Earnings Labs

Blue Bird Corporation (BLBD)

Q4 2024 Earnings Call· Mon, Nov 25, 2024

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining Bluebird's fiscal 2024 fourth quarter and full year earnings conference call. My name is Sierra, and I will be your moderator for today. Lines have been muted during the presentation portion of the call with an opportunity for questions and answers at the end. I would now like to pass the conference over to our host, Mark Benfield, Head of Investor Relations with Bluebird. Please proceed. Thank you.

Mark Benfield

Management

Welcome to Bluebird's fiscal 2024 fourth quarter and full year earnings conference call. The audio for our call is webcast live on blue-bird.com under the Investor Relations tab. You can access supporting slides on our website by clicking on the presentations box on the IR landing page. Our comments today include forward-looking statements that are subject to risks that could cause actual results to be materially different. Those risks include, among others, matters we have noted on the following two slides in our filings to the SEC. Bluebird disclaims any obligation to update the information in this call. This afternoon, you will hear from Bluebird's President and CEO, Phil Horlock, and CFO, Razvan Radulescu. Then we will take some questions. So let's get started. Phil?

Phil Horlock

Management

Thank you, Mark, and good afternoon to everyone. First, let me say the Bluebird team has done an incredible job in delivering continually improved results as we have moved through each quarter in 2024. As you will see shortly in Razvan's section, the fourth quarter was no exception to that. We achieved outstanding financial performance and another quarter record for Bluebird. For the full year, we delivered record financial results across the board, and once again, we beat our guidance range for each of the three metrics on the three report. Let's get started with the key takeaways for the full year on slide six. As the headline says, fiscal 2024 was an all-time record year for Bluebird. Referencing the first line in the box, I am very pleased to report that we more than doubled our prior record profit achieved in 2023, delivering an outstanding adjusted EBITDA margin of 13.6%. That's an impressive six percentage points higher than a year ago. As I just mentioned, we beat full-year guidance once again, and we are also increasing our long-term profit outlook on the back of the structural improvements we are making. Importantly, on this call, we are providing you with fiscal year 2025 guidance above the preliminary guidance we showed in our last earnings call. Razvan will be covering these in detail later. Market demand for school buses continues to be very strong. The backlog for Bluebird school buses at fiscal year-end was over 4,800 units, which is 6% above the same time last year. Importantly, net orders for Bluebird buses in fiscal 2024 were 16% higher than last year. Now that's a great endorsement of the customer demand for Bluebird's expansive range of buses, and this bodes well for pricing, production stability, and profit margins. Supply chain issues are…

Phil Horlock

Management

And finally, we beat guidance on each of net sales, adjusted EBITDA, and adjusted free cash flow by quite a margin too. Including our updated fiscal 2025 guidance being delivered today, this will be the seventh consecutive quarter in which we have beaten and raised our guidance. With a record full-year profit and margin more than double the previous record we set just last year, I am incredibly proud of our team's accomplishments. I would now like to hand it over to Razvan to walk you through our fiscal 2024 fourth quarter and full-year financial results in detail. We will also be providing you guidance for fiscal 2025 and an updated long-term outlook. Over to you, Razvan.

Razvan Radulescu

Management

Thanks, Phil, and good afternoon. It's my pleasure to share with you the financial highlights from Bluebird's fiscal 2024 fourth quarter and year-end record results. The year-end is based on a close date of September 28, 2024, whereas the prior year-end was based on a close date of September 30, 2023. We will file the 10-K today, November 25, after the market closes. Our 10-K includes additional material and disclosures regarding business and financial performance. We encourage you to read the 10-K and the important disclosures that it contains. The appendix attached to today's presentation includes reconciliations of differences between GAAP and non-GAAP measures mentioned on this call, as well as other important disclaimers. Slide nine is the summary of the fiscal 2024 fourth quarter and full-year record results. It was another outstanding operating quarter for Bluebird, with significantly improved volume and with high-margin units across all powertrains driving both our top-line and our bottom-line results. We beat the adjusted EBITDA quarterly guidance provided in the last earnings call, and in fact, we delivered the best Q4 quarter ever for Bluebird with $41 million adjusted EBITDA margin. The team continued to push hard and did again a fantastic job and generated 2,466 unit sales volume, which was 350 units above prior year Q4 volume. All-time quarterly record consolidated net revenue of $350 million was $47 million or approximately 15% higher than the prior year, driven by a higher number of units and higher parts sales. Adjusted EBITDA was a Q4 record of $41 million, driven by higher volumes, increased parts sales and margins, improved MicroBird joint venture results, partially offset by increased labor, SG&A, and engineering costs. The adjusted free cash flow was a very strong $50 million, a $15 million increase versus the prior year fourth quarter. This was…

