Nuvve Holding Corp. (NVVE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome, everyone. Thanks for tuning into our Q&A session. I'm Ted Smith, Nuvve's President and COO; I'm joined today by Gregory Poilasne, Co-Founder and CEO of Nuvve; and David Robson, our CFO. Before we begin, we'd like to remind you that this call may contain forward-looking statements. While these forward-looking statements reflect Nuvve's best current judgment, they are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those implied by these forward-looking projections. These risk factors are discussed in Nuvve's filings with the SEC, which are available on our website. These factors should not be construed as exhaustive and should be read in conjunction with other cautionary statements that are included in Nuvve's SEC filings. Listeners are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, since there can be no assurance that these will materialize. Nuvve undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements to reflect new information, future events or otherwise. We had a great turnout of questions submitted for a webcast, and we're excited to answer them. Some of the questions we received were duplicative and we'll group them together. And we'll do our best to answer every topic that you raise. Before we dive in, Gregory is going to provide a quick update on the progress Nuvve has made, delivering on our key strategic initiatives, as we aim to capture significant growth opportunities ahead. Gregory?

Thanks, Ted, and good morning, everybody. I'm very excited to be here today. This is our first one, so please work with us as we are going through the process. I appreciate the level of sophistication of the question that you've been bringing to us and a passion to our important mission. Since the creation of Nuvve in 2010, we've been resting on really 2 critical pillars. One is renewable energy deployment. And as we all know, renewable energy deployment requires stationary storage. And the number 2 is electric vehicle deployments, which have the advantage of having some very large batteries inside them. And that's really the original vision of [indiscernible] we love our vehicles, but they are part most of the time. And if you have an EV, you have a big battery, but you have also plenty of time to recharge it. Two, if you put a bit more [indiscernible], you can make it bidirectional. And therefore, it gives you the ability of using that battery inside the vehicle to do energy storage. And then the other piece that we have on top of that is this aggregation platform that allows us to gather all those vehicles together and make them look like a big battery. So with those 2 pillars, we've been focused on 3 areas. We initially launched our commercial production in 2016 with light-duty fleet. So fleet-wise, it has been always a big center for us. And here in the U.S., our focus has been around school buses. And the reason why we've been using school buses because you drive by those parking lots and you see those yellow buses they are parked all the time, obviously except when they are trying to take the kids in the morning. It's a very large fleet, 600,000 school buses that are running in North America every day, 24 million kids, very large operation, about 40,000, 50,000 buses sold every year. And so when you take all those buses and you connect them, for example, to a 60-kilowatt charging station, that's 36 gigawatt that all those buses across North America would be able to provide to give you an idea that, that's about 70% of the peak, the largest peak we've ever seen here in California. And so that's why we've been -- in 2019, we started to focus on school bus and the electrification, which we could see some early sign. At this point, the EPA is making available $5 million that are starting to be deployed, support the school district and adopting electrification of transportation. We have been qualifying the acquisition as a leading service provider in that space and our K12 business unit, soon will have about 500 of those buses connected, probably one of the largest fleets of electric vehicles connected to a single platform. Our value proposition is now rolled into 3 key aspects: the vehicle readiness meaning making sure that the vehicle is charged for the driver when the driver needed, the energy management, making sure when that we are providing the energy at the lowest cost possible to charge those vehicles, but also providing those very valuable grid services that help reduce the total cost of ownership and three, the battery life extension because by managing this battery, that's managing those charging sessions, we not only don't manage the battery, but we can actually enhance the battery life, especially in the case of school buses where they tend to be parked for a bit of time and therefore, the ability of charging them can improve the battery life. This is what we call the customer-facing part of V2G is the charge management. Our goal is to remove all the pain points of electrification of transportation effort. We have demonstrated that we know how to support our customers in this segment, and we are launching new services, for example, in Texas, which has the largest fleet of school buses across the United States, about 50,000 of those. With third-party forecasting for the further acceleration of electric school bus deployment in 2024 compared to 2023, we -- and assuming that we maintain our existing market share of charging station sales, we see a path forward to potentially tripling our charging station unit sales and doubling our sales in 2024 compared to 2023. We see the potential. We see some very attractive potential for our new K12 business unit between now and 2030 as we go through the acceleration of electric school bus deployment. Turning to our second focus area. The idea is applying our technology, which is working well with electric vehicles that are highly unreliable resources and to apply this technology to stationary storage. With our advanced platform, we believe that we can extract more value for stationary storage than any other player in the space. Our strong differentiator within the space is our ability to provide energy management, advanced grid services and resiliency. Looking ahead, we believe that the stationary storage in the long run will be about 15% of our business, though in the short run, this might actually be a larger number. Finally, we have been very focused on enhancing the services we are providing through the use of our AI platform called Astrea. And we believe that we are providing best-in-class forecasting capabilities [indiscernible] and utilities to our Astrea AI's offering. We have advanced features that allow us to predict with a high level of confidence when an EV will be connected to a charging station and the amount of kilowatt hour it will need to onboard during the session. [indiscernible] when you're going to be using EV next. For the grid side, the technology allows us to predict when the EVs are going to be creating potential bottlenecks on the distribution system and therefore, this is very valuable information for the utilities. And then it allows us to help them reduce these [indiscernible] in order to smooth out the energy through the system. As the EV adoption is getting through the adoption curve, this is very critical because otherwise, the grid will have to be significantly upgraded and this will increase the cost of energy for everybody. So we look forward to executing on the focus areas, especially with the key achievements we've received over the last year, like the California Energy Commission where we're going to be receiving about $1.9 million for our [indiscernible] project and RESCHOOL. This project will expand our capabilities into microgrid environment, enhancing resiliency capabilities. And just this week, we announced our partnership with [indiscernible] in Japan, where we have been -- where we are deploying further stationary storage, fairly large capabilities, the capacities [indiscernible] in Japan. This is very important to help them stabilize their grid over Japan. Let me tell you that, and also that we're getting the consumer space, and we believe that this space or this segment will take off, probably in 12 to 18 months, so we have a little bit of time for us. But at this point today, I really want to focus on those 3 key segments. We are pleased to share that we're expecting over $8 million of revenue in 2023, which compared to $5.3 million we achieved in 2022. We believe this is great growth. Potential of our business in this environment that has remained challenging as we all know, we expect continued growth throughout 2024, and we can see a path reaching $15 million to $20 million early next year. With that, I'm going to turn this call to Ted and the Q&A portion of this webcast. Ted is going to read the questions while David and I are going to go through the answers. Ted?

