Greetings, and welcome to Ideanomics' Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Tony Sklar, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please proceed, sir. Thank you very much, operator, and welcome everybody to the Ideanomics Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call. Joining me today, I am pleased to have Mr. Alf Poor, Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Stephen Johnston, Chief Financial Officer, and Mr. Robin Mackie, President of Ideanomics Mobility. A webcast of today's call will be archived and available in the Events and Presentations section of our corporate website for a minimum of 30 days. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. During the call, we will make forward-looking statements such as dialogue regarding our revenue expectations or forecasts for the remaining quarter and full fiscal year 2022 and 2023. These statements are based on our current expectations and information available as of today and are subject to a variety of risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. Actual results may differ materially as a result of various risk factors that have been described in our periodic filings with the SEC. As a result, we caution you against placing undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. We assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statement as a result of new information or future events, except as required by law. In addition, other risks are more fully described in the Ideanomics public filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which can be viewed at www.sec.gov. Today, November ninth, 2022, the company filed with the SEC its Form 10-Q for Q3 2022 and afterwards issued a press release announcing those financial results. Participants of this call who may not have already done so, who may wish to look at those documents as we provide a summary of those results on this call. The format for today's call will be as follows. Mr. Alf Poor will begin our comments today and speak to the company's progress and strategic developments. Mr. Stephen Johnston will speak to the company's operating and financial results for the third quarter 2022. Mr. Robin Mackie, President of Ideanomics Mobility, will speak to the company's operational activities in mobility and the progress made since our last earnings call. Finally, Mr. Alf Poor will make management's closing remarks, which will be followed by our Q&A. I now hand the floor over to Mr. Alf Poor, Ideanomics' CEO. Thank you, Tony, and thank you to everyone joining our Q3 earnings call today. On today's call, we will be introducing our new Chief Financial Officer, Stephen Johnston. Stephen brings more than 30 years of experience in the automotive industry to Ideanomics. The commercial EV sector is facing challenges as a result of difficult economic conditions and the slow pace of adoption due to a lack of incentive programs at federal and state government level. The Inflation Reduction Act has started to provide some of the programs fleet operators are looking for, but certainly, there is more work to be done at the government level in order to support the transition to zero-emission transportation. Despite these challenges, we have made progress in each of our businesses, as Robin will speak to. We have made this progress despite implementing cost-saving measures across the organization. Ideanomics continues to support our customers' electrification goals through our mobility and energy verticals. U.S. Hybrid is a prime example. We expect that business to be profitable in 2023. Energica and Solectrac are making and selling more products. Year to date, Energica has sold 78% more motorcycles compared to the same period last year, and Solectrac sold more tractors in Q3 than they did in all of 2021. I also want to share a quick story about WAVE. Just one day after Hurricane Ian hit Florida, our WAVE wireless charging system in St. Petersburg was back up and running for the local transit authority. This is a testament to the quality of engineering, which has resulted in reliability and durability of our wireless charging systems in extreme weather conditions. I want to highlight that Ideanomics EV revenues are growing through sales in key European and U.S. markets. In previous quarters, our non-core fintech businesses and our China EV sales business made up the bulk of our revenues. The switch has now taken place. By transitioning away from non-core businesses and markets, we can place our focus on the areas where we anticipate the more meaningful market opportunity. I'd also like to provide an update on VIA. The Ideanomics and VIA teams are working closely on progressing the acquisition. We believe VIA can be a force multiplier for Ideanomics and vice versa. Together, we offer a better product that meets customers' needs today and tomorrow. Ideanomics Energy and Ideanomics Capital will accelerate VIA sales with our as a service subscription model and offer customers turnkey charging solutions to support the mass deployment of VIA vehicles. The WAVE and VIA teams are collaborating on the integration of WAVE's induction charging system onto the VIA platform, and that would represent an industry first as a fully integrated solution in commercial EV. This is what our customers in the last mile delivery and logistics markets require, a simple, integrated, and affordable way to