Phil Horlock

Management

We ended the year with $128 million in cash and reduced our debt significantly by $35 million over the last year. In fact, at the end of fiscal 2024, we had $33 million of cash in excess of all debt. Our liquidity sat at a record $271 million at the end of fiscal 2024, a $108 million increase compared to a year ago. In fact, now in mid-November, we reached over $300 million in liquidity for the first time ever. The operating cash flow was a very strong $111 million this year, driven by an improvement in operations and margins, offset by an increase in accounts receivable due to the large number of fleet and GSA units built towards the end of the year, all of which can turn into cash already in fiscal 2025 Q1. On slide sixteen, we wanted to share with you our updated fiscal 2025 guidance. We have a number of both tailwinds and headwinds, and we maintain a cautious stance, maybe a bit less conservative than in the prior years. As already mentioned in the prior call, the tailwinds include strong demand, stable pricing, and still a very high industry backlog. We offer now not only diesel and gasoline school buses, but we have the only propane-fueled school bus in the industry with green fuel and best-in-class total cost of ownership. We are also leading in the EV segment with over 2,000 buses on the road and are confident in the upcoming orders from round two and three of the EPA clean school bus program, significantly improving our sales mix in the second half of fiscal 2025 above our already strong EV backlog of over 600 units. But headwinds include supply chain still being fragile at times, while improving overall, and we have made great…

Phil Horlock

Management

So looking at cash, we plan to invest into our future manufacturing capabilities while also returning value to our shareholders through stock buybacks. We already completed a $10 million buyback in fiscal 2024 Q4, and we have authorization for up to another $50 million in the existing program. We plan to achieve this while maintaining great liquidity and a strong cash position, and we have flexibility in case we decide to pursue focused and attractive M&A opportunities. Moving on to slide twenty. Looking at our fiscal 2025 updated guidance, through hard work from all our teams and great execution of our strategy, we already delivered way ahead of schedule the 13% adjusted EBITDA margin we highlighted in the past as our long-term aspiration. Today, we are confirming the medium-term outlook at 14% margin in fiscal 2026 and 2027, with volumes of up to 10,000 units generating revenues of around $1.6 billion with adjusted EBITDA of approximately $225 million. Starting in 2028 and beyond, our long-term target remains to drive profitable growth now to even higher levels, towards $1.85 to $2 billion in revenue, comprising of 11,000 to 12,000 units of which 4,000 to 5,000 could be EVs, and generate EBITDA of $270 to $300 plus million, or 14.5% to 15% plus at best-in-class level. The plus comes from the other areas of growth outside of these we mentioned before, both for Bluebird commercial chassis and for MicroBird. We continue to be incredibly excited about Bluebird's future, and I will turn it back over to Phil.

Phil Horlock

Management

Thank you, Razvan. As usual, that was a great explanation of our latest financial results and our outlook. So let's move on now to slide twenty-two. I covered this slide in our two prior earnings calls, so I won't spend too much time on it today as our priorities and strategy are unchanged. Just as they should be. The chart on the left illustrates the three priorities that continue to drive us today: taking care of our employees, delighting our customers and dealers, and delivering profitable growth. The chart on the right provides more texture around the specific strategies that we are pursuing that both align with our priorities and drive our forward-year growth plans. At the center is our ultimate objective to drive sustained profitable growth. As you look at the margin accomplishments and our plans, we transformed the business from losses to record profitability in fiscal 2023, achieving an 8% margin. In fiscal 2024, we grew our margin by a full six points to around 14%, which is a truly breakthrough year for us that we are now building from. As we look longer term, our goal is to grow our margin to 15% and more as Razvan just mentioned. Following these six core strategies have been key to our margin transformation and will continue to drive our forward-year profitable growth plans. Let's now turn to slide twenty-three and look at the latest stages of federal funding for clean school buses, which is so important to help us to continue accelerating the adoption of both electric and propane vehicles in fiscal 2025 and beyond. Let me start by reiterating that the EPA's focus on school buses is great news for our industry, our customers, and our schoolchildren. With school buses recognized as having the perfect duty cycle for…