Okay. Thanks. So the first question from the shareholders is for Gregory. In the last earnings call and recent press releases, you've alluded to potentially being in the early stages of exponential growth. Is there anything specific you're seeing in the market that makes you think this is the case?

I think that the first answer is the global growth, right? I mean the EV growth, though you might read some articles sometimes saying that EV growth is not coming up fast. There was a good news later from a U.S. banker last week, I think that was kind of taking all those points and EVs are moving forward, more and more EVs on the road. And so the global trend is there. Now I think the next point is really a question of demand and supply, right? I mean the charging stations, for example, we've been deploying are great, but they are really the first generation with those school buses, for example. And so we already see some drastic cost reduction in those. And therefore, as the costs go down, supply -- sorry, the costs go down, demand is increasing, and this is another big reason why we think that this is going to be accelerating in 2024. 2022, 2023 were still impacted by some supply chain issues that have been also impacting how the technology has been [indiscernible] and I think the other thing is we've been refining [indiscernible] proposition for our end customers. These 3-point of vehicle readiness, energy management and battery life extension, we think are very appealing and removing the pain point in the adoption of electric vehicles. Now if you look more of the data between October and November, we deployed 82 charging stations, which is by itself already twice what we did a year ago in 2 months. And so that's also reflected into the megawatt or the management that are growing at the same time. And so we clearly see a growth trend into which we are doing. We all wish it was going faster but the reality is there. And this is the phase that we are seeing right now. Now I think as we go through this acceleration, it's going to be very exciting.

The second question from shareholders is for David. David, what's Nuvve's estimated revenue for 2024 based on the most recent available data?

