was sort of a little bit embarrassed that he was laughing. But actually, guess what's happening now? We're putting artificial noises onto electric buses so that people can actually hear them in the street. And that's what started now. So I think one of the -- so some of the lessons we've learned would be the variability of the national grid affects the pricing of what you're putting in for your infrastructure, and public sector bodies can think differently about how you can equalize that out. But if you're bidding for work, don't bid without knowing how you're going to link up with your substation. That sounds a really simple basic thing, but it's so true. If your substations are a long way away, you've underbid the price of bidding for electric vehicles. Dealing with drivers and customers is absolutely fine. The next really, really crucial bit is the warranty on the batteries, how long is that warranty is going to be and what's going to happen when it falls out. Because if we could guarantee that warranty of the batteries for the life of the vehicle, let's say, we're talking 12-plus years, and at the moment, the warranties are for half of that, that is a big unknown for us. So although we've been running electric buses since 2016, we still are not 100% sure of the operational cost of running electric buses. So we think they're about 20% to 30% cheaper, but the big unknown is what's going to happen with the warranties on the batteries. And that goes back to my earlier comment. What I've tried to do with government and everybody is separate out the CapEx cost, which is double and is a different issue and a different way of solving it, from the operational cost, which becomes my problem and trying to work that one through. So we -- that is still an unknown element. But there are upsides. So we're also trying to think about ways in which we can allow other users to use our depots to charge up because we've got this massive bit of kit sitting around in depots. We've got a place called Northumberland Park in North London, which will now become the largest depot in the world, I'm told. Don't quote me, but that's what I'm told. That actually will feed back power into the national grid at night from the batteries that have not been used during the course of the day. And then another -- I'm also -- so we're trying to see of other ways in which we can use the power. So we started thinking about the real estate above the depot. So you can actually feed off the power and actually have the whole of the housing and residential housing above. One of the reasons, as I'm sure a lot of you know, it's very difficult for people to get the planning permission near depots when they're diesel, and you're starting up the diesel engine at 3:00 in the morning. If it's electric, it all changes the dynamics. So we're thinking laterally about how do we make these things work. We're just about to invest massive amount of money in East London and Silvertown to do this very thing, how do we capitalize on what we've now got as an asset for wider things. But the -- one of the things it always goes back to, and you've all mentioned it, is about range. And whilst it's in the depot for us, that's fine. We got about 150-mile range. We would need about 200 to get to, and I heard Danny say, to 70%. That's sort of where we need to be, 75% of all the routes to be able to be covered by it, because then you get into the opportunity charging issue and the pantograph issue, and then you get into the visual effect of that, where you can put it, whose land it is, the time it takes, the dealing with the public authorities. When you're in control of your own depot, you can do whatever you like. When you rely on third parties, it just slows the whole thing down. So we are more keen for the technology to advance so that we can get better ranges than we are about trying to do opportunity charging along the line of route. It will have -- and in the end, it will be a combination of all of those things. So I think that covers some of the lessons we've learned. We were on a very steep learning curve, and we took some commercial advantage from doing that. Unfortunately, people have now followed us and understood some of these things. And we have -- I think, Danny, you said it, we have honestly been very upfront. And I had more visits to Waterloo depot from around the world than, I think, the United Nations has got countries. We've had everybody there looking to see how we've done it, and we've shared what we've been doing with anybody that wants to come.

So Josipa, in December, the Trudeau administration also announced the hydrogen strategy for Canada. CUTRIC has been involved with operators that are evaluating both battery-electric and hydrogen fuel cell electric buses. Can you share your perspective of pros and cons for each approach?

Yes. Well, I mean, I -- first, I have to say it's great that a hydrogen strategy finally came out at the federal level because we've been working on this for years. And it goes back to that whole idea that it's one or the other. And finally, we got to a stage where we're all recognizing that hydrogen is part of the electrification platform of the future. And in Canada, we have the, I guess, shameful reality right now that we have a world-leading technology in hydrogen fuel cell stacks. We have North America's leader in hydrogen fuel cell bus manufacturing, New Flyer, and we have hydrogen supplies that are green hydrogen. And yet we have 0 hydrogen fuel cell buses on the road or even in the process of being procured, outside of a project that we're leading with Mississauga right now with New Flyer's support. So it's that very bizarre scenario. And what I can say about it is, it's taken the last few years to convince transit agencies to even allow us to model out physically the benefits of hydrogen fuel cell in tandem with and complementary to their battery-electric buses, thus deeply was the culture opposed to hydrogen for all sorts of historical reasons that no longer hold. Now where we are circa 2021 and 2020 certainly is a number of agencies, over half a dozen, that have now asked us to model out how will hydrogen fuel cell buses work in their communities. How far can they go? What's the fueling system? Can we get green, gray or blue hydrogen? What's the GHG picture look like? So a definite culture shift for the new decade, and that is a good sign. The next 12 months ahead, though, we'll be really leveraging that federal strategy to get some cash into a demonstration project that gets 10 to 20 fuel cell buses out on the road, likely in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton area, likely in Mississauga, very definitively with New Flyer buses as the only provider in Canada of these fuel cell buses and being able to show and build out a green hydrogen supply chain with one of our partners, Enbridge. That has to happen. And one of the big challenges we had over the last 6 to 8 months was convincing our federal government that really, the hydrogen strategy has to look at heavy-duty powertrains, trucks and buses and coaches, that trying to convince tens of thousands of Canadians to buy hydrogen fuel cell cars is not the way of the hydrogen future, maybe down the line. But you're trying to convince households to make very expensive purchases versus working with fleets that by 10, 20, 30, 100 buses all at once, that drive the industry forward in a stepwise function. So positive indications ahead, Mississauga leading the way, New Flyer leading on the manufacturing, Enbridge leading on the green hydrogen. Finally, circa 2021, Canada is coming back for a hydrogen homecoming. And I expect in the next 24 months, we'll have those buses out on the road. It's been a bit of a trek. But now culturally, the industry has shifted fundamentally. And I would say, Jennifer, to the issue of challenges ahead, people often ask us, "Well, physically speaking, like where should hydrogen buses go and where should battery-electric buses go?" Well, physically speaking, from an engineering perspective, as everybody knows on this panel, the hydrogen fuel cell buses in Canada are battery-electric buses with range extenders, right? They're not fuel cell stack-heavy. They're battery-heavy. So they perform as well and as beneficially in the same places that battery-electric buses perform, which is like stop/start, heavy, dense downtown traffic. Put them out on a highway, and they're going to perform less efficiently in terms of the comparison to how a diesel engine is designed. But nonetheless, we see 3 areas where hydrogen fuel cell buses are really going to have a strong performance. That is: One, in the areas where the blocks are very long, lots of interlining, lots of blocks, lots of trips, so long kilometers with no downtime. Because to Danny's point and to David's point, if you have on-route charging, you have infinite range. It doesn't matter how big your battery pack is. So if you don't have access to on-route charging, you don't have a charging solution or you have very low downtime, then hydrogen is probably going to be your solution. The second area where we're seeing it really take off is on those high-speed routes, not because from the laws of physics perspective, it's much more efficient to apply fuel cell bus to high-speed routes, it's not. It's because of the low downtime and high speed, burn through your battery situation. And so we're seeing the high-speed routes, the highway routes plus those long blocks where you don't have downtime, you can't structure it into the schedule, that's really where hydrogen is the low-hanging fruit for deployment. Thereafter, it's going to be exactly, as you say, David, after some years of experience, when -- where are the pennies being saved of one over the other CapEx versus operational costs. But right now, those are some of the early deployments that are a necessary must. The last area where we're seeing deployments are like in Mississauga, where it's a real estate issue. It's not an energy systems issue. It's a real estate issue. Their facility does not have the space for chargers in depot or the property right's on route. So you're looking there at hydrogen on day 1 because of a real estate issue and none other than that.

The lockdown of cities over the last year has actually proved several things, I think, to the world. It did show us that reduced traffic could produce a significant impact on CO2 emissions and, therefore, climate change. It also showed us an increased demand for urban space and this need for complete streets, where cities are designed for people and not cars. And it showed us that many jobs could be accomplished in a work-from-home scenario, kind of like this one. So Paul, final question: can you share your thoughts on how cities and public transit will be shaped by these lessons in the long term?

It's an interesting question that we're spending a lot of time thinking about with many of our partners, our members, agencies and the like. And I will say, no one can predict exactly what this return to the office will be like. I happen to be a big believer in the importance of cities, and that our cities aren't just going to go away. Even though in this moment in time, albeit this longer moment that we have, it's 10 months now, likely to go at least another 6 months or more, we're all doing and adapting as we need to, not because we want to, but because we need to, right? We've got all the lockdown orders, the shelters in place, the social distancing. So we're doing everything that is expected of us in order to be safe and not to contract the virus and not to spread the virus. I don't think that's the mode that we want as a society to be in. And I think once we get through the vaccinations, once we make the transition to this other side of the pandemic, I believe our cities and our public transit systems will come back to life. We've got cities that are the engines of our jobs. They're the engines of culture, the amenities, the kind of lifestyle that I believe most of us really want. And I think that what we're going to see is, in all likelihood, some percentage of jobs that, yes, can be done at home, may want to continue that way. But I believe that the great majority of people want to be out with others and interacting, sharing ideas, creating new thoughts. And I think that's where transit plays an incredibly important role to help our cities come back. And I think we have some dangers. And I think David talked about this very early on in our session, and that is what we saw with these lockdowns is people naturally being fearful of the virus, moving back to their private automobiles to get into our cities. That is a recipe for disaster. That's not what we can be doing in order to preserve the quality of life that we want, the cities that we expect to be vibrant. So public transit plays a critical role in that. As our economy comes back, as people begin to return to some degree of normalcy, public transit needs to be there. So there's a relationship there. The transit needs cities, and viable -- vibrant cities need transit. So I think we're in a good place. But it's going to take, I think, a closer working relationship with our policymakers and our decision-makers at the city level and the like to make sure that these decisions that are made are done looking at this broader picture. How does this relate to not only mobility? How does it relate to our economic development? But what about the goals that we've established and are aspiring to relative to climate change and sustainability and the like? So I think we've got to bring all of those issues to the table. And as a transit organization, whether it be a transit operator or a transit planning agent, we need to be at the table to help formulate and shape these decisions.