Razvan Radulescu

Management

As we benefit from the $1.9 billion of EPA round two and three awards that are in play right now. EV bus sales from the EPA round four and clean heavy-duty vehicles program, however, will likely impact fiscal year 2026 at the earliest. I should mention following recent discussions with the clean school bus program administrator of the EPA, our understanding is that there is no delay in the EPA's plans or processes to pay grants or rebates to the awardees following order submission. The EPA is simply accommodating requests for awardees to delay ordering until firm infrastructure plans are in place that match with bus delivery timing. Our expectation that the majority of fiscal year 2025 EV bus deliveries will be in the second half of the year supports this view on infrastructure and thus order timing. I'd like to turn to slide twenty-five and provide you with our view on continued federal government support on incentives pertaining to Bluebird. Clearly, there has been a lot of hand-wringing on this topic in recent weeks. As the headline says, we are very confident in continued federal government incentive support for two specific programs from which Bluebird is benefiting. First, the DOE's $80 million investment grant representing 50% of a $160 million plant expansion at Bluebird. It is worth reminding all of us that this program was fully endorsed in the state of Georgia by both Republican and Democratic parties for the following reasons. It supports manufacturing investment in the United States, by a US company with a history of nearly 100 years based in Middle Georgia where manufacturing presence is limited. And it creates up to 400 good-paying jobs and adds much-needed capacity to build new, cleaner buses for transporting our children safely to school. Second, the $5 billion clean…

Operator

Operator

We will now begin the Q&A session. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before asking your question.

Michael Shlisky

Operator

Our first question comes from Michael Shlisky with DA Davidson. Your line is now open.

Michael Shlisky

Operator

Yes. Hi. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. A lot to process here. Maybe I'll start with one of your other comments there, Phil, about the EPA program. Got delivery going through 2027. It's not past that. The program's fifth round will probably be over by 2027-2028. Yeah. You still got quite a few by large, risk mix of EVs in your go-forward mix from that point forward. Are you relying on a renewal of the EPA program after fiscal 2027, whenever the last 2027-2028? Alright. That this current one's over, do you feel like your EV business will, at that point, which is seven years away, stand up on its own and not in such heavy subsidies?

Phil Horlock

Management

Hi, Mike. It's Phil here. Good question. I think the last point you said. We're expecting as we progress through to 2028, which is when we expect the EPA program will end, we expect to continue those at the EPA sub-EPA. That, of course, we're still seeing and expecting a lot of state support. Which local support that exists. And I think as Razvan told you, you know, last time he's called. Our projections do recognize a reduced revenue on these vehicles. Over time. We're seeing it a little bit now in the EPA because each round there's been about a $25,000 reduction in the amount of the rebate or grant being offered just resulted in more units being available for the market too. So we can do to see that as costs come down, battery costs come down, more scale, and reflecting great significant margin over time, but certainly reducing in price to make it a little bit more affordable. For all. And that's the reason that parity when TCO and the price really, really gels together.

Michael Shlisky

Operator

Okay. So that's all been baked in. The pricing changes over time. The fact that it's gonna be over after 2027, that's all kinda baked in.

Phil Horlock

Management

Absolutely. I think Razvan's got a couple of comments on that to make too.

Razvan Radulescu

Management

Yeah. It's Mark. It's Razvan. So, you know, in the past, they messaged the three times an EV price versus a diesel bus. We are now already moving towards the 2.5 times multiplier. And we are projecting that slope to continue downwards as we reduce our cost. While maintaining our percentage margin across all bus types and powertrains.

