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REE Automotive Ltd. (REE)

Q4 2024 Earnings Call· Thu, May 15, 2025

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the REE Automotive’s Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2024 Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation there will be the question-and-answer session. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I will now hand the call over to the company. Please go ahead.

Dana Rubinstein

Management

Good morning and thank you for joining us on today’s conference call to discuss REE Automotive’s fourth quarter and full year 2024 results. During the course of this call, management will make, express and imply forward-looking statements within the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and other U.S. Federal Securities Laws. These forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to those statements regarding the company’s financial condition, including the impact that it will have on REE’s future business and plan, its ability to implement its current business including as impacted by the growing concern, it’s plan to address its growing concern including through a significant reduction in operational expenses which includes a reduction in force, it’s need to obtain significant additional financing, the growing demand for REE’s products and technology from OEMs and technology companies as reflected in expanding customer reservations and deepening engagement with OEMs, the ability to generate revenue from REE AI cloud, the implementation of the next phase of our mission, REE’s ability to generate software based revenues both in the near-term and long-term, REE's software based business being less capital intensive, REE's ability to license its technology and its broader transition toward a subscription based revenue model, it’s plans regarding production of its P7 lineup, REE's ability to integrate our software alongside existing products from OEMs and technology companies, delivery of initial trucks to its North American customers and the timing thereof, its ability to improve its operational efficiencies, impact of U.S. tariffs and trade policies on its business in 2025, addressing our supply chain and reassessment of production including to tariff uncertainties and our Q1 2025 expected cash. Such forward-looking statements and their implications involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results or performance to differ materially from those projected. The forward-looking statements during the course of this call are subject to other risks and uncertainties, including those discussed in the Risk Factors section and elsewhere in REE's Annual Report on Form-20F for the year ended December 31, 2024, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and elsewhere in subsequent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Today's call is hosted by Daniel Barel, REE’s Co-Founder and CEO; and Hai Aviv, REE’s Chief Financial Officer. I will now turn the call over to Daniel Barel.

Daniel Barel

Management

Welcome everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We are pleased with our performance in 2024. We began this journey over a decade ago and I'm encouraged by the progress we made this year. The milestones achieved have laid a solid foundation for REE as a differentiated technology company in the automotive industry. I'd like to take some time to recap our 2024 and provide you with some recent updates. We saw demand increase significantly for our technology and we reached several critical technology milestones reinforcing our position as a leader in the SDV space. Notably, we received the first Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard Certification for a full-by-wire vehicle in the U.S. Also, Airbus in collaboration with us, successfully completed the first autonomous drive on an active runway using our SDV technology. We launched REEai Cloud in collaboration with Geotab, introducing vehicle services and advanced data analytics that provide predictive maintenance and optimize operations, opening up a path for what we see as a new software revenue opportunity. 2024 was a breakthrough year for RER. Our achievements point to one thing, our vision for REE is coming to life. Our technology has been tested on the road under real-world condition and within a commercial framework. This is a critical time in the industry as we see it converge of electric, autonomous and connected vehicles, all of which we see as an opportunity to tap into through our scalable software-driven platform. With that said, while we entered 2025 with this positive momentum, we have recently experienced unprecedented and unpredictable challenges. The current U.S. Tariffs and trade policy has significantly impacted our supply chain, similar to many in the global automotive industry. More specifically, over 2024 and beginning of 2025 we have tirelessly worked and deployed our raised capital towards…

Hai Aviv

Management

Thank you, Daniel and hello everyone. In 2024, we strengthened our financial position. Our liquidity improved to $72 million inclusive of $18 million credit facility at the end of the year, reflecting the impact of two successful registered securities offerings. These offerings raised approximately $60 million in gross proceeds, including $45 million from M&G and Motherson Group in September 2024 and an additional $50 million earlier in 2024 from M&G. In the first quarter of 2025 we raised an additional $36.5 million in gross proceeds through two more registered offerings, each led by M&G and Motherson Group. During the last 12 months we have spent approximately $75 million on production readiness and R&D completion. Looking ahead, we will continue to prioritize enhancing our capital position with plans to expand financing options that will enable us to accelerate our technology driven strategy. Now turning to the P&L, for the full year our GAAP net loss was $111.8 million, a slight improvement from $114.2 million net loss in 2023. This was primarily driven by lower engineering and R&D expenses as we completed substantial portion of the P7 program R&D phase along with operational efficiencies that helped to reduce overall operating costs. However, we were impacted by non-cash losses related to the remeasurement of warrants and derivative liabilities. On a non-GAAP basis, our net loss improved to $70.3 million from $98.3 million in 2023. This improvement was driven by reduction in engineering and R&D expenses and operating efficiencies as mentioned earlier. In Q4 2024 our GAAP net loss was $37.3 million compared to $38.5 million in Q3 2024 and $35.2 million in Q4 2023. The quarter-over-quarter improvement was primarily driven by lower non-cash losses related to remeasurement of warrants and derivative liabilities, partially offset by higher cost of revenues associated with the production…

