Workhorse Group did not win the bid, but it’s not taking the news the sitting down.  -  Photo by Chris Brown.

Workhorse Group did not win the bid, but it’s not taking the news the sitting down.

Photo by Chris Brown. 

On Feb. 23, the United States Postal Service awarded its long-awaited contract under its Next Generation Delivery Vehicle (NGDV) program to Oshkosh Defense to replace aging postal vehicles. Workhorse shares fell over 50% in the days following the contract announcement.

Workhorse Group did not win the bid, but it’s not taking the news the sitting down.

Workhorse met with USPS representatives on March 3 to discuss the situation. While the details of that meeting “cannot be disclosed at this time,” Workhorse said in a statement that it “intends to share that information through appropriate communications channels to the extent that the Company is permitted to do so.

“Yesterday’s meeting with the USPS marked the first step in what we expect may be a prolonged process to explore our options and possibly pursue further action related to our NGDV bid,” said Workhorse CEO Duane Hughes in the statement. “We will continue to follow the proper due course procedures as defined by the USPS and will also look to other options available to us.

Hughes said that Workhorse has retained the services of legal and corporate advisory firms Akin Gump Straus Hauer & Feld LLP and Mound Cotton Wollan & Greengrass LLP to identify our options and pursue them effectively.

The bid announcement did not end the intrigue, however. In a congressional hearing on Feb. 24, U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said that battery-electric mail trucks will only make up 10% of this new fleet. Oshkosh does have an electric version to deploy in the NGDV program, but it’s unclear how USPS vetted Oshkosh’s electric model.

In Workhorse’s quarterly earnings conference call on March 1, an analyst asked Hughes about this specifically. While Workhorse’s electric offering did go through testing with USPS, “We are not aware of any other vehicle that … were of the finalists that went through the durability testing process,” Hughes said.

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