Michael Shlisky

Operator

Got it. Got it. So it's all planned. It's always been part of your outlook, but I guess you tell us behind the scenes what you're doing to ensure that the powertrain providers and I guess there's two of them now, what are they doing to reduce their prices to you and kind of having sure everyone's coordinating and working in lockstep to keep your margins and their margins consistent as we go forward.

Razvan Radulescu

Management

Yeah. So, obviously, we are not able to share with you on this public call all our strategies for lower cost. The last, we are working with several providers, and there is new capacity coming online through the next couple of years. And we have clear plans behind with them behind our numbers to drive costs down and make EV buses more affordable. With the ultimate goal of reaching and beating with total cost of ownership conventional buses.

Michael Shlisky

Operator

Okay. Maybe one last one for me. Do you have any significant growth restrictions for parts for 2025, or is the mid to low as you had the last quarter here roughly decent growth rate for you for the following fiscal year here?

Razvan Radulescu

Management

So our parts business is already very strong, has been for the last couple of years. So right now, we are targeting single-digit, low single-digit revenue growth year over year.

Michael Shlisky

Operator

Okay.

Phil Horlock

Management

Fair enough. No. We've been achieving. What's that? Okay. We've been achieving five percent in recent. You know, that sort of number, and that's sort of, you know, what we expect to be. Cool. Hey, Mike. One thing I just wanna mention to you. I do talk about state and local grants. Just to give you an example, we're right now in the middle of our significant order we won. I think you knew about that with the LA Unified School District. For 108 electric buses. That's a great example. Not a single EPA grant used for that. Transaction. Of a single want. All supported by grants in California, state grants, some local grants, and a very attractive deal for the customer. So as an example, I think even today of not being entirely reliant on EPA. And still having a very attractive proposal to offer.

Michael Shlisky

Operator

Got it. Outstanding. I'll pass it along. Thanks so much.

Phil Horlock

Management

Thanks, Mike.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Eric Stein with Craig Hallum. Your line is now open.

Eric Stein

Analyst · Craig Hallum. Your line is now open.

Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking the questions. Alright. So maybe, hey, so maybe on pricing, good to hear about, I think, the three and a half percent increase that you're putting through here recently. And I know that you know, this is typically a one to every, you know, once or twice every year you do this. You know, just curious. I mean, this has been a really big part of your margin expansion, obviously. What are you hearing from customers? Is there any pushback? You know, how are the others kind of acting on price in the market, and how do you feel about this going forward?

Phil Horlock

Management

Yeah. I think again, a good question. I mean, we've got a rhythm going where we certainly price twice a year. We've been doing that for a good couple of years, April first, and then October the first. So it's almost like October's on the start of our new model year, so to speak, and then mid-model year. And we can tell from all the bids we've done, our win rates, and, you know, it becomes the school district bids and their decisions we know we're very competitive. We are competitive. The competition looks like is, you know, on the same lines as us. And, yeah, it's going very well. And, occasionally, as in a case of the $3,500 amount we put on in October, we put some product features in there too. It's a model year, and we have some non-attractive features in that pricing too. To differentiate ourselves a little further. So yeah, it's working very well, and we feel confident continuing on that trend.

Eric Stein

Analyst · Craig Hallum. Your line is now open.

Got it. That's helpful. And then maybe just on the outlook for fiscal 2025, I knew it's a new situation over the last couple of years, because of the backlog, and I get the whole dynamic about the second half waiting for EVs, but your guidance does imply that there is a little more seasonality in the year. Is that, I mean, anything to read into that? Is that just kind of just the way that the schedule lays out for deliveries, or how should we think about that?

Razvan Radulescu

Management

Yeah. If you look at slide six, production seasonality is purely driven by the number of weeks available in each quarter with Q1 being the lowest due to both Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays and shutdown. And Q3 being the highest. So there is nothing special there.

Eric Stein

Analyst · Craig Hallum. Your line is now open.

Okay. Alright. And then maybe just a housekeeping question. So it sounds like $50 million in CapEx for this project. At least for this year's portion of the project. Should we think of that as total CapEx, or is that the CapEx that would be above and beyond your more typical levels?

