Good afternoon and welcome to Nuvve Holding Corp.’s First Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Eduardo Royes. Thank you. You may begin the call.

Thank you. On today’s call are Gregory Poilasne, Chief Executive Officer and David Robson, Chief Financial Officer of Nuvve. Earlier today, Nuvve issued a press release announcing its first quarter 2023 results. Following prepared remarks, we will open the call up for questions. Before we begin, I would 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 and in the earnings release issued today, which are available on our website. Nuvve undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements to reflect future events or circumstances. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Gregory Poilasne, Chief Executive Officer of Nuvve. Gregory?

Thanks, Eduardo and good day to all listening in. We thank you for attending our first quarter 2023 results call. We are extremely encouraged by the improvement in the fundamentals of our business in Q1. 2023 is so far bearing the green shoots we have always felt were inevitable. It has just been a question of when, not if. This was evidenced by both record orders and deliveries for our DC chargers during the period. At the same time, we progressed on additional lumpy orders which is helping sustain momentum in order flow and sales of our DC chargers in the near-term and evolve our plans to boost megawatts under management and reach service revenue streams more quickly via avenues that are not dependent on large scale hardware rollouts. To briefly summarize our key accomplishments in the quarter, while we do not get into specifics on orders and deliveries, we will note the following. On the order front, we saw a fourfold increase in orders for DC chargers versus the fourth quarter 2022 and orders increased by more than 3.5x on a year-over-year basis. In terms of deliveries, we more than doubled our fourth quarter DC charger shipments sequentially and more than tripled shipments related to Q1 2022. One big driver of the increase in both orders and shipments in the first quarter was the previously discussed record size order of 24 units from the Los Angeles Unified School district. Only a small portion of orders between now and Q1 were affiliated with rebates to customers that we directly supported in the 2022 integral funding round of the 5-year EPA Clean School Bus program. We are also thrilled to report that our strategic initiative aimed at quickly growing and scaling up our megawatts under management by integrating into established third-party…

Thanks, Gregory. I will start with a recap of first quarter 2023 results. In the first quarter, we generated total revenues of $1.9 million compared to $2.4 million in the first quarter of 2022. Recall the last year’s Q1 results were impacted by unique strategic decision to directly sell 5 electric school buses that has not been repeated since. On a more apples-to-apples basis that excludes the bus sales, our product and service revenues increased by approximately 240% year-over-year given the record high number of charger shipments that Gregory alluded to. Margins on product and service revenues were 18% for the first quarter 2023 compared to 5% for the first quarter 2022. Margins in the year ago period were depressed due to the just mentioned bus sale. As a reminder, margins can be lumpy from quarter-to-quarter depending on mix. DC charger gross margins at standard pricing generally range from 15% to 25%, while AC charger gross margins are approximately 50%, but in dollar terms are a small fraction of the revenue of a DC charger. Grid service revenue margins are generally 30%. Operating costs, excluding cost of sales, was $8.3 million for the first quarter of 2023 compared to $9.8 million in the first quarter of 2022. This decrease was primarily attributable to lower public company fees, payroll and consulting costs. Cash operating expense, excluding cost of sales, stock compensation and depreciation and amortization was $7.2 million in the first quarter of 2023, declining from $8.2 million in the first quarter of 2022. The reduction in costs evidences our previously discussed initiatives to optimize our cost structure. And we believe we can continue to run expenses at approximately $7 million or lower per quarter in the near-term. Other income was $0.2 million in the first quarter of 2023 versus income…

Thanks David. To wrap up, better record orders and deliveries for our DC chargers in Q1 and Q2 is poised to be another strong quarter given the larger award we have already won, others we are working on and the EPA fund in 2022 awards coming in. We are making good progress getting our Circle K partnership up and running and look forward to revenue generation later this year. And to momentarily showcase the benefits of this partnership to Circle K that customers and ultimately others we think stand to benefit from such agreements over the balance of the year. At the same time because you do work on other similar opportunities with ChargePoint operators that we hope to announce in the coming quarters. We thank you for your participation and look forward for speaking with you in August. With that said, I would like to now turn the call back to the operator to begin our Q&A. Operator.

[Operator Instructions] And the first question will be from Eric Stine from Craig-Hallum. Please go ahead.

Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking the questions.

Hey Eric.

