Happy New Year! It’s that time again! Here’s the financial update for the period ending on Dec 31, 2024.
Summary:
Lots has happened in the last three months! The largest two things that are material to our finances are that we (a) started collecting membership dues, and (b) paid off the majority of our legal bills from the bankruptcy. Our cash position is extremely strong right now, however it will change drastically as we enter 2025 and incur significant expenses for IP licensing, T-Mobile connectivity, and cloud operations.
Overall, thanks to the generosity of all of you, we’ve taken the FOA from nothing and made it through our first big hurdle (which was navigating the bankruptcy). Now we are moving into the next phase, which is assuring both continuing connectivity / operations of the cloud, as well as a robust supply of parts, and access to service for as many owners as possible.
Narrative:
From the time the FOA started in May/June 2024, until the close of business on 31 December 2024, we have collected approximately $1.9M in donations, dues, and fees. Of that, approximately $350k was voluntary one-time donations (thanks to all who donated!) and approximately $1.55M was either annual or quarterly membership dues. Fees associated with these transactions (credit card, foreign exchange, and membership processing) were approximately $98k. Now that we have demonstrated sufficient payment volume, we are working with Stripe (our payment processor) to lower the rates charged and hope to bring these processing fees down significantly in the future. We are also looking at ACH and other mechanisms to capture dues which may help lower costs. Because of our large amount of cash on hand, we are actively working to initiate more effective cash management so that we can earn some interest on the funds we are holding.
On the expense side, our largest expense continues to be legal fees – they accounted for approximately $360k of spend in 2024. Second on the list were IT expenses of approximately $5,500, followed by insurance at about $1100.
We expect our expenses to significantly change in 2025 as we ramp up our effort to support the Oceans in the field with connectivity and cloud services and we forecast our legal fees to continue to decline. We are working on putting together our 2025 budget, but still have to nail down some final details with respect to IP licensing, T-Mobile (4G), and cloud connectivity for FOA members. When we finalize the budget, I will distribute it so that you all can follow along as we go. We expect our budget in 2025 to be very tight – it may look like we have a lot of cash in the bank (we do), but we are also going to have significant expenses also – operating the cloud that Fisker built is not inexpensive. We plan to be ruthless in driving the costs down over time though and think we can be successful in this effort.
Regarding connectivity: The board has made the decision to handle connectivity/cloud in the same manner as we handled parts with Tsunami Automotive (www.tsunamiautomotive.com
essentially to create a separate business entity to be responsible for Cloud and cellular connectivity for the cars. This new entity is called Undercurrent Incorporated. Undercurrent will license the software IP for the cars, contribute to the operation of the cloud, and focus on the “software” side of the Oceans – much like Tsunami focuses on parts and “hardware.” Undercurrent, like Tsunami, is wholly owned by the FOA. Undercurrent will use any excess proceeds from operations to deliver updates to the Ocean software over time.
Lastly, I want to extend HUGE thanks to Derek McCallum and Gary Blackmore who are a CPA and UK Chartered Accountant respectively and have graciously volunteered their time to help with bookkeeping and general accounting / financial advice. It’s great to see how many awesomely skilled (and generous) people we have in the FOA community!
As usual, if you have any questions regarding this report - please reach out either via this forum or send me an email at brian@fiskeroa.com. On a personal note, I’ve decided to resign my position as Treasurer early (my term was originally scheduled to end towards the end of this year). This means that the treasurer position will be up for election for a “short” term in this election cycle. I look forward to working with the new Treasurer to help them transition and onboard!
Oh, for my usual final disclaimer: These interim financial statements, as well as my statements above, are unaudited, may be incomplete, may not reflect costs incurred but not recorded, and may be subject to change based on the advice of accountants or other professionals.
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alles ist sehr freundlich und nett, über viele Dinge wird gesprochen, aber ich sehe keine konkreten Pläne für die Zukunft und was mich persönlich noch interessiert sind zwei Fragen, die ich sehr wichtig finde:
Wann wird Fast und Version 2.2 in Europa sein?
