Good afternoon. Welcome to Amprius Technologies' Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2023 Earnings Conference Call. Joining us for today's presentation are the company's CEO, Dr. Kang Sun; and CFO, Sandra Wallach. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Following management's remarks, we will open the call for questions. Please note that this presentation contains forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, statements regarding future product commercialization, new customer adoption, the timing and ability of Amprius to build its large scale manufacturing facility, expand its manufacturing capacity, scale of business and achieve a sustainable cost structure and Amprius' financial and business performance. These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other important factors that may cause Amprius' results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied in such forward-looking statements. For a more complete discussion of these risks and uncertainties, please refer to Amprius' filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Finally, I would like to remind everyone that this conference call is being webcast and a recording will be made available for replay on the company's Investor Relations website at ir.amprius.com. In addition to the webcast, the company has posted a shareholder letter that accompanies these results, which can also be found on the Investor Relations website. I will now turn the call over to Amprius Technologies CEO, Dr. Kang Sun, for his comments. Sir, please proceed.

Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us this afternoon. On today's call, I will report our progress and accomplishments for the fourth quarter, while also highlighting some of the milestones we achieved in 2023. Our CFO, Sandra Wallach, will then discuss our financial results for the period. After that, I will share some closing remarks before opening the call for questions. The fourth quarter was a strong end to a great year for Amprius. Before I give a recap of the year, I would like to briefly introduce Amprius to those who may be new to the company. Amprius develops, manufactures and markets high energy density and