Ideanomics, Inc. (IDEX) Q1 2021 Earnings Call Transcript

Ideanomics, Inc. (NASDAQ: IDEX) Q1 2021 earnings call dated May. 17, 2021

Corporate Participants:

Tony Sklar — Senior Vice President, Investor Relations

Alf Poor — Chief Executive Officer

Kristen Helsel — Chief Revenue Officer

Conor McCarthy — Chief Financial Officer

Analysts:

Craig Irwin — ROTH Capital Partners LLC — Analyst

Nelson Siu — Mackie Research Capital — Analyst

Sean McDonald — Acorn Management Partners — Analyst

Presentation:

Operator

Greetings and welcome to the Ideanomics First Quarter 2021 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host Tony Sklar, Vice President of Communications and Head of Investor Relations.

Tony Sklar — Senior Vice President, Investor Relations

Thank you very much, operator and welcome everybody to the Ideanomics Q1 2021 earnings conference call. Joining me today, I am pleased to have Mr. Alfred Poor, our Chief Executive Officer; Ms. Kristen Helsel, our Chief Revenue Officer and Mr. Conor McCarthy, our Chief Financial Officer. A webcast of today’s call will be archived and available in the events and presentation sections of our corporate website for a minimum of 30 days. As a reminder this conference is being recorded. During the call, forward-looking statements will be made regarding our revenue expectations or forecasts for the quarters and full fiscal year 2021 and 2022 related to our business.

These statements are based on current expectations and information available as of today and are subject to a variety of risks uncertainties and assumptions. Actual results may differ materially and as a result of various risk factors that have been described in our periodic filings with the SEC. As a result we caution you against placing undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. We assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statement as a result of new information or future events except as required by law. Other risks are more fully described in the Ideanomics public filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission which can be reviewed at www.sec.gov.

Today May 17, 2021 the company has filed its 10-Q with the SEC and afterwards issued a press release announcing its financial results. So participants in this call who may not have already done so may wish to look at those documents as we provide a summary of the results on the call. The format for today’s call will be as follows. Our CEO, Mr. Alf Poor, will provide an overview of business strategy and the developments for Q1 and Q2 2021 so far; our Chief Revenue Officer, Kristen Helsel, will introduce herself and discuss the activities and focus going forward; and of course, our CFO, Mr. Conor McCarthy, will discuss our financial results for Q1 2021.

I now hand the floor over to our CEO, Mr. Alfred Poor.

Alf Poor — Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Tony, and thank you to everyone joining our call today. Financial results in Q1 2021 exceeded our expectations. And we are looking forward to the second quarter results. Ideanomics is transforming dramatically quarter-over-quarter. And I am both pleased and proud to say that as of today, Ideanomics is the healthiest it has been in my almost three years with the company. An exciting blend of acquisitions and organic growth along with significant cash on the balance sheet has management confident that our revenues will continue to increase in our various business segments for the foreseeable future.

The company was fortunate to capitalize prior to a broad market pullback across our peer group, although we continue to see value in the sector regardless of market sentiment. Despite everything from COVID-19 and component shortages through the scarcity of containers and shipping delays, the EV industry is continuing to benefit from being the only viable, sustainable future for the automotive industry. We have taken measures to ensure such disruptions are minimalized where possible through hiring dedicated resources on the ground wherever such bottlenecks exist.

I’m pleased to say that Ideanomics has been successful in attracting outstanding talent to the company. I’m already seeing the positive impact of these new hires. The quarter began with the acquisitions of Timios and WAVE. It seems like both have been with us for much longer than around four months. But such is the pace of change at Ideanomics today. Timios has had a record quarter for earnings in Q1 2021, as Conor will discuss. We have begun assimilating WAVE into our Mobility segment and helping them service their order backlog as well as introducing their product to foreign markets. I am pleased to inform you that the interest in WAVE for non-U.S. markets is there.

Both Timios and WAVE have also added talent to their ranks since their acquisitions. The WAVE team has assisted us in discussions with our OEM partners to ensure our client DC buses and trucks will support WAVE’s inductive charging when they come to market. Currently, as you will have seen on the recent 2020 earnings call, the buses are ready for marketing and homologation purposes. And the trucks are having some changes to cab size, etc, made based upon market feedback. We’ve hired homologation and certification expertise to help increase our efficiency in these types of areas going forward.

