Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the Beam Global Second Quarter 2021 Financial Results and Corporate Update Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] After today’s presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions] Please also note, today’s event is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference call over to Kathy McDermott, Chief Financial Officer. Ma’am, please go ahead.

Thank you. Good afternoon, and thank you for participating in Beam Global’s conference call for the second quarter of 2021. We appreciate your time today and joining us for the call. Joining me is Desmond Wheatley, President, CEO and Chairman of Beam. Desmond will be providing an update on the recent activities at Beam, followed by a question-and-answer session. But first, I’d like to communicate to you that during this call, management will be making forward-looking statements, including statements that address Beam’s expectations for future performance or operational results. Forward-looking statements involve risks and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those statements. For more information about these risks, please refer to the Risk Factors described in Beam’s most recently filed Form 10-K and other periodic reports filed with the SEC. The content of this call contains time-sensitive information that is accurate only as of today, August 12, 2021. Except as required by law, Beam disclaims any obligation to publicly update or revise any information to reflect events or current circumstances that occur after this call. Next, I'd like to provide an overview of our financial results for Beam’s second quarter ended June 30, 2021. For the second quarter of 2021, we reported revenues of $2,121,098, a 46% increase over $1,455,158 reported for the second quarter of 2020. Revenues for the first six months ended June 30, 2021 were $3,493,490 a 26% increase over $2,772,210 for the same period in the prior year. During the second quarter, we deployed the first seven of 52 units ordered by the State of California, and we shipped two units on the New York City contract. We also shipped the second of our latest generation of Solar Tree products to a customer in California, which will provide charging for full…

Thanks very much, Kathy. And thanks, everybody, for joining us today for your continued support and trust in my favorite company Beam Global. The last few months have been really good for the electrification of transportation and also good for Beam Global. Since the end of Q1, we've received the largest order in our history, seen our pipeline increased dramatically, maintained a healthy backlog, second world record, been added to the Russell 2000, and grown our business across federal, state, municipal and enterprise customers, while receiving follow on orders from two of our most important accounts, amongst other things. In the second quarter, we generated more revenue than in any second quarter in our history, even as the country was still struggling to recover from the COVID pandemic. Q2 was a record setting quarter from a revenue point of view, but it's a record that we look forward to breaking, again and again. As of June 30, the first-half revenue we recorded and the contracts we've signed in the backlog when combined equal more than all of full year 2020 revenues. We expect all of that contracted backlog to be converted to revenue within 2021, with one or two possible and I think immaterial exemptions. Said another way, by midway through the year, we had sufficient revenue and contracted backlog to beat 2020, our previous best year, with six months remaining in 2021 to continue to add to the largest pipeline we've ever had, and convert that pipeline into backlog and of course revenue. I've committed to you for some time that I was confident that we would start to experience an acceleration in the adoption of electric vehicles, and as a result, an increased urgency and the requirements for electric vehicle charging infrastructure. I believe that we're beginning to…

Operator, would you please queue up for questions?

Ladies and gentlemen, at this time we'll begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]

I'm just going to -- by the way, before we get started on questions, I'm just going to say this. I'm going to please ask you to restrict yourself to one, maybe two short questions max, because I want to make sure that everyone who wants to ask a question gets an opportunity to, and then if it turns out that we run out of questions, then I'm happy to follow up with any of you either on this line or in-person at any time.

And with that in mind, our first question today comes from Craig Irwin from Roth Capital Partners. Please go ahead with your question.

Hello, Craig. Not actually hearing Craig at the moment on my end.

Mr. Irwin, is it possible that your phone is on mute? We'll move on to our next question. Our next question comes from Noel Parks from Tuohy Brothers Investment Research. Please go ahead with your question.

All right. Good afternoon.

How are you, Noel?

Real good, thanks. Just a couple things. You talked about the GSA contract and how much that has made the process of your federal procurement easier. Can you just talk a little bit about that? And just wondering, is it a shorter series of steps or just the overall faster process?