electrify. Before I pass you over to Stephen, I would like to address our share price. Everyone at Ideanomics is committed to supporting the value of our company and our stock. To do this, we are focusing on the fundamentals of cost savings and execution in conjunction with pursuing strategic financing from alternatives to dilutive equity-based finance. These funding initiatives are currently ongoing. To sustain our vision, we are focused on building momentum around our successes. Put simply, this means winning more customer contracts and generating higher margin revenues, which will help demonstrate the path to profitability our investors expect. I will now hand you over to Stephen Johnston, who will take you through our financial results for the quarter. Thank you, Alf, and thank you to everyone joining this call. Since I joined Alf, Robin, and the team at Ideanomics, I'd emphasized a focus on disciplined capital investment that will underpin our financing activities. The entire EV industry continues to face headwinds. We see this reflected in market sentiment and share prices across the EV market. Every company in our sector has been affected in a significant way, without exception. My goal is to ensure that Ideanomics can navigate these headwinds. I'm focused on ensuring consistent, on-time delivery of our financial filings, driving gross margin expansion, and managing our cost structure, all of which will enable us to navigate the current economic environment. I'll talk more about this, but first, I'd like to present you with Ideanomics' Q3 results. Revenue for the quarter was $24.3 million, 9% lower than the same time last year. This was primarily due to a decrease in revenue from Timios, our title and escrow services business, and a decrease in revenue from our China-based EV resale business, which offset growth in our expanding EV businesses in U.S. and Europe. This dip at Timios and in EV resale is primarily caused by temporary cyclical macroeconomic factors. What I'd like to highlight is our work towards generation of higher margin revenue from EV-related Ideanomics manufactured products and services in our core markets in the U.S. and Europe. In Q3, we generated $16.2 million in revenue from EV charging and battery products and services, an increase of more than 50% year-over-year. $8.8 million of that EV charging and battery revenue came from the U.S. and Europe, 4x higher than the same time last year. EV revenues from manufactured products are where our focus remains going forward. Gross profit was a loss of $0.7 million, representing a gross margin of -2.7%. This is down compared to the last quarter, and the decrease was primarily due to higher levels of fixed cost in our organization, which we have since begun to address and offset through cost reduction measures. As of quarter end, Ideanomics has cash of $25.2 million. Over the past nine months, we used more cash for operations compared to the same time last year, as the macroeconomic conditions have temporarily slowed growth for our acquired businesses who have customers with incentive dependencies. Cash used in investing activities over the last nine months was $90.8 million, which was primarily due to expenditures incurred for the acquisition of Energica. In response to market headwinds, Ideanomics is implementing a more focused capital investment process. This includes an emphasis on smart spending, prioritizing investments that will deliver risk-balanced returns. We are also continuing our journey to create a leaner, more focused company 100% committed to becoming a world-class provider of commercial EVs, charging products and related services. Robin will speak more about this in just a moment. Looking ahead, Ideanomics will continue to raise capital. We are exploring attractive capitalization opportunities from diverse sources. We anticipate bringing in additional capital to the business before the end of this year, with an emphasis on non-dilutive financing, as Alf mentioned earlier. This includes the potential to secure direct funding to support our growth businesses, such as Solectrac and Energica. The right capital partners with industry experience will enable these businesses to scale faster, as well as minimize the costs Ideanomics must carry by itself. As an example, we have agreements with two separate companies to finance dealer expansions for Energica and Solectrac. This is a validation of our brands and products. Back to you, Tony, for more remarks. Thank you very much, Stephen, and it is really great to have you on our team, and our shareholders appreciate on-time filings. I'd like to now take the time to introduce Robin Mackie, our President of Ideanomics Mobility, who will discuss mobility and energy verticals in more detail. Thank you. Robin? Thank you, Tony. As a reminder for everybody in the call, my focus continues to be on execution and performance improvement across the business. Building on Alf and Stephen's comments, we've initiated a number of cost saving measures across the organization, with business reviews completed at both corporate and operational levels. These initiatives have enabled us to cut our operating costs while retaining key talent and maintaining a focus on value-added projects with the highest returns. Additionally, we are still experiencing some supply chain constraints and are actively working with our partners to stabilize the supply