China operations were reorganized in Q1, resulting in a decline in revenues. However, the revenues — however, the changes were needed and we expect to see revenues bounce back in Q2. The WAVE product line is being introduced in China because the company — the country — so let me start that again. The WAVE product line is being introduced in China because the country does not have high powered inductive charging and there is great interest in areas including seaports, airports, and the heavy truck and bus markets. As announced at the end of March, the Treeletrik team landed the first of what we anticipate will be several significant orders this year in Indonesia, which will see Treeletrik setup assembly facilities on the ground in Indonesia to help expedite time to market on those orders.

The first vehicles under those orders will be exported from Malaysia as finished products. And we anticipate delivering some initial orders beginning in Q3, with the Indonesia-based assembly facilities on line in Q4 or early 2022. Elsewhere, the Treeletrik team is finalizing its new headquarters and showroom in Kuala Lumpur with an August time line for moving in. Final pieces are being put in place to expand into Thailand where we are finalizing plans to introduce a battery rental and swapping program, which is designed to promote sales of Treeletrik’s EV two-wheelers while at the same time providing immediate cost of ownership benefits to local businesses compared to gasoline-powered motorbikes and mopeds.

Several minority investments were completed in Q1, which we hope will become market leaders in their fields. For example, TM2 launched a rare earth metals exchange where there previously was no market. Trading in some metals began this month and initial revenues have been achieved. Congratulations to Peter and the team there. As you know, rare earth metals are playing an increasingly important role in the clean tech space. We took a 20% stake in Italian public company, Energica. Motor Company, which makes all electric performance motorbikes for both road use and racing.

I’m pleased to say that the value of our investment has increased some 50% since we closed the transaction. But for me educate is more than an investment, and I’m excited for the synergies being developed between our companies. We made an investment in Silk EV in the first quarter, which has since unveiled the S9 hypercar with Hongqi at the Shanghai Auto Show, where it received a tremendous reception. The Silk team is a fusion of U.S., Italian and Chinese automotive design and engineering. And they’re bringing together what we believe will be a hotly anticipated entrant into the hypercar market in 2023.

The Silk investment brings with it leading edge in introducing new charging battery technologies and production vehicles. Our investment in Silk provides us with an inside look at what can be applied in our other electric vehicle segments. Two weeks ago, we made a minority investment in FNL Technologies, which markets to Hoo.be in social media platform. As part of that deal, we divested ownership in grapevine as we believe this represents a broader opportunity to unlock the value of those combined investments this is great by continuing to operate within Ideanomics.

In a press release last week, we were delighted to announce a definitive agreement to acquire U.S. Hybrid, an American manufacturer and supplier of fuel cells, drivetrains, and other technology components essential to the development of zero-emission vehicles. As mentioned in the press release, U.S. Hybrid will unlock our Made in America capabilities and we anticipate integrating the EV and hydrogen fuel cells into MDT vehicles. In addition to helping them scale their existing customer base of OEMs, transit authorities and specialist customers in sectors such as aerospace and defense. Dr. Abas and his team have a portfolio of technologies, which can be leveraged internally and licensed out to the and licensed out to the broader market.

So we are very pleased that U.S. Hybrid selected Ideanomics as the partner to help them scale their business. This acquisition extends the strategic positioning of Ideanomics as a provider of innovative technologies, capabilities, and solutions which are already well established by those seeking to employ them in vehicles of all kinds. We are developing our charging-as-a-service model for launch in 2021 which we believe will unlock orders and revenues in North America and be the precursor to what we hope will become future vehicle-as-a-service and energy-as-a-service offerings in 2022 and beyond.

Vehicle-as-a-service would migrate fleet operators over to entirely opex space model and enable them to achieve the pay-for-mile model they have desired. While waste services backlog we are looking to add sale some existing customers in addition to new orders to increase revenues in 2021. Although their revenues tend to be lumpy Q2 is looking stronger than Q1. We are hoping to get the charging as a service offering in place for WAVE customers this year to help smooth out lumpiness in quarter-over-quarter revenues by replacing upfront payments with recurring predictable monthly revenues. Timios also continues to deliver strong revenues in Q2 along with improved — along with an improved quarter in our China WAVE operations and potentially the inclusion of U.S. Hybrid revenues from the point the deal officially closes.

