Update Covers All Meg-Related Announcements to Date
Ideanomics, has announced a detailed update to its Mobile Energy Global (“MEG”) activities, including the impact of the Coronavirus on its Q1 activities.
In general, Chinese companies returned to work at the start of March with most major commercial activities slowly getting back to normal. MEG’s partners have been impacted to varying degrees and recent conversations have shown there is a resolute effort being made to recover quickly from the effects of the outbreak. Currently, there are no details available for any government stimulus programs to help the Chinese economy recover from the shutdown, so we are unable to determine what participation opportunities, if any, may be available to Ideanomics and MEG.
A: Financing / Funding for Fleet Purchasing
In September 2018, Ideanomics announced its agreement with First Auto Loan, regarding lease financing and ABS products with a target of raising $6 Billion to fund the lease financing of ride-share vehicles and other types of app-requested taxis. This agreement is currently in progress and will benefit from the capital sourcing referenced below.
In November and December of 2019, Ideanomics and MEG announced the creation of multiple funds in association with Dasheng Licheng Lease Financing, with Ideanomics bringing in several high-profile insurance companies to provide large-scale funds to support EV lease financing programs. The final province-level registrations were underway when the outbreak occurred and are now back underway. The impact on bringing these funds to market will now extend into Q2 but should otherwise remain unaffected.
In November of 2019, Ideanomics and MEG announced an agreement with China’s Yunnan province which included lease financing for the heavy truck segment, with backing by AAA-rated province-specific entities in conjunction with MEG’s lease financing programs. The deal also provided for investment into charging station infrastructure, as well as investment into Treeletrik via Yunnan’s role as the ASEAN region’s belt and road sponsor. The shutdown impacted the timing on this, particularly as it pertained to final registration and approvals at local government, but is expected to be reinstated in the near term.
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B: EV and EV Battery Manufacturing Alliance
Over the course of the past 18 months or so, Ideanomics, and subsequently MEG, has partnered with leading EV and EV Battery manufacturers, including JAC, Geely, Beijing Foton, CATL, and Yinlong, among others. These partnerships are an important part of the overall offering and assist MEG in offering competitive procurement and order fulfillment. Having best-in-class partners ensures we can meet the needs of fleet operators in terms of vehicle specifications, quality, reliability, and cost and continue to attract large-scale order interest.
As part of the commencement of activities in Qingdao, we will be showcasing many of these partners at our EV sales hub and anticipate additional manufacturing partners participating based on their value to the overall offering.
We had begun to implement a joint marketing strategy with select partners, including our participation with CATL in the now postponed EV Mining event in Stockholm, Sweden on March 18-20. It has been tentatively rescheduled until November of this year, due to Coronavirus concerns.
C. Joint Ventures and Other Strategic and Umbrella Agreements
Ideanomics and MEG has announced several agreements as either joint ventures, strategic partnerships, or umbrella agreements, which form part of MEG’s business development and revenue pipeline development activities. These include deals with the provinces of Inner Mongolia and Yunnan for MEG involvement in supporting the transition to EV mining, which we anticipate will be a significant revenue division for our organization; Zhitong 3000, where we intend to offer their fleet customers’ MEG services; activities securing relationships with tourism associations to develop EV tour bus revenues; and more. Each of these is progressing in the normal course of business in the context of earlier sections of this update and, in particular, section A as it pertains to lease financing services.
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D: Sales Agreements for Execution
In August of 2019, Ideanomics and MEG announced a joint venture with iUnicorn, to procure and finance 90,000 taxis for the city of Chengdu, in addition to other cities. In September of 2019, MEG announced the delivery of an additional 4,127 taxis, with confirmation of a further 11,000 to be delivered by the end of 2019. These are subject to the return of local government, to process the final rebate and registration approvals. We anticipate this occurring when the spring temperatures reduce the impact of the outbreak and cities return to normal levels of commerce and the resulting demand for public transportation is restored to pre-outbreak levels.