So on behalf of Paul Soubry and the leadership team at NFI Group and all of our businesses, I'd like to say a heartfelt thank you for joining us today and sharing your perspectives and expertise. We are truly grateful to consider all of you partners in our collective journey towards solving big urban problems with smart, resilient mobility solutions. Thank you.

Thanks to all of our panelists for that excellent discussion. We're now at the halfway mark of our day, and we're going to take a short bio break. Following the bio break, we'll come back, where you'll hear from Paul Soubry, our President and CEO, to discuss how we're leading the ZEvolution. [Break]

Welcome back from your bio break, and we'll now kick off the second half to today's presentation. Recently, we conducted an extensive global search, looking for someone with a high-tech perspective, a disruptor and somebody with partnership and global experience to join our Board of Directors. So in May 2019, Kathy Winter, the Vice President and General Manager, Autonomous Transportation and Infrastructure division of Intel Corporation, joined the NFI Group Board of Directors. At Intel, Kathy manages a global organization which delivers comprehensive solutions for smart cities, mobile automation and transportation. She leads a team that's developing increasingly sophisticated platforms for a variety of commercial and consumer market segments, which include ADAS or advanced driver assist systems; AD, autonomous driving; AMR, autonomous mobile robots; and IVI, in-vehicle infotainment. Prior to joining Intel, Kathy was the Vice President, Software and Services, Automated Driving for Delphi Electronics & Safety, where she led automated driving efforts, global new growth strategies for embedded and aftermarket software products and cloud-based autonomous and consumer services. And even before that, Kathy held a number of senior R&D and business positions at Motorola in cellular infrastructure, telematics and mobile phones. Kathy will now provide an introduction into NFI's next chapter, the evolution to zero-emission buses or what we call the ZEvolution.

Thanks, Paul. It's been really exciting to join the NFI Board. In my capacity at Intel and with Delphi and Motorola previously, I have had the opportunity to witness and experience incredible technology advancements. That's part of why I was attracted to NFI, to be part of a company as it leads an industry through the early stages of transformation. I must tell you, though, developing heavy-duty buses is much more difficult than I expected and definitely very different than high-volume automotive. It is incredibly complex with an extremely high degree of customization based on the unique operational and political dynamics of each customer. The NFI team are experts in assessing and understanding their customers' unique requirements, the integration of leading-edge technologies and navigating very complicated global sourcing processes. Forming a true partnership with our customers is a priority. Transition of bus fleets to zero emissions is not a question of if, it's when. But it's an evolution, not a revolution. It will take time, especially in public markets, where it's complicated by installed fleets, colors and buckets of money and varying political support. I see lots of companies making promises of disruption and revolution, but not all are going to be successful, especially at the end product stage like NFI. It's my pleasure to now introduce a short video to kick off the next section of today's presentation. NFI has and will continue to evolve, disrupting itself and the industry by launching leading-edge technology for a safer and more sustainable world. NFI is leading the ZEvolution to a zero-emission future. [Presentation]