As I mentioned earlier Treeletrik more meaningful revenues will start in Q3. We do not anticipate Medici to contribute to revenues until next year but we do hope to get order interest in 2021 in areas where we have specialized knowledge such as seaports, airports, etc and our intention is to cross-pollinate those orders with both WAVE and U.S. Hybrid products. What we have put together for investors is what we believe is a compelling offering of products and services which will produce revenues in the short, medium and long-term.

The presentation deck which accompanies today’s earnings call will be filed as an 8-K with the SEC to enable investors a fuller context of our organization and the opportunities being pursued. In particular, I would refer you all to slide 15 which dictates details of our Ideanomics and mobility ecosystem. You’ll see from this chart how our shared services platform acts as a force multiplier across the Ideanomics and mobility businesses and how each is designed to provide value for others in the ecosystem such that, we maximize sales revenues achievable from each customer.

This is where we differ from most other companies in the EV sector. So we’re active and perhaps only a single for two areas of activity or are constrained regionally. And may face a significant period ahead until they achieve profitability. We believe we have put together a prudent and flexible approach, which enables us to be nimble and maximize the shareholder interests until the EV industry approaches maturity. I would like to mention that we along with our peers and partners in the industry, look forward to receiving the details and clarity from the Biden administration regarding their infrastructure investment plans.

Currently, we see a situation whereby potential buying is held back pending more details. Our fleet operators and others need to understand what support the government is providing in the transition to zero emission vehicles before they have the conviction to pursue their transition planning. We encourage the administration to understand the need to bring the details to market, so we don’t mean this a voice in which confident planning is not achievable. Finally, I’d like to thank shareholders for their patience and support.

The EV sector is on a trajectory which is gaining momentum, but it is one which is not sinking to short-term trading aspirations. Companies such as Ideanomics anticipate shareholder value to grow most significantly in the medium to long term. Although, we do consider ourselves one of the few value stocks in the sector due to our ability to derive revenues in the short term. Thank you all for tuning in today. I’ll hand you over to our new CRO, Kristen Helsel to introduce herself in her areas of responsibility in Ideanomics.

Kristen will start a feature on our earnings calls going forward.

Kristen Helsel — Chief Revenue Officer

Hey Alf. As a very brief introduction, I recently joined Ideanomics as the Chief Revenue Officer. I have both technical — and I have both a technical and business background and have scaled a number of companies in easy and clean tech space over the past 12 years. I am incredibly excited to join this team at a time when we are building and aligning our operating entities to lead worldwide in electrification and clean technology delivering both real and disruptive change as well as meaningful revenue. I spent much of the last several weeks learning about our current Ideanomics ecosystem and focusing on how to build our business units in a synergistic way while simultaneously scaling revenue.

In each case, the opportunities and challenges are unique. I have visited with each of our businesses in the United States and I’m working directly with our colleagues overseas until such time as international travel is appropriate for me to visit our businesses and operations in Europe and Asia. At Teneo, we have a strong and well-developed organization that had its best quarter in Q1 2021. And I am pleased to say that we are developing new opportunities to support growth and expand revenue stream beyond their positional business lines. My visit to WAVE reinforced my strong belief that the electrified future will be driven by inductive charging.

The current WAVE product is a beautiful piece of engineering and has been working in some cases for several years in challenging conditions and therefore demonstrated that we have a reliable and robust product ready for adoption at scale. Our WAVE installation in the Antelope Valley — at the Antelope Valley Transit Authority in Northern Los Angeles County is the largest high-power inductive charging system deployed in the United States. As significantly, the acquisition of WAVE means that, for the first time in Ideanomics history, our company has delivered consequential charging infrastructure revenue. It is an exciting time to be in the EV business and we have big plans for our WAVE business along with our other operating companies. I was also able to spend time with the Solectrac team at their new facility in Santa Rosa.

While still an incredibly young company, they have made remarkable strides with their scalable approach to micro manufacturing as well as their thoughtful product lineup. I expect continued positive developments from Solectrac throughout 2021 as they expand, add staff, and grow to meet the strong customer interest in their products. One significant piece of our overall EV energy and clean tech offerings fell into place with the upcoming U.S. hybrid acquisition announced last week. Led by Dr. Abas Goodarzi, the team has nearly 30 years of solid engineering advancements in their catalog, many of which we plan to leverage.