Yeah, I mean, as I said in my remarks, we've made federal sales in the past, and it was just agony, time consuming, they need to have some sort of contract vehicle in place, it needs to be competitive, they need to do all sorts of looking at the filters at work. Now that we have the GSA contract in place, all of that vetting that competitive process, technology process, company vetting, and everything is done. So essentially, we've moved from a very time consuming, lengthy and uncomfortable process, which frankly, most federal entities don't want to put themselves to, they just won't do it. They'll go and find something that is on the GSA contract. We're through that now. They can essentially point and click to buy our product. So again, it's kind of early days, the federal government doesn't move quickly, as I think we're all aware. But we've already received the first orders from it, they do most of their spending sort of towards the end of the year, end of third quarter and during the fourth quarter. What we've seen during their early stages with the first purchase orders that we received through the GSA is that it was practically seamless, and certainly when compared to the previous opportunity. So that makes it much easier for us. But more importantly, maybe it makes it much easier for them to buy from us. And we know that easy is good.

Great. And could you just talk a little bit more about recent product improvements. You did have an announcement during the quarter that you experienced a 12% increase in the EV ARC charging capacity, so interested in that. And also, you mentioned improvements that are being made to make the product easier to manufacture.

Yeah, I think it's absolutely crucial to understand this. It's never going to get easier, or there won't be any improvements to digging trenches, pulling cables and pouring concrete. It won't. And yet at the same time, our products are getting better. Now this 12% increase in energy density came as a result of our engineering team finding ways to make the product more efficient and just essentially put more sunshine into electricity into the car. We will never stop doing that. And so the product will continue to get better and better, while at the same time that competition, the general contractor, the electrical contractor, the consultant, the zoning specialists, all the disruption, everything, digging up parking lots, that just doesn't get better, in fact it gets worse and harder to do during sight. So it's fantastic if you were to grasp this, you would see our product getting faster, more efficient and more powerful. While at the same time, what you're going to see is increased inefficiencies and difficulties with grid tied installations. As more code is written, more and more of the low hanging fruit slots are taken. So that's the 12% efficiency piece. And again, we won't rest on that. The other side of it is that at the same time, I've got the engineering team looking very carefully at how we make the EV ARC, what steps we take, what materials we're using, and essentially, they are tasked with figuring out ways to make it faster, less expensively, but never at the expense of quality. And they've made great strides already. I mean, as you go down the factory floor, and you see the teams putting the products together. I do this every day and my questions obviously are questions like, are we speeding up, is it getting easier, is it getting better. And the responses I'm getting from the people who are actually making the product daily are, yes, it's getting better, it's getting faster, that will in turn, reduce our costs and increase our deployment velocity. And we're going to need that because we as I said, with a $75 million pipeline, we feel that it's likely that we're going to start to receive a whole lot more orders and we need to be able to get them out quickly and efficiently and above all profitably.

Okay. Thanks a lot.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from Greg Lewis from BTIG. Please go ahead with your question.

Hi, Greg. How are you?

Hey, Desmond, how are you doing? Thanks. Thanks for taking my question. Desmond you kind of touched on a little bit around the logistics side of it. You called out Hawaii. Clearly we're hearing a lot about inflation. As we think about that base price for the EV ARC and delivery, how have those conversations been with customers around potential inflation pressure that you're seeing? And kind of as we think about whether it's in the event that maybe some of this isn't transitory, what has kind of been the message from customers in terms of maybe that $65,000 base price, maybe it's not a little bit higher? Maybe some of your input costs are weak?