and improve the predictability of our production throughput. As Stephen mentioned earlier, Ideanomics generated $16.2 million in revenue last quarter from the sale of EVs and charging infrastructure. I would like to briefly touch on some examples of how our focus on execution has enabled this. Firstly, our targeted investments in growing production and distribution capabilities, of which the clearest examples will be with Energica and Solectrac. Energica has doubled its production, launched Energica Inside, a business unit, introduced new models with a wider market appeal, and secured its first fleet orders. Underpinning this success is a simple fact: Energica makes the world's best electric motorcycle. For example, we delivered the first 88 Energica SS9 bikes to the Indonesian police force with our partner, UTOMOCORP. We will follow up with orders anticipated this quarter in excess of 200 units. This is an exciting new market segment for us. With recently expanded manufacturing capabilities and a growing global distribution network, Energica is ready to supply police bikes and other municipal fleets across the globe. Last quarter at Solectrac, we saw the assembly and sale of the first 44 e25 tractors from the Nolan Manufacturing joint venture in North Carolina. On top of this, we recently completed a new high-level assembly line at the company's Windsor facility in Northern California. Solectrac can now produce up to 120 tractors per month on a single shift, and with multiple shifts, achieve a stretched goal of up to 360 tractors per month. Solectrac continues to expand its dealer network. With each dealer, we typically see initial orders of up to 6 tractors for stock, generating immediate revenue. This dealer expansion will enable us to engage with larger opportunities in the fleet and municipal markets, as reflected in our recent deal to supply multiple tractors to a California university. U.S. Hybrid under Macy Neshati's leadership is continuing to expand its strategic partnership with Global Environmental Products. This resulted in an order to provide EV driveline systems direct to GEP's production facility for an additional 62 zero emission sweepers. The first kits for this order have already been built and shipped. Additionally, U.S. Hybrid completed in partnership with a major automotive group, a retrofit of a top handler, a type of vehicle used to lift and move containers at ports and warehouses, converting it from diesel to hydrogen fuel cell hybrid power. U.S. Hybrid expects to receive additional orders to retrofit port vehicles and equipment for this emerging market segment. Next, I will talk about our energy vertical and WAVE. In quarter three, Ideanomics Energy continued to grow its pipeline of opportunities, including additional opportunities unlocked by the direct funding provided under the Inflation Reduction Act. These include opportunities in the sports and hospitality markets. Additionally, we recently released an update to WareSmart, a free tool designed to help warehouse operators in Southern California become compliant with emissions reduction regulations. In just a few days, we saw an increased sign-up rate and began conversations with several high-quality leads. As a reminder, not every opportunity will translate into a contract, but these are strong, positive leading indicators showing that we are offering our customers exactly what they're looking for. At WAVE, we've begun producing wireless chargers for phase II of our collaboration with Antelope Valley Transit Authority, located in northern Los Angeles. We are on track to deliver WAVE wireless charging pads and vehicle receivers to Josephine Community Transit in Oregon in the first half of 2023. We're progressing the previously mentioned project with a large logistics and delivery customer, which is expected to be completed the first half of 2023. PEA, our containerized DC fast charging investment with Prettl Group, is in the final stages of testing, with the first systems expect to be delivered in the U.S. in quarter one of 2023. Tony, back to you. Thank you, Robin. Now finally, we have Alf Poor to give management's closing remarks. Alf, it's yours. Thank you, Tony. Before we open the floor to questions, I'd like to reiterate Ideanomics' core value proposition. It's very simple. We make electrification fast, simple, and more affordable for the commercial EV fleet operator. We do this by combining EVs, charging, and financing under one roof. On top of that, we partner with customers on front-end planning to ensure optimal EV and charging infrastructure deployment. Customers want this. They're looking for a trusted partner who can help them transition from combustion engine vehicles to zero emission. The warehouse tool Robin mentioned is a great example of our customer value proposition in action. We created a tool specifically designed to make life easier for warehouse operators in Southern California, the first in the country to be hit with fines for allowing gasoline and diesel vehicles into their facilities. By making it simple and straightforward to understand and mitigate the fines, we've opened up some very promising doors for the Ideanomics group. I believe that our as-a-service financing model sets us apart. Subscription models make it possible for customers to transition to zero-emission vehicles faster by eliminating the barrier of high upfront costs. This