We may -- we just recently issued a stockholder letter. And in that letter, we disclosed we see a path of $15 million to $20 million in revenues next year for 2024 and that assumes continued market expansion being forecasted for the industry and our ability to maintain our market share. But we're entering in 2024 with very strong positive momentum and our expected backlog will be at an all-time high, which gives us a really strong base to support our views on [indiscernible].

The third question from the shareholders is for Gregory. How confident are you in your ability to meet revenue guidance for '23 and 2024?

So first of all, on 2023, right, we are very much on track to getting to that $8 million. And by the way, this was the plan at the beginning of the year. And so we've been able to deliver on that and really see no expense. So that has been very important. We see also the trend, as I was just describing of the growth, and we are following that, for example, year-to-date November 2023, [indiscernible] management have been increasing by 39% to 24.2 megawatt. Now I think as we are entering in 2024, our backlog is above all-time high. There has been some chat about [indiscernible] some of the board about friends know where we are going from, we've been basically qualified by the finance committee, and we're going to go to the Board. This becomes a very key aspect of what we're going to be delivering in 2024, fully crossing our figures that we get approved. I think this is the kind of thing that we've been working on for some time. It's been taking more time than we wish, but now we have a clear path. And so we're very excited about 2024.

The fourth question from shareholders is for David. This past quarter, grid service revenue increased to $0.6 million or 21% of total revenue. This is a significant increase from a reported $0.09 million in Q2. What contributed to the increase and what share of total revenues are grid services expected to provide going forward?

Well, it's a great question. We're pleased with the significant grid service revenue we saw in Q3. And it is coming from a couple of areas. We have our existing platform in Denmark with vehicles connected, and we have strong performance there as well as stationary battery grid service revenues we have seen in North America. There is some seasonality to grid service revenues. But what we have shown is our grid service revenues when you look at it on a year-over-year basis, are basically growing at 3x and compared to our hardware revenues growing at roughly 2x. And that's the kind of growth we want to see for our business. So we're really pleased with it. As all of you know, grid service revenues is a key long-term recurring revenue stream for us, which is key for our business.

The fifth question from shareholders is for Gregory. What's the status of the partnership with Circle K? What's the timing when Circle K megawatts, management will begin to produce a grid service revenues? And does Nuvve still expect to add 50 Circle K sites and if so, when?

Yes. So I think this is a perfect example of what we are careful in giving guidance, right? We are not controlling everything, not everything is in our hands when we work with partners. Their goal is deploying charging station first and then we help them optimize the cost of those charging stations that are deployed. So we've been going through the integration with their hardware, both on the charging station side and the storage side. And we definitely expect some revenue in 2024 and this will be drastically increasing megawatt management. But again, we are moving at a pace where it's not just us, we want to go faster, but we have also to support our customers and help them in that part.

The sixth question from shareholders is, again, for Gregory. Congratulations on the record month of the 81 chargers added to the platform in the first 2 months of Q4. Are any part of the Circle K project? And if not, will any chargers or stationary storage be coming online for the end of the year?

Yes. So those 81 are really true sales of charging station, and this is really in the school bus business. So that's [indiscernible] sales basically. In the Circle K, we are reacting as the platform to [indiscernible] procuring the charging station and selling them. And we have a platform that comes on top of it and help them optimize the cost of energy or they are providing to their customers, but also providing grid services, which is helping [indiscernible] cost of the infrastructure. So I think that's -- so 81 was K12 focused.

The seventh question from shareholders is again for you, Gregory. Can you provide color on the current competitive landscape? Who are your key competitors? Are you winning contracts over the competition?

Yes. And I think there are a couple of key points, right? I think we have 24.9 megawatts under management right now. And obviously this brings us clearly in the leadership position in this, I think, one of our competitors at a webcast a couple of weeks ago when they talked about 1 megawatt under management. We have studied to manage those megawatt under management in 2016 in Denmark with fleet customers. This is when we launched our technology. So we also have tons of data. We understand how the customers are using their vehicles and our technology combined. We are the only ones that are doing aggregation on a second-by-second basis with a very extremely accurate power flow and so we have unmatched value proposition. I talked about those 3 pillars as we face with customers. And so that's why we are the leader in the technology and [indiscernible] of choice when we engage with some of our OEM customer partners.