Razvan Radulescu

Management

Yeah. The $50 million is the extraordinary above and beyond. We guided in the past also around $25 million as our normal CapEx.

Eric Stein

Analyst · Craig Hallum. Your line is now open.

Yep. Okay. Thanks a lot.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Tyler Dominguez with BTIG. Your line is now open.

Tyler Dominguez

Analyst · BTIG. Your line is now open.

Hi, everyone, and thanks for taking the question. Here. I wanted to follow up on some of the productivity comments and the structural improvements that you're kind of seeing. I guess, how much of that is left? And then if you had to kind of bucket that opportunity in terms of maybe manufacturing gains versus gains on procurement. I guess, how would you bucket those different verticals? And I guess, how much of that is left for as you look out to next year?

Phil Horlock

Management

Again, another good question into our details here. I look at three major elements. I mean, the first one is I look at pure productivity in the manufacturing operation. This is lean manufacturing, kaizen, of initiatives done before or tackled before, we brought some new folks on the team. These last two years are really helping move the needle there. And making sure we eliminate waste and the walking time our employees have in the stations. And that's good really good discipline. And that pays dividends. The second one is around I guess it's called managing the material coming through the line. And, again, we strengthened our team there. We closed a warehouse that was thirty-five miles away from us. In Macon, Georgia, and we brought one that's about less than ten miles away. And we also put a warehouse next to the line in the main plant, which means that we can really fulfill our material needs very quickly in response to any issues we might have. Importantly, when I measure that, I measure throughput. This is a third piece. And it's part of that too. It's when I look at where we were just a couple of years ago, it was taking us forty days from when we set up a unit to when we call it's ready for delivery. Okay. So the first time we start putting a frame rail on a line, and building components on it, gosh. Should that vehicle coming off the line being ready for delivery after taking out for a drive and all things we do test driving, so and so it was more than forty days. That's now down to less than between twelve to fourteen days it takes us now. And that saves labor, it saves obviously, it's great working…

Tyler Dominguez

Analyst · BTIG. Your line is now open.

Okay. Great. No. That's very helpful. Thank you. And then on my follow-up here, surrounding some of the comments related to the EPA and the potential extension of the deadlines. I guess, how do you guys kind of think about the alternative power bus mix in the product portfolio? Is there an opportunity to maybe have some customers take delivery of other powertrains outside of EV? I guess, how do you kind of think about managing the product portfolio kind of given some of the comments surrounding the charging infrastructure and trying to really match that supply with the demand here over the next call to twelve to eighteen months?

Razvan Radulescu

Management

Hey, Tyler. Thanks for the question. This is Razvan. So first of all, we ended the prior fiscal year with over 600 units in backlog, and we laid out on a quarterly basis what our EV sales expectation is. And, obviously, we expect a number of orders from round two and three to come, and especially field second half of the year where we still have open slots. So that's how we manage the next twelve months for sure, and we continue to sell and push propane, which has the lowest total cost of ownership. So it's the best money can buy out there in terms of financial payback. So between these two actions, we are very confident in our guidance and what we laid out for you.

Tyler Dominguez

Analyst · BTIG. Your line is now open.

Okay. Thank you, guys. Really appreciate the time here. I will turn it back to the guild.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Craig Irwin with Roth Capital Partners. Your line is now open.

Craig Irwin

Analyst · Roth Capital Partners. Your line is now open.

Good evening. Thanks for taking my questions. So, Razvan, in your prepared remarks, you talked briefly about $6 million in one-time SG&A and engineering expenses in the quarter, in the September quarter. Can you maybe give us a little bit more detail around what that was? And are these items that are likely to recur in upcoming quarters?

Razvan Radulescu

Management

That's correct. Thanks for the question. So the $6 million one-time is primarily on a year-over-year basis, the bonus accrual. Given the extraordinary results we had this year, it was a higher amount accrued this quarter compared to the prior year. I'm consulting expenses that we booked in Q4 which weren't there a year before. So that's why I called them one-time in the sense that they are not to be repeated in the next coming quarters.