I hope you enjoyed that very short video that tries to encapsulate all of the critical elements, as our world moves through the zero-emission evolution or what we call the ZEvolution. And thanks, Kathy, for that wonderful introduction. I'm moving down in our part of our presentation and talk you through and walk you through the various elements of our business, of the market and how we've tried to respond and react and why we believe NFI will lead the ZEvolution. It's really interesting to look at the global data. Buses are projected to lead the evolution to zero-emission vehicles, over trucks or cars and so forth. And there's lots of elements that I'm going to walk you through that give you that insight and that perspective. First, we're seeing -- every day, every quarter, you're seeing more announcements of governments around the world making commitments to carbon-reduced, carbon-free, clean city commitments. And that's being implemented across the planet, which then has resulted in tremendous improvement and aggressive nature of political will for zero-emission buses gaining momentum. Really exciting in the United States of late where President Biden campaign was really wanting around moving the environment to green-type, zero-emission vehicles and getting them into the cities across America. We've seen California lead every state. We've seen the Canadian government of late accelerate their desire for the adoption of zero-emission buses through their plants and of course, the U.K. National Bus Strategy really trying to push zero emission across the country. We've done a bunch of research. We found some various sources, I think this one's very helpful from Bloomberg, that just gives you a perspective from 2020 to 2040, that buses, because of those political and economic factors and the environmental desire, are going to lead the pace of adoption. Now before we start to put buses on the road, a number of years ago, we had to have charging standards. And of course, I think we saw that happen early in China. We saw it move collectively and collaboratively over the last 10 years in Europe. And then, of course, in the last number of years, we've seen Canada and the U.S. work to the SAE standards. Once we had the charging standards, we also needed, in the last couple of years, actually led by a number of our R&D engineers, working with a whole collaborative group of agencies, to clarify those standards for charging on-route, charging overnight at a depot or wireless charging, which is still under development. The really exciting thing is that when we started delivering zero-emission buses or battery-electric buses specifically, the cost was off the charts. And what we've seen over the last -- you can see on this chart from 2014 to 2020, global battery prices have dropped somewhere in the neighborhood of 80%, which will only help going forward, help our vehicles as they're integrated, as we're getting more scale in zero-emission buses, allow for cost of ownership of a zero-emission bus to [ close ] -- or approach parity of conventional powered vehicles. And all those things are now contributing to our customers. Our operators' demand for zero-emission is gaining traction. We've given you some examples here of quotes from Canadian operators, U.S. operators and U.K. operators of either specific dates when they'll stop buying conventional vehicles or adoption dates for full electric fleets. What's very clear is we're not going back. Now the pace of adoption is obviously up to -- for everybody's debate. There's a number of issues we have to consider. First, you have largely public transit fleets with vehicles that still have a useful life and, to some extent, a strategy in many cases of one-to-one replacement of an old propulsion technology to zero emission. You've got the strategy of integration, trying to help transit operators or public companies understand what it means, and you heard through our panel earlier today what it means and the lessons learned about how to get it into their depot and all the strategies around charging and where they're going to get their energy and stuff -- energy from and so forth. And then you've got the dynamic of funding. You've got current funding models that were based on certain costs of vehicles and certain ways of fueling or filling them. And now the unplanned environment of where does the money come from the charging infrastructure and whether you do it in terms of maintenance changes into your depots as well as what government funding initiatives might be available. And then finally, you've got to kind of retrain and involve your entire workforce, whether it's the sourcing people, the operators, the maintenance people, the programming people and dispatch and so forth. So there's a lot of things that will actually take time to help people pace the adoption. Then you get into the actual vehicle and the charging strategy, and there is a lot of different issues or factors for every operator. And quite honestly, there are no 2 operators that are alike, whether it's individual load factors, weather conditions in their environment, topography, average speeds and route lengths, the battery type they choose, the number of accessories on the vehicle and what parasitic load happens, the capacity, the age of batteries and so forth. Which means what we've tried to do in our offering and our strategy is to do 2 things: have different types of zero-emission vehicles, depending on the customers' desire, whether it's battery electric or fuel cell or trolley electric; and then in addition, provide a scenario where we can be very flexible with the different types of charging that they may need, whether it's at the depot or on roof or range extenders. We're really comfortable, and we're really excited of where we're at in leading this movement to zero-emission our electric bus mobility. What's -- when you look at the combination and the creation of NFI Group, we have over 450 combined years' experience of our individual companies. We've got more than 105,000 vehicles in service today in well over 100 cities around the world. And there's a whole bunch of things that make us not only in a position to lead, but continue to lead and grab more share as we go forward. First, our buses were designed -- our buses have been around for 50 years in terms of the current configuration, the monocoque-type structure. At New Flyer, for example, they chose -- we chose a strategy of designing the structure or the shell or the monocoque frame of the vehicle to be able to be propulsion-agnostic upfront, whether we were having clean diesel, whether it was natural gas, whether they were planning for electric trolleys or ultimately fuel cell or battery electric. All kinds of issues are taken into consideration. Weight distribution: it's one thing to have lots of batteries and have a certain level of size of vehicle but not be able to fill it up with passenger capacity. And so all those things have helped us to position our vehicles to be agnostic, to move with our customers. We've also made choices around adapting and adopting different types of materials, whether it's carbon steel or stainless steel to build our structures, and all of them were designed for common maintenance and field service. We're really proud of the fact that our company, NFI, has tested more buses at the Federal Altoona site than any other competitors. The other dynamic is that no 2 buses are alike. In addition to the city's requirements being unique, every operator has all kinds of issues that they use and understand and imply when they go forward with zero-emission vehicles. And so we have to have a vehicle that lasts a certain length of time. They have their own heating and cooling type standards. We have different types of capacity requirements. We have weather dynamics and all these other things. So at the end of the day, we don't sell specced buses off the shelf. Our expertise lies in the rapid customization and then be able to manufacture at scale, and that's been something that's been very successful across our entire business. Our zero-emission electric journey really started in 1969, 50 years ago, when we delivered our very first electric rubber wheel trolley to Seattle. And you could see on this chart a whole bunch of major industry first or milestones, whether it's fuel cells, whether it's hybrids, battery-electric vehicles, telematics introduction and so forth, where our business has continued to evolve over time to the point where we now have pivoted completely. We don't just sell buses anymore. We provide solution. And that means whether we provide or integrate our own charging strategy with them or work with the operator, the buses and vehicles themselves, a way to connect and use data to diagnose the vehicle and service them and a very comprehensive aftermarket support. We have revenue streams from all elements of this value chain. But what was missing was a place to go. As the industry started to try and move towards fuel cells or battery-electric vehicles, there was no place to go to really understand the implications. And so in 2017, our company launched what we call the VIC or Vehicle Innovation Center. It is based in Anniston, Alabama at our manufacturing facility, a dedicated facility where people can go to understand what it means, all the implications associated with a battery-electric or a fuel cell electric vehicle, numerous displays, interactive activities, observation decks where you can see the design layout of the vehicles, placement of batteries, different chargers to understand those implications for you. And very excited, what you see on the picture here, what we believe to be the world's first zero-emission bus simulator based on an Xcelsior CHARGE, you can see the front end here, and working with simulator companies to make it almost like aircraft simulation, the ability to really understand what it means to drive an all-electric vehicle. And today, we already have the platform of zero-emission vehicles across our ARBOC line, our -- Xcelsior as well as our Alexander Dennis and Motor Coach vehicles. These buses exist and are all in operation or in for sale today. So what we've chosen from a strategy over the last number of years, there was method to the acquisitions: build a portfolio of vehicles that have propulsion capability all the way through to zero emission, but also have a platform and a portfolio that have the different sizes and types of buses, whether they're smaller buses, medium-duty, heavy-duty, single deck or double deck, way past any of the competition. And the same thing applies for Alexander Dennis in the U.K. The ability to provide that offering to a very different customer base has been very, very successful. As we moved more and more of our facilities, today, relatively small, into the ability of building zero emission, we bit the bullet early a couple of years ago. We chose to spend the capital to make all of our facilities ability to build all types of propulsions on the same production lines. The answer then, as in today's reality, is if zero-emission evolution takes off faster, we can continue to migrate our production capability to that as opposed to having to worry about balancing multiple production lines. And you can see both in the North American environment or the U.K. environment with Alexander Dennis, all of our facilities are capable of handling all types of propulsion vehicles in their facilities, both single deck and double deck. Now the other thing that's really important to us and really exciting from our competitiveness perspective and our go-forward profitability is the fact that the vast majority of all of the component suppliers are the same on a zero-emission bus as they are in our conventional fleet. No question, there were some new suppliers and new technology that we had to bring into our fold. But our sophisticated supply chain, which is designed globally and, in some cases, strategically designed to comply with things like buy America or any buy country-type demands, very, very successful and very integrated to our current business. We've also chosen to partner with key leading suppliers. You can see some names here of some of the very exciting partners that we've chosen, brand names, global capability, latest and greatest technology. And really exciting just to point out, you may have seen our press release earlier today, Alexander Dennis has been partnering with BYD for 3 or 4 years now to put Alexander Dennis bodies integral in building with BYD chassis supplied from China. We've just come to an agreement with BYD in the U.K. to have a strategy where Alexander Dennis will build the chassis based on a BYD design and supply and will integrate themselves for an all U.K.-built electric vehicle, very exciting opportunity for us. Now we manufacture today -- in the rest of our business, we manufacture our own battery packs. And so we have numerous self-sourcing relations, a couple of prime providers today. We also buy battery modules from those providers, and then we manufacture our own battery packs. And so what you see on this chart here is we'll take those input components, we will build the battery pack inside -- sorry, the battery pack inside our manufacturing facilities adjacent to the production line. We'll install them, and then we have the ability with our electronics and telematics to ensure that the operation technology deployment is happening as it is intended. And so we continually -- we continue to push this battery market research and testing to ensure that we're market leaders, which is also a part -- a key element of our strategy. We've chosen to remain kind of cell-agnostic. It has both financial implications in terms of the ability to stay latest and greatest on R&D. We've seen battery prices continue to come down. And so -- and we're seeing that a battery, the battery sales cost today, about 25% of the zero-emission vehicle. The exciting part is that as we continue to move and migrate with our suppliers, and we're not tied to only one supply base, we have all kinds of flexibility to operate it for our customers going forward to always have the latest and greatest technology in terms of range, cost, reliability or warranty offerings. And we believe fundamental to that strategy is to retain flexibility to integrate the latest and greatest at all times. Very exciting to report that we have so many zero-emission vehicle buses, whether it's trolleys, battery electric or fuel cells in public and private operators in Canada and the United States today and the same in the U.K. and New Zealand, where Alexander Dennis has a commanding position with the deployment of zero-emission vehicles. To support what's in service today, but as our customers move to zero-emission vehicles, is the requirement to have a massive and sophisticated and flexible comprehensive service network. In our North America locations, as the U.K., we have parts stocking locations. We have over 300 field service and technical employees deployed in the field to help those customers not only maintain their existing fleets but to deploy, troubleshoot and ensure successful operation of zero-emission vehicles. Now when I joined the business 12 years ago, I was really surprised you saw these $0.5 million capital assets that really didn't have very much sophistication in terms of telematics or real-time monitoring. We've been an industry leader in our world to try and push the use of telematics and over-the-air software updates to be able to understand not only what's happening with the health of the vehicle, but also the electric and the battery system to understand the charging dynamics, to understand fault codes real-time, which have huge implications for real-time deployment, preventative maintenance and fleet planning going forward. Ironically, the tool and the supplier that we chose at New Flyer called 360 Connect (sic) [ Connect 360 ] is the same one that Alexander Dennis uses in the U.K., lots of opportunities to go forward there together. Now the other thing as we deployed vehicles, it became clear early that we needed to be way more integrated in understanding the strategy associated with charging solutions. The first couple of our bus deployments where we had the operator or the customer put in the charging infrastructure, we had all kinds of challenges ensuring that the vehicles were connecting, charging, operating at the intended pace or operation. We then decided to stand up in 2019, January 2019, our own infrastructure solution business, which has become a tremendous asset. We understand what's required. We help customers design, select, deploy that charging infrastructure. And the buses are designed to completely integrate. Very successful learning, very successful business, the fastest part that's growing in our business in the last couple of years. And finally, as we put zero-emission buses in the field, we need to have foresight of what we're going to do with those batteries when those vehicles get to their 12-, 15-, 20-year life. And so we've recently -- you've seen a press release last week with a company called Li-Cycle. We've just started an initiative working where we're going to take all of the batteries off of our pilot buses and our R&D buses, and we're going to work with Li-Cycle to understand the implications for battery recycling for the future and then working with our customers to ensure that's deployed. So the reality is our business is transitioning to zero emission, exciting from an operations standpoint, from a customer satisfaction and massively from an environmental perspective. But our view is that it's far more of an evolution than a revolution. You see today, they'll take time. You can see today on this chart, the number of zero-emission vehicles adopted as a percentage of the total transit and motor coach buses in each of these locations. The only part of the world that has made major progress has been China. The rest of it is sub-2%, 2.5% around the world. Huge opportunity, but it will take time to evolve. In North America, here's an example of the U.S. public transit fleet, that only 2% of that fleet today is a battery and fuel cell, a huge opportunity. However, you have an installed fleet that's somewhere north -- or close to 60% of that fleet is less than 10 years old. It's going to take time for that fleet to earn off or burn off its useful life to ensure great value for the taxpayer investment. Make no mistake, it's happening. The same thing applies in the U.K., although in the U.K., we have -- as you heard from our panelists today, we have private operation performing public transit services. And the U.K. is ahead of North America as less than 25% of those vehicles, however, are either Euro 6, the latest standard, hybrid or zero emission. It, too, will work through an evolutionary process, we think, faster than North America. Now as you heard from the panel, another dynamic is that there's buckets, meaning where the money comes from, and colors, different buckets of budget, whether it's operating buckets, fuel budgets or capital buckets. And it's not as easy or intuitive as we might think to be able to move money across buckets and colors of money. We think that over time, we're going to see the funding mechanisms in North America change as those vehicles move. Today, it's an area that we have to continue to work on. And of course, in the U.K., where they're even more reliant on the operator fare box, there are more incentives. And that's why we think the U.K. market will adopt zero emissions faster. Now here's the final dynamic that we all need to continue to think about. As we deploy more zero-emission buses, we get more and more demand for energy. And so here's a simple example of 6 buses being charged simultaneously at 1 facility. Imagine if you were in an environment where there was 600 buses deployed or 500 on 1 depot, and you need to charge them overnight. You'd need 45 megawatts of power, which is an equivalent of charging about 30,000 homes, a dramatic demand coming forward, which means the design of the vehicle, the charging strategy and the link to the utilities or the energy providers are critical to ensure that the whole solution is not only cost-effective but is green. So there's our projections based on all of the analysis we've done of the adoption rates of zero emissions for buses around the world. You can see that we have the U.K., in our projection by 2023, getting somewhere north of 45% adoption, and you can see in North America the heavy-duty transit space getting north of 21% at the same time. Obviously, private operators disrupted by COVID, the North American coach and the North American cutaway market adoption by '23 will be much less than we see in the public or in the U.K.-type environments. Now finally, some really exciting and sexy stuff. Today, NFI has autonomous buses. But autonomous buses and the deployment in public roads is going to be measured. You can see on the right here, we all understand the basic 5 stages of autonomous vehicles. Motor Coach -- for years, for example, MCI has been deploying Level 2 and Level 3 with lane departure, adaptive cruise controls, 360 cameras, all these kind of things. Early next year, we are deploying a complete Stage 4 autonomous vehicle fleet in the United States. I'll tell you about it in a second. So just imagine the possibilities as we start to deploy more and more of these technologies onto public vehicles or to public transit vehicles. First, the dynamic around pedestrian and vehicle safety. There's no question: buses operated in a very liquid and changing environment. And so the ability to have data, to have early warning and all these kind of things, only enhances the overall safety of our public transit systems. The other end of the spectrum is imagine the cost savings and the efficiency at a public depot. Imagine 500 or 600 vehicles at a depot and a driver can drive up, the driver gets out, the vehicle gets charged, moves to the charger autonomously, moves to the washer autonomously, goes for maintenance autonomously and then parks itself in a much more dense environment. And imagine in the morning when the dispatcher can get on and see the health of the entire fleet before he dispatches the first vehicle as opposed to maybe a cold winter or a Winnipeg morning, where one of the buses in the middle of the pack won't start and the dynamics that has or the implications that has for the rest of the pull-up. So earlier, as I mentioned, we've started a project. It was -- it's managed by an organization in the United States called CTE. The customer is Connecticut DOT, and we're partnered with a very sophisticated autonomous vehicle company called Robotic Research. And so together, we are going to put Stage 4-level autonomous vehicles on public roads, dedicated roadways for vehicles in Connecticut in 2021. Really exciting about what we can learn from this initiative. One of the really exciting things we see in Alexander Dennis, they've worked with one of their primary customers, a company called Stagecoach, and with a local technology company called Fusion Processing. And they've been working on that dynamic of having an autonomous vehicle work through its operation movement on a depot, really exciting, learning with tremendous possibilities going forward, combining both the autonomous vehicle element with the electric vehicle. So we're at the end of this section. We really are excited about where we are. We've got this healthy sense of paranoia and learning about what the competition in the market is doing. I mean, what's been deployed in our space over the last 5 or 10 years outweighs the pace of the technology evolutions we've seen in the last 70 or 80 years. The market dynamics are positioned for buses and coaches to move to electric vehicles. We've built our business as a combination of companies with decades of investment, innovation and product development. And as you heard from Ian, we now harmonized that into an integrated operating company. We are the industry leader historically of deployed, and we're the industry leader today as we move to zero emission and as we see that evolution to the zero-emission future or what we call the ZEvolution. We've got the most manufacturing capacity, the largest installed fleet, the deepest relationships and the most reliable and extensive aftermarket infrastructure. And we offer solutions. Everything from the legacy propulsion that customers need as they transition through infrastructure solutions, electric vehicles and parts support. Today, NFI's backlog is about 8% zero emission. 31% of our public bid universe are moving to zero emissions that will only drive the continued growth of our business as well as profitable growth and return to our shareholders. With that, I'm going to hand it back over to Steve.