The eighth question from shareholders, again, is for you, Gregory. In the context of expanded stationary battery grid services in Japan, what share of megawatts that our management are currently stationary storage, as a stationary storage market has matured more quickly than vehicle grid, and does Nuvve this as an area of grid services growth in the near to medium term?

Yes. So I think at this point, with -- especially the deployments we have in Japan, I know we are like in the 30% range of weight of stationary storage. Think that in the long run, it's going to be more in the 15% right? Our vision is stationary storage and V2G as we work together and actually build some IP around that specific subject [indiscernible] later, but we think that the core of the storage will be provided through EVs because that's the cheapest way of doing it. Now for different purposes such as resiliency, I mean, stationary storage is very important as well. And this is why we think about this 15% portion of the portfolio will be stationary storage.

The ninth question from shareholders is for David. David, how is your financial planning for 2024?

Well, we are planning for continued strong growth. And as we've mentioned it, I just want to repeat it, we're seeing a path towards $15 million to $20 million of revenue next year. So that's what we're planning for because there's continued market expansion in the industry, and we have a good portion of market share.

Okay. I have a series of rapid-fire questions from shareholders for David. So here we go. David, what's the expected revenue from Circle K and eventually for other big contracts?

We're not breaking out Circle K revenue at this time.

Does Nuvve currently carry any debt?

No.

Is Nuvve planning to report revenue from license agreements with DREEV or EDF?

No.

The 13th question from shareholders is for David. Can you update us on the ABL?

Well, we're pleased that this quarter, we secured a $1 million facility covering receivable financing and this, together with the actions we've taken to reduce our cost, improves our financial position to where we've been as we navigate through some pretty challenging market conditions and this additional liquidity gives us flexibility as we consider some additional options to raise capital going forward.

The 14th question from shareholders is for Gregory. Now that the launch of Nuvve K12 is underway in Texas, what geographies will you focus on next? What do you expect in terms of deployments for 2024?

Yes. So one, it's based on our value proposition right? I talked about vehicle readiness, energy management and battery life extension. So if you drill them on energy management, there are 2 pieces there. There is one how they reduce the cost of energy that we deliver to the vehicles; and two, potential grid service revenue that you can generate across the different states of the United States. Those values are distributed in very different ways. So if you focus in Texas, for example, the value that's very high whether it's about the arbitrage on the cost of energy. And so that's more on energy management and energy trading in case [indiscernible] cost of energy is high. So there's a lot of energy management value there versus some of the areas of the U.S. where you [indiscernible] grid service. And so I'm not going to say what are the next stages we are targeting, but I've given you some hint about the very precise model that we have in terms of how we're addressing the market and where we see the value and how we are going from state by state in order to deploy [indiscernible].

The 15th question from shareholders is again for Gregory. What are next steps in the rollout of your Astrea AI forecasting offering? Do you have plans to further integrate the technology in additional regions?

So as I said, a tagline for Astrea is better [indiscernible] and we've been working on those capabilities for the last 2 years and we keep on working on those. My vision is that we will become really good at predicting -- forecasting in general, many aspects of it, either it's vehicle usage or the energy markets. We've demonstrated some of that today. Two key functionalities that are coming out, I talked a little bit about it earlier. One is the ability to predict; one, kilowatt hours are going to be needed by a set of charging stations on an hourly basis, but then we can procure the synergy [indiscernible]. So I think, for example, [indiscernible] operator that -- the raw material that they are bringing to their end customers is electrons. And so we can provide them the ability of determining when they're going to need those electrons, the high level of accuracy so that then they can procure this synergy 24, 48, up to 72 hours in advance and avoid that volatility that you might see on the energy cost at times. And then the second functionality, which is more focused on our relationship with the utilities and helping the utilities to optimize the use of their distributed -- distribution infrastructure, the ability to predict when they are going to be peaks associated with EV charging and how we can help them manage those things at the same time. So this enhanced functionality really are putting us in a position where nobody else has been looking at those aspects. And it gives us the possibility to build relationship with those partners and combine the V2G piece of Nuvve Energy, which is controlling the charging stations with the procurement of energy and the management of the system -- of the distribution system.

