Blue Bird Corporation (NASDAQ:BLBD), a leading manufacturer of school buses, has reported a record fiscal year for 2024, with substantial financial growth and a strong emphasis on electric vehicle (EV) sales. The company's financial performance saw a 6% increase in bus sales, totaling 9,000 units, and a 19% rise in sales revenue. Blue Bird's adjusted EBITDA more than doubled from the previous year to $183 million, with a notable increase in the adjusted EBITDA margin to 13.6%. Additionally, the adjusted free cash flow reached $99 million.
Key Takeaways
- Blue Bird achieved a 6% increase in bus sales, with 9,000 units sold.
- Sales revenue rose by 19%, and adjusted EBITDA more than doubled to $183 million.
- The company's adjusted EBITDA margin increased by 6 percentage points to 13.6%.
- Electric bus production and deliveries grew by 30%, with EVs making up 8% of total sales.
Company Outlook
- Blue Bird anticipates net revenue of $1.4-$1.5 billion for fiscal 2025.
- Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be between $190-$210 million.
- The company aims to grow EV unit sales by 64% and achieve a 14% adjusted EBITDA margin.
- A long-term goal has been set to reach a 15%+ margin by 2028.
Bearish Highlights
- No specific bearish details were provided in the call summary.
Bullish Highlights
- Blue Bird's alternative powered buses, including EVs, represented 58% of total unit sales.
- The company has a strong backlog of 4,800 buses, with over 600 EV units.
- Federal support, including the EPA's Clean School Bus Program, is expected to contribute to supplying up to 4,000 EV buses over the next three years.
Misses
- The summary did not report any specific misses in terms of financial targets or expectations.
Q&A highlights
- The company's leadership expressed confidence in Blue Bird's momentum and diversified powertrain strategy.
- The CFO emphasized the importance of profitability and cash flow.
Blue Bird has made significant strides in its EV and alternative powertrain strategy, with over 700 electric buses produced and delivered, marking a 30% increase year-over-year. Electric buses now account for 8% of the company's total sales, up from 6% in the previous year, and Blue Bird projects EV sales to reach 12% by 2025. The company is benefiting from federal funding, particularly the EPA's $5 billion Clean School Bus Program, and is confident in the continued support for clean school bus initiatives. The market outlook is positive, with ACT forecasting a 6% compound annual growth rate through fiscal 2027.
In terms of strategic initiatives, Blue Bird has completed its first collective bargaining agreement with the United Steel Workers and was awarded an $80 million investment grant from the Department of Energy (DOE) for facility expansion. The company is focused on improving manufacturing efficiency and throughput while maintaining a diverse powertrain portfolio.
Important quotes from the call include President and CEO Phil Horlock's statement, "Blue Bird has never been stronger and we've got great momentum," and CFO Rasvan Rogilescu's remark, "Revenue is vanity, profit is sanity and cash is king." Horlock also emphasized the company's diversified approach by saying, "We are not a one trick pony."
The company's strong performance and forward-looking strategies indicate a robust position in the market for clean and alternative energy vehicles. With a solid financial foundation and strategic federal support, Blue Bird is poised to continue its growth trajectory in the school bus manufacturing industry.
Full transcript - Blue Bird Corp (BLBD) Q4 2024:
Sierra, Moderator: Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining Blue Bird's fiscal 2024 Fourth Quarter and Full Year Earnings Conference Call. My name is Sierra, and I'll be your moderator for today. All lines have been muted during the presentation portion of the call with an opportunity for questions and answers at the end. I'd now like to pass the conference over to our host, Mark Benfield, Head of Investor Relations with Blue Bird.
Please proceed.
Mark Benfield, Head of Investor Relations, Blue Bird: Thank you, and welcome to Blue Bird's fiscal 2024 Q4 and full year earnings conference call. The audio for our call is webcast live on bluebird.com under the Investor Relations tab. You can access the supporting slides on our website by clicking on the Presentations box on the IR landing page. Our comments today include forward looking statements that are subject to risks that could cause actual results to be materially different. Those risks include, among others, matters we have noted on the following two slides and in our filings with the SEC.
Bluebird disclaims any obligation to update the information in this call. This afternoon, you'll hear from Bluebird's President and CEO, Phil Horlock and CFO, Rasvan Rogilescu. Then we'll take some questions.
: So let's get started. Phil?
Phil Horlock, President and CEO, Blue Bird: Thank you, Mark, and good afternoon to everyone. First, let me say the Blue Bird team has done an incredible job in delivering continually improved results as we move through each quarter in 2024. As you will see shortly in RASBAN's section, the 4th quarter was no exception to that, where we achieved outstanding financial performance and another quarter record for Bluebird. For the full year, we delivered record financial results across the board and once again, we beat our guidance range for each of the 3 metrics on which we report. So let's get started with the key takeaways for the full year on Slide 6.
As the headline says, fiscal 2024 was an all time record year for Blue Bird. Referencing the first line in the box, I'm very pleased to report that we more than doubled our prior record profit achieved in 2023 and delivered outstanding adjusted EBITDA margin of 13.6%. That's an impressive 6 percentage points higher than a year ago. As I just mentioned, we beat full year guidance once again and we're also increasing our long term profit outlook on the back of the structural improvements we are making. Importantly, on this call, we will be providing you with fiscal year 2025 guidance above the preliminary guidance we showed at our last earnings call.
Lasvan will be covering these in detail later. Market demand for school buses continues to be very strong and the backlog for Blue Bird school buses at fiscal year end was over 4,800 units and that's 6% above the same time last year. Importantly, net orders for Bluebird buses in fiscal 2024 was 16% higher than last year. Now that's a great endorsement of the customer demand for Blue Bird's expansive range of buses and this bodes well for pricing, production stability and profit margins. Supply chain issues are undoubtedly easing and we've done a great job in managing through a couple of constraints on some chassis components this year.
We expect to see more easing as we move through 2025. Through a combination of pricing and richer vehicle mix, we increased our average bus selling price by 14% through 2024 and every bus we are selling and those in our order backlog reflect current pricing at today's economic conditions. And we are priced competitively, which we can tell from our quote win rate and incoming orders. On the EV front, we produced and delivered more than 700 electric buses, nearly 30% more than a year ago, thanks largely to the first round of $1,000,000,000 of funding from the EPA's unprecedented $5,000,000,000 Clean School Bus Program. Throughout the fiscal year, we maintained our very strong mix of alternative powered vehicles and further strengthened our leadership position in this segment.