Thanks, Paul. We are really excited about the future of NFI Group and the ZEvolution. We will now hear from our business unit presidents, who will provide an update on their respective markets and share how they are contributing to the ZEvolution. First, we will hear from Chris Stoddart, President of New Flyer and MCI. Chris has been with NFI Group since 2007. And prior to his current role, Chris served as New Flyer's Senior Vice President of Engineering and Customer Service. Next, we'll hear from Doug Minix, General Manager of ARBOC. Doug joined ARBOC in 2019. And prior to this role, he served at Tenneco for over 16 years as Executive Director of Operations. We'll then hear from Paul Davies, President and Managing Director of Alexander Dennis Limited, who will join us from the U.K. Paul has over 25 years in the bus and rail industries, and he joined Alexander Dennis in 1997. Lastly, we will hear from Brian Dewsnup, President of NFI Parts. Brian joined NFI Group in 2013. He was previously the CFO of North American Bus Industries, which was acquired by us in that year. I'll now hand it over to Chris.

Good morning. My name is Chris Stoddart, and I'm the President of NFI's combined New Flyer-MCI organization. As Ian Smart shared with you earlier today, this past year, we've reorganized the 2 businesses and as well as our part fabrication businesses under one leadership team with an objective of creating savings and efficiencies. Although this consolidation is occurring in the midst of a global pandemic, in some ways, it's been a long time coming. Both New Flyer and MCI have traveled very similar paths over their histories beginning in Winnipeg, Canada in the 1930s, growing into the U.S. market and becoming leaders in their respective markets, offering innovations that advance mobility across North America. Over the past 6 months, our teams have been working diligently to align all back-office processes and systems while maintaining the 2 iconic brands that our customers rely on. We'll talk about the impact of COVID on these businesses in a moment. But during this journey, we've been pleased to find many areas where processes overlap and many best practices that we can leverage across the entire business. It's a very natural fit. And so looking forward, our team will take the opportunity to become a stronger and more resilient organization, improving the products and services that we offer to both public transit and private motor coach operators. There's no denying COVID made 2020 very challenging. Cities locked down and private motor coach operators effectively paused operations. As an essential service, public transit continued operation, albeit with reduced ridership and fare box revenue. Throughout the crisis, 3 priorities emerged for our team. First, we implemented numerous return-to-work protocols and made significant investments to provide our employees a safe work environment. Secondly, we focused our engineering resources on developing products and features that aided our customers in protecting drivers and passengers, which helped restore confidence in taking public transit. And lastly, we included our voice in advocacy efforts to secure relief funding for transit agency and motor coach operators. Fortunately, we did not experience cancellations of existing public sector contracts, but we did see a significant delay in planned procurements. This, combined with the decline in private market motor coach deliveries, resulted in a decision to reduce run rates to manufacture primarily public transit vehicles in 2021. So yes, there's been a tremendous amount of turmoil in our industry. However, we certainly have had a bright spot. Our zero-emission bus program has made some incredible strides, which I'll talk about in a few minutes. At the beginning of 2020, transit had started to see an uptick in ridership across North America. Many multiyear contracts were coming to the end of their contract term in 2019, and our 5-year bid universe showed significant pent-up demand. Most large transit agencies were investing resources in pilot zero-emission bus projects, performing range analysis and developing zero-emission bus specifications. Investment in fleet expansion, combined with some ambitious fleet electrification goals, have the industry poised for strong annual deliveries while making significant progress in the deployment of zero-emission public transportation. COVID, combined with fleet electrification planning, has resulted in delays in many multiyear bus procurements, and the remaining ones have been very competitive. Fortunately, we work closely with our customers to participate in pilot zero-emission bus programs and win transactional business through state contracts, but the current crisis has tempered agency's attention somewhat from capital procurements. On the private motor coach front, we were expecting approximately a 4% decline in private sales for 2020. This market has historically ran in 12-year cycles, and you can see deliveries peaking in 2017. When COVID hit, charter and long-haul operators paused their operations as travel and tourism effectively stopped. Consequently, lending organizations also slowed down financing for this sector. This has resulted in an 85% decline in private motor coach industries during the COVID time frame. We continue to watch recovery drivers such as return to work, return to school, collegiate and professional sports and tourism while staying very close to our customers. We've been active in advocacy efforts along the -- alongside the American Bus Association in Washington, D.C. for COVID relief funding and have been fortunate enough to increase our market share to 64% during this time due to our strong customer base. So during this disrupted market, we've taken the opportunity to dramatically adjust our cost structure and reduce our inventory of preowned coaches. We're hopeful that the recent activity in Washington, along with the rollout of the COVID vaccine, will be a catalyst for recovery in this space of schooling, sports and tourism resume. Historically, ridership alone has not driven market demand for transit vehicles, but availability of public funding has. During this global pandemic governments on both sides of the border have recognized the critical role transit plays in remobilizing cities and supporting economic recovery. Throughout 2020, there's been a tremendous amount of activity focused on obtaining relief funding to offset the lack of fare box and contract revenue. In the U.S., the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2021 was recently signed into law on December 27, 2020. This bill builds on the CARES Act for 2020 and includes $14 billion for public transit as well as $2 billion for private operators, which is certainly good news. In Canada, we saw the federal government fund public transit operating expenses for the first time ever in 2020 under the Safe Restart Agreement. This emergency relief funding provided $2.3 billion in funding for public transit, with a 50-50 cost share agreement and augmented provincial and municipal support for transit systems. Both of these initiatives have kept public transit moving in North America. But bus procurements tend to move forward when there is funding certainty. The U.S. DOT fiscal year 2021 appropriations, along with the Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program and Gas Tax Funds, will help transit agencies plan fleet replacements, including the transition to zero-emission public transit. Looking forward, we are encouraged by the desire of both President-elect Biden and Prime Minister Trudeau to rebuild a cleaner and more resilient economy through investments in zero-emission and low-carbon public transportation. The theme of Build Back Better is clearly resonating on both sides of the border. The Biden priority provide every American city with 100,000 or more residents with high-quality, zero-emission public transportation options through flexible federal investments. And Trudeau's plan has an aggressive target of 5,000 zero-emission buses and coaches by 2025. And so throughout the coming year, the U.S. Congress and the Senate will work to complete the next 5-year surface transportation bill reauthorization, building on the 2020 INVEST Act. And in Canada, the healthy environment and a healthy economy plan will roll out. We will make sure our voices are included in advocacy efforts. At the end of the day, we remain very optimistic that our industry can also use this opportunity to advance national climate change objectives at the same time of supporting manufacturing jobs throughout the supply chain. We've been extremely pleased with the performance of our zero-emission bus program this year. Throughout 2020, we delivered 194 battery electric and fuel cell buses to 17 cities across North America. Most of whom also required our support with the installation of charging infrastructure. As a result, we saw our infrastructure solutions business grow by more than 700%. We're extremely proud of our 85% win rate for zero-emission procurements and our best ever performance with FTA LoNo grants. Our participation in these pilot programs will set us up for success in the future. We're also excited to see our first public battery electric coach order for MCI of 25 coaches. They will be delivering these units in 2021. As you heard from Paul this morning, and you can see from this map, we've been extremely active over the past couple of years, having been awarded zero-emission bus programs in cities across North America, including some of the larger metropolitan cities such as New York, L.A., Toronto, Montréal, Seattle and Boston, to name a few. From specification development through the bus construction and bus delivery and charging infrastructure installation, these projects typically take about 18, sometimes 36 months, to complete. And large cities require rigorous testing and evaluation to qualify buses before purchasing zero-emission buses at any kind of scale. And part of our success can be attributed to having on-site field technicians at each customer location to ensure a successful deployment. New Flyer has the widest zero-emission product offering in the industry. Our Xcelsior CHARGE battery electric bus and Xcelsior CHARGE H2 hydrogen fuel cell electric bus, alongside our tried and tested trolley electric bus, are 3 zero-emission options currently in service across North America. The Xcelsior CHARGE is available in 35-, 40- and 60-foot models with both long-range and rapid charge configurations. Our designs are interoperable, OppCharge-compliant and following all SAE standards. The Xcelsior CHARGE H2 is available in 40- and 60-foot models. And it's noteworthy that fuel cells now comprise about 10% of our zero-emission bus builds and growing. All are built on a proven and qualified Xcelsior transit bus platform, providing industry-leading gradability and passenger load carrying capacity. And 2021 will see us add both a public and private motor -- market motor coaches to MCI's zero-emission portfolio. Supporting zero-emission operation takes the power of analytics. And for New Flyer, this includes the New Flyer Connect over-the-air technology to harness data for better efficiency, operation and performance. 20-years back, I would bet you didn't think you could manage a bus fleet from a mobile phone, but here we are today. This ability is a proven, especially critical in understanding bus performance in energy usage through extreme climates and conditions, which I'm proud to say our buses have steadily performed through. Heating and cooling, average speed, number of stops per hour, climate, topography, regen braking, all that significantly affects energy consumption and range. And being able to track these key metrics is critical for our customers. This data helps influence choices for charging strategies and future bus configurations. All of our Xcelsior CHARGE and CHARGE H2 vehicles are monitored via telematics and on a daily basis to ensure they are achieving service demands and properly charging. The same technology will be deployed on all of our MCI electric coaches, too. And speaking of infrastructure, this is the most critical part of a zero-emission bus adoption and the most influential factor of success behind an electric bus deployment. For us, it's also in growing business and cause for optimism. So we probably offer New Flyer infrastructure solutions as a full suite service. This team, which has grown since first announcing that in 2019, is dedicated to providing safe, reliable and optimized charging services and, to date, has installed over 170 chargers across North America. Energy optimization, design and installation of wayside and depot chargers, coordinating UL certification, site visits, on-site grid to bus testing and commissioning, providing engineering services and financial projections are just some of the tasks this team takes on. And we've been absolutely thrilled with the year-over-year growth and expected to continue in line with our zero-emission bus deliveries. Looking ahead to 2021, it's remarkable to see the appetite for zero-emission public transportation has not waned. Pilot programs of 2018 to 2021 have paved the way for regular multiyear procurements of electric buses intended for replacement orders. And we're seeing increased interest in fuel cell electric vehicles, especially from some of the battery electric early adopters. Zero-emission motor coach adoption is starting in the public and employee shuttle space and will likely move slowly throughout the private motor coach segment. As a result, zero-emission bus production is now forecasted for all of our plants. And we anticipate approaching 30% of our production being zero-emission by 2023, which is also expected to outpace the industry market percentage of zero-emission bus deliveries. 2021 will be an extremely busy year for us with respect to technology deployment. Over the next few months, our vehicle innovation center will host digital product launches for all NFI Group North American products. New Flyer is launching its third-generation battery electric bus and the industry's first SAE Level 4 automated transit bus. MCI is launching its battery electric low-floor commuter coach and its battery electric motor coach. And infrastructure solutions will expand to support charging infrastructure for all North American NFI Group battery electric vehicles, which includes ARBOC and ADL. Here's a sneak preview of what's in-store for 2021. This is our Xcelsior AV, which is North America's first SAE Level 4 automated heavy-duty transit bus. We expect to line enter this vehicle in midyear of 2021. The Xcelsior CHARGE NG, or Next Generation, is our next-generation battery electric bus, and its first one is already on the production line as we speak. The D45 CRTe LE CHARGE, this is MCI's low-entry battery electric commuter coach for the public market. And the J45e (sic) [ J4500e ] CHARGE, this is MCI's battery electric motor coach for the private market. Today, all of our major manufacturing facilities are now capable of producing zero-emission buses. We've made the investments in personal protective equipment, tooling, battery manufacturing cells, commissioning base, charging infrastructure and hydrogen fueling capabilities. Or we've also heavily focused on investment in workforce development to the tune of 150,000 training hours per year. Our teams can now package batteries, install fuel cells, work with high voltage, commission, charge, maintain and support zero-emission buses. We've grown our infrastructure solutions business, adding a highly skilled team of electrical and construction engineers capable of providing turnkey charging solutions. And creating digital content has resulted in a 673% increase in attendees for a Vehicle Innovation Center technology days, which is accelerating the knowledge transfer to facilitate successful deployment of zero-emission buses. These early investments, combined with available aftermarket parts inventory, daily monitoring of the fleet and over-the-air software updates and a team of trained field service technicians to support buses and service, has positioned us in an exceptionally healthy position for growth in zero-emission bus space. So ultimately, COVID accelerated what was already in front of us. This global crisis, terrible as it has been, has provided some great opportunity. The transition to zero-emission has never had more momentum, and transportation has taken center stage as a critical enabler in remobilizing our economy and our cities. 2020 is our decade of change. This decade is about optimizing our operation, reducing our cost base and demonstrating our ability to realize the potential of technology. We've already made the right investments in responsible, sustainable zero-emission transportation. The difference with us is we're not just talking about doing this. We're already there. Thanks for your time this morning, and I'll now pass you over to Doug Minix to provide an update for ARBOC.