The 16th question from shareholders is again for Gregory. What has been the results of ShareIntel's investigation into illegal short-selling activity? Is there a belief that the activity continues to depress the stock price? How will these insights be used to prevent further manipulation?

Yes. And I don't feel like I can answer all the question here, but by working with ShareIntel, we can proactively track shareholder ownership, identify parties that having suspicious or rather unusual trading activities and then deploy [indiscernible] steps to help curtail such activity. We are committed to taking all necessary actions to protect the interest of our shareholders. And we're going to keep on working with ShareIntel and other partners to combat potential illegal short selling and restore fair market conditions for our share price.

The 17th question from shareholders is for Gregory. Does the company plan to raise capital and to fund future growth?

So first, right, when the cost of capital is high, cash management becomes very, very critical. I think we've shared with you that we have been working very, very actively in reducing our cash expense and therefore, we have a good handle on our cash position. Also I think a big differentiator of [indiscernible] to some of the other players in the space is that we don't have any capital expense and so that gives us more agility in how we are managing our cash. Now we remain very flexible and we are continuing to evaluate all the options that are coming to us in order to raise capital as we determine that we need potential more cash, but more cash now to drive our growth. And we are looking at it both in the short run and in the long run.

The 18th question from shareholders is again for Gregory. Why is this overhead so high? What steps are you taking to cut costs? What is Nuvve's plan to reduce corporate SG&A and the burn of non-revenue-generating activities? And do you feel you need to make additional cuts?

So we are growing a new technology, and we are investing strategically as we deploy a vehicle to grid software. That said, as I talked about decreasing our cost has been very, very important for us. We keep on reviewing our organizational structure and try to optimize our costs, specifically by looking at administrative and people functions because you work towards lowering our cash expense rate, and we think that will be below [indiscernible] $5 million per quarter. I've talked in the last earnings call about $1.5 million of cash expense monthly, that's where we are working on a [indiscernible].

The 19th question from shareholders is for David. When will Nuvve be profitable? And how much cash is needed for us to be profitable?

Well, we have not disclosed forward-looking guidance around our cash breakeven point, and it really depends on a number of variables. What I can say, and I'll just repeat it, and we've talked about it a lot as we expect record revenue growth in 2024, this path to $15 million to $20 million annually. And additionally, as we execute our plan, we intend to raise additional capital in 2024 as Gregory has mentioned.

The 20th question from shareholders is for Gregory. Is Nuvve currently exploring any opportunities to be acquired? This seems like the best outcome for shareholders to avoid further dilution or losses and inject much needed cash on the business.

So I talked about our clear strategic path with those 3 segments. I think the best thing for us is to execute on those and we are confident about the progress that we are making and our ability to deliver. Now we're probably a company if anybody comes to us and the price on the table, there's a process [indiscernible] by the Board and then also get to the shareholders. So -- but the probably #1 for us is to focus on delivering our plan, those things come together afterwards.

The 21st question from shareholders is for Gregory. Why has Nuvve been raising money now? Is management getting a deal at the expense of existing shareholders?

Our business path has always been to really to raise money. We can [indiscernible] because there is a path to get to profitability and it requires some investment and while we are very aware of the price, we don't believe that this is prohibitive in terms of how we are raising money, and that's because we think that there is a lot of value in the long run in what we are doing, as I said, we are the leader of the subject. Now this is also driving why we are [indiscernible] rates, right? Because in this case, we don't want to bring too much money at once and we are very prudent and strategic in how we are [Audio Gap]

The 22nd question from shareholders is again for Gregory. Gregory, what do you say to nearly every shareholder that's invested in Nuvve following its public listing? For many of the early investors, the value of their investment in Nuvve is down well over 90% to date. Is there any way to provide incentives or distributions to long-term investors that have been holding on the shares or can Nuvve retire shares given the insiders that would reduce previous dilution?

So I mean, investments we are making to accelerate the deployment of the technology is setting the stage for a long-term growth and value creation. [indiscernible] included the need for additional capital to raise. And while our capital raising plans are [indiscernible] as I just said. So while the pressure [indiscernible] keep us from seeking additional sources of capital, we've been scaling back. We've been ready to get expense in order to deliver on the plan. And I'm actually very excited about this 2024 plan.

