We recently wrote about how much we think Walmart is paying for each vehicle and in a similar vein we're going to try and come up with some reasonable assumptions on how much the rest of the order book works out to.
First, lets look at the graphic above clipped from Canoo's last ER(Q3 FY22) presentation, note that the numbers given aren't exact and will be either rounded up or down.
The total order book is in excess of $2 billion representing 60,000 units. Of those, 18,000 are "stage 3" orders with actual signed binding contracts, worth $750 million. See the table graph below with our assumptions on how that $750M price tag is broken out.
Client | Units Ordered | Total Order Price | Avg Unit Price |
US Army | 1 | $67,500 | $67,500 |
NASA | 3 | $147,855 | $49,285 |
Autonomy | 100 | $3,800,000 | $38,000 |
Oklahoma State | 1000 | $50,000,000 | $50,000 |
Zeeba | 3000 | $120,000,000 | $40,000 |
Walmart | 4500 | $300,000,000 | $66,600 |
Kingbee | 9300 | $279,000,000 | $30,000 |
Totals: | 17,904 | $753,015,355 | |
Please note again that the pricing has some assumptions, as outlined below.
Autonomy's order may, or may not, belong on this list. Their logo wasn't included in Canoo's slide deck along with the other organizations with contractual agreements, and we find the price suspiciously low for only 100 units in comparison the others. However, the number and pricing was revealed in a large press release concerning their staggering total order of 22,790 vehicles priced at $1.2B from 17 different automakers and if you visit their website they do have a landing page for Canoo. When we reached out to Autonomy's CEO Scott Painter, he said the order included "lifestyle vans in adventure and premium trims" - Seeing as how the official price of the base level LV has come out at $40k, it's not likely they have an order that includes the higher trims as well for less that the starting price of the base trim. We could be wrong, but we anticipate that either the 100 units or the $3.8M number will change in the future.
The US Army order award is public information, which discloses the price.
NASA's CTV order award amount is also public information
Oklahoma State's order for 1000 vehicles is public information, the state even waived the standard practice of competitive bidding when signing the contract with Canoo. However, that contract lists how many vehicles will be ordered, not a total price. We get the $50M price tag from Tony himself from the Q3 FY 21 ER transcript.
The Walmart order is up for interpretation as well, but as we discussed previously, we believe its $300M for 4500 units, including upfitting and fleet software. The additional 5500 units they're able to increase the order size to would probably come in at $40-50k each.
For the Zeeba and Kingbee orders we backed into these numbers using the remainder of the $753M unspoken for, which was $399M. Kingbee is very high volume but likely to just be barebones LDVs, as they can provide their own upfitting. Zeeba's order might also include other trim models so we put them a bit higher.
You could probably play with the numbers to make all sort of assumptions fit, so we could very well be wrong but either way what is known for sure is their contractual agreements are worth roughly $750M which comes out to an average price of around $42,000k each.
If this average is applied to the rest of the non-biding orders from Zeeba, Kingbee and Walmart, then just these three customers by themselves represent a total of nearly $1.5B in potential revenue within 5 years. Again, that is just THREE customers without knowing how much, or if any, of that includes non-vehicle revenue such as upfitting or software. We also believe Walmart will not be satisfied with just 10,000 units; recall Amazon ordered 100,000 EDVs from Rivian.
Canoo's current and most pressing issue is funding, they need quite a bit of money to build up the facilities to begin fulfilling these orders. We see a path forward for Canoo to meet this demand without having to continue to dilute current shareholders as extremely as has happened this year already. In this proxy filing we note the following statement:
"The ability of the Company to continue as a going concern is dependent upon the Company’s ability to access additional sources of capital, including, but not limited to equity and/or debt financings and government loans or grants."
It is not without great risk, as relying on the government to come through on anything in a timely manner isn't what one wants to be reliant on. Tony Aquila is not without friends with deep pockets and probably still has the ability to continue to raise private funds, but each time they finance operations via equity Tony dilutes himself the most. We can't say Canoo won't continue to heavily dilute, but we can say we believe the board will exhaust every option available ahead of doing that.
For a more longer term view, consider what happens when Walmart, Kingbee or Zeeba will do when they want to upgrade or purchase new fleet vehicles. They can go ahead and purchase an entire new vehicle from Canoo or anyone else, or they can save money by just swapping out the tophat and reusing the MPP Skateboard. Or perhaps they decide the sell the vehicles outright to wholesalers who then sell them to the public. Once these vehicles are in the publics hands, they can then introduce entire new families into the Canoo ecosystem who can purchase new tophats as well when the need arises. The lifetime vehicle revenue per unit relative to initial price should be close to industry leading once the ecosystem is up and running.
Authors disclosures: I am long Canoo - I own common shares, warrants and call options.