Thanks, Chris. Hello, everyone, and welcome. My name is Doug Minix. I joined the FI team a little over a year ago as General Manager for the ARBOC Specialty Vehicle business. I'd like to take the next few minutes and introduce ARBOC to you. We are the leader in the North American low-floor cutaway market. ARBOC serves the low-floor segment of the total cutaway market. This is a great complement to the New Flyer transit business. We meet the demand for easy access of those requiring special accommodations. ARBOC was founded in 2008 in Middlebury, Indiana, where we are located today. We have produced well over 4,000 buses since the beginning and have grown to over 130 employees. Our current book of business is strong with 350-plus units in queue. We also operate through a dealer network of 13 independently owned and operated dealerships, with 31 locations in North America. 2020 represented many challenges and opportunities. We were off to a great start, tracking well above our plan, and then the pandemic hits and we paused our operations. We restarted in late May, then the second wave hit us in November. At that time, we experienced very high absenteeism, and our suppliers were also negatively affected. The opportunities are still there. We're executing on existing contracts. We're gaining more business and more market share. We're increasing our throughput, which means more sales. We continue to leverage the New Flyer supply base and we're launching the electric Equess, our zero-emission market disruptor, while utilizing New Flyer EV expertise. We also will be executing our strategy on the low-floor electric cutaway. Looking at our market, the update from -- and recovery. We enjoy a 75% market share in the low-floor segment of the overall cutaway market. The cutaway market has been strong and remained strong in 2021 and continues to grow in the outyears. We're integrating some design and enhancements on the Equess platform as well. Those will go into production in early 2021. And as I mentioned earlier, we have a strong order book, with over 350 units in queue. We're very excited about our market. Let's not forget the impact of zero-emissions demand in our market. This chart shows our conservative estimates for the next few years. I personally believe the demand to be much greater going forward. This is an opportunity for solid growth in the outyears. The outlook is extremely positive, and we are dedicated to grow to meet the demand. Here's a snapshot of the products that we offer at ARBOC. We have 2 distinct categories. First is the Equess. It's our low-floor, mid-sized, medium-duty transit shuttle bus. It's a monocoque design built from the ground up at our facility, with capacity of up to 33 passengers. Second, we have the low-floor cutaways offered in 3 models: The Mobility, which has our kneeling suspension capability, can carry up to 21 passengers. It's also the chosen platform for our future electric cutaway. The Freedom is a low floor, fully accessible non-kneeling product. And finally, the Independence, which is our smallest, lowest cost, low-floor, fully accessible option. We utilize multiple OEMs for chassis and chassis components for these units. Moving on to the zero-emission evolution. We are excited to talk about our new Equess CHARGE, ARBOC's zero-emission battery electric bus. This beauty is built on a traditional Equess platform and offers a 200-plus mile range that can be expanded. We're fortunate to have the New Flyer expertise in battery electric assisting us. Their Xcelsior CHARGE technology is a big part of what we have included in the Equess CHARGE. We will be launching the Equess CHARGE in the second quarter this year as well as getting our test vehicle through Altoona. Remember, this vehicle, like all of our products, is designed, sourced and built in America. We are very, very proud of these accomplishments. Another one of our exciting projects is electrification of our low-floor cutaway. This is equally important to ARBOC, our dealers and the customers that we support. We are targeting the launch of the new vehicle and market introduction next year. This project is well underway. As mentioned earlier, we will utilize the Ford E450 cutaway platform. This vehicle will have low-floor capabilities and an estimated range of 250-plus miles and also fast charge options. It will be 100% all-electric and be completely Buy America-compliant. As I mentioned, demand will only continue to grow as states legislate the use of electric vehicles. For example, going forward, California is mandating, through a general gradual progression, that all vehicles with 14,000 pound GVW be electric. These actions will continue to drive demand. In closing, I want to leave you with our go-forward strategies: Increased market share of low-floor medium-duty buses; utilize our variation reduction program that improves quality, longevity as well as overall customer satisfaction, while helping us to increase our build rate. We'll be increasing efficiency and eliminating waste through the New Flyer Operational Excellence program and utilize our LEAN expertise; electrification of our low-floor medium-duty as well as our low-floor cutaway products; and leverage improvements through collaboration with our sister divisions. We'll continue to be diligent and enhance our Buy America compliance and sourcing strategies. So overall, our future is bright at ARBOC. We're very excited for what the new year brings. That's the ARBOC business. Thank you for your time. I would now like to introduce Paul Davies from Alexander Dennis.