Yeah, it's an excellent question, Greg. And it's one obviously, that we're chucking around here all the time. But I got to tell you this, you can tell by the fact that I got specific about a specific loss on the delivery, how frustrated I am by the impact that shipping costs had on us during the quarter, because it really paints a very inaccurate picture about the direction that we're moving in in terms of improving gross profitability. $25,000 on a single bloody delivery, it's just infuriating. However, I got to tell you something, and with my usual lack of politics, I'm going to tell you this, it was more us than inflation. We just didn't do a good job of efficiently setting up our deliveries, at least that's where the biggest win is going to come for us. And we've already experienced that. We're getting our hands around this, we're getting better at using our own deployment equipment, not relying on third-party carriers who are reliable is not a word you use when you're talking about third-party carriers, and the volatility of cost. We can get this under control and we've already made great strides to do that in this quarter, and we're going to continue to do it. And as I said, I won't let something like that Hawaii incident take place again. So inflation, it exists, we're certainly paying more for steel than we used to, and we don't want to. We're also seeing cost of components coming down in the longer-term, though, important things like batteries and stuff like that. So I will tell you this, I don't think that the answer to gross profitability for us comes from increasing our sales price. I think the answer to profitability comes from in continuing to do what we're doing, which is getting better at making the product and just volume. I've said this to you many times before it's all about volume for us. We pay less when we buy more. Our overheads impacts are less than the product when we do more products. And then we just frankly get better at it more efficient at it. And in this instance, certainly this quarter is concerned, a great deal of the gross profit loss just came out of inefficiency in delivering, not shipping to us and not inflationary impact. We're shipping the product from us to our customers, and we know what the problems are, and we can solve them, and I'm telling you today we're going to.

Okay, great. One more final one, I mean, clearly, it sounds like you're making -- military. I guess I kind of wonder you guys had good quarter boosting revenue. Is there a little bit of chicken and egg, maybe with the military as they kind of think about relying on you kind of for more equipment than you're currently producing? I'm just kind of curious as you talk to some customers, maybe are they interested in the product, but, maybe that they need some more comfort around your Beam’s ability to kind of scale up? Is that been a headwind at all?

In the past, yes. There's no doubt about it. In the past, when we didn't have these sort of big customers like New York City and the State of California, Caltrans and others. I've no doubt that people had doubts about our ability to perform. However, we're constantly assuaging those doubts. I mean, we're delivering right now to these 52 units at multiple different agencies across California, CAL FIRE, Cal OES as Caltrans. These are not early adopters or risk takers, and they're buying our product. And it's not because we're a California-based company by the way, they put competitively saw a product which could do what ours can do and selected us. Now where the military is concerned, again, not early adopters. I mean, it's really incredible even talking to them. In fact, I just had a conversation with somebody in the military the other day that said I've got $1,000 computer in my hand here but I can't use it. I have to use my 1995 Dell whenever I want to do military business, the kind of joking and laughing about it, but it's true. Having said that, they are under mandates to clean their fleets up, when we talk about cleanup, federal fleets, includes military, all bought tactical, and even tactical is going to go that way. But in the meantime, they've got massive fleets of other vehicles, which they're going to have to go electric with. And if you think about the base environment, and if you think about the dynamic nature of the way they deploy and all that sort of stuff, as I said in my remarks, they cannot go through the process of constructing, and doing all the other things that are required with grid tied stuff in the ground. So whether or not they have doubts about us from our size, and everything else like that, the need that they have is so acute and so immediate, and our ability to fulfill it is so immediate. And during this demonstration project EMS, was just a fantastic opportunity for us to get a lot of video and get in front of a lot of people. And there were congressional interest in it and everything else too. So I can't speak for how quickly they'll move. But, like a mighty battleship, when they do move, you don't stop them, you don't turn them around. And I think as I said, we're very well-positioned, American made product, energy security, clean tech, EV charging, all rolled into one product that can be rapidly deployed without construction or any of the other risks or variable costs. I just think we're very well placed to take advantage of it, while I can't forecast how quickly they'll move.

Perfect. Thank you very much for the time, everybody.

Thank you, Greg.

Our next question comes from Tate Sullivan from Maxim Group. Please go with your question.

Hello, Desmond. Following up on shipping and handling, just in the queue and where you break out your revenues. I see you do get some revenue from shipping and handling, is that a negotiation customer by customers? Is it standard that you include a standard shipping fee in the EV ARC so you can just review that?