In November of 2019, Ideanomics and MEG announced an order from Yunnan province for 35,000 taxis, and an additional order for 2,300 taxis from the city of Guillin, in Guanxi province. Both of these orders are delayed due to the closure of non-essential local government services, which we anticipate returning to normal in a similar manner to the iUnicorn JV.
In addition to the sales agreements mentioned above, the MEG team has developed a diverse pipeline of sales orders, with interest and activities in all four of its EV revenue divisions of Heavy Trucks, Buses and Coaches, Logistical Vehicles, and Taxis. In lieu of the lease financing funds availability, MEG has been pursuing bespoke financing for each order, respectively. Furthermore, the recently announced Qingdao sales center activities will help further augment sales going forward.
E. Global EV Sales Expansion
In March of 2019, Ideanomics announced the acquisition of 51% of Malaysia-based EV manufacturer and distributor, Treeletrik. Since the acquisition, Treeletrik has hired an experienced CEO from the automotive industry, increased its sales and after sales operations, upgraded the land secured under the acquisition from leasehold to title holder, secured orders elsewhere in the ASEAN region, and is in negotiations to bring in a number of Chinese EV manufacturing and EV battery partners to help round out its KD and assembly activities such that it can scale its supply operations to ensure order fulfilment.
Outside of Asia, MEG has received some preliminary order inquiries in the Middle East and plans to broadly expand its global footprint once all of its China-based activities are under way.
F: Energy Sales
MEG’s core strategy is to acquire fleet customers, through offering innovative and cost-efficient transition to EV, such that we transition the consumption of energy from Gasoline and Diesel onto cleaner Electricity. MEG has signed numerous joint venture and strategic partnership agreements to help develop its relationships in this regard and plans to sell both pre-paid electricity at a discount to fleet operators, as well as participate in the lucrative EV charging market. Each of these is valid and in process for normal course of business, with the major highlights detailed below.
In July of 2019, Ideanomics announced agreements with Three Gorges, to include Tianda Energy and Ding Fang, and Palcan Energy to finance and develop EV fast charging networks. MEG has continued to explore these and other EV fast charging technologies, including those from our EV battery partners, as detailed in the PetroChina update below.
In September 2019, Ideanomics and MEG announced a joint venture with PetroChina, to begin a project to repurpose gas stations to EV fast charging stations, starting with the city of Nanjing. To date, as there is rapidly-evolving technology development in the areas of EV charging and energy management and storage solutions, we are dependent on the certification of new technologies and apparatus for commercial use such that we ensure the most up to date technologies and charging experience are deployed.
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G: Other Financial Services / ABS
In August of 2018, Ideanomics announced an agreement with NTC to provide ABS refinancing for buses in several China cities, including Tianjin. Subsequently, Ideanomics announced agreements in January of 2019 with financial institutions to provide financing and other services to support the ABS under the NTC agreement.
The debt rating of Tianjin at municipal level, along with delayed deliveries from manufacturers, has proved challenging for underwriting and issuance of ABS. In June of 2019, Ideanomics signed an agreement with EV bus and battery manufacturer Yinlong covering both China and Ex-China activities. As Yinlong had already delivered 5.1Billion RMB of manufacturer financed EV buses in Tianjin, outside of the Ideanomics agreement, we began discussions in late Q3 / early Q4 with Yinlong to reorganize the registration and recording of those delivered assets such that they can be compliant with ABS requirements. That activity is underway, albeit it was disrupted and delayed by the Coronavirus activities in the region. Additionally, MEG plans to work closely with Yinlong in 2020 to help support the delivery of additional city bus orders in order to facilitate the ABS refinancing accordingly.
In June of 2019, Ideanomics and MEG announced a joint venture with GCL, to include GCL contributing guaranteed sales orders of 500,000 logistical vehicle orders over the next three years. These orders will require financing under the lease financing activities covered in section A, as the original barter-plus-subsidy deal put in place is not being accepted by manufacturers. Several of the small to mid-size orders from the GCL order flow are currently in the pipeline to help develop and streamline the deal expediting process of our lease financing activities.
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