Thank you, Doug. As this is my first Investor Day, I thought I should take the opportunity to introduce myself. I am a seasoned veteran of the bus industry, having joined Alexander Dennis back in 1997. Before returning to the U.K. in December of last year, I spent 20 years in the Asia Pacific, where I led the development of the business in that region. I had the pleasure of working very closely with Colin Robertson over the past 13 years. And although I have picked up the baton at an incredibly tough moment in time, I'm very excited about the challenge ahead. COVID has forced us to make some tough decisions to realign the business to the economic reality and prepare it for long-term growth. So a bit about ADL at a high level. We are a global leader in the design and manufacture of single and double deck lightweight buses and coaches. Our business consists of 3 very strong brands, as Dennis was founded in 1895, Plaxton in 1907 and Alexander in 1924. So a combined 300 years of expertise, knowledge and a long track record of product innovation and ability to develop new markets across the globe. We have a proven track record of consistently maintaining a market-leading position in our core markets for all propulsion variants, with our core markets being the U.K., Asia Pacific, specifically, Hong Kong, Singapore and New Zealand, and North America. With our history in large installed fleet base, we have a very strong aftermarket business and extensive support network. We're delighted to be part of the NFI group, and it's been great to see the traction we have been getting in terms of sharing resource, expertise and know-how over the last 12 months. Before we delve into the many positive activities that we are working on, it's important to set the scene as we reflect on the disruption that we faced in 2020. Our industry has been disproportionately hard since day 1 of the pandemic, with governments, particularly in the U.K., telling the public not to use public transport unless absolutely necessary. As a result, we saw bus patronage drop by around 80% at its worst point. As a consequence of this, operators' fare box income was hit hard and we saw many new bus orders canceled or delayed during this extended period of disruption. But despite this setback, we did not sit still and feel sorry for ourselves. We quickly put ourselves on a steady diet of self-help. We have taken swift action, reducing our U.K. cost base by around 25%, ceasing manufacturer plant in Guildford and moving around $35 million of annualized costs. We've also been actively engaging with governments in our core markets to help stimulate demand in an industry that can play a pivotal role in making recovery. Our international markets remain our growth engine, and we have continued to lay foundations during 2020 to ensure that new markets such as Berlin and Ireland will contribute to 2021 and beyond. As I mentioned earlier, we are very fortunate to have a strong international business, coupled to a healthy aftermarket business, which has quickly recovered to pre-COVID levels. There is clearly momentum around zero emissions. But it's important to highlight that as we embrace this evolution, we cannot ignore our conventional ICE and indeed hybrid business, which will represent over 60% of our annual sales volume in this coming year. We will remain at the forefront in these areas, and therefore, we can easily adapt to the pace of change, whatever form that takes. The U.K. market is the bedrock of the ADL business. And taking a look at this in a bit more detail, you can see how severely challenged 2020 was in addition to the relative underinvestment in prior years. We have consistently held a market-leading position, and we remain well placed as we look ahead, thanks to our product range that covers all of the technology piece, and that is something that sets us apart from our competition. With a strong green agenda within the U.K. and Scottish governments, combined with the underinvestment that I mentioned earlier, we are confident that we will see the U.K. market start to recover in 2021, with this trajectory continuing in the years beyond. And we feel confident while also remaining [ healthily ] paranoid that we can be the major beneficiary of this recovery. Zero-emission buses are becoming more important to us than ever before. And we expect our volumes to grow to 30% of our annual deliveries in 2021, and we expect that growth to continue across all of our markets in the years following. We knew it was coming, and we invested heavily in R&D accordingly. It was a question of when and not if. And arguably, the government's support [ has emerged ] and countries think about how to recover from COVID has been a major catalyst of change. And as I mentioned earlier, while the pace of transition to ZEB's increases, we remain well-placed in the conventional sector, too, a sector which is not under attack from newcomers. And this is not our first rodeo either. Our first ZEB bus hit the road in 2016. And the depth of our offering and capabilities have expanded rapidly with strong ambitions in each of our markets in terms of scope and size of ZEB offerings. It's worth noting that the same level of customization across our single and double -- single deck and double deck products is necessary for ZEBs. That is what our customers want, and we have the know-how, expertise and the business model to support them. And as you can see from the time line at the bottom, how quickly battery technology is evolving. And we have fully embraced this by continuing to develop our products to ensure that we remain at the forefront of technology. And these are not unrealistic forecasts. We are not developing new markets from scratch or looking to build buses out unobtanium. We have successfully delivered or have an order over 500 zero-emission buses to date, and we have products available to our core markets in the U.K., Asia Pacific and North America. We are walking the talk already. We have a market-leading position in the U.K. and New Zealand, and our vehicles in London alone have accumulated over 14 million zero-emission miles so far. But each market is different. It is very much horses for courses and no one-size-fits-all, and that goes for both the size, shape and specification of the bus as well as the technology solution. As part of our successful global growth story, we've adapted the way we do business. We have a regionalized assembly where appropriate to optimize cost and to meet localized content requirements. We have steepening partnerships with key system partners. And speaking of partners, we are very fortunate to have a very strong relationship with BYD. Strategic partnerships in the automotive space are not uncommon, and they play a pivotal role in our evolution story. The ADL philosophy is to collaborate with the best-in-class technology partners to both advance our expertise and deliver a market-leading product. We are experts at integrating different technologies into our product platforms, allowing continuous innovation and flexibility to support our customer needs. Our ZEB journey commenced in 2016, working in partnership with BYD, enabled our business to react to market demand rapidly, quickly developing both single and double deck products for the U.K. market. And as I showed earlier, we have progressively introduced new variants that incorporate the latest battery technology. The approach we adopt, the partner we choose, the system we integrate is carefully selected for the needs of the market. Our EV solution can be provided in tandem with a partner as it is with BYD, or there's an integrated product offering as we have in our North American Enviro500 DD, double deck, and which will be carried forward to our offering in Asia Pacific. And our development journey does not stop. We are continually focused on incorporating next-generation technology into our vehicles, offering operators better performance while maintaining our competitive edge. As we look out to 2021, we will be adding our next-generation hydrogen double deck to our U.K. product line. This is being developed in-house, taking onboard the learnings from our first-generation product. But it's also being supported by the learnings from across the group, given New Flyer's extensive experience of fuel cell buses in the North American market. Internationally, our APAC electric double deck product is in the design phase, ready to serve existing long-standing customers who are starting to transition to zero emissions. And as we look out to 2022 and beyond, we'll also be developing our European solution to meet customer requirements that align to our ambitious expansion plans in Europe. As I mentioned earlier, despite the headwinds that we had to contain within 2020, we are encountering a tailwind that we never have had before. More government involvement and more subsidies available to bus operators, and this is changing the market dynamics. As Paul Soubry mentioned earlier, the U.K. government has made strong commitments to deliver green buses with the headline grabber being to invest in at least 4,000 more British-built green buses. Recent announcements confirm that GBP 120 million of this will occur in the next financial year. Looking beyond that 4,000 green bus commitment, the policies and changing landscape paints a clear road map to our ZEB-led recovery. We are seeing TfL for the largest EV fleet in Europe eager to accelerate their plans to fully electrify their fleet. And in Scotland, after a successful first round of green bus support announced in September, of which ADL secured around 85% of the orders, we have commenced detailed discussion on a much larger round, too. In conjunction with this, the Scottish government has committed GBP 120 million of government financial support over the next 5 years to decarbonize the bus sector in a way that is good for passengers, businesses, the workforce and the climate. And this sentiment isn't just coming from the U.K. and Scottish governments. Major bus operators have also made firm public commitments as they start to embrace this evolution, too. So across the board, we are seeing ambitious commitments to substantially decarbonize bus fleets. And as you can see from our product lineup, we are very well positioned to support the industry on this journey. From our whole markets, the U.K. is likely to lead this evolution, but our international markets are not far behind. In New Zealand, the recent election results and renewed political commitment to EV bodes well for us, having recently announced that we have reestablished our partnership with Kiwi Bus to assemble ADL zero-emission buses and territory. And in Hong Kong, the government is -- have shown heightened commitment to green innovative transport solutions, which will include trials of battery electric double decks. Commitments from the NTA in the Republic of Ireland to invest in a further [ 800 ] zero-emission buses with a tender recently released. And the changing political dynamics in North America are accelerating ZEB demand, as Chris outlined in his presentation. So although those evolution is providing a welcome tailwind, our growth has traditionally been created in new international markets. In 2020, we've showcased a number of examples where we have fully embraced this, starting with BVG in Berlin. Providing a gateway into the wider European market, securing this flagship contract in Berlin will have a transformational impact on our European business. With a framework agreement for up to 430 buses signed in October 2018, we have developed a product with a unique 3-door, 2-staircase design to meet market-specific requirements. With the prototype vehicles delivered to the customer in November, after successful trialing, we are planning to commence [ seating ] production later this year. 2020 also saw ADL breaking into the Irish market, where we signed the framework agreement with the NTA for the delivery up to 600 hybrid double deck buses, with firm orders for 280 buses already placed. While these buses are diesel electric hybrid, they have the ability to operate in an electric range mode. So to have zero-emissions capability for those parts of the route, we're reducing [ woodside ] emissions and improving air quality as a priority for stakeholders. So with COVID creating a period of temporary market disruption, we have reacted, realigned and refocused to ensure that we are well positioned to return to long-term growth. We have embraced the challenges and opportunities presented by a one-of-a-kind 2020. The green recovery has become increasingly apparent amongst governments and customers, both domestically here in the U.K. and also internationally, and our well-invested and well-supported ZEB product range is ready to support this ambition. This is not a [ paper-takes-on-anything ] exercise. We have a proven track record of building and delivering on this. The strength of the Alexander Dennis brand and our commitment to providing our customers with a competitive product and support proposition gives them confidence. Our international markets have been an engine of growth in the past, and nothing has changed in that regard. We continue to selectively go in the markets that are best suited to the Alexander Dennis skill set. 2020 has led the groundwork for both Ireland and Berlin, and we will reap the benefit of this in 2021. You've heard consistently throughout the presentations that the group are well-placed to maximize the opportunity afforded to us by this evolution. And I hope that I've been able to articulate how we at ADL are well-invested across our product range, our customers, markets and aftermarket infrastructure to be able to not only embrace the shift to zero-emission solutions but to continue to serve our customers during their own zero-emission transition, while supporting the needs of conventional fleet. Thank you very much. I'll now pass you over to Brian Dewsnup of NFI Parts.