idea is not new, but Ideanomics is one of the first companies to offer it for EVs and charging. I believe this is the future of fleet electrification, and we are ready with these types of financing programs. To close, as I mentioned in my last call, I want to remind you all that Ideanomics will continue to raise money. Looking ahead, we'll use this capital to thoughtfully scale our businesses, including Via Motors, where we are well-positioned to win an increasing market share in the high-value, last mile and local delivery space. This is one example of where we can focus our efforts as a first mover to generate meaningful revenues and in turn, shareholder value. Thank you again to everyone for joining our call. I'll hand you back to Tony. Thank you very much, Alf. We're now gonna start the company's Q&A. I'm gonna ask the operator to give the instructions for folks. Thank you. We will now conduct a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment while we poll for our first question. Hi. Our first- Operator. I think that we'll take one of the questions. We're gonna want people to get their hands up for sure within the telephone queue. We did have some questions that came in on the SaaS platform and the top two questions that were voted on. I'm gonna ask those ones first, and then we'll move into the telephone queue. Alf, this is gonna be for you. The top two questions on the platform that was voted on for shareholders. They wanna know a little bit more about the VIA deal, when that's gonna finalize, and if you could speak to a reverse split, which seems to be a top-voted one there. Okay. Yeah. The VIA team is working with the Ideanomics team on a daily basis to get that deal finalized. We're looking at some creative ways to get the deal over the line right now. You know, we'll give you some updates in the very near future, but both parties remain motivated to get the deal finalized as quickly as possible. We continue our joint marketing efforts together, and Ideanomics has continued to extend funding throughout Q3 and early Q4 to VIA as well. Watch this space is the best I can give you at this time on the VIA deal, but we are looking to finalize in the very near future. In terms of a reverse stock split, we don't believe that is a viable option for Ideanomics at this time. It's certainly, as I've previously mentioned, never been even presented to our board as an option at this point. We are in contact with the Nasdaq. We will ask them and expect to be granted a 180-day extension. The reason we're not considering a reverse stock split at this time is, A, it's typically a negative indicator to the market, so you'll see the stock kinda settle down below its split value after the transaction. B, the commercial EV sector has been beaten up pretty badly. We actually started that downturn in the market in February of 2021. Ideanomics and about a dozen or so other peers, and we've all been trading in a tightly correlated pattern since. I think the recent market pressure of the stock market coming down in general has kind of piled on to the commercial EV sector, so we've taken kind of a double hit. As part of that, we expect to be one of the first sectors to emerge when the economy does recover. For those reasons, we're not, you know, looking to hit the panic button and do a reverse split. I don't think it works for our investors. I don't think it works for Ideanomics. We have a very liquid stock. Reverse splits can dilute your liquidity significantly. I think, you know, one of the most attractive propositions of Ideanomics is its liquidity and, you know, we'd be loathed to let that go. Reverse split, hear a lot of noise on it. Tony and the team reported on social media or other platforms as they gather information and bring it to the management team, but not currently something on our agenda to take a look at. We do believe that we'll make the you know we'll be back in compliance with our minimum $1 listing bid and above as soon as the market correction takes place. Great. Thank you so much, Alf. Now we're gonna go to the phone lines. Operator, I believe that Andres Sheppard from Cantor Fitzgerald is up next. Yes. Andres Sheppard, please proceed. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking our question and welcome, Stephen. Looking forward to speaking and working with you going forward. Maybe a question for Alf and/or Robin. Can you just remind us what are the most important milestones and catalysts that we should be aware of as we head into 2023? Thank you. Robin, you wanna take that to start with or you want me to? I'm very happy. Hi, Andres. For me, the focus primarily is on the growth organizations at the moment, and we're seeing quarter-over-quarter improvement on the throughput of those businesses. Specifically, I'm talking about Energica and Solectrac, who are gaining more and more market traction every quarter. That is one area that I think is a strong indicator for the future. Also, the transition that has been made at U.S. Hybrid as we move forward to cash flow break-even and into profitability through the last quarter of this year. We've seen a transition in their approach to market from pure engineering and non-recurring engineering type projects into the provision of kits and volume to support other OEMs who are moving into the market. WAVE, I think, will see some traction through quarter one, quarter two. They have