Bay e-bike company on the right track as orders take off in America
Tauranga-based electric motorbike maker Ubco says it’s set to more than double its revenue this year on the back of a big US deal.
Chief executive Katherine Sandford told the Herald earlier this week, “We hit just over US$8 million in revenue last year globally, and this year we’re targeting just over US$20M — and a big chunk of that will come from the order we’ve secured from Tucker Powersports.”
Tucker, which operates a chain of adventure sports outlets across the US, has placed a purchase order for 1500 Ubco bikes, which sell from $7499 to $7999.
The bikes will be sold through the Rv-focused stores in the Camping World group. An RV is what Kiwis would call a motor home — only typically much bigger than those you see on our roads.
The idea is that an RV could be bundled with a couple of Ubco’s 2x2 Adventure Bikes (Camping World will also sell an attachment rack), so you could pull up at a forest then do some off-roading.
The order is huge for Ubco. It equates to 1.5 times its full sales last year. All up, the firm says it’s on track to sell 4000 bikes this year.
Ubco has also just launched a $5m raise on crowdsourced equity platform Snowball Effect. If it hits its target, investors have pledged to chip in the same amount and take the total raise to $10m.
US expansion is on the agenda. Ubco already has a significant presence in North America — home to roughly half its 100 staff — and plans to expand from 20 to 200 dealers in the US. Its regional headquarters is in Oregon (home to 20 per cent shareholder Evigroup) but it has also recently set up a supply chain team in
San Jose, too.
Supply chains are, of course, a big deal in the age of Covid disruption.
Here, Sandford says Ubco has benefited from its tight partnership with its contract manufacturing partner, Taiwanese industrial conglomerate TPK.
TPK (which currently holds a 5 per cent stake) invested $14m in Ubco last year. As a shareholder, it now has skin in the game, and has created a production line dedicated to Ubco, capable of scaling up to produce tens of thousands of bikes per year.
More importantly, TPK — which had 2021 sales of around $5.3 billion — has the heft to secure supply of key EV components.
Sandford says having half the team in Oregon means Ubco can work on two projects at once.
Ubco has a quad bike utility vehicle in the works, plus an upgraded 2x2 that will be able to hit around 80km. The company has also had an eye on NZ Post’s temperamental fleet of 400 Paxter four-wheel electric delivery vehicles, made by the Norwegian company of the same name.
Sandford has no timeline on new product releases, at this point, however.
For the time being, Ubco is still in the red. Operating losses outweighed revenue for FY2022 and are forecast to double in FY2023 before narrowing to close to breakeven in FY2024. When will it break into the black?
“We expect to be profitable in the fourth quarter of FY2024,” Sandford says.