It's more location by location. I mean, we do have certain set rates, particularly when we're using our own transportation system, the ARC mobility system, which is a very good way of delivering product at very low cost of our incremental cost of cost of diesel and the price of the driver, and the amortization of equipment, of course. We build the trailer ourselves, and even sell it to other people. So when we're doing it ourselves, and we control it ourselves, it's a good enterprise. You're right, we get revenue from it. We can do it profitably, when we're doing it ourselves. Where we get into trouble is when we're quoting customers, to deliver to locations, and sometimes it's a month or two later, before we go there. And in the case of Hawaii, they just doubled the cost on us without so much as a by your leave. And we were not able to go back to the customer and impose that cost increase on them. And we didn't think it was wise to at this point in our evolution, because we want to evolve into Hawaii and it was important to us to get out there. So there was some sort of more decision making process in that as well. We could have said no, we're not going to do it. But of course, as you know, we're attempting to grow. And the bigger the footprint, the more we're seeing, the more we sell. So there I guess you could say in a way that loss was a marketing expense for us. And we don't classify it that way. Of course, it goes as COGS. But in a way, I view it as an SG&A costs. So there's volatility there. The prices have gone up. There's no question about that, we've definitely seen inflation in transportation at the moment. I think, there's an element of transitory nature to it, because this course is a launch activity right now, which didn't take place during COVID, which is taking place right now. I think that supply and demand will recover that to a certain extent. But the real opportunity here is within our own control. We need to do more of this ourselves and we need to get better at planning it, and better at controlling it. And I'm telling you, we are taking the steps to do that internally right now.

Thank you, Desmond.

Thank you, Tate.

Our next question comes from Gabe Daoud from Cowen. Please go ahead with your question.

Hello, Gabe.

Good afternoon, Desmond. Thanks for taking the time. Thanks for taking the questions. Just curious if you could give us a little more color on the updated pipeline figure. And again, maybe Desmond just help us frame how this is defined, and maybe any kind of color around a customer makeup of that I think $75 million figure that you mentioned?

Yes. So first thing let me to tell you, we do not include things in pipeline that we consider not to be realistic opportunities that can move to purchase order. So as I've mentioned many times before, we have a conservative discipline where that's concerned. But anybody who's in our pipeline knows what the product is, knows how it works, has a need for it, has budget, has all those other sorts of things. And we're endeavoring to take them through the process towards purchase order. It's not casual interest, or us extrapolating what might happen if we sell to one customer, therefore 10 other similar customers might drop into place, or any of that sort of stuff. This is real, active, engaged interest. The makeup of it, there's certainly still an awful lot of municipal and local government. But what's interesting is we're also seeing a significant increase in both enterprise and federal and certainly state governments as well. As you know, during 2020 a very significant amount of our business came from municipal governments and that's fine. We're in a couple of 100 of them and there is 19,000 of them across the U.S. So I don't mind taking municipal government business. And they all operate fleets, and they're all going to have to electrify and we solve a lot problems for them. But at the same time, the Federal interest, of course, is huge, the commitments of funding, and again, our pipelines filling up with those sorts of opportunities. State, same thing. The State of California just renewed their contract with us and interestingly added product, so they put more of our solutions on to the state contract. And furthermore, made that state contract available to any other state in the union. And when I was on…

Thanks, Desmond. Very helpful. And then, just the driving on sunshine initiative, I know in the prepared remarks you mentioned, it certainly takes time and effort. But just curious if there is anything else you could kind of speak to around timing?

Whenever I do these calls, I know that there are certain things that people want to hear from me. They want to hear that I've got a sponsor on the driving on sunshine network, before they wanted to hear that I closed the city. And it took me a long time to do that. I did it. Now they want to hear that I've got a sponsor, it's taking me a long time to get it done. But I'll get it done. And I'm going to disappoint until I get it done. My apologies. And no one's more frustrated about that than I am, but I'm going to get it done. We will get it done. What I can tell you is that I'm definitely seeing a change in the reception of the story. Now, as I said earlier, it went from being an interesting concept, something that's becoming more of an imperative. I can't go into a lot of detail on that. But the answer is, just as I said in my comments, whoever does this will be a large organization, multifaceted organization. And this is something that they haven't done before, and touches on many areas of their organization, renewable energy, carbon reduction, marketing, media, facility, all sorts of different things. And we need to get buy in from everybody and that's a process. What I can tell you and everyone else on the call is, no one's saying to us, this is a trap idea. We're not interested, we're not hearing that. In the interest of full disclosure, we have had two or three organizations who have said not for us at this time. But that's okay, because there are two or three of organizations of several 100 that are available to us. So we are advancing this conversation. And I believe as firmly today as I've ever believed that we'll get it done, it'll never be fast enough for me or for anybody on the call, but we will get it done. The other area where I'm going to get flack I know is on EV standard. People want to see us that we're taking that to the market, and I do too. I love that product. I can't wait to get the thing out there. But just understand I'm a disciplined human being. And I know that we need to make profitability and efficiency and excellence in the EV ARC product to take advantage of the current opportunities that we have right now happen now. And then we'll go from that straight into EV standard and we'll get that out in the market as well. And anyone who was talking to me personally about that, feel free to get in touch with me directly. I never make a secret of how to get in touch with me.