As a synergistic addition to the Ideanomics global ecosystem of businesses, U.S. Hybrid will allow us to continue to lead the global EV transformation with a focus and dedicated innovation center, while simultaneously unlocking the commercialization potential of their remarkable product portfolio, allowing the company to deliver at scale. For the balance of 2021 and 2022, my focus will be to drive revenue in three ways. First, to grow each operating company within our Ideanomics ecosystem with priority on expanding customers, launching new products, delivering top line numbers and building backlog. Second, we went to align all of our sales business development, marketing and pricing activities within each business unit to achieve scale.

This effort will be supported by investments in both human and working capital. Third, we are identifying the synergistic opportunities available to us from our broad global footprint, so that we are able to penetrate new markets and develop unique solutions. This may include both growing and acquiring new capabilities to round out our offerings. In closing, I want to say, I am thrilled to be part of the Ideanomics team. We are laser focused on delivering in the short term, but the acquisition of U.S. Hybrid demonstrates that we have an eye on the future as well.

And the solutions that will be required in the markets we serve. This is true for both Ideanomics capital and our EV business unit Ideanomics Mobility. I am delighted by what we have delivered today in our amazing potential moving forward with the hopes that the world will open for travel sometime later this quarter or early in the third quarter, I will spend time visiting and learning on the ground with our international businesses and partners. I look forward to sharing our progress with you.

I will now hand this over to our CFO, Conor McCarthy to detail our financial performance for Q1 2021.

Conor McCarthy — Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Kristen. Good afternoon. In the first quarter, work done over the last 24 months in building the foundation for growth in Ideanomics’ mobility and capital divisions started to come to fruition. This quarter marked the fifth consecutive quarter of growth in both revenue and gross profit. The highlights for the quarter are revenue of $32.7 million and a gross profit of $10.8 million. The first revenues from WAVE Ideanomics’ inductive charging business and from Timios, our title and escrow service companies, both businesses were acquired in January 2021.

We closed the quarter with $356 million in cash, which provides a deep pool of capital for investments in our Ideanomics balance sheet and capital business units. Now, trying to discuss the financial performance in some more detail. Revenue for the quarter was $33.7 million, which represents the sixth consecutive quarter of growth, demonstrating the increasing strength of Ideanomics’ business. Timios, our title and escrow business, generated revenues of $27.6 million and WAVE revenues of $1.8 million, which were reported in the charging and batteries line in the revenue table. Both of these businesses were acquired in the first quarter of 2021.

And consequently, their financial results are only included from the date of acquisition. Revenue for electric vehicles was $3 million in the current quarter, up from just 55,000 in the first quarter of 2020. As Al discussed on last quarter’s earnings call, we’ve been reorganizing our operations in China. Revenues from EV in the first quarter were lower than the levels achieved in late 2020. However, we believe that the destructing in China will result in a return to growth in EV revenues in the coming quarters. Gross profit for the first quarter was $10.8 million which represents a gross margin of 33%.

Operating expense for the first quarter was $23.8 million as compared to $9.5 million in the prior quarter. The increase was due principally to the inclusion of the operating costs related to the Timios and WAVE acquisitions, and a charge of $5 million arising from the settlement of a class action lawsuit. Professional fees in the first quarter were $5.2 million as compared to $1.8 million for the prior period. The growth was related to an increase in legal fees, consulting services, and investor relations-related expense. The increase in legal fees was related to rights of general corporate matters responding to regulatory inquiries, advice mergers and acquisitions, and advice in relation to the class action lawsuits.

The loss from operations was over $13 million as compared to $9.4 million in the prior period. The loss from operations included a $5 million expense related to the settlement of a class action lawsuit. Interest expense for the period Interest expense for the period was $0.4 million and represents a saving of $2.7 million as compared to the prior-period expense of $3.2 million. The prior-period expense included charges related to the application of U.S. GAAP to the variable conversion price in the then outstanding debt, which was all repaid in 2020.

The currency outstanding convertible debt has a fixed conversion. We recorded a net loss of $0.7 million as compared to a net loss of $12.6 million in the prior period. This quarter includes a noncash tax benefit again of $12.9 million arising from the acquisition of Timios and WAVE. To conclude, the results for the first quarter demonstrate that the work over the last 24 months to build up the company’s sales to financing to charge, S2F2C business model is bearing fruit.