Hi. So, yes, I have been jumping between calls this afternoon. So, I apologize if I ask anything that you discussed at the beginning of the call. But maybe I will start just taking a step back, it’s a question I think I have asked you over time, there is always a lot of noise about vehicle to grid. And I guess not all vehicle to grid is created equally. And I know it’s still early, but as the market develops, as the EPA programs starts rolling out and things move forward. Do you sense that customers are starting to get a better sense of new views capabilities, your V2G solution, versus others who may call it that, but we are just doesn’t have the same functionality.

I think in the segments, where we have a presence such as school bus, for example, here in the U.S., it is clear and we see that because more and more people are coming and reaching out to us initially have been mostly working with school districts, but we also see that all street operators coming in and wanting to work with us. So yes, I think there is a key understanding in that space that we have we are a key leader. Similarly, now we said at the CPO such as Circle K, the reason why they chose us is because they know that our platform is that must happen platform in order to aggregate those charging stations that they have, and to control them at a very fast pace, which is where there is the highest value in providing those grid services. So, the good news is the awareness is building up, right. This is why for example, SB 233, the bill here in the Senate, in California is going through and would mean that by 2027, each and every vehicle – electric vehicle sold in California, would have bidirectional capabilities. And that’s obviously very important for the growth of our business. And that shows that now it’s not just us, the fleet managers in the school bus business, but also at the political level, the understanding of how critical V2G is building privately.

Got it. It’s helpful and you brought up Circle K. I mean I know that in that industry, people watch what others are doing. I mean I guess I would love to hear kind of next steps for Circle K. But beyond that, just thinking about, do you think that this is something you can replicate and have others reached out upon seeing this announcement and just to at least start to think about going that same route, or how should we think about that?

So, first, where we are on Circle Okay, we know there is some integration work that needs to happen and rolling out something potential hardware in some cases on some of the sites in order to create the communication link between our platform and the infrastructure that is already deployed today. And so, we are right in the middle of this and so on plan, for – with our expectations in terms of disintegration and targeting 50 sites to integrate with them. Now, how is it replicable, I think first of all, Circle K is headquartered in Norway and so they are very exposed to the EV rollout, that’s why they understood it so well. But also for us, it’s an essential demonstration because once you demonstrate the value that we can bring to such an infrastructure rollout, then it will become a no brainer for the others to come and work with us and so yes, it’s definitely a repeatable with other players in the space. Now, you have a different type of infrastructure, right. This is fast charger in gas stations, you might have also some charging infrastructures for example, for transit bus depots where V2G might not be the most suitable, but the V1G can be very valuable in charging those vehicles at the lowest cost and potentially reducing the total cost of ownership of the infrastructure that goes with them. So, if the question of use case on the type of CPO implementation, we are very confident that this is going to be rolled out across a variety of CPOs over time.

Eduardo, do you think that the demonstration project with Circle K needs to be run for a bit before you really see interest coming your way, or is it something you have already seen some inquiries just based on the announcement to start?

We have not announced any of those things. So, it’s – I can’t disclose things, but on the overall, I think from my perspective as this, what I really am looking forward is, and we got to see that there actually is the value we can bring to such an infrastructure and putting a number on that is going to the very final outcome of this rollout.

Okay. Thanks a lot.

You bet.

[Operator Instructions] The next question is from Brian Dobson from Chardan. Please go ahead.

Hey, it’s Greg Pendy on for Brian Dobson. Thanks for taking my questions. Can you just share with us any color on what you are seeing in the school bus market in terms of pricing? I think in 2022, prices were pretty elevated, given a lot of the supply chain issues that were going on, and also buses. We were never even at places like Blue Bird spending any time on the lot. They were just leaving right away. So, are prices normalizing at all in EV school buses?

I don’t know, normalizing. I don’t know if this is the term I would use yet. I think that things are still pretty tight. And but I think that the trend is going to be to go back where you would think they would go, which is price going down over time. I think what we see also is battery sizes are increasing in those school buses. Initially, we had a lot of them that run it in the order of 120 kilowatt hours to 150 kilowatt hours now 200 kilowatt hours or 300 kilowatt hours is becoming more of a norm. So, maybe prices be rising, but the capabilities of those vehicles are increasing at the same time.

That’s helpful. And then can you share any color on what you are seeing, I guess with your Wallbox relationship with the Quasar, anything on that on the residential front?

Not any thing that we can share at this point.

Okay, understand.

Thank you.

Thank you. And ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Gregory Poilasne for any closing remarks.

Thank you very much everybody. And we are looking forward to seeing you in 90 days for some very, hopefully very exciting news at a time. So, thank you very much. Bye-bye.

Thank you, sir. The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.