The higher margins and higher owner loyalty from these propane, gas and electric buses contributed to our outstanding full year profit improvement. We're also reinvesting back into the business too by selectively upgrading facilities and installing lean manufacturing processes, and we continue to enhance the plant working environment. And we're seeing the results of this investment in achieving some of the best manufacturing performance the company has ever seen with higher efficiencies and increased throughput. As a result of all these accomplishments, we achieved an outstanding full year adjusted EBITDA of $183,000,000 with a margin of 13.6%. Now let's take a closer look at the financial and key business highlights for the full year on Slide 7.
As I've said on previous earnings calls, our fiscal 2024 financial performance is transformed from a year ago with many record highs reported. We sold exactly 9,000 buses in the full year, which is a solid 6% above last year. Now those unit sales drove a very impressive 19% increase in sales revenue over last year. The impact of higher pricing and a richer mix of EVs is clearly evident in the revenue growth. Our full year adjusted EBITDA of $183,000,000 was more than double last year.
That's an outstanding increase of $95,000,000 representing a 6 percentage point increase in margin to 13.6%. And finally, adjusted free cash flow of $99,000,000 was well above the 50% of EBITDA target that we strive for. The $22,000,000 decline versus last year is more than explained by the substantial one time inventory reductions we took in the second half of twenty twenty three. Overall, we had breakthrough full year results and achieved transformational improvements over last year. We are on a great trajectory.
Turning to the right hand side of the slide, you can see some of the key operating highlights for the business and there were many firsts for Bluebird. As I mentioned earlier, demand is exceptionally strong with our firm order backlog at the end of the fiscal year and was about $735,000,000 in sales. That's 4,800 buses or almost 7 months of production at a current sales rate. The full year Abby selling price per bus in fiscal 2024 was an outstanding 14% above last year and that's about a $17,000 increase per bus. And at $104,000,000 our parts sales grew by 6% and we broke the $100,000,000 barrier for the first time in our history.
With gross margins at over 50%, the parts business is a significant contributor to our results. Turning to alternative powered buses, they represented 58% of our full year unit sales. Now we continue to be the undisputed leader in this space with our major competitors running at less than a 10% mix. EV buses are part of the alternative power mix and full year EV bookings increased by almost 30% over last year with more than 700 sold, exactly in line with the plan we showed to you last quarter. That represented a strong and growing mix of 8% of our total sales compared with 6% in fiscal 2023.
Additionally, we left the year with a record EV order backlog of about 6.30 buses and that's a very strong 13% share of our total backlog. That's worth more than $200,000,000 in sales And remember, the vast majority of orders from RANs 2 and 3 of the Clean School Bus Program providing more than $1,900,000,000 in funding are all ahead of us. On the labor front, we completed our 1st collective bargaining agreement with the United Steel Workers Union earlier this year. We have a 3 year contract in place and we're off to a great start working together and we look forward to a collaborative and stable partnership that benefits all. To help execute the $160,000,000 expansion plan at our Fort Valley, Georgia location, in the Q3, we were awarded an $80,000,000 investment grant by the Department of Energy to increase EV and overall production of our Type D Bus.
This will create up to 400 new jobs by expanding single shift capacity from 10,000 to 14,000 school buses annually and is a significant profitable growth initiative. In the Q2, you might recall we reviewed our exclusive propane and gasoline engine contract with both Ford (NYSE:F) and Rausch until 2,030. By that time, we will have partnered exclusively for almost 20 years. Now that's what you call a successful business partnership. And finally, we beat guidance on each of net sales, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted free cash flow by quite a margin too.
Including our updated fiscal 2025 guidance being delivered today, this will be the 7th consecutive quarter in which we have beaten and raised our guidance. With a record full year profit and margin, which is more than double the previous record we set just last year, I'm incredibly proud of our team's accomplishments. I'd now like to hand it over to Rasband to walk you through our fiscal 2024 Q4 and full year financial results in detail. We'll also be providing you guidance for fiscal 2025 and an updated long term outlook. Over to you, Ras Ben.
Rasvan Rogilescu, CFO, Blue Bird: Thanks, Phil, and good afternoon. It's my pleasure to share with you the financial highlights from Blue Bird's fiscal 2024 Q4 and year end record results. The year end is based on a close date of September 28, 2024, whereas the prior year end was based on a close date of September 30, 2023. We will file the 10 ks today, November 25, after the market close. Our 10 ks includes additional material and disclosures regarding business and financial performance.
We encourage you to read the 10 ks and the important disclosures that it contains. The appendix attached to today's presentation includes reconciliations of differences between GAAP and non GAAP measures mentioned on this call as well as other important disclaimers. Slide 9 is a summary of the fiscal 2024 Q4 and full year record results. It was another outstanding operating quarter for Bluebird with significantly improved volume and with high margin units across all powertrains driving both our top line and our bottom line results. We beat the adjusted EBITDA quarterly guidance provided in the last earnings call and in fact we delivered the best Q4 quarter ever for Bluebird with $41,000,000 adjusted EBITDA margin.
The team continued to push hard and did again a fantastic job and generated 2,466 unit sales volume, which was 3 50 units above prior year Q4 volume. All time quarterly record consolidated net revenue of $350,000,000 was $47,000,000 or approximately 15% higher than prior year, driven by higher number of units and higher parts sales. Adjusted EBITDA was a Q4 record of $41,000,000 driven by higher volumes, increased parts sales and margins, improved Microbur joint venture results, partially offset by increased labor, SG and A and engineering costs. The adjusted free cash flow was a very strong $50,000,000 a $15,000,000 increase versus the prior year Q4. This was despite an increase in working capital, mainly accounts receivables, as we continue to sell a significant number of buses to fleets and GSA also in this quarter.
All of those receivables have already turned into cash during fiscal 2025 Q1. Phil covered already the record fiscal 2024 year end key figures with 9,000 units, dollars 1,350,000,000 in revenue, dollars 183,000,000 or 13.6 percent in adjusted EBITDA and a very strong $99,000,000 in free cash flow, more than 50% of the adjusted EBITDA. I will provide more details on our full year results later in the presentation. Moving on to Slide 10, as mentioned before by Phil. Our backlog at the end of Q4 has grown and continues to be very strong at over 4,800 units, including over 600 EVs.
Breaking down the quarterly record $350,000,000 in revenue into our 2 business segments, the BaaS net revenue was $323,000,000 up by $46,000,000 versus prior year. Our average BaaS revenue per unit was flat at $131,000 per unit, which was largely the result of pricing actions taken over the past year, fully offsetting lower EV product mix. EV sales in Q4 were 84 units as guided in our last call or 87 units less than last year due to the requested delivery dates on our backlog EV units, placing them in calendar year 2025. This gives us already almost half of our fiscal 2025 EV expected volume already in backlog. Parts revenue for the quarter was $27,000,000 representing a growth of $1,400,000 or 6% compared to the already very strong prior year levels.