Understood. Thanks, Desmond. Thanks for all that.

Thank you, Gabe.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Tyler Bailey from Needham. Please go ahead with your question.

Hello, Tyler. Yep, it looks like Tyler has got the same problem Craig Irwin has. Craig if you can hear this, by the way, I want to hear your question. So if you don't get it right now, call me. Tyler, same to you.

Mr. Bailey, is it possible your phone is on mute?

Hello.

Now we got you.

I apologize. This is Vikram Bagri. No one took my name and I guess I was waiting for my associate to speak. Hey, Desmond I have two quick questions.

Hi, Vikram, how are you?

Doing well. I have two quick questions. One on the product mix, you talked about the pipeline, you talked about President Biden's infrastructure plan and spending on that side and electrification of bus fleets and municipal fleets. Are you seeing more interest in Solar Tree? Are you seeing that interest increase in discussions? Are you seeing that interest in pipeline of orders? Could you talk about the product mix in that pipeline?

Yes, definitely. So the answer is, it's almost entirely EV ARC at this point. However, having said that, that does not mean that we're not seeing increased interest in the Solar Tree as well. The Solar Tree is, although we've had Solar Tree the name the registered trademark for a long time, the Solar Trees that we deployed this year are brand new for us, same technologies in the EV ARC, but a bigger form factor. And so really, we just deployed the first of them. We haven't actually officially launched that product. Marketing is gritting their teeth listening to this call, but I'm even talking about it because they want to launch it in a more official manner, and we're going to. But anyway, it's deployed, it's working. But no, we're not seeing -- the pipeline is still very largely driven by the EV ARC products. And remember, where Biden’s spending is concerned, we do level one, level two, and DC fast charging with that product. Also remember, that we are agnostic as to the provider of the EV charging solution, charge point, blink, and now Electrify America, all of their products are out in the field operating on our products right now. We just make their products work with our construction and electrical work and all the other things that I've already talked about. So DC fast charging, to the extent that that's an area of large expense, which I think it will be probably unwisely, actually, in many cases, but at any rate, we can perform that. Level two, which I think will perform to provide the majority of charging in the future, we can provide that. And level one as well, if that's something that people are interested in, and there is a place for that. So again, however they spend the money, we can make the chargers work, we just do it without the construction or the utility bill or the risk. But the mix is still heavily weighted in favor of the EV ARC right now. And that's why I'm putting so much emphasis from an engineering operations point of view into increasing our efficiency, reducing our costs and getting the point where we can pump those things out like Model T's very profitably.

Great. Thank you. And as a follow-up, Desmond, I fully appreciate not disclosing a whole lot of details about EV standard. But as you may realize we and your customers and the street and investors share your excitement about that product. So is there any more detail you can share on that front in terms of specs, in terms of costs, margin longer-term, what you will target? And I fully understand if you cannot, what are the signposts that we should keep in mind and look for on that front? Are you looking to file more patents? And, until you file those patents, you won't disclose more details. And when should we expect more announcements on that front? Where are you in the process? Thank you.