And the company is poised for rapid growth. Milestones achieved in the first quarter include cash of $356 million on the balance sheet and an attractive line of acquisition opportunities. We recorded our fifth consecutive quarter of revenue growth, recruited the additional team members in the U.S. and China that we need to capitalize on the opportunities in EV sector in general and integrate Ideanomics’ assets into a complete end-to-end offering for our EV customers. In summary, Ideanomics is very well positioned to take advantage of the great opportunities ahead of us.

That concludes my remarks. I’ll hand it back to Tony.

Tony Sklar — Senior Vice President, Investor Relations

Well, thank you very much, Conor. That concludes the prepared remarks by management. And I know this is the prepared remarks by management and I know this is everybody’s favorite time, our Q&A session. So, Victor, if you wouldn’t mind, operator, if you could give folks the instructions on how to raise their awesome hand.

Questions and Answers:

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Craig Irwin with ROTH Capital Partners. Please proceed with your question.

Craig Irwin — ROTH Capital Partners LLC — Analyst

Good evening and congratulations on the strong quarter. Impressive.

Alf Poor — Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Craig.

Craig Irwin — ROTH Capital Partners LLC — Analyst

First question I wanted to ask is for a little bit more color on U.S. Hybrid. This is a name we’ve known about for many years and Abas is a bit of a legend out there, I mean given that he literally wrote the textbook that all the engineering students today are using to learn about drivetrain electrification. What do you see as the potential revenue contribution over the course of 2021? Now, I know Dr. Abas is known for his technology innovation and for doing really unique projects for very demanding customers. But are there components in the existing book of business where you see rapidly repeatable products or is this more a technology acquisition that fertilizes the success across the rest of the company?

Alf Poor — Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Craig. That’s an excellent question. Kristen, would you like me to take this question? Do you want to take this question? I’m happy for either of us to do so.

Kristen Helsel — Chief Revenue Officer

Alf you can start and I can add any color if appropriate.

Alf Poor — Chief Executive Officer

Absolutely. So, thank you Craig. This is interesting. Yeah. Since you mentioned Dr. Abas and his team probably been at the forefront of clean energy and low emission and zero emission vehicles for the past 25 years. They’ve worked with pretty much everyone in the space from OEM through to the defense and the aerospace sector. So a lot of folks have relied on Abas and his team to produce everything from prototypes through to fully working units. Abas has served as something of an innovation center for the industry and that’s allowed him to reach healthy seven figures in revenues every year. We believe there’s an opportunity for him to start licensing his technologies to take him up into eight and nine figures of revenue in the future.

We haven’t closed the deal yet. It’s still subject to a few closed — traditional closing conditions that should close hopefully by the end of this month. So the chances to have an impact of pushing from seven figures to eight figures this year is probably too early to speak of but certainly we believe this business is poised for growth. He’s been looking actively in the market for a partner to help him scale the business. Now the EV industry and the potential for hydrogen fuel cells is very much on everybody’s radar. And we were fortunate enough to strike the right cord with him such as he chose us as his partner. So this is a business that does produce millions of dollars of revenue a year being an innovation hub for OEMs and others. We expect that to move up into the eight figures and nine figures over the next few years.

Craig Irwin — ROTH Capital Partners LLC — Analyst

Excellent. Well congratulations. It looks like a really amazing fit for the portfolio. The second thing I wanted to ask about is Timios and the title and escrow business. You reported $27.6 million in revenue in the quarter. But last year, I think this business — for the full year did $60 million. So some interesting alchemy going on there. Can you explain why this business is so very strong with this strength, maybe a little bit onetime in nature, given short-term changes in the market or is this something that can persist over the course of the year? And it seems that they contributed some pretty healthy margins. Are those profit levels something that also are likely to persist over the course of the year?

Alf Poor — Chief Executive Officer

So the Timios business obviously involved in the refinancing and purchasing. Mortgage market impacted. Companies like Timios are doing incredibly well. So we’re in a low interest rate environment. There was a period for a couple of weeks where it looked like interest rates may increase. As long as interest rates remain low, we can expect Timios to continue to perform well. We don’t know what will happen with inflation. I think everyone’s concerned with that. If we do see an uptick in inflation and we see a corresponding uptick in rates. Typically, those are the types of headwinds that impact businesses like Timios. But that said we’re looking to aggressively support their growth plans. They’ve opened up a real business which is going to be very interesting. So for us, we have a very vibrant business within our Ideanomics Capital Group and we’re looking forward to more strong revenues from them in the future.