This great performance was in part due to the increased demand for our parts as the fleet is still aging as well as supply chain driven pricing actions and throughput improvement. Gross margin for the quarter was 17% or 0.5 percentage points higher than last year due to our sustained operational performance and our pricing overtaking the inflationary costs, including the effects of the new USW labor agreement. This is a testament to our strong product position and diversification across all school bus types and powertrains with approximately $60,000,000 of gross margin despite only 84 EV units being sold this quarter. We are not a one trick pony unlike many new entrants in this space. In fiscal 2024, Q4 adjusted net income was $25,800,000 or $4,500,000 or over 20% improvement year over year.
Adjusted EBITDA of $41,000,000 or 11.8 percent was up compared with prior year by approximately $1,000,000 Adjusted diluted earnings per share of $0.77 was up $0.11 versus the prior year. Slide 11 shows the walk from fiscal 2023 Q4 adjusted EBITDA to the fiscal 2024 Q4 results. Starting on the left at an already strong $40,700,000 the impact of the bus segment gross profit in total was $9,300,000 split between volume and pricing effects, net of material cost increases of $11,000,000 offset by labor cost increases of negative 1,700,000 dollars mainly due to the USW new labor rates now in full effect for Q4. The favorable development in the Parts segment gross profit was $900,000 driven by higher sales and improved margins as mentioned earlier in the call. Additionally, our 50% share result from MicroBorg joint venture improved also by $3,500,000 year over year.
These great improvements more than offset planned increases in our fixed costs. On a year over year basis, the fiscal 2,004 includes onetime approximately $6,000,000 of expenses, mainly in bonus and professional services, with the rest of $7,100,000 in SG and A and engineering costs as expected. The sum of all of the above mentioned developments drives our record fiscal 24Q4 imported adjusted EBITDA result of $41,300,000 Moving to Slide 12. I will cover some more details regarding our full year record results. Breaking down the $1,347,000,000 revenue into our 2 business segments, the vast net revenue was $1,243,000,000 up by $208,000,000 or 20 percent versus prior year.
Our average BaaS revenue per unit was $138,000 an increase of $16,000 per unit versus the prior year, which was largely the result of pricing actions taken over the past year and improved EV product mix. EV sales for fiscal 2024 were 704 units as guided in our last call, an increase of 158 units or approximately 30% improvement versus last year. Parts revenue for the year was $104,000,000 representing a growth of $6,000,000 or 6% compared to the already very strong prior year level. This great performance was in part due to increased demand for our parts of the free distillaging as well as supply chain driven pricing actions and throughput improvements. Gross margin for the year was a record 19% or almost 7 percentage points higher than last year due to our sustained operational performance and our pricing overtaking the inflationary costs year over year including the full effects of our USW labor agreement in Q4.
This is another testament to our strong product position and diversification across all school bus types and powertrains, with over $250,000,000 of gross margin coming mainly from our 92% non EV units sold. But I said before, we are not a one trick pony. In fiscal 2024, adjusted net income was $115,000,000 an $81,000,000 improvement year over year, more than tripled of the prior record. Record adjusted EBITDA of $183,000,000 or 13.6 percent was up compared with prior year by $95,000,000 more than doubled $1,000,000 and almost a 6 percentage point margin increase year over year. Adjusted diluted earnings per share of $3.46 was up $2.39 versus the prior year, also more than tripled year over year.
Slide 13 shows the walk from fiscal 2023 adjusted EBITDA to the fiscal 2024 results. Starting on the left at the prior record of $88,000,000 the impact of the bus segment gross profit in total was 113,000,000 dollars Split between volume and pricing effects, net of material cost increases of $120,000,000 offset by labor and overhead cost increases of negative $7,000,000 including the USW new agreement now in full effect. The favorable development in the Parse segment gross profit was $5,000,000 driven by higher sales and improved margins. Additionally, our 50% share results from Microbord joint venture improved also by $6,000,000 year over year. These great improvements were offset by planned increases in our fixed costs, mainly personnel and fringes healthcare related, SG and A and engineering in total of $28,000,000 as we continue to invest in our business and our people.
The sum of all the above mentioned developments drives our new record fiscal 2024 adjusted EBITDA result of $183,000,000 or 13.6%. Moving on to Slide 14, we have extremely positive developments year over year also on the balance sheet. We ended the year with $128,000,000 in cash and reduced our debt significantly by $35,000,000 over the last year. In fact, at the end of fiscal 2024, we had $33,000,000 of cash in excess of all debt. Our liquidity settled a record $271,000,000 at the end of fiscal 2024, a $108,000,000 increase compared to a year ago.
In fact, now at mid November, we reached over $300,000,000 in liquidity for the first time ever. The operating cash flow was a very strong $111,000,000 in this year, driven by an improvement in operations and margins, offset by an increase in accounts receivable due to the large number of fleet and GSA units built towards the end of the year, all of which can turn into cash already in fiscal 2025 Q1. On Slide 16, we wanted to share with you our updated fiscal 2025 guidance. We have a number of both tailwinds and headwinds and we maintain a cautious stance, yet maybe a bit less conservative than in the prior years as already mentioned in the prior call. The tailwinds we have strong demand, stable pricing and still a very high industry backlog.
We offer now not only diesel and gasoline school buses, but we have the only propane fuel school bus in the industry with clean fuel and best in class total cost of ownership. We are also leading in the EV segment with over 2,000 buses on the road and are confident in the upcoming orders from round 23 of the EPA clean school bus program will significantly improve our sales mix in the second half of fiscal twenty twenty five above our already strong EV backlog of over 600 units. At headwinds, supply chain is still fragile at times while improving overall, and we have made great progress in removing bottlenecks for some key components. The material costs and supplier inflation pressures are still present. And finally, we expect still relatively low EV production and sales through the first half of fiscal twenty twenty five as the infrastructure plans are being worked on and with many customers requesting EV delivery before full start in the summer of 2025.
In summary, we are maintaining our units and revenue midpoint guidance to $9,250,000,000 and $1,450,000,000 respectively. However, given our momentum from our record fiscal 2024 results, we're increasing our adjusted EBITDA guidance by $10,000,000 to $200,000,000 or 13.8 percent with a range of $190,000,000 to $210,000,000 and 13.6% to 14% margin. Moving to Slide 16, we laid out for you the quarterly guidance for fiscal 2025. Starting in Q1 with the seasonal lowest number of production weeks in the year due to year end holidays, we expect to sell approximately 2,000 units including 100 EVs and generate approximately $300,000,000 in revenue with adjusted EBITDA of $40,000,000 to 45,000,000 dollars In Q2, we expect our total volume to go up to approximately 2,300 units, including 200 plus EVs and generate approximately $350,000,000 in revenue with adjusted EBITDA of $45,000,000 to 50,000,000 dollars In Q3 and Q4, we expect an increased number of EVs with 300 plus in Q3 and 400 plus in Q4, driving quarterly revenue around 400,000,000 and adjusted EBITDA of $50,000,000 to $60,000,000 per quarter as shown. Before we look at our free cash flow guidance on Slide 17, we wanted to remind you that Bluebird was awarded by the Department of Energy under the NASSC program, an $80,000,000 for a new 600,000 square foot Type D and EV production facility.
