Back on August 6th I posted a blog on this Canadian company which now makes electric snowmobiles and electric watercrafts. It is based in Montreal.The watercraft part of the equastion is a more recent phenomenon. Sales for the second quarter of 2023 where $4.1 million and losses where $15.9 million dollars compared to sales of $400,000 in the second quarter of 2022 and losses of $11.1 million in the second quarter of 2022. These are not good numbers. The company is burning through money at a phenonenal pace and it's stock price is tanking. Export Development Canada recently lent them $15 million after also recently raising $46.9 million dollars from private investors at 10% due in December 2028. I am sorry for throwing so much at you so quickly. Let's back up for a minute. The electric snowmobile thing. Does the concept make sense? Their machines (yes they have several models) only have a range of 100 km. True adventurest need more range than that and a network of dealers who understand the intricacies of these new design styles. If you break a front ski who do you call to get a new one and who can install it for you? For this reason alone I would not want to own one. There is just to much uncertainity. The watercraft part of the equation sounds to be potentialy more profitable. Distributors in California, Texas and Florida have come on board as well as the United Arab Emirates has shown an interest. 31 dealers have signed up and the company recently reached the milestone of producing 1,000 vehicles. There is a 11/13/23 conference call you can listen to. Go to their website and log and listen to get a better flavour of their story. The log in is easy and will take you less than 60 seconds. It will help in making this story come to life. You will learn for example that if you own a fleet of these vehicles, like some ski resorts do, they can be more economical to run than gas powered units. You will also learn that the company now has 32 million dollars of inventory, up from 20.8 million oin inventory on Dec. 31st 2022. That plus they are in the process of ramping up there production to 50 vehicles a week. You will also learn that the sales and marketing part of the equation is becoming yet another important and costly piece of the puzzle. So many startup companies like this one seem to fumble in getting the ball rolling. Once again, listen to their earning report. Now here is how there stock is trading. Shown here is a three year chart. It's ugly.
So the question now is can this company survive? Debt at 10% and a need to go big or be bankrupt. "Canaccord" was behind this venture way back at the beginning and the volume of share trading has now dried up to next to nothing. I wonder what the short position on this stock is? The buzz is off this stock and only two analyst bothered to show up for the conference call, one to ask how much money of the Export Canada Development loan is left and one asking about how much upside is there to next years production numbers. These were both good questions. Both callers where respectful. Why did not more analyst show up? Now here is a chart of Bombardier. Can you see it dropping in price on it's last quarterly earnings release only then to rebound on recent news of possible interest rate relief.
One other consideration is that players like Bombardier and Polaris will soon most likely to be entering this space. Yes Tiaga will be able to release soaring sales numbers in 2024. That however may not be enough to keep this company going. What do you think?
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