Craig Irwin — ROTH Capital Partners LLC — Analyst

Thank you. My last question is about Tree Technologies and the Treeletrik motorcycles and mopeds. Can you maybe describe for us if there’s an update on the delivery schedule into Malaysia — or I should say into Indonesia? And have you sketched out the potential capital needed to build the new assembly plant in Indonesia for when much larger volumes are being shipped?

Alf Poor — Chief Executive Officer

Yes. I’ll address the first part of the question. Second part is a conversation that’s more in tune with Conor and he’s CFO which Treeletrik which is [Indecipherable]. We were quite wise to say that the deliveries wouldn’t start until early Q3. There was an opportunity, perhaps for the deliveries to begin before that. But obviously, as you know, Craig, the international supply chain in any part of automotive, which includes motorbikes and mopeds as well has been impacted. Things are moving a little slower. We don’t foresee any delays beyond that original July timeline we were starting to look at.

So we think in terms of the vehicles being delivered from Malaysia as finished product into Indonesia that will begin in Q3 as we previously said. In terms of the assembly facility, this is going to be light assembly. So the vehicles will be coming in. And this isn’t heavily — heavy assembly of subcomponents. This is putting on the wheels, putting on what they call the fairing, the plastic siding around, inserting the battery, putting the seats in, that type of thing. So the facility shouldn’t cost us more than a couple of million dollars U.S. to put in place. And we’re looking at some facilities now. I don’t know if you have any further comments, Conor.

Conor McCarthy — Chief Financial Officer

Your comments are right on the money Alf and this is light assembly. It’s [Technical Issues] there’s none of the capital intensive stuff like a page plans or anything like that. So, we are looking at this time, we think it could be in the range of $2.5 million to $3.5 million investments loan in an assembly line.

Craig Irwin — ROTH Capital Partners LLC — Analyst

Excellent. Well, this was a very busy quarter, I should say. Congratulations on getting so much done and all this progress. I’m going to hop back in the queue now. Thank you.

Alf Poor — Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Craig.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Nelson Siu with Mackie Research. Please proceed with your question.

Nelson Siu — Mackie Research Capital — Analyst

Hi, everyone. And congratulations again on your great quarter.

Alf Poor — Chief Executive Officer

Thank you.

Nelson Siu — Mackie Research Capital — Analyst

My question is the company has been doing quite a bit of strategic planning. Are you going to continue investing in human capital? And where will be the focus of that?

Alf Poor — Chief Executive Officer

Human capital, of course. I mean, as our revenues grow every business needs to grow the amount of people internally to service it. We’ve acquired some tremendous human capital and through the WAVE team as well as the U.S. Hybrid team recently. So in terms of innovation, I think we have a strong team there. We are filling out a number of open positions within Ideanomics, but more broadly, throughout the management and in general tiers of the company. We’ll continue hiring people. But I think we’re coming close to the 2021 kind of open candidate roles that we had. Our HR team has been very pleased with the ability to bring people in. And I think we’re pretty close to closing out the open roles over the year that we approved.

Nelson Siu — Mackie Research Capital — Analyst

Okay, great. Thanks for answering the question.

Alf Poor — Chief Executive Officer

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Sean McDonald with Acorn Management Partners. Please proceed with your question.

Sean McDonald — Acorn Management Partners — Analyst

Thank you very much. And again, Ideanomics, congratulations on a phenomenal quarter.

Alf Poor — Chief Executive Officer

Thank you.

Sean McDonald — Acorn Management Partners — Analyst

One thing that I would like to note actually I guess my question would be twofold. Regarding your newest asset U.S. Hybrid, granted that a lot of the revenues have been generated from some of your phenomenal acquisitions over the last year. I would assume that U.S. Hybrid fits well in the portfolio not only for generating revenues but for being integrated into your already existing components and portfolio. So I apologize if you had touched on this but maybe from a high level integrating these fuel cells into your own vehicles, could you explain a little bit of that process? And then once that transition is complete are you going to allow U.S. Hybrid to generate their own additional revenues from products and services on their own drive train components or will this be fully folded into Ideanomics?