This would raise our total production capability to 14,000 units on one shift and would provide for increased volume upside for the commercial chassis production when needed. The total investment of $160,000,000 would span over 2 years from calendar year 2025 until first half of calendar year twenty twenty seven with 50% to be funded by Blue Bird, subject to finalize negotiations with the DOE by the end of December 31, 2024 and our Board of Directors approval. The free cash flow impact for Blue Bird in fiscal 2025 is now roughly estimated at $50,000,000 for our half. On Slide 18, in summary, our fiscal 2025 guidance for net revenue is $1,400,000,000 to 1,500,000,000 dollars with adjusted EBITDA of $190,000,000 to $210,000,000 and free cash flow of $40,000,000 to $60,000,000 after deducting $50,000,000 in extraordinary CapEx for the new plant under the NASH program. We expect fiscal 2025 to be another record year for Bluebird on our path of profitable growth.
Speaking of profitable growth, let's look on Slide 19 at some of our principles for running the business and touch on some capital allocation points. We strongly believe that revenue is vanity, profit is sanity and cash is king. Let's cover these points 1 by 1. On the revenue side, we are focusing on executing our organic growth with an emphasis on alternative fuels. However, we do still offer diesel for those that continue to request it.
We are not chasing market share, yet we are reengaging with some of the national large fleets as already shown in fiscal 2024. While we continue to be laser focused on our core school bus business, we have planted the seeds for adjacent market growth in the commercial step and chassis business as well as with MicroBird. More to come in the future on this exciting new areas of profitable growth. Looking at profit, we continue to be very disciplined in our margin management. We have implemented a price increase of $3,500 per bus for all orders received after October 1, 2024 to cover for expected variable cost increases, including the impact of our new labor agreement with USW.
We continue to be nimble in our backlog management, which we like to keep at approximately 2 quarters of production, providing us with a competitive advantage in the current environment. Finally, we work relentlessly on reducing our variable costs through continuous cost improvements, lean manufacturing on 1 shift, supply chain management and steel forward buys. Looking at cash, we plan to invest into our future manufacturing capabilities while also returning value to our shareholders through stock buybacks. We already completed $10,000,000 buyback in fiscal 2024 Q4 and we have authorization for up to another $50,000,000 in the existing program. And we plan to achieve this while maintaining great liquidity and a strong cash position and we have flexibility in case we decide to pursue focused and attractive M and A opportunities.
Moving on to Slide 20. Looking at our fiscal 2025 updated guidance, through hard work from all our teams and great execution of our strategy, we already delivered way ahead of schedule the 13% adjusted EBITDA margin we had highlighted in the past as our long term aspiration. Today, we are confirming the medium term outlook at 14% margin in fiscal 20 26 and 20 27 with volumes of up to 10,000 units generating revenues of around 1,600,000,000 and with adjusted EBITDA of approximately $225,000,000 Starting in 2028 and beyond, our long term target remains to drive profitable growth now to even higher levels towards $1,850,000,000 to $2,000,000,000 in revenue comprising of 11,000 to 12,000 units of which 4,000 to 5,000 could be EVs and generate EBITDA of $270,000,000 to 300 plus 1,000,000 or 14.5 percent to 15% plus at best in class level. The plus comes from the other areas of growth outside of EVs we mentioned before, both for Bluebird commercial chassis and for MicroPulse. We continue to be incredibly excited about Bluebird's future and I will turn it back over to Phil.
Phil Horlock, President and CEO, Blue Bird: Thank you, Rasband. As usual, that was a great explanation of our latest financial results and our outlook. So let's move on now to Slide 22. I covered this slide on our 2 prior earnings calls, so I won't spend too much time with today as our priorities and our strategy are unchanged, just as they should be. The chart on the left illustrates the 3 priorities that continue to drive us today: taking care of our employees, delighting our customers and dealers and delivering profitable growth.
The chart on the right provides more texture around the specific strategies that we are pursuing that both align with our priorities and drive our 4 year growth plans. At the center is our ultimate objective to drive sustained profitable growth. As you look at the margin accomplishments and our plans, we transformed the business from losses to record profitability in fiscal 2023, achieving an 8% margin. In fiscal 2024, we grew our margin by a full 6 points to around 14%, which is a truly breakthrough year for us that we are now building from. And as we look longer term, our goal is to grow our margin to 15% and more as Rajvind just mentioned.
Following these 6 core strategies have been key to our margin transformation and will continue to drive our 4 year profitable growth plans. Let's now turn to Slide 23 and look at the latest stages of federal funding for clean school buses, which is so important to help us to continue accelerating the adoption of both electric and propane vehicles in fiscal 2025 and beyond. Let me start by reiterating that the EPA's focus on school buses is great news for our industry, our customers and our school children with school buses recognized as having the perfect duty cycle for EV adoption. And of course, EV buses provide major health benefits for our school children and communities by replacing old legacy diesel buses that emit harmful emissions. As a reminder, we have just started the 2nd year of this bipartisan 5 year program, which provides $5,000,000,000 of funding of electric and propane powered school buses.
There is still over $4,000,000,000 to be deployed after the 1st year of funding. The latest news to report to you since the last quarter is that the EPA has launched Round 4 of the 5 Round Clean School Bus funding program. This Round 4 rebate program is highlighted on the slide and provides $965,000,000 to fund an estimated 4,000 EV score buses. The application period is now open and is scheduled to close on January 9, 2025, with winners needing to take delivery of the buses in May 2027. We are now working closely with our dealers and our customers to submit applications.
And needless to say, with the order deadline being November 25, the vast majority of these buses will be delivered in our fiscal years 2026 and 2027. In play at this point are rounds 23, which I covered extensively at our last earnings call. Now these two rounds provide over $1,900,000,000 in funding for 6,600 clean school buses. The winners have all been notified and have until April 2026 for round 2 and June 2026 for round 3 to take delivery of their buses. Virtually all of this is ahead of us in terms of orders and deliveries.
Looking at the far right column, we have a 2024 clean heavy duty vehicles program, which I also covered at our last earnings call. This program is funded by the Inflation Reduction Act and the great news is that 70% of that EV funding is being allocated to school buses. That's up to $650,000,000 to accelerate the adoption of EV school buses and that's beyond the $5,000,000,000 from the EPA program. We estimate that orders from this program should total 2,300 EV school buses. Awards are expected to be announced in December 2024 with the winners having until January 27 to take delivery of these buses.