Daniel Barel

Management

As you've heard today, we made meaningful progress in 2024 technologically, commercially and financially. REE is and has always been a technology company. Our mission from day one has been to create a scalable, technology-driven mobility platform built on both software and hardware. We were never focused on becoming a traditional OEM. Today, we are accelerating the next phase of that mission, enabling the future of mobility by partnering with OEMs, technology companies and others to bring vehicles built on our proprietary SDV technology to market faster, with better performance and with more efficient manufacturing. The critical question for REE in recent years, has been identifying the most effective business model to bring our technology to the customer who need it most. We are seeing the answer through a path of developing our technology through less capital intensive means, including licensing and partnership models. We embarked on a journey towards mass production in order to demonstrate our technology and its capabilities, and while this remains important, it is not the only path forward. Given the hindered uncertainty and risk in today's production environment, we've made a strategic decision to focus on our software technology. This decision is rooted in a commitment to being good stewards of capital. Preserving cash today allows us to preserve flexibility for tomorrow, ensuring we can adopt as market conditions evolve. Importantly, we are not resting on our laurels. Our technology can be deployed through less capital intensive means, including licensing and partnership models. We are actively advancing several commercial opportunities along these lines and we remain confident in our ability to pursue potential long-term profitable growth even in the face of broader industry and trade headwinds. Our future lies in providing the software and intelligence that will drive tomorrow's vehicles. We envision that through recurring…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] We will now take the first question from the line of Poe Fratt from A.G.P./Alliance Global Partners. Please go ahead.

Poe Fratt

Analyst

Yes, good afternoon, Daniel. Good afternoon, hi. The first question I had was, can you talk about the conversion of the MoU to a definitive agreement and do these changes potentially push out the timing of that finalization or have any impact on the MoU as you see it right now?

Daniel Barel

Management

Hey, good morning, sorry. Thanks for the question. Regarding the MoU, currently we don’t see any change in the time line that we have indicated. We have already started to receive payments from that MoU on services that we’ve been delivering and currently we believe that we are on track to what we previously announced in terms of timeline.

Poe Fratt

Analyst

Great. And Hai, could you repeat the first quarter cash balance and, ignore the credit facility. What is the actual cash that you had on the balance sheet at the end of the quarter?

Daniel Barel

Management

The first quarter, that is.

Hai Aviv

Management

Yes. Thanks Paul, for the question. So, it’s $61 million excluding the credit facility for the end of the first quarter.

Poe Fratt

Analyst

And just if I may, if I could ask about, I know you want to, you don’t have, you’re going to release details on the restructuring and your plan going forward. None of these potential changes impacted your run rate in the first quarter, am I correct? And secondly, can you talk about your cash burn, if you will, the starting point from which you’re going to start to cut costs? Is it roughly $18 million to $20 million of cash burn in the first quarter that you’re going to look to narrow? Can you talk about headcount at the end of the quarter and maybe give us a little flavor on. You talked about restructuring the leadership team. Can you talk about how that might shape or how that might change the leadership structure?

Daniel Barel

Management

Sure. So as we said, we are taking immediate actions to reduce our cash burn, including cost of our production, discussions with our suppliers and of course, significant reduction in our operating costs. We previously communicated that the anticipated operating expenses will be between $6 million to $6 million a month. We ended, as we said the quarter with $61 million. And going forward we plan to reduce the operating expenses over time and to reach an operating expense of between $3 million to $4 million by the end of the year.

Poe Fratt

Analyst

Great, thanks. Thank you so much. That’s helpful.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] We will now take the next question from the line of Poe Fratt from A.G.P./Alliance Global Partners. Your line is open.

Poe Fratt

Analyst

Yes, sorry. Daniel, can you talk about your, the reservations and whether these changes potentially, change the reservation book? They’re non-binding reservations to begin with, but have you seen any cancellations or do you anticipate any cancellations? And then can you just talk about the path to first, to first revenue or the ramp in revenue? Can you just sort of highlight how much that might have shifted out into the future?

Daniel Barel

Management

Sure. Regarding the reservation, of course we’re working with our customers to assess the current production situation and it’s basically affecting everybody here in the industry. And we believe it’s important to remain in open dialogue, in active dialogue and work collaboratively to finding solutions for that. The good news is our customers are telling us that their interest in our product has increased given our SDV, our software defined vehicle. And not just because it’s an EV with great of course characteristics and offering. But the strongest sell point that we hear from our customers is the software defined vehicle technology that we have now. We believe that the $1 billion, close to $1 billion in reservation, which of course includes binding orders and capacity reservations such as the previously mentioned MoU and others, prove that there is a strong demand for our technology. And due to the fact that we’re temporary depositing production, it’s a little bit too early to say when we’re going to be resuming production and therefore to assess when we’re going to be ramping up deliveries and generating revenue from deliveries. With that being said, we’ve always said that we are a tech company and technology, it’s in our core and, we’re very excited by the fact that, we currently believe that the, our technology is mature and we have demand for that it, the software defined technology, the software itself. And that actually allows us to move our focus in the interim as we evaluate the macroeconomic conditions and tariffs. We will be focusing more and more on our software business. And it’s worth mentioning also regarding the MoU that there is a good portion there that is also related to that and we believe that we would be having great products to the market around our software in the meantime where our goal is to generate revenue from software and software related business in the interim as we continue to assess.

Poe Fratt

Analyst

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. I will now like to turn the conference back to Daniel Barel for closing remarks.

Daniel Barel

Management

Thank you. And thank you everybody for taking the time today. I think we’re seeing, as we said, some challenging times in the industry and I’m very proud of team REE and their accomplishment not only in 2024, but the way they have are handling the current situations in 2025. I see an amazing team of people that give me a lot of confidence that they’re able to, manage the current situation well and to generate strong and significant value for our shareholders. And with that, I want to thank everybody again for the time today. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.