The 23rd question from shareholders is again for Gregory. What are the details of the expected reverse split? And when do you anticipate it will happen? How do you plan to avoid the same outcome following the reverse split?

We've talked about it. We're not doing the -- we are working on doing the reverse split. I think the best way to go through this is for us to -- we shared with you the plan which is a step more than what we've done in the past. Now we need to be on the plan. And that's what we are ready to do here.

The 24th question from shareholders is again for Gregory. If Nuvve finds itself in a cash trap situation or fear of dissolution, will [indiscernible]?

So the purpose of Levo, the Joint Venture Group has always been to finance deployments. And so no, it's not there, that cash is not there for that.

The 25th question from shareholders is, again, for Gregory. Since the proposed California Senate Bill 233 in California was placed in the suspended file, when will the final vote on that will take place?

That's pretty [indiscernible]. One thing that we don't control. We have some [indiscernible] going to go back this year. We see many benefits of this even though it didn't go through the first time, I've already been raising the awareness and it's very important. So I think we've been successful through that, and I think it will go through this year.

The 26th question from shareholders is again for Gregory. Why are we seeing other OEMs announce vehicle grid research projects with competitors instead of Nuvve? Is that an infringement of your patents?

I think that there's -- the OEMs are trying to better understand how transformation is going to be impacting them. And there's a lot of noise around vehicle-to-grid. And so sometimes it's a relationship aspect. Again, I think for us to keep on working on [indiscernible] we can't work with everybody at the same time, right? So I think people need to learn and then [indiscernible].

Yes, 27th question from shareholders is for David. David, Nuvve disclosed $9.93 million due to customers in a recent 10-Q. This is troubling for a company with very limited liquidity. Have you used EPA funds to finance operations?

No. We do not -- we have not used customer funds to finance our operations. Just a little background. We received these funds for grants we wrote on behalf of our customers for the EPA's 2022 Clean Bus School rebate program. And what we do is we keep the share of the funds related to the products that we've sold them and then we send the balance to the customer. And these funds are kept completely separate in a separate operating bank account.

Okay. I have some rapid-fire questions this time for Gregory. Gregory, why are you listed as an employee of DREEV?

I'm not an employee of DREEV, I'm a director.

Do you get a paycheck from DREEV?

No.

And do you own shares of DREEV?

No.

The 29th question from shareholders is for Gregory. Gregory, can you explain the value that Nuvve shareholders get from the DREEV JV?

Yes. So first of all, when you put this JV together, working with [indiscernible] EDF was very important. So what we are getting out of it is we own shares. We have a minority shareholder in DREEV. They are developing a V2G offering in certain countries in Europe, and we are collaborating together in developing this. This is a significant value for Nuvve both from the financial aspect and the operational aspect as well through the corporation. And we're learning a lot from each other.

The 30th question from shareholders is for Gregory. Gregory, when will the company theoretically begin producing and selling its vehicle to vehicle charging cables for which a European patent was recently acquired?

Yes. I think this is touching more of the consumer space. I think this is very exciting and by the consumer space, we see probably another 12 to 18 months for the consumer space to [indiscernible].

The 31st question from shareholders is again for Gregory. Gregory, can you explain why Nuvve sold its [indiscernible] Switch?

Yes. I mean I think we have built a great relationship with the team there. We think that [indiscernible] is very complementary to what we are doing. They were working through their own run of investments, and we thought this was the best way for us to be extracting the investment with some value on top of it and then keep the partnership that we have built with them at the same time. So let them grow in the EV environment, but we keep our relationship and give cash back.

The 32nd question from shareholders is again for Gregory. Gregory, Switch's CEO is strongly advertising their partnership with Nuvve and Switch offers Nuvve's vehicle-to-grid on their home page. When is Nuvve expecting to announce integration of the platform and explain the benefits of potential revenue with Switch?

Yes. So I think the -- first of all, the benefits is really a seamless integration between the new standards that are coming in place that are enabling vehicle-to-grid and our platform. So that's really the purpose there. And I think that in terms of commercial launch, this is going to be happening very soon, right? And I mean anything that basically involving what's called [indiscernible], which is the by directional standard for the communication between the vehicle and charging station. We will be working closely with Switch. So 2024, it's coming.

