South Africans love their bakkies. Whether it’s a Hilux with the unmistakable anatomy of a blue bull dangling from the tow bar in the parking outside Loftus, or a Ranger Raptor making a delightful noise on dirt roads in the Western Cape, bakkies are as South African as biltong and the Springboks.
Except, they aren’t. The term “bakkie” might not have travelled beyond our borders, but the concept isn’t unique to our country. In the US, they have trucks — and they are bigger, badder and even higher off the ground than the most 4x4 accessorised versions trundling around Gauteng. Everything is taken to the extreme in ’Murica, including their spending power.
Enter Worksport, a company that has Make America Great Again dripping all over it as it produces tonneau covers for the load bays of these vehicles. There’s an entire page on the website about the importance to the company of US-based engineering and manufacturing. Then, at the bottom, there’s a link to “invest in the future of renewable energy” by becoming a shareholder in the company. But where did that suddenly come from?
This is more than just an accessories business. Worksport’s technology turns trucks (reminder: bakkies) into mobile solar energy generators. The company also offers an energy storage system, so the vehicle becomes a mobile power point that can power enough fridges to make sure everyone at the rugby gets an ice-cold brandy and Coke. Or, more accurately, to power a camping trip upon arrival or tools at the building site.
Known as SOLIS, the product is a solar-charging load bay cover, while the COR product is a portable inverter and battery system. There was a time during load-shedding when these products were flying off the shelves in South Africa. The use case may be different in Worksport’s core markets, but there’s no denying the cool factor of charging your camping power solution with a solar cover on your vehicle while driving! And, yes, if you’re thinking of the Ecoflow brand, you’ve nailed it in terms of identifying Worksport’s biggest competitor in this space.
Listed on the Nasdaq and with well over 100 patents, Worksport is the most interesting “this could’ve been a South-African company” that you’ve never heard of. But does it make money?
The top line certainly has a strong story to tell, with the fourth-quarter 2024 results taking full-year revenue to $8.5m vs guidance of $6-$8m. And here’s the really interesting bit: those numbers don’t include the SOLIS and COR products. They are only being released into the market in 2025, so 2024 numbers were based on the more traditional product lines. Naturally, this doesn’t stop the investor relations strategy from focusing on the future clean energy potential of the business. After all, “renewable energy” is a much sexier story to tell than “vehicle accessories” — and in the US, the story makes a big difference to the market cap.
Still, Worksport is tiny by US standards and would only be a small cap even on the JSE. With a value of just $30m and a share price drop of 33% in the past 12 months, the US market doesn’t seem to be lapping up the story. Worksport is far below the radar at the moment and has burnt through a lot of capital in the past few years to expand its manufacturing capacity.
It probably also doesn’t help that for some reason Worksport has muddied the water by adopting bitcoin and XRP for its corporate treasury strategy. It at least has the good sense to cap this to 10% of excess operational cash, but why create more question marks around a story that is already struggling to get the market excited?
Worksport is far below the radar at the moment and has burnt through a lot of capital in the past few years
But for those who enjoy founder-led growth stories, there just might be something here. CEO Steven Rossi said in a recent interview that he’s never worked for anyone in his adult life, having been an entrepreneur since he finished school. He took the company public in 2014 and it was another five years until the idea of a solar tonneau cover started to blossom. They raised capital on the market in 2021 to execute on the plan, which included a shift of the listing to the Nasdaq as the right market for this sort of company. Credit to them: they certainly know how to time a capital raise.
The past few years have been focused on building out manufacturing capacity and a proudly American supply chain. The idea is simple: take the profits from the tonneau cover business and invest them in the solar covers. Oh, and research & development in heat pumps for that matter, with the company recently announcing that there will be a global reveal of the latest developments at subsidiary Terravis Energy in February.
But here’s the catch: cash and cash equivalents fell from nearly $30m at the end of 2021 to just $1.9m by the end of September 2024. The growth trajectory is through the roof, with sales of $1m in all of 2023 to more than $1m a month by the end of 2024. Growth requires capital and the markets aren’t always in the mood to provide that capital, so Worksport is now at a critical point in the journey where it simply has to deliver on promises to survive.
Thankfully, investors won’t have to wait much longer to see whether Worksport will make it. This year is a huge one for the company, featuring the all-important launch of the solar product as well as the aim of being cash flow positive. Due to Nasdaq rules, the pressure is also on to get the share price above $1 (it’s at $0.91 at the time of writing), otherwise it may need a share consolidation or even a shift to a different exchange.
What could get the company there? Well, aside from the solar project and whatever the heat pump innovation turns out to be, the basic business of selling tonneau covers could do it. The CEO recognises that you have to start small with route-to-market, building out a wide base of dealers rather than betting your entire business on whether Home Depot or Dick’s Sporting Goods is willing to stock your product and give you decent trade terms. The company has built strong relationships with a wide dealer network in the automotive retail sector in the US. It also has a powerful online strategy that was the major source of sales growth in 2024 while the dealer connections were built.
Worksport is so early in its journey that retail shareholders ask questions on the earnings call, not just professional analysts. Institutional coverage is almost nonexistent. There’s plenty of risk and uncertainty, which also means this could be a 10-bagger (or more) if everything goes to plan.
Local investors can only dream of having small caps such as these on the JSE. Instead of talking about raising capital and launching products, many of our local options are either suspended from listing due to lack of compliance, or delisting by choice. There are exceptions, of course, but nowhere near enough. Looking abroad to Worksport shows what is possible and how capital markets can power innovation. Hopefully, 2025 will be the year that Worksport puts all the doubts to bed.
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