transitioned from being heavily predicated on government funding in terms of proof of concept, to working closely under the IRA with a number of key customers looking to adopt the technology. A transition from government-funded to more commercial projects, albeit still proof of concept during 2023. Thanks, Robin. That's very helpful. Maybe as a follow-up, as it pertains to WAVE specifically, can you just give us an update on how you intend to apply for the projects that qualify under the NEVI federal funding? Any color there that you can give us? You know, I know the projects are still being developed, but my understanding is that you do intend to apply for some of those to qualify for the federal funding. Anything you can share there, perhaps? Thanks. Yeah. I think the difference in the pivot from what traditionally the approach has been by an organization like WAVE for federal dollars is now that we're supporting our customers to apply for those federal dollars in very much more commercial applications. Previously, we've used the Department of Energy and others to help us develop the technology. Now we're using and working with the customers to apply the technology. I think that's the subtle difference, Andres, in the approach and where we sit at this time. Got it. Thank you. Maybe a question for Stephen, if I may. You've mentioned on the call that you are exploring capital raising opportunities. I'm wondering if you can perhaps expand a bit further on this. You know, what kind of opportunities are you considering, you know, in terms of maybe equity versus fixed income? And what sort of timing are you thinking about? Thank you. Yeah, thanks. I'll field this one and Stephen, feel free to chime in as well. There's tremendous interest in Ideanomics at this time because we've actually got products on the road and in the ground, so to speak. There's really a few different types of conversations taking place. There's the equity ones. We wanna be lightly touching the equity market as much as we can. We wanna respect our share price, but we may use equity sparingly over the course of the next six months. There's two really interesting ones that are developing. There's the debt market, which is an obvious place for high investor returns. Now, the stock market's in a state of flux, so we have ongoing conversations with debt providers. That's a longer path than an equity transaction. Equity transaction, they look at Ideanomics share price, they look at the volatility, they look at the volume, and a deal is struck in a matter of days, you know, maybe a couple of weeks maximum. When you're dealing with a debt fund, you're talking about three-six months of due diligence, multiple in-person management presentations, inspection of IP registries, you know, the whole kit and caboodle. There's also another, a really interesting dynamic. A number of the private equity funds have stepped forward. Those with, you know, some of them got large ESG impact-focused funds, where they wouldn't normally approach a public company. They're seeing opportunity because of the lack of capital. There's some really interesting conversations. Our chairman's been helping facilitate some of those. Those are really interesting as well. They could probably be some relief to investors. They probably could be the cheapest capital we could access because their structures will be, you know, less like a debt or a mezzanine financing and more like a mix between debt and equity. You know, we've got a good opportunity here. There's a lot of interest in Ideanomics at this time. These deals do take time to land, but we're in some significant conversations, and we expect to conclude them before the end of the year. Wonderful. Thank you, Alf. Maybe one last one for me, if I could. On strategy, going forward, Alf, do you expect to continue to acquire businesses that fit with the overall strategy, or are you kinda content with the current businesses that you have on the mobility side, specifically? Thank you. Yeah. You know, Ideanomics is a dynamic business, as you know, Andres. We're never shy to step into acquisitions. The first phase of the acquisition program that we did was really to capture what we felt was some of the most meaningful technology in the space. As you know, Andres, whether it's WAVE, whether it's Energica, whether it's, you know, Via Motors, they're all differentiated, and they're all strong from a technology perspective, unlike a lot of the products in the market, which is just a body design with somebody else's tech underneath. That was the first phase of what we're doing. If we're gonna do acquisitions in the future, they won't be so tech-heavy. They'll be more focused on revenue generation and force multipliers for generating revenue within the group. If we're gonna access the acquisitions market again and take advantage of that. It would be for revenue-generating companies that can help multiply the revenues across the group. Wonderful. Thank you very much. Congrats again on the quarter, and I'll pass it on. Thanks again. Thank you. Thanks so much. Our next question comes from Elise Rummick with E*TRADE. Please proceed. Hi. I am an investor in your company, and my concern is you're saying all these wonderful things and it's just, I think you've like mastered all this wording. It just everything seems like an incomplete thought. Our next question comes from Garrett Van