Craig Irwin

Analyst · Roth Capital Partners. Your line is now open.

Okay. Excellent. And then a question of clarification. Phil, in your prepared remarks, you said that you do not expect a surge in orders before the end of the calendar year. But when I look at the very granular guidance you give around EVs, you expect a 2.4 to 3.1 fold increase in deliveries in the second half of calendar 2025. That's dramatic growth. When do you expect that surge in orders to materialize? It'll give you visibility on those units being delivered.

Phil Horlock

Management

I think it's a good question again, Craig. I think we see that towards the end of our second quarter, we should see it happening. Second quarter for us, obviously, is through, you know, March or so, February, March of the year. So that's the time period, which will set it up nice for us to deliver later in the year. You know, I just wanna stress. I mean, when we were here last month, we talked about this firm deadline, which the EPA had set at the end of November, actually. And what's happened is can understand that. I think we all can. I would hope we can. That, you know, infrastructure is really important. Where am I getting my charging stations from? Because I should be. This latest rounds they're looking for a higher volume of. In other words, the onesie twosies we saw in round one, we're not seeing those in round two and three. They're more about fifteen to twenty to thirty vehicles looking for larger orders which are probably a bit more effort on the infrastructure side. So with our customers, dealers, fleets, requests from the EPA, hey. Can we extend this? Give us time to figure this out a little more. And the EPA said, sure. We'll let you have that. All we've seen so far is that the extension. And I can't obviously predict at the end of that forty-five but they'll extend again. But that's what they'd be that's the max that we've seen to any of customers who requested an extension. Is forty-five days.

Craig Irwin

Analyst · Roth Capital Partners. Your line is now open.

Okay. Understood. So then, in the final days of the Obama administration, there were three or four waivers issued to try and extend some of these funding programs forward into the first Trump administration. And I understand EPA is working on more than a half dozen similar waivers right now to provide funding continuity. Is there anything specific you might want to point us to there that you feel is relevant to the visibility that you're calling out for the funding continuity for an obvious Biden flagship program for the last four years?

Phil Horlock

Management

Well, I think, you know, I mean, we've mentioned before, but we go back to being a bipartisan program in 2021. I mean, no from the Republican party, that being supported. So I mean, and I try to summarize today. If I listen to the new administration, what they talk about is we love US manufacturing. We love US suppliers. Well, we certainly got that, and we're certainly in the US. Like adding jobs. We're certainly doing that too. Because we're growing the business. And we look at health and safety. I heard Trump talk about that quite a bit. On his running and safety and health is so important. Well, that's this is nothing better than this for children's health than getting rid of harmful emission fumes. And so I think when you look at it, know, the EPA is behind all that, and you know, we and at the EPA, when we talked to them, we're completely confident I mean, I said completely they are confident of this being maintained. They believe it's exceptionally valid product. It's done what the EPA is all about. Making sure they protect the environment and they protect their children in particular by these buses every day. I think we'll like we're sitting here with some, you know, program that sort of it's off left field. It doesn't seem to make sense. It's why you're supporting some small group. We're supporting twenty-five million children every day. To ride a school bus. And we've had discussions with that with the EPA. We've had discussions with lobbyists about this, who also feel, you know, confident that this will be supported. I can't predict, obviously, with complete accuracy, but I certainly think we feel we feel very confident that this money is going to a great cause. Should continue to do so.

Craig Irwin

Analyst · Roth Capital Partners. Your line is now open.

Well, I like those comments, and congratulations again on the record results.

Phil Horlock

Management

Thanks a lot, Craig. Appreciate it.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Chris Pierce with Needham and Company. Your line is now open.

Chris Pierce

Analyst · Needham and Company. Your line is now open.

Oh, hey. Thanks for taking the question. I look at slide twenty-six, industry predict from ACT, it looks like twenty-four is gonna be down year over year versus it was up in prior slides. I know these aren't your estimates, but I just wanna get a sense if BlueBird is delivering mid-single-digit growth and the industry is down, can you talk about share gains that you might be seeing within the industry? Or just wanna make sure I fully understand sort of what's happening. And is it just share gains in alternative or share gains in diesel? Like, I just wanna get a sense of what you guys are seeing versus the industry.

Phil Horlock

Management

Well, it's another good question here and a good observation. I think what I would say is, first of all, we don't tend to talk about share in this situation, but what we'll talk about is there was a specific reason why the twenty-four industry represents deliveries to customers, it's down. And that's because one of our competitors had major production problems in the early part of the 2024 calendar year. Which prevented them from delivering we believe, quite a few a few thousand buses. To their customers. They had some product changing I couldn't dive and they chose not to deliver them. And that won't get into who that is or what the problem was, but we know for a fact that's true. I don't think we so now they're back on board again later in the year. They got products up and running. They were shipping them. And that's why you see the it's you see the major boost in twenty-five, a big growth because that customer now kicks in the volume they've neglected to deliver in twenty-four.

Chris Pierce

Analyst · Needham and Company. Your line is now open.

Gotcha. Okay. And then if I look at slide twenty on your slide deck, that long term you know, it used to say twenty twenty-seven. Now it says twenty twenty-eight, but the numbers haven't changed. I just wanna get a sense of is that because of the same dynamic we just discussed where the industry shape of growth is different, or is this something different on your end?

Razvan Radulescu

Management

Yeah. Thanks, Chris. I'll take the question. This is Razvan. So first of all, every year as we look, the long term not to be add butter we kept a thousand and twelve thousand unit. However, we raised the upper end of the three hundred plus million and fifteen plus we did change the bottom line. We kept the top line. And the reason for that is because as we lay down now the exact plans for our new facility, we are planning to go live with it in the first half of calendar twenty twenty-seven. Which means we can't benefit yet of that capacity increase fiscal twenty twenty-seven, including also ramp up of about six months. So, therefore, the eleven thousand, twelve thousand have to start in twenty twenty-eight plus. So that's the reason why they shifted by one year.

Chris Pierce

Analyst · Needham and Company. Your line is now open.

Okay. And then lastly, could I just get an update on the CES search, please?

Phil Horlock

Management

Sorry. Sorry. What was that? Sorry. I missed what you said there. What?

Chris Pierce

Analyst · Needham and Company. Your line is now open.

Oh, Phil, I know that you're hear the question again. Phil, I know you're sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Phil Horlock

Management

Yeah. Can you hear me? I never I never left, but I don't still here. But yeah. I mean, yeah. But look. Look. Yeah. I mean, obviously, I was planning on retiring at the end of September. And that didn't work out. And I can tell you the board has undertaken a search and there's a three-person committee on the board looking at this in some detail and going through it. And I can assure you that when we do when someone is selected, ensure a great transition to make this work seamlessly.

Chris Pierce

Analyst · Needham and Company. Your line is now open.

Okay. Thanks for your time.

Phil Horlock

Management

Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Chris.

Operator

Operator

Thank you all for your questions. There are currently no questions in queue, so I'll pass the conference back to Phil Horlock for any closing remarks.

Phil Horlock

Management

Well, thank you, Sierra. And all of you for joining us on the call today. As you heard today, following our record fiscal 2024 results, which were I just mentioned again, it more than double last year's then-record profitability. We've increased our fiscal 2025 guidance for EBITDA to $200 million at the midpoint of range, which is a $17 million increase over fiscal 2024 and we are confident in achieving more than a 15% profit margin in the longer term. I think Razvan used the term today on his call. We're not just a one-trick pony. We love the interest in EVs. It's terrific. We like the product, and we grew from a 6% mix in 2023 to 8% in 2024, and we're looking to grow to 12% or so in 2025. So, again, significant growth we've seen there, but hey, we make a lot of products. We still make propane. We make gasoline. We make diesel. And we make a good margin a very good margin, all three of those. So we have the most expansive range of powertrain offerings in the industry as you all know. So bottom line, I would say the Bluebird has never been stronger. And we've got great momentum. So we appreciate your interest and look forward to updating you again on our progress next week. And should you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact our head of investor relations Mark Benfield. Thanks again from all of us here at Bluebird. And have a great evening.

Operator

Operator

That will conclude today's conference call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect your line.