Thank you, Paul. I'm Brian Dewsnup, the President of the NFI Parts business. We are the aftermarket arm of the NFI Group, so we sell parts into all of the OEM vehicles as well as vehicles that were designed and built by other manufacturers. We are truly a motor coach, transit and cutaway parts business looking to sell across the across all vehicle platforms in the industry. We've been around for 90 years as long as the bus company has been around. And we service our customers out of our 7 parts distribution centers that have about 700,000 square feet of warehouse space. Let's talk a little bit about the history of NFI Parts. We have put these -- the various different acquisitions we put together over the years. In 2016, we put the New Flyer and the NABI Parts businesses together and rebranded the company as NFI Parts. And then we put the other acquisitions together. And in fact, right now, we're in the middle of putting the Alexander Dennis business in North America into the NFI Parts business, and we're doing that as we speak. 2020 definitely brought us a number of challenges. We saw the public business operate more or less as normal. It was down a little bit roughly at the 90% range, but we saw a number of quote activity and a lot of sourcing going on. The private business was impacted more greatly than the public business. It was -- it continues to operate at about a 30% level. And we see that as we do surveys of coach utilization, we see that as well. And that's been pretty consistent over the fourth quarter. And then from an opportunity standpoint, we spent a lot of time and effort this year putting together a portfolio of COVID-related products that would help improve the safety on our customers' vehicles. We've developed a line of ventilated roof hatches, drivers, barriers, ultraviolet lights and air and surface purification units. And all of that combined to be opportunities for our customers to increase the level of safety on their vehicles. Let's talk a little bit about the various different markets that we operate in, first one being the public market. We do about 60% of our business in this public market, roughly 100,000 orders a year. Most of these customers buy higher quantities of parts, and we're shipping -- about 75% of our orders are pallet shipments, where we're shrink wrapping a larger quantity of parts on pallets. And there are a number of large customers that comprise about 80% of the total sales here. This market has done really well, has held up, has been pretty resilient during the pandemic. We expect that the first half of 2021 to be somewhere between 90% and 100%. And then as we look at the second half of the year, there was some question about funding. We're really excited about the recent bill passed in Congress that will add some additional funds into both the public and private spaces. And we think that will get us closer to the 100% of normal. And then once we get to 2022 and beyond, we expect that we'll be back to normal when it comes to volumes in this public market. Private market, far number -- far greater number of customers, with about 3,000 customers. We do about the same 100,000 orders on an annualized basis. This market is different in that 75% of what we ship is going into parcel shipments, or if you think about a box with a single part or maybe a couple of parts, and so they're buying far fewer quantities of parts but about the same number of orders. And this is a very fragmented market. There are no really large players that dominate this. So we expect that the next 6 months, we'll be about where we are today, somewhere between 30% and 40%, maybe a little bit of growth with the stimulus bill that was recently passed, providing a couple of billion dollars into the private market. We think the second half of the year, we will see some growth, and we expect to be about in the 50% to 60% range with sports teams and various different tours and charters and things and employee shuttles getting back with the vaccine availability. And then we expect 2022 and beyond to be back somewhere in the 80% to 100% range as we see this business continuing to recover. And then lastly, our programs, not a huge piece of our business at 3% to 5%, but it is important, and we do well here. This business would be anything -- a 3-month program to 18 months in duration. So you'll see vehicle retrofits, technology upgrades or kind of vehicle refurbishment programs, where they might come in and replace the flooring and the seating and just giving the bus an upgrade. And we've won a lot of business in 2020 in this area. And so we expect the first 6 months of 2021 to be at 180% of what we would consider a normal level. And then the second half of the year, we expect that mitigate a little bit and drop down into the 130%, 110% range. But we expect this to be back to normal when we come to 2022 and beyond. Now I'd like to talk a little bit about a couple of different delivery models. We have -- based on the acquisitions and how the companies have been put together, we have very sophisticated customers and public transit agencies who have formal RFPs, with a lot of rules and regulations buried within those that we comply with. And we also work with customers that may operate 1 or 2 vehicles. And they're very transactional in nature, and they may just simply buy through our web store. And so we're capable of working with customers anywhere on that spectrum. Now I'd like to talk about our 2 different delivery models, first being vendor-managed inventory. That's a program where we will hold inventory specifically for a customer, and that customer agrees to only buy that set of parts from us. And that's beneficial for both of us because it really cuts down on the amount of administrative work required to do all the sourcing and quoting and things like that and allows us to really just to concentrate on part supply and really hitting a pretty high availability rate. And then the other one I'd like to highlight are parts kits. A lot of maintenance jobs will require multiple parts, 15, 20 different parts to do a job, and customers may not have inventory in everything or may not be able to put that all together. And so our parts kits allow for a single box to come and they can do an entire job -- maintenance job with that box. So everything you need comes in that kit can simply get taken to the vehicle, opened and then way you go. When it comes to zero-emission buses, you've heard a lot of exciting things today about the manufacture of zero-emission buses, and we're here as a parts organization to support that transition. We've done a lot of foundational groundwork in getting our systems set up with batteries, traction motors and all the things that zero-emission buses will need. And we're excited about that transition and supporting our customers in that way. We believe that as the OE, we'll have a unique role as the technology continues to increase on these vehicles. Our ability to support that as an OE is just elevated. And our customer -- our competitors are going to have a hard time supporting this as they won't have access to the same engineering drawings and technical support that we have access to. And from a service standpoint, we have some award-winning training programs. We've seen a dramatic increase in the amount of participation on our -- of our service online service offerings. We've seen a lot of classes that have been taken over the last 9 months or so. And then we also provide accident services, so the buses that need a major repair from a major accident, we're usually the first call and we can outline an entire parts packages required to get that bus back into running and good working order. And we have a number of wonderful partnerships. As the largest OE in North America, we have great and deep and long relationships with our supply base. That allows us to have the lowest cost bases and use that in the industry to capture some pretty good market share. And we've also developed a couple of private label brands, our Kinetik brand and our SVP brand. We are an OE-first company. We like to sell the OE parts. We think that's the best design. But we do have a number of customers that want to participate in the value end of the spectrum. And so we develop these 2 brands and -- so that we can service them and have products that they can purchase from us as well. And then lastly, our strategic priorities. We continue to build out our All Makes strategy. We continue to do cross-referencing on competitors' vehicles and build out our portfolio of parts that we can sell on to any vehicle, not just the vehicles that we make. And we also continue to build out our private label offerings to compete for those value-minded customers that I just referenced. Our NFI Forward project, the integration of Alexander Dennis and the footprint rationalization, we are well underway with them. We should be completed with them in the first half of 2021. And then we're excited about the transition to electric buses. We believe that there are some service models, some revenue-based service models that we're working on, and we should be able to build the business out of that. And we're excited about working with our customers and being able to support them and that transition as they move into that type of vehicle. The cutaway offerings. Today, we support the ARBOC business and keep -- make sure that those vehicles operate in the marketplace. We are excited about expanding beyond ARBOC. A lot of our customers today operate motor coaches and transit vehicles. They also operate cutaway vehicles. So we have the infrastructure, we have the customer contacts, we have the parts distribution model to service that as well. And we're looking forward to expanding our reach there kind of beyond the ARBOC product line. And then lastly, vendor-managed inventory programs. We're really interested in continuing to build those relationships with customers. We view those as multiyear relationships. And it's been really beneficial for us and our customers to be able to move into that type of an offering and be able to service them in that way. So we're excited about the future at NFI Parts. We are excited about 2021 and the opportunity to participate as the business continues to grow and return to normal levels. And so I appreciate your time, and we'll turn it back over to Stephen.

Thanks, Brian, and all of the presidents for those market updates. We'll now have our EVP and CFO, Pipasu Soni, discuss how the priorities and plans you heard from today's sessions will drive our financial results for 2021 and beyond. We were very pleased to have Pipasu joining our team 13 months ago as he brings a wealth of experience in business transformation, performance and process improvements, capital management and strategic planning. Prior to joining NFI, Pipasu worked with United States Steel, Pentair and Honeywell International.