Alf Poor — Chief Executive Officer

Thanks so much for your question, John. I did mention this in the preamble, U.S. Hybrid and WAVE are very strategic acquisitions for us because of our focus on the commercial vehicle sector. Both of them are — offer us the capability to cross-sell. So by that I mean, when we sell a truck or a bus we can sell WAVE’s inductive charging system with it. One of the things that the Biden administration has underscored is that there needs to be a Made in America component.

If we do the assembly here and we put in the type of technologies that we’ve acquired through the acquisition of U.S. Hybrid such as fuel cells, electric drive trains, a DC-DC converters, these are really, really important key components. And that’s what you want to be Made in America because that’s the technology. The wheels, the seats, the windows — people don’t care about these. These are all — if you think they’re all made in America, you have an incomplete understanding of the global automotive supply chain. They’re just not. So what’s really important for the Biden administration is, is the tech that they’re going to be helping to fund is that providing American jobs, is that American innovation? Ideanomics can put its hand up now and say, absolutely for us, it is.

So that’s why this was a really important stepping stone for us and was a follow-on acquisition that was very deliberate by us in terms of acquiring WAVE and acquiring U.S. Hybrid. We couldn’t get the deals done in either case as quickly as we’d wanted to. But there could have been a period where they came — the acquisitions were pretty close back to back. But acquisitions always take time as you know. What was the second part of your question, sorry, Sean.

Sean McDonald — Acorn Management Partners — Analyst

Sure. The second part of my question was as a U.S. Hybrid as a sole entity has again gotten a lot of attention. And their products and services are so much different than anything out there on the market. So when it comes to actually transitioning the fuel cells and the drivetrains and the core components into your own vehicles, will you allow U.S. Hybrid to also pursue additional products and services on their own or will this be a wholly-owned subsidiary exclusive to your vehicles?

Alf Poor — Chief Executive Officer

It will not be exclusive to our vehicles. The intention with U.S. Hybrid is to do two things. One, make those technologies available to the vehicles we sell so they can meet the Made in America requirements and also make sure that our vehicles are best-in-class even if we do end up exporting them to Latin America, Europe, etc. But the other really important thing is, [Indecipherable] we’ve seen, we’re looking for a partner to help them scale. The technologies they have can very easily be scaled for focusing by OEMs in this country and globally, as well as license that to OEMs as well. So we see really two threads here. One, keep the innovation pipe going, okay? But then, it bifurcates into how we use their technologies and how we can license and sell those technologies and products out to the broader automotive sector.

Kristen Helsel — Chief Revenue Officer

Alf, I think I can add some color here as well. What’s most important, Sean, is we want Dr. Goodarzi and his team — his innovation team to keep doing what they’re doing, to staying at the forefront of the EV sector, the fuel cell sector, and all of the things he’s done to advance this industry over the last 30 years. What we really think that the second part where Ideanomics can provide some additional support is being able to leverage that commercial opportunity. So, taking that huge catalog of products and things start to develop, and putting those to work not only in our products, but lots of products in this country and around the world.

Sean McDonald — Acorn Management Partners — Analyst

Right. Well, that makes sense. I appreciate it.

Operator

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I’d like to turn the floor back to Tony Sklar for any closing comments.

Tony Sklar — Senior Vice President, Investor Relations

Thank you very much, everybody. This is all the time that we have today and this will conclude the Ideanomics’ first quarter 2021 investors’ call. Our team is very excited for the rest of 2021. I think we have shown and demonstrated we have come to this particular Q with some very great numbers and excitement, and we will continue to allow our community to reach out to us. If you have any further questions individually, please don’t hesitate to send those questions to ir@ideanomics.com.

We’d like to thank our listeners and shareholders, analysts, and others who have taken the time to listen to this call. We urge you to refer to our latest SEC filings for any information that you need. This call will be available from our website in the Investor Relations section, you can find a link there. Don’t forget to be alerted to our news events and other information in a timely manner. We recommend you following us on all of our social media channels, sign up for our newsletter and explore our website at www.ideanomics.com.

I am very excited as well to thank our marketing team and their efforts on not only our new branding but the amount of content and creation that we are continuing to come to the market in social media and other partners that we have brought along the way. Thank you, everyone, for participating in today’s call. Thank you, operator.

Operator

[Operator Closing Remarks]