So including round 4, we have a total of $3,500,000,000 in grants and rebates approved and preparing to be deployed over the next 3 years to fund up to 13,000 EV and propane school buses. With our expectation on winning around 30% of orders, these programs represent a great opportunity for Blue Bird to supply up to 4,000 EV school buses of all body types over the next 3 years or so. Beyond that, we have another $1,000,000,000 in clean bus funding to go and significant state and local funding too to accelerate the adoption of clean EV and propane powered school buses. And remember the mission. The Clean School Bus Act was a bipartisan agreement signed in 2021 designed to keep our children and communities safe from air pollution by removing harmful older emissions legacy diesel buses from the road and replacing them with clean powered buses.
What can be more important than the safe and healthy transportation of our school children? Continuing on the subject of federal funding of electric buses, I'd now like to turn to Slide 24 and look at the likely timeline for orders and deliveries, which has been a question posed in recent weeks. This slide depicts the various EB rounds and funding timeline from application to bus delivery. As you can see, round 1 of the Clean School bus funding program was completed in fiscal 2024. RANs 2 and 3 closed out applications in early 2024 and winners were noted part of their awards through the Q3 of 2024.
Now following the award notification stage, we have now entered the ordering phase for the winners. Now prior to ordering the buses, awardees want to deal first with finalizing their charging and utility infrastructure needs. That is to ensure they have charging available and operative close to when the ED school buses are delivered. Those charging infrastructure needs are recognized by the EPA by permitting buses to be deployed as late as June 2026 from these two rounds. Now the EPA had dictated that purchase orders for the round 3 rebates must be placed by year end 2024.
We have seen recent evidence, however, of order extensions being allowed by the EPA at the request of the rebate winners. So while we are still expecting a sharp increase in orders late this calendar year, it likely will be less than the expected surge due to the recent granting of extensions to the order deadline by the EPA. With this assumption, this slide depicts the relatively long ordering period in place well into fiscal 2025 with the majority of correspondent deliveries expected to be in the second half of fiscal 2025 and into fiscal 2026. Nevertheless, as Rajvind showed, we are forecasting very strong EV unit sales of 11.50 buses in fiscal 2025, representing more than 60% increase in Blue Bird deliveries over fiscal 2024 as we benefit from the $1,900,000,000 of EPA RAN 2 and 3 awards that are in play right now. EV bus sales from the EPA Round 4 and Clean Heavy Duty Vehicles program, however, will likely impact fiscal year 2026 at the earliest.
I should mention that following recent discussions with the Clean School Bus Program Administrator of the EPA, our understanding is that there is no delay in the EPA's plans or processes to pay grants or rebates to the awardees following order submission. The EPA is simply accommodating requests for awardees to delay ordering until firm infrastructure plans are in place that match with bus delivery timing. Our expectation that the majority of fiscal year 2025 EB bus deliveries will be in the second half of the year supports this view on infrastructure and bus order timing. I'd now like to turn to Slide 25 and provide you with our view on continued federal government support on incentives pertaining to Blue Bird. Clearly, there has been a lot of hand wringing on this topic in recent weeks.
As the headline says, we are very confident in continued federal government incentive support for 2 specific programs from which Blue Bird is benefiting. First, the DOE's $80,000,000 investment grant representing 50 percent of $160,000,000 plant expansion at Blue Bird. It is worth reminding all of us that this program was fully endorsed in the State of Georgia by both Republican and Democratic parties for the following reasons. It supports manufacturing investment in the United States by a U. S.
Company with a history of nearly 100 years based in middle Georgia where manufacturing presence is limited, and it creates up to 400 good paying jobs and adds much needed capacity to build new cleaner buses for transporting our children safely to school. 2nd, the $5,000,000,000 Clean School Bus Program funding that we have spoken of so much today. As a reminder, 25,000,000 children ride school buses today in the U. S. It's America's largest mass transportation system by a long way and it's not a discretionary purchase by a school district.
This program was written into legislation in 2021 with full bipartisan support of the bill. The funds have been fully appropriated and 4 years of funding are in play. It helps eliminate the harmful emissions we see every day at school with old legacy diesel buses emitting black fumes from the tailpipe as kids board and exit these buses. This is a serious and proven health concern. It accelerates the adoption of 0 emission buses to protect our children's health and safety, reduces future costs by increasing scale and lowers operating costs to a fraction of that of an internal combustion engine.
We have more than 2,000 electric buses deployed and on the road, thanks in part to this program built in the U. S, partnering with U. S. Suppliers, all for the safety of our children. So to summarize these programs, U.
S. Manufacturing, U. S. Company, bipartisan support, innovation, new jobs, health and safety of our children and clean air for everyone. Now that's compelling.
So let me now wrap up the earnings call and our outlook for the business on Slide 26. There's not much more to say on our fiscal 2024 results other than we achieved record results, more than doubled last year's then record profit and we beat guidance across every metric. Frankly, fiscal 2024 was a breakthrough financial performance of Blue Bird, just shy of a 14% adjusted EBITDA margin and reflecting a 6 percentage point margin increase over fiscal 2023. Rasband took you through the raised guidance for fiscal 2025 and I'm showing some of those key metrics at the midpoint of guidance here. We are being prudent on our bookings outlook, only increasing volume by 3% over fiscal 2024 at this time as we still deal with some supply chain issues.
But we manage them very well in 2024 and if we can build more in fiscal 2025, we will just as we did last year. Net revenue of $1,450,000,000 will be a new record for Bluebird, up 8% from fiscal 2024. Adjusted EBITDA guidance of $200,000,000 is 9% higher than our fiscal 2024 record results. Importantly, we are planning on a robust 14% adjusted EBITDA margin in fiscal 2025 as we look to maintain our momentum after such a surge in margin in fiscal 2024. And finally, we're looking to grow EV unit sales to 11.50 buses in fiscal 2025 and that's a substantial 64% increase over the year before and well supported by $1,900,000,000 of EPA funding already in the market.
As you can see on the right chart, there is a lot of pent up demand following low industry sales in 2020, 2021 and 2022 and the bus fleet has aged by a couple of years. ACT is forecasting a compound annual growth rate of 6% through to fiscal 20 27 And that's great news for our business and great news for our profit outlook. The future is incredibly bright for Blue Bird. This time last year, we talked of achieving a 12% EBITDA margin in a couple of years. Clearly, we've already surpassed that by a significant margin and are confident in our pursuit of our new long term goal of more than 15%.