Thanks, Stephen, and thank you for joining us for our Investor Day. I'm Pipasu Soni, the Chief Financial Officer for NFI Group. Today, I'll provide a recap of 2020, including our most recent credit agreement, and provide insight to our financial projections for 2021 through 2025. As you heard throughout today's presentation, the 2020 pandemic hit the bus and coach industry hard. It was my first year with the company and one I won't soon forget. When we started the year, we were extremely optimistic that based on our order book and the addition of ADL, we would deliver a record financial year that would see us meet or exceed our original external guidance of $320 million to $350 million. When we provided this guidance during our Q4 2019 earnings call, initial news of COVID-19 was surfacing, but it did not materially impact NFI's operations and didn't appear it would be a significant issue. A few weeks later, the world changed. We immediately mobilized and moved to a proactive approach by idling the majority of our facilities for more than 2-months and providing daily communication on COVID-19 measures across our company. We accelerated our 3-year business strategy by launching NFI Forward, which Ian previously discussed, to rightsize operations and lower fixed cost. We took advantage of tax deferrals put into place by various governments and utilized [ SUs ] and U.K. furlough schemes were available. We revised our credit agreements twice to provide more flexibility to navigate through the crisis. And we place greater visibility on liquidity and working capital improvements. As we close out 2020 and maneuver through COVID-related absences, we are pleased to reconfirm the guidance that we provided during our Q3 2020 earnings call of $145 million to $155 million for the full year. It's a testament to our entire team that even during a year that saw the lowest quarterly deliveries in our history, we rebounded strong and have positioned ourselves well for 2021. While the pandemic created several challenges, it did not keep us from achieving several critical milestones in the finance and IT functions. These improvements included moving to a shared service model for accounting, treasury, payables and other back-office functions. This not only provides efficiencies and cost savings, but also positions us to accelerate the integration of future acquisitions. We also incorporated a functionalized model for finance. We now have business finance teams focused on FP&A, or financial planning and analysis, versus the day-to-day accounting. This shift allows the business unit FP&A teams to spend more time partnering with their business unit leaders to identify and drive the best opportunities for EBITDA growth and cash flow performance. We implemented several systems that drive visibility and common definitions across the company. For example, with Oracle EPM, using common metric definitions, we can better determine which teams are driving the performance for items, such as inventory, and share best practices to help underperforming units. And lastly, we moved from a business unit-first approach in determining our IT road map to one that reviews and ranks priorities globally. I'm very pleased with the accomplishments by the NFI team and -- during a year of uncertainty to help position NFI Group for long-term success. As we close out 2020, I do want to thank our banking partners in North America and now in the U.K. who have been instrumental in NFI Group's success. They have stepped up to ensure that we have enough covenant flexibility as we recover from COVID-19. As Paul and I have mentioned before, we didn't have a liquidity problem, but a covenant calculation problem due to the decrease in EBITDA during the COVID-impacted quarters of fiscal year 2020. As we began our fall planning cycle, we had greater visibility on the impact the pandemic would have on our 2020 results and greater visibility on the time and length of our market recoveries. This led to us obtaining a more flexible relief package in December. As we close out the year, we expect our liquidity to be above $220 million, even when factoring in the cancellation of our sidecar credit facility, which was never used. A few notes on the amended agreement. We used a conservative downside scenario for covenant calculations with expectations for a partial recovery in 2021 and stronger improvements in 2022 and beyond. Our total leverage covenant for 2021 is based on the downside model with some additional headroom, which provides NFI with significant calculation flexibility. As we move beyond 2021 and dropped trailing 12-month results that include 2020 financials, we begin the return to more normal covenant levels. We have the same minimum liquidity as before of $50 million, but now we have a debt capitalization covenant of 70%. We did provide general security due to the higher leverage ratios expected during quarters where the 12 months trailing EBITDA is using previous year COVID-impacted quarters. Please note that this security does not include fixed property. And while it is a general security, mostly on working capital assets, there are no borrowing base requirements associated with it. Lastly, we will keep dividends at current levels, provided we meet all financial covenants. Again, I want to thank the banks for their partnership and their continued confidence in the business and leadership team. As we've now closed out 2020, we wanted to provide our expectations for 2021 and provide targets for the longer term. For 2021, we are slightly pivoting our internal goals to include an equal focus on EBITDA and cash flow generation, which ultimately will provide an accelerated path for debt reduction and EPS growth. The cash flow focus is primarily through working capital improvements, many that are already in progress through the NFI Forward initiative. Outside of operational improvements, we are also reviewing options for items such as tax structure to help in both EPS growth and cash flow generation. For 2021, we expect revenue to be between $2.8 billion and $2.9 billion and adjusted EBITDA to be between $220 million and $240 million. This represents an improvement of over 50% from 2020 adjusted EBITDA levels. Within our manufacturing segment, we expect ZEBs to account for approximately 20% to 25% of revenue based on our current order book. We plan to maintain our dividend at current rates and spend more capital versus 2020 based on NFI forward requirements. In total, we expect capital spending of approximately $50 million, with an approximate split of 70% for maintenance and 30% for strategic NFI Forward projects. As we think of the longer-term through 2025 and with NFI Forward completed by the end of 2022, we see several factors that will drive growth, margin and ROIC improvements. By 2025, we expect revenue will be roughly $4 billion without any additional acquisitions. This growth is driven by market recovery in North America bus and coach and U.K. transit, continued growth in our ARBOC and cutaway and medium-duty markets and ADL's international expansion in Europe and Asia Pacific. For 2025 top line growth and margin improvements, expectations will also come as our manufacturing segment sees 35% to 40% of revenue coming from ZEBs. 2025 adjusted EBITDA, we expect to be between $400 million and $450 million, with expectations that the private market begins to return to pre-COVID levels in 2023. And we experienced significant volume drop-through as we produce vehicles with a much lower cost base following the improvements generated by NFI Forward. As Ian mentioned in his presentation, we see an opportunity to remove 8% to 10% of both overhead and SG&A costs from 2019 levels. When volumes return to those types of levels, NFI's revenues will be generated on a cost base that is more variable and includes a smaller fixed component. We expect ROIC will be above 12%. For ROIC, we've seen lower levels in 2019 and 2020 as we made significant investments from 2017 to 2019 throughout our business. These investments in capital expenditures, ZEB production capacity and acquisitions were all the right decisions and will provide positive EPS enhancement over long-term but required significant upfront investment. I have a very high level of comfort achieving these targets by 2025 and feel there is a potential to exceed. For now, we're taking a measured approach, with more conservative market recovery in private segments, as we get through the pandemic. To wrap up, I want to reiterate our capital allocation priorities. First and foremost, we are focused on reducing our leverage ratio through driving internal efficiencies and process improvements, specifically through the NFI Forward initiative. Second, we will continue to fund the highest ROIC projects to ensure the greatest return for our shareholders. Next, we are committed to paying the dividend based on meeting our financial covenants as we know the importance of this to our shareholders. Also, we're always looking for acquisitions, both bolt-ons and transformational. We've taken the current disruption as an opportunity to focus on our acquisition readiness plan, and are investigating potential assets that may become available as we come out of the pandemic. Lastly, we do evaluate share repurchases based on stock price. We have a very focused approach that will drive significant value creation for our shareholders. I'd now like to introduce the Chairman of the Board of NFI Group, Honorable Brian Tobin. As many of you know, Brian has been the Chair of NFI since it went public in 2005. And today, Brian is also the Vice Chair of BMO. Previously, Brian served as a Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador and also served as a member of the Canadian Parliament, holding a number of senior cabinet positions, and has also served as a Director and Chairman of several Canadian publicly traded companies. Thank you again for joining us. And now I'd like to turn it over to Brian.

Thank you, Pipasu. Well, on behalf of the entire NFI Board, let me congratulate you on celebrating year 1 as the CFO of New Flyer Industries. And what a year you've had, let me say, with the pleasure that you have risen to the occasion for that. We thank you. It's been an exciting journey. As Chair of NFI's Board for the last 15-years, this business has evolved from a transit bus manufacturer solely based on the Canadian and U.S. market to a leading global independent bus and coach player. I'm pleased to say we have a diverse Board, with experience in governance and finance and technology, M&A and a solid working relationship with a superb management team led by an exceptional CEO, Paul Soubry. We're delighted that over the last period of time, we've added 2 new members to the Board. First of all, Kathy Winter, who, as you know, comes from Intel, and who you heard from today. And I'm sure you were as impressed with her contribution as we are at the Board level each time she participates. And of course, we've also welcomed with a lot of enthusiasm the participation on the Board of Colin Robertson, the former CEO of Alexander Dennis, as our Vice Chair, European-based and who adds unique insights into the market, the technology, the competitive dynamic and the operations of our business there and our business, generally, all around the world. Well, to be blunt, 2020 was a hell of a year. No question about it. One we won't forget soon. COVID changed everything and changed it for just about everybody. But I'm incredibly proud of our management team who worked very closely with our Board to deal with these tough issues that we've had to face, with a laser focus on the safety, the health and welfare of all of our thousands of team members across North America, in Europe and in Asia. Investors' support over this time has been critical to our group's success, including our largest shareholder, Brazil's Marcopolo. I'd also be remiss not to recognize the support, the flexibility and the creativity of our credit syndicate, and that has also been critical to getting through 2020 in a smooth and effective way. The Board remains extremely confident in management and their capability. As you've heard today, the team has a plan, which has the full support of this Board. We're excited to see the execution as NFI realizes upon the benefits of the significant investments that we've made in battery electric and fuel cell propulsion, infrastructure and telematics solutions, internal fabrication capability and operational excellence initiatives. New Flyer Industries is an amazing story that sometimes flies under the radar of investors, but NFI has a historical track record of providing strong and consistent return to shareholders. The addition of ADL into the NFI Group midway through 19 -- 2019, while stunted due to the COVID pandemic, creates both synergies and opportunities that will be realized upon in the medium- and in the longer-term. Make no mistake about it, ADL remains a rock-solid acquisition for the NFI Group. Now combine that with the aggressive cost optimization and reduction efforts of NFI Forward that Ian outlined today and you will see that as the markets recovered, we are well-positioned for a continued and sustained success. We recently witnessed incredible excitement, as you all know, around EV startups, resulting in unicorn valuations based upon incredible growth and performance promises. Well, as you've heard today, we're not a startup. We are quite simply the market leader. Now this market is not easy. But NFI is a proven success. Pipasu have been very clear about our targets and the upside of where this business can grow, and in my view, the upside is, quite frankly, in a word, very significant. There's no doubts in our mind that NFI will lead the transition to zero-emission bus and coach transportation, and NFI will remain the market leader. We're out front leading the charge, and we're leading the change to EV technology. And we intend to stay there, front and center. Thank you. Stephen?

Thanks, Brian. That brings us to the end of our Investor Day. We hope you enjoyed the sessions and found them informative. Given the logistics of our virtual format, we decided not to have a formal question-and-answer segment, but we are available for follow-up meetings and questions at any time. Please do not hesitate to reach out should you have any queries. Thank you to everyone for joining us. We'll be posting all of today's presentations and a video recording to our website shortly. Our plan is to make this Investor Day an annual event, and we hope you'll be able to join us in the future. As you heard throughout today's presentations, we have a lot of exciting developments and announcements in automated vehicles, battery electric and zero-emission buses and coaches coming down the pipeline. Lots of exciting things to look forward to. Stay safe and enjoy the rest of your day.