Wagoner, a private investor. Yeah. The question is about the skateboard architecture. Are they delivering products using that skateboard architecture? Just one-off kind of, people wanna see or would wanna buy one to test it out. When do you expect volume to be available in the Detroit facility? Alf, I can take that if you wish. Yeah, please do, Robin. I'll try and answer the previous questions well afterwards. Okay, no problem at all. The actual skateboard technology at the moment is completed all of its testing and validation for the U.S. market and homologation and is ready to go to scale. We have a number of companies that are interested in utilizing the technology, specifically for their own applications. We recently announced a very large deal with a emerging bus manufacturer, a small shuttle bus manufacturer, who chose the platform over other competitors. As you well know, we've been doing significant testing with some large grocery firms and some logistics companies as well. To answer your second question, we expect to be in the market by quarter one, end of quarter one, 2024, and are currently looking at both facilities and contract manufacturing partners to enable that. I hope that answers your question. Yeah, I was just asking, have you delivered any vehicles at all? Just a couple. No. To various people that wanna try it out. No. We have delivered what I would call validation prototypes, which is a normal process within the automotive industry. Our next phase is building what we call alpha. Those alpha vehicles will actually be put into the hands of end users who've expressed an interest, and we expect that to be completed by the end of quarter one, 2023. Great. Thank you so much. Oh, I'll be happy. Go ahead, Alf. I'll be happy to pick up on the other lady's call either dropped or got cut off or something. She said she was from E*TRADE, but it sounds like she was a retail investor. We get a lot of these types of retail investor interactions. I think one of the things that's really important to understand here, and I said this in some recent investor presentations I gave at some conferences, the commercial EV sector is only just starting to mature. Companies like Ideanomics have revenues. Most of our peers within the industry, commercial EV industry, do not. Okay? Ideanomics is at the forefront of this. We have a technology forward approach, which is paying dividends at this time to us. The industry is immature, okay? Which is why you see our subsidiaries like Energica and Solectrac racing ahead. They're racing ahead why? Because they're sold through dealer distributors, so it's more like a consumer purchase. Right? The large fleet operators have been holding out, waiting, and I've said this many times, holding out waiting for the government rebates and incentives that will help them pay for this legislative, it is legislative transition into EV and zero emission transportation. Okay? No fleet in the country is going to do anything other than testing and early vehicle deployments without the government stepping in and paying for what is a legislative change. That's what we've been seeing in the commercial EV industry, and you can see that when you look at any of our peers, 'cause most of them book zero revenue. Ideanomics is a little bit different. We've got the charging systems. We've got some of the products that were purchased in a consumer manner. We've obviously got VIA, which doesn't start production, as Robin said, until 2024. The reason it doesn't start production till 2024 is we did not want the upfront expense without the market being ready to buy. Many of the companies that we expect in our sector are struggling right now with $50 million, $100 million a month burns because they're maintaining manufacturing facilities when they don't have any customer orders. Okay. That's the answer to that lady's question is, we've built a world-class company. The market has been slow to mature, but because we've stepped into this with diverse approach, we are actually making revenues, and we're not just purely losing money like many of the other folks in the space. I think that's probably the best way I can answer it at this time. Thank you so much, everybody. That is all the time we have for today. This concludes the Ideanomics Q3 2022 investors' earnings call. We encourage our community to continue to reach out to us, and we can answer any of the questions that you may have individually. You can send your questions to us at ir@ideanomics.com. As you can imagine that mailbox does get a lot of email. We have a tremendous amount of investors. Please don't hesitate to continue to get it to the top. We have the system. We will answer your questions. We'd like to thank our listeners and shareholders, analysts, and others who have taken the time to listen to our earnings call today. We urge you to refer to our latest SEC filings for any information that you need. This call will be available on our website in the investor section, and you can find the link there. To be alerted to news, events, and other information in a timely manner, we recommend you following us on our social media channels. Sign up for our newsletter and explore our website at www.ideanomics.com. Thank you, everyone for participating in the call today. Thank you. You may disconnect your lines at this time and have a great day.
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