I want to thank our nearly 2000 employees for all the hard work and dedication in delivering our record results in fiscal 2024 and for transforming our company as well as our outstanding dealer partners who are critical to our success. Now that concludes our formal presentation today and I'd now like to hand it over to our moderator for the Q and A
Sierra, Moderator: session. Thank you. We will now begin the Q and A session. You. Our first question may come from Mike Schlosky with D.
A. Davidson. Your line is now open.
Mike Schlosky, Analyst, D.A. Davidson: Yes. Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. A lot to process here. Maybe I'll start with one of your later comments there, Phil, about the EPA program.
You've got deliveries going through 2027, it's not past that. The program's 5th round will probably be over by 2027, 2028. Yet you've still got quite a few, by a large mix of EVs in your go forward mix from that point forward. Are you relying on a renewal of the EPA program after fiscal 2020, whenever the last 20 7, 20 8 since this current one is over? Or do you feel like your EV business will at that point, which is several years away, stand up on its own and not need such heavy subsidies?
Phil Horlock, President and CEO, Blue Bird: Hi, Mike. It's Phil here. Good question. I think it's the last point you said. We're expecting as we progress through to 2018, which is when we expect the EPA program will end, we expect to continue to go at the EPA.
So EPA And of course, we're still seeing and we expect to see a lot of state support, which local support that exists. And I think as Rajvind told you on last earnings calls, our projections do recognize a reduced revenue on these vehicles over time. We've seen it a little bit now in the EPA because each round there's been about a $25,000 reduction in the amount of the rebate or grant being offered. That's resulted in more units being available for the market too. So we continue to see that as costs come down, battery costs come down, more scale and still reflecting a great significant margin over the time, but certainly reducing in price to make it a little bit more affordable for all.
And that's the reason that parity when TCO and the price really, really gels together.
Mike Schlosky, Analyst, D.A. Davidson: Okay. So that's all been baked in. The pricing changes over time. The fact that's going to be over after 20 27, that's all kind of baked in.
Phil Horlock, President and CEO, Blue Bird: Absolutely. I think Rajvind has got a couple of comments on that to make too.
Rasvan Rogilescu, CFO, Blue Bird: Yes, Mike. This is Rajvind. So in the past, we messaged the three times an EV price versus a diesel bus. We are now already moving towards the 2.5 times multiplier. And we are projecting that slope to continue downwards as we reduce our cost, while maintaining our percentage margin across all bus types and powertrains.
Mike Schlosky, Analyst, D.A. Davidson: Got it. Got it. So it's all planned. It's always been part of your outlook. But I guess, can you tell us behind the scenes what you're doing to ensure that the powertrain providers and I guess there's 2 of them now, what are they doing to reduce their prices to you and kind of having sure everyone's coordinating and working in lockstep to keep your margins and their margins consistent as we go forward?
Rasvan Rogilescu, CFO, Blue Bird: Yes. So obviously, we are not able to share with you on this public call all our strategies for reducing our costs. Nevertheless, we are working with several providers and there is new capacity coming online through the next couple of years. And we have clear plans behind with them behind our numbers to drive cost down and make these CV buses more affordable with the ultimate goal of reaching and beating with total cost of ownership conventional buses.
Mike Schlosky, Analyst, D.A. Davidson: Okay. Maybe one last one for me. Do you have any significant growth recitations for parts for 'twenty five or is the midterms you had the last quarter here a roughly decent growth rate for the following fiscal year here?
Rasvan Rogilescu, CFO, Blue Bird: So our parts business is already very strong, has been for the last couple of years. So right now, we are targeting single digit, low single digit revenue growth year over year.
Mike Schlosky, Analyst, D.A. Davidson: Okay. Fair enough. We've been achieving okay, we've been
Phil Horlock, President and CEO, Blue Bird: achieving 5 percent in recent that sort of number and that's sort of what we expect to be going. Hey, Mike, one thing I just want to mention to you, I do talk about state and local grants. Just to give you an example, we're right now in the middle of our significant order we won. I think you knew about that with the L. A.
Unified School District for 180 electric buses. That's a great example. Not a single EPA grant used for that transaction, not a single one, all supported by grants in California, state grants, some local grants and very attractive deal for the customers. So there's an example, I think, even today of not being entirely reliant in EPA and still having very attractive proposals to offer.
Mike Schlosky, Analyst, D.A. Davidson: Got it. Outstanding. I'll pass it along. Thanks so much.
Phil Horlock, President and CEO, Blue Bird: Thanks, Mike.
Sierra, Moderator: Our next question comes from Eric Stine with Craig Hallum. Your line is now open.
Eric Stine, Analyst, Craig Hallum: Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking the questions.
Rasvan Rogilescu, CFO, Blue Bird: Hey, Eric.
Eric Stine, Analyst, Craig Hallum: So maybe on pricing, good to hear about, I think, the 3.5% increase that you're putting through here recently. And I know that this is typically a one to every once or twice every year you do this. Just curious, I mean, this has been a really big part of your margin expansion. Obviously, what are you hearing from customers? Is there any pushback?
How are the others kind of acting on price in the market? And how do you feel about this going forward?
Phil Horlock, President and CEO, Blue Bird: Yes. I think, again, a good question. I mean, we've got a rhythm going where we certainly price twice a year. We've been doing that now for a good couple of years, April 1 and then October 1. So it's almost like October is the start of our new model year, so to speak, and then mid model year.
And we can tell from the bids we've done, our win rates and it becomes totally a delta of school district bids and their decisions. We know we're very competitive. We are competitive. The competition looks like is on the same lines as us. And yes, it's going very well.
And occasionally, as in the case of the $3,500 amount we put on in October, we put some product features in there too. It's a new model year and we have some nice attractive features in that pricing too to differentiate ourselves a little further. So yes, it's working very well and we feel confident continuing on that trend.
Eric Stine, Analyst, Craig Hallum: Got it. That's helpful. And then maybe just on the outlook for fiscal 2025. I know it's a new situation over the last couple of years because of the backlog. And I get the whole dynamic about the second half waiting for EVs, but your guidance does imply that there is a little more seasonality in the year.
Is that I mean, anything to read into that? Is that just kind of just the way that the schedule lays out for deliveries? Or how should we think about that?
Rasvan Rogilescu, CFO, Blue Bird: Yes. If you look at Slide 6, production seasonality is purely driven by the number of weeks available in each quarter with Q1 being the lowest due to both Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays and shutdown and Q3 being the highest. So there is nothing special there.
Eric Stine, Analyst, Craig Hallum: Okay. All right. And then maybe just a housekeeping question. So it sounds like $50,000,000 in CapEx for this project, at least for this year's portion of the project. Should we think of that as your total CapEx?
Or is that the CapEx that would be above and beyond your more typical levels?