Yes, good question. So the answer to your question, you sort of answered it already, you can find most of what you need to know about the EV standard in our existing patents around it. Just to give you broadly speaking, my intention is that the EV standard have approximately within the same zip code, let's say performance that the EV ARC has because we've learned that that's a performance level, which is really very excellent where EV charging is concerned. So that EV ARC is delivering up to 265 driving miles a day without connecting to the grid, and remembering that we are really interested in DRR or daily range replenishment. We don't care about empty full scenarios, they just don't happen if you're an EV driver. I've been doing it for 10-years. Rather you charge it like you charge your cellphones. So DRR, daily range replenishment is our target. Average U.S. sedan drives 30.4 miles per day, and data obtained commuters drive less than 24 miles with a round trip commute. So the EV standard product will be designed to address that DRR. We want to make sure that cars -- we're not trying to fill up empty Tesla's or any other questions that I frustratingly get all the time. What we're trying to do is make sure that when people park their cars, they pick up their DRR and the EV standard will be capable of doing that. The second part of your question, yes, we will continue – and EV standard will be capable for doing that for multiple cars, not a single vehicle, just like the EV ARC is. Now, to answer your second question where patent is concerned, I mean, again, in this quarter, we were issued another patent. We are going to continue to pursue our intellectual property portfolio, but with the same level of discipline which we've always had, which is number one must create barrier to entry for the competition. Number two, must be something that we reasonably believe we can monetize. You will not see us building a patent portfolio simply to have a patent portfolio. It's only to make sure that we can protect the valuable intellectual property that goes into the differentiators, which make our product so excellent.

Good. Thank you. That's all I have.

Thanks, Vikram.

Our next question is a follow-up from Tate Sullivan from Maxim Group. Please go ahead with your follow-up.

On the patent protection, you mentioned China, do you already have patents in Europe as you consider expanding there? Or is it completely different country-by-country?

Yes, we do. Europe's a difficult animal. The way you get patents in Europe is a difficult animal. You basically get sort of Europe-wide patent and then you select the various nations that you're going to go in with it. So we’re very careful about how we do that, because it's bloody expensive. And so we're constantly treading along tightrope there. But we are, of course, defending our intellectual property in Europe to the extent that we reasonably can. We're defending it in China as well, as the reason that Europe's a greater emphasis for me at the moment is because it has replaced China as the top EV market in the world. And I'm also more sanguine about our opportunities of developing a new business in Europe than I am in China. Having spent several years as I think, you know Tate, trying to get a good deal done in China, we were unsuccessful in doing that during the Trump Z spat [ph]. But, we're confident that we'll get something done in Europe, as long as it's a good deal and as long as it's done in a sober and reasonable manner, which is the only way I know how to do it.

Great. Thanks. And a quick follow-up as well, most of the sales efforts, is it direct outreach now or will it shift to more responding to RFPs or with the infrastructure plan? Or how do you see that developing?

There's no question that we anticipate more RFPs with the infrastructure plan. At the moment, most of our sales are direct outreach. But, there's another aspect to our selling too, which is growing. And this is what's very encouraging to me inbounds. In the past, almost every sale that we've made has come as a result of just sweat and blood and tears and shoe leather, going out and beating down on opportunities. We're seeing increasing numbers of inbounds and of course inbounds are by far the best. We know that there's an appetite in everything else, the minute they come to us. So we're getting a lot more of those. We do believe there will be more RFP activity. But here's the good news. We've responded to several RFPs in our history, State of California, City of New York, State of Florida, State of Massachusetts, many others. I just can't remember the top my head. In every instance those RFPs were competitively let and resulted in competitively let contracts. And in every incidence, we were the only vendor that had a solution, which met the specifications called out in those RFPs. So we love RFPs. I don't want to be sole source. That's a target on your back. I want to win RFPs because what I have is unique and better than anybody else in the market. And we've demonstrated our ability to do that with the biggest and best customers out there.

Thank you, Desmond.

Thanks, Tate. Craig Irwin, are you there?

[Operator Instructions] Sir, at this time, I'm showing no additional questions. I’d like to turn the floor back over to you for any closing remarks.

Well, I just want to thank everybody for those questions and everyone else who was listening who didn't ask a question. And of course, I want to continue to thank everybody for your support in this company, your belief in us. Our shareholders are our number one priority, along with our employees and customers of course. I hope you can hear from me. I am not less enthusiastic about my job than I was yesterday or the last time we talked, on the contrary, I'm having a great time and I think we're off to a fantastic acceleration in the way the business is running here. So again, thanks for your support. Thanks for your time here today. Stay tuned.

Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we'll end today's conference call. We do thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.