2019 plus 2020 US FTA funding = $878M USD in short timeThe
2019 US FTA funds totaling $423 million was
awarded on November 25th to the
individual state projects. The money is now funneling through to bus makers like Grande West. This is just the beginning. I think we’ll see a lot more news releases regarding which particular states are buying mid size buses from Grande West via Alliance Bus Group (and mostly likely routed through RATP Dev USA, the bus operator that was involved with the Mississippi orders) and that will bring even more excitement to the stock.
Remember we only had about 3 small states before, now we are going to see that there are many more states who will buy Grande West buses due to the $40 million order from the large bus operator that was just announced. I think this bus operator is RATP Dev USA and they do a lot of public transit and university transit buses in the US. They also do all sorts of other transit related projects
in every part of the world.
In addition to the above exciting news, the US FTA funds for
2020 Notice of Funding Opportunity was just announced and should be in the area of about
$455 million. I wasn’t expecting a another $455 million to be announced so early in the year. The closing date for project submissions for this $455 million is March 30th, 2020. Hopefully they will award that money much quicker than the 2019 funding. That’s like 2 years of funding squeezed into a 6 to 8 month window. A total of $878 million US dollars is nothing to sneeze at. I bet Grande West tries to grab as much as possible of that money between now and end of summer.
The $878 million USD is just the federal portion of the transit bus funding. There are also local dollars that are not included in that number. In addition to federal and local government funds, there are also major dollars being spent on mid sizes buses by universities with large student populations that need to be transported around large campuses all day long.
Grande West’s timing for pushing out the first Buy America buses off the Spartan assembly line is just perfect … it couldn’t get any better with regard to the massive amount of funding that is becoming available in such a short period of time.
In 2018 the small urban and rural areas of the US got around 44% of the US federal funding. Those are the areas where Grande West is most needed and competition is virtually non-existent for the mid size buses.
Remember how Grande West captured 90% market share in Canada in their market segment within a few short years. This $40 million dollar orders is screaming loud and clear, they are well positioned to conquer the US market in the same way.
Also, during the conference call management said customers were just waiting for the first batch of Buy America compliant buses to be shipped to customers and then the big US government orders would flow. They also said the Mississippi orders would ship end of 2019, beginning of 2020 per schedule. Well they didn’t exaggerate. It looks like they delivered on what they promised, hence the $40 million order.
Those leased buses in Mississippi really paid off. You do whatever you have to do to land your first $40 million dollar public transit / university type order in the US where the market is so large.
Ignore the short term trading nonsense on this thread and keep your eye on the ball. Hold for the big gains!
Short term traders don't post real research. They post distortions and hype. BE CAREFUL!