Rasvan Rogilescu, CFO, Blue Bird: Yes. The $50,000,000 is the extraordinary above and beyond. We guided in the past also around $25,000,000 as our normal CapEx. Fees.
Mark Benfield, Head of Investor Relations, Blue Bird: Yes. Okay. Thanks a lot.
Phil Horlock, President and CEO, Blue Bird: Thanks, Eric.
Sierra, Moderator: Our next question comes from Tyler D'Amatoiu with BTIG. Your line is now open.
: Hi, everyone, and thanks for taking the questions here. I wanted to follow-up on some of the productivity comments and the structural improvements that you're kind of seeing. I guess, how much of that is left? And then if you had to kind of bucket that opportunity in terms of maybe manufacturing gains versus gains on procurement, I guess, how would you bucket those different verticals? And I guess, how much of that is left as you look out to next year?
Phil Horlock, President and CEO, Blue Bird: Again, another good question into our details here. I look at 3 major elements. I mean, the first one is I look at pure productivity in the manufacturing operation. This is lean manufacturing, kaizen of initiatives done before, tackle before. We brought some new folks on the team these last 2 years that really helped them move the needle there and making sure we eliminate waste and the walking time our employees have in the stations and that's good really good discipline and that pays dividends.
The second one is around, I guess it's called managing the material coming through the line. And again, we strengthened our team there. We closed a warehouse that was 35 miles away from us in Macon, Georgia, and we brought one that's about less than 10 miles away. And we also put a warehouse in the next to the line in the main plant, which means that we can really fulfill our material needs very quickly in response to any issues we might have. But importantly, when I measure that, I measure throughput.
This is the 3rd piece. And it's part of that too is when I look at where we were just a couple of years ago, it was taken us 40 days from when we set up a unit to when we call it ready for delivery day. So the first time we start putting a frame rail on a line and building components on it to actually that vehicle coming off the line and being ready for deliveries after taking that for drive and all things we do test driving, so on and so, it was more than 40 days. That's now down to less than between 12 to 14 days it takes us now. And that saves labor, it saves obviously, it's great working capital.
It's fantastic for us, but that again has been part of our challenge. How do we reduce that time, compress it to make sure we get a major productivity? And you can imagine when you go from 40 days to 14 days, it's very good for, like I say, our use of our capital, use of our cash and frees up a lot of cash. So it's those three areas. Kaizen initiatives type of initiatives, lean manufacturing, it's working to control our inventory a lot better, material management and flow.
And then the third piece is this acceleration of throughput in the line. We also have it's limited for us because I think we mentioned before, a school bus has got 9,500 parts on it. Typical car, 2,500. We got 9,500 and all different variation, length of our vehicles, all of them are in the same lines. And so we have very high intensive labor on our line, not too much automation.
But where we can, we have been using it to help really assist our folks on the line to improve a better quality bus and we're seeing the impact of that. So hope that's helpful to let you know, give me a texture around what we're doing.
: Okay, great. No, that's very helpful. Thank you. And then on my follow-up here, surrounding some of the comments related to the EPA and the potential extension of the deadlines, I guess, how do you guys kind of think about the alternative power bus mix in the product portfolio? Is there an opportunity to maybe have some customers take delivery of other powertrains outside of EV?
I guess, just how do you kind of think about managing the product portfolio, kind of given some of the comments surrounding the charging infrastructure and trying to really match that supply with the demand here over the next, call it, 12 to 18 months?
Rasvan Rogilescu, CFO, Blue Bird: Yes, Tyler, thanks for the question. This is Rasvan. So first of all, we ended the prior fiscal year with over 6 100 units in backlog and we laid out on a quarterly basis what our EV sales expectation is. And obviously, we expect a number of orders from round 23 to come and especially feel the second half of the year where we still have open slots. So that's how we manage the next 12 months for sure.
And we continue to sell and push propane, which has the lowest total cost of ownership. So it's the best bus money you can buy out there in terms of financial payback. So between these two actions, we are very confident in our guidance and what we laid out for you in the
: Okay. Thank you guys. Really appreciate the time here. I will turn it back to Nikhil.
Sierra, Moderator: Our next question comes from Craig Irwin with ROTH Capital Partners (WA:CPAP). Your line is now open.
Craig Irwin, Analyst, ROTH Capital Partners: Good evening and thanks for taking my questions. So, Rajlan, in your prepared remarks, you talked briefly about $6,000,000 in one time SG and A and engineering expenses in the quarter, in the September quarter. Can you maybe give us a little bit more detail around what that was? And are these items that are likely to recur in upcoming quarters?
Rasvan Rogilescu, CFO, Blue Bird: That's correct. Thanks for the question. So the $6,000,000 one time is primarily on a year over year basis, the bonus accrual. Given the extraordinary results we had this year, it was a higher amount of crude this quarter compared to the prior year. Some consulting expenses that we booked in Q4, which weren't there a year before.
So that's why I call them one time in the sense that they are not to be repeated in the next coming quarters.
Craig Irwin, Analyst, ROTH Capital Partners: Okay. Excellent. And then a question of clarification. Phil, in your prepared remarks, you said that you do not expect a surge in orders before the end of the calendar year. But when I look at the very granular guidance you give around EVs, you expect a 2.4 to 3.1 fold increase in deliveries in the second half of calendar twenty twenty five.
That's dramatic growth. When do you expect that surge in orders to materialize that will give you visibility on those units being delivered?
Phil Horlock, President and CEO, Blue Bird: I think it's a good question again, Craig. I think we see that towards the end of our Q2, we should see it happening. 2nd quarter for us obviously is through March or so, February, March of 2020. So that's the time period, which will set it up nice for us to deliver later in the year. I just want to stress, I mean, when we were here last month, we talked about this firm deadline, which the EPA had set at the end of November actually.
And what's happened is, I can understand, I think we can all count, I hope we can, that infrastructure is really important and where am I getting my charging stations from, especially if we get this latest rounds, they're looking for a higher volume of In other words, the onesie, twosies we saw in round 1, we're not seeing those in round 2 and 3. They're more about 15 to 20 to 30 vehicles looking for larger orders, which are probably a bit more effort on the infrastructure side. So with our customers, dealers, fleets, requests from the EPA, hey, can we extend this, give us time to figure this out a little more? And the EPA said, sure, we'll let you have that. All we've seen so far is the extension.
And I can't obviously predict at the end of that 45 days whether it will extend again, but that's what they be that's the max that we've seen to any of customers who requested an extension is 45 days.