The 33rd question from shareholders is again for Gregory. We haven't heard much about Levo. The Stonepeak commitment was up to $750 million. What amount has been committed to date? When can we expect an update on anticipated future capital commitments and a time line to deploy that capital?

Yes. So when we launched Levo, that was in August 2021, since that supply chain issues, inflation kicked in, and Levo is working -- this capital structure works well for certain price on the buses, but the cost of the bus went up. And so what has happened in the meantime is that the government stepped in and the EPA [indiscernible] $5 billion. And therefore, the need for financing the vehicle has been going away because basically the cost are getting, school buses [indiscernible]. Now as we go through further deployment, cost of the bus goes down, the need for financing will come up, and we'll see if Levo is the vehicle at that time. In the meantime, as I said, we have private school bus connector or we're going to have school bus platform. We're moving on with our core business.

The 34th question from shareholders is again for Gregory. With [indiscernible] service competitors announcing wins with school districts on a weekly basis, what is preventing Levo from closing deals? And what does it need to be a more competitive offering?

Again, I don't know that we see a lot of fleet as a service or outside of the existing fleet operators that are truly financing the buses because of the financing from the EPA and so I think that's an important thing. So for us in that environment, we are focused on getting customers [indiscernible] proposition. I talked about earlier, vehicle readiness, energy management, battery life extension. And that is a -- I think [indiscernible].

The 35th question from shareholders is again for Gregory. Nuvve used to announce partnerships almost every month until mid-2022. In 2023 earnings, Nuvve was reporting increased interest in vehicle-to-grid, but doesn't name partnerships anymore like automotive OEM or charger manufacturers. Is there a change of strategy in Nuvve's public relations?

I don't know of a change. I think we are partnering, but then we also need to deliver, right? And so I think our focus is what you're saying now. The focus has been okay. We have the partner into the school bus business. We have Nuvve K12, and now we are delivering and we see the growth in the charging station that we are selling every quarter.

The 36th question from shareholders is again for Gregory. What benefits have come to date as a result of signing the memorandum of understanding with the Department of Energy?

I think the main one is awareness. It's really showing that at the highest level, people are aware that they [indiscernible] and I think that's our key step. At the time when this was created, I can tell [indiscernible] was in agreement about it. But I think now even [indiscernible] talked about how we're able to be a game-changer [indiscernible].

The 37th question from shareholders is again for Gregory. As competition within the vehicle-to-grid space continues to mature, what steps is Nuvve taking to protect and leverage its patent portfolio? Do you have additional patents under development?

I mean patent has been and will remain a key part of what we are doing. We have some key original patents on the subject, but we've been working on different implementation that we've been protecting going from some of them that may have seen about combining, for example, [indiscernible] or bidirectional vehicles, vehicle-to-vehicle charging as well as using product. We are awaiting some also international [indiscernible]. So that's very important, but also delivering on our commitment right now remains our key priority.

The 38th question from shareholders is, again, for Gregory. Can you provide insights to the technical aspects of Nuvve's vehicle-to-grid technology, highlighting whether it's challenging for other companies to replicate and how robust the associated patents are? Does the company face threats from hardware and software integrated firms like Tesla, similar to how charging infrastructure has been dominated by Tesla's Supercharger network?

Yes, it's a broad question. First of all, I think on our IP, we think we are going to handle on the V2G piece now. I think the key feature of our technology are, I talked about earlier, which is one, the ability of doing aggregation and two, the ability of controlling on a second-by-second basis a very accurate power flow, right? And as we go through this very large deployment of EVs, those features are going to be essential. And we see that today, for example, in Norway, where we have a significant amount of EVs over there. And when people are plugging an unplugging, it's creating a fast change on to the grid, and that's creating some headaches for the people that are managing the grid [indiscernible] together, one combined with the Astrea forecasting and then the ability of controlling that infrastructure at the same time that I think is where we have a strong position. Nobody else to my knowledge is doing that right now.

The 39th question from shareholders is again for Gregory. Based on past Elon Musk commentary, it would appear that Tesla has plans to pursue a vehicle-to-grid sharply. How can it do so without violating Nuvve's existing patents and the same line of thought, power companies like Ford produces the F-150 with vehicle-to-grid and is producing its own V2G software or Fermata Energy legally able to pursue vehicle-to-grid in the U.S. despite Nuvve's many patents?

Yes. I mean the patent is not going to stop somebody from doing something, right? And then we need to -- we would have to understand what they are doing to make sure that they are overlapping with it. But one, we are very confident into our leadership and strength of our global portfolio. There's no question about it. While other may be pursuing some opportunities in the space, we have a multiyear first-mover advantage, strong technology and targeted areas of focus have enabled us to build nearly 25 megawatts under management and become the only pure-play public company to generate a recurring capital revenue in the V2G space. We are aware of no other companies in the world that is close to this, and we fully believe in our strategy and steps we are taking to drive growth in 2024 [indiscernible].

The 40th question from shareholders is again for Gregory. How do you perceive the impact of Tesla Cybertrucks vehicle-to-load feature on Nuvve Holdings? Considering Nuvve specializes in software, do you believe you can compete in this aspect? Or do you see it as entirely a different market?

So I mean vehicle-to-load is one feature, right? Our goal is to have a large feature set that are depending on which region you are in. Now vehicle-to-load where you plug something into your vehicle, it's not something that we see as very valuable today, our focus is really on how EVs combined with the electric grid can generate value for the EV owner.

The 41st question from shareholders is again for Gregory. In 2021, Nuvve announced a partnership with Wallbox to provide V2G capabilities for the Quasar charger. Since then, the Quasar 2 has been released with similar capabilities. Is there an update on Nuvve's partnership with Wallbox since the original Quasar announcement?

I mean we've had some deployment in the U.K. with Wallbox, for example. And we want to build a charging station manufacturer that have bidirectional products that are coming.

The 42nd question is again for Gregory. With U.S. and European governments increasing subsidies for hydrogen-related initiatives, is Nuvve eligible for such subsidies? Additionally, can Nuvve's vehicle-to-grid platform be applied in the hydrogen economy?

So #1 is focus, right? I talked about the 3 segments where we are focusing right now. And [indiscernible] us to generate some revenues. So that's why we do focus on segments that are growing today. Now our platform, basic hydrogen creates a battery on the other side. And so we have the ability of [indiscernible] batteries. So yes, it's compatible. And this is something we are keeping an eye on but this is not in our priorities right now.

The 43rd question from shareholders is again for Gregory. How do you foresee the impact of next year's U.S. presidential election on initiatives like the introduction of electric vehicles and vehicle-to-grid technology?

I would say no matter the outcome of the election, right, we continue to work hard on deploying our technology. We think that the investment that have been done by the OEMs in the space is not going to go back [indiscernible] and so we don't see that as a hurdle [indiscernible].

The final question for Gregory. Gregory, do you have any closing remarks? What else should we know?

I mean I want to just come back to some of the key points, right? One is we've built -- we worked hard to build a leadership position in the space. We have a first-mover advantage. I think we've built a great understanding on the grid side as well as on the user side. I talked about our value proposition to the users, which is vehicle readiness, energy management and battery life extension. And I think this is really moving some of the key pain points that fleet managers initially are facing when they are adopting electric vehicles. We are very excited about 2024, and we see that as a very -- as a very exciting year and I talked a bit about some of the precursor of that through for example, but my point yes, I want to thank our stockholders, I want to thank our partners, I want to thank also our employees. I know I'm sure that some of you feel like maybe we could answer all the questions. We want to keep on -- keeping this channel open, we are listening to what you are exchanging altogether. We are impressed with some of the comments that some of you are making and the understanding of our business. And we want to keep this channel open and therefore, I can promise one thing we'll be back. And as soon as we can, we'll be sharing more about what we see in the future. So I want to thank everybody. Thank you, Ted. I want to thank you, David. And I want to thank all of you for being with us today, and we're looking forward to sharing more.

Thanks. We had a flurry of questions come in at the last minute. So we'll definitely need to schedule another call. This recording will be posted on Nuvve's Investors section of our website and will remain there for 90 days for playback. Thank you very much, and we'll end the call here.