Craig Irwin, Analyst, ROTH Capital Partners: Understood. So then, in the final days of the Obama administration, there were 3 or 4 waivers issued, to try and extend some of these funding programs forward into the first Trump administration. And I understand EPA is working on more than a half dozen similar waivers right now to provide funding continuity. Is there anything specific you might want to point us to there that you feel is relevant to the visibility that you're calling out for the funding continuity for an obvious Biden flagship program for the last 4 years?
Phil Horlock, President and CEO, Blue Bird: Well, I think I mean, we've mentioned this before, but we go back to being a bipartisan program in 2021. I mean, no from the Republican Party that being supported. So I mean, and I try to summarize today, if I listen to the new administration, what they talk about is, we love U. S. Manufacturing, we love U.
S. Suppliers. Well, we certainly got that and we're certainly in the U. S. We like adding jobs.
We're certainly doing that too because we're growing the business. And we look at health and safety. I heard Trump talk about that quite a bit on his running and safety and health is so important. Well, that's this is nothing better than this for children's health and getting rid of harmful emission fumes. And so I think when you look at it, the EPA is behind all that.
And at the EPA, when we talk to them, they're completely confident. I mean, I say completely they are confident of this being maintained. They believe it's exceptionally a valid product. It's done what the EPA is all about, making sure they protect the environment and they protect their children in particular by these buses every day. I think we're like we're sitting here with some program that's sort of soft left field, it doesn't seem to make sense.
It's why you're supporting some small group. We're supporting 25,000,000 children every day who ride a school bus. And we've had discussions with that with the EPA. We've had discussions with lobbyists about this who also feel confident that this will be supported. I can't predict obviously with complete accuracy, but I certainly think we feel very confident that this money is going to a great cause and should continue to do so.
Craig Irwin, Analyst, ROTH Capital Partners: Well, I like those comments and congratulations again on the record results.
Phil Horlock, President and CEO, Blue Bird: Thanks a lot, Greg. Appreciate it.
Sierra, Moderator: Our next question comes from Chris Pierce with Needham and Company. Your line is now open.
Chris Pierce, Analyst, Needham and Company: Hey, thanks for taking the question. If I look at Slide 26, industry predictions from ACT, it looks like 24 is going to be down year over year versus it was up in prior slides. I know these aren't your estimates, but I just want to get a sense, if Bluebird is delivering mid single digit growth and the industry is down, can you talk about share gains that you might be seeing within the industry? Or I just want to make sure I fully understand sort of what's happening. And is it just share gains in alternative or share gains in diesel?
Like I just want to get a sense of what you guys are seeing versus the industry.
Phil Horlock, President and CEO, Blue Bird: Well, it's another good question here and a good observation. I think what I would say is, first of all, we don't tend to talk about share in this situation. But what we'll talk about is, there is a specific reason why the 24 industry, which represents deliveries to customers is down. And that's because one of our competitors had major production problems in the early part of 2020 4 calendar year. We've prevented them from delivering, we believe, quite a few thousand buses to the customers.
They had some product changes and couldn't out and they chose not to deliver them. And that won't get
Mike Schlosky, Analyst, D.A. Davidson: into who that is or what
Phil Horlock, President and CEO, Blue Bird: the problem was, but we know for a fact that's true. I don't think we so now they're back on board again later in the year, they got the products up and running, they were shipping them. And that's why you see the major boost in 2025, the big growth because that customer now kicks in the volume they neglected to deliver in 2024.
Chris Pierce, Analyst, Needham and Company: Got you. Okay. And then if I look at Slide 20 on your slide deck, that long term, you used to say 2027, now it says 2028, but the numbers haven't changed. I just want to get a sense of is that because of the same dynamic we just discussed where the industry shape of growth is different or is this something different on your end?
Rasvan Rogilescu, CFO, Blue Bird: Yes. Thanks, Chris. I'll take the question. This is Rasvan. So first of all, every year as we look, the long term moves a bit, but we kept 1,012,000 units.
However, we raised the upper end of the $300,000,000 plus $1,015,000 plus. So we did change the bottom line, but we kept the top line. And the reason for that is because as we lay down now the exact plans for our new facility, we are planning to go live with it in the first half of calendar twenty twenty seven, which means we can't benefit yet of that capacity increase in fiscal 2027, including also ramp up of about 6 months. So therefore, the 11,000, 12,000 has to start in 2028 plus. So that's the reason why that shifted by 1 year.
Chris Pierce, Analyst, Needham and Company: Okay. And then lastly, could I just get an update on the CES search, please?
Phil Horlock, President and CEO, Blue Bird: Sorry, sorry. What was that? Sorry, I missed what you said there on what?
Rasvan Rogilescu, CFO, Blue Bird: Phil, I know you're talking about the question. Correct me.
Chris Pierce, Analyst, Needham and Company: Phil, I know you're talking temporarily now. Yes. Can you hear me?
Phil Horlock, President and CEO, Blue Bird: I never left, but I'm still here. But yes, I
Mike Schlosky, Analyst, D.A. Davidson: mean yes. But
Phil Horlock, President and CEO, Blue Bird: look, yes, I mean obviously, I was planning on retiring at the end of September and that didn't work out. And I can tell you the Board has undertaken a search and there's a 3 person committee on the Board looking at this in some detail and going through it. And I can assure you that when we do when someone is selected, we'll ensure a great transition to make this work seamlessly.
Chris Pierce, Analyst, Needham and Company: Okay. Thanks for your time.
Phil Horlock, President and CEO, Blue Bird: Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Chris.
Sierra, Moderator: Thank you all for your questions. There are currently no questions in queue. So I'll pass the conference to Phil Horlock for any closing remarks.
Phil Horlock, President and CEO, Blue Bird: Well, thank you, Sierra. Thanks for all of you for joining us on the call today. As you heard, today, following our record fiscal 2024 results, which were I just mentioned again, at more than double last year's then record profitability. We've increased our fiscal 2025 guidance for EBITDA to $200,000,000 a midpoint of range, which is a $17,000,000 increase over fiscal 2024. And we are confident in achieving more than a 15% profit margin longer term.
I think Rasband used the term today on his call, we're not just a one trick pony. We love the interest in EVs. It's terrific. We like the product, and we grew from a 6% mix in 2023 to 8% in 2024, and we're looking to grow the 12% or so in 2025. So again, significant growth we've seen there.
But hey, we make a lot of products. We still make propane, we make gasoline, we make diesel, and we make good margin, a very good margin, all three of those. So we have the most expansive range of powertrain off of the industry, as you all know. So bottom line, I would say that Blue Bird has never been stronger and we've got great momentum. So we appreciate your continued interest in Blue Bird and look forward to updating you again on our progress next quarter.
And should you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact our Head of Investor Relations, Mark Benfield. Thanks again from all of us here at Blue Bird and have a great evening.
Sierra, Moderator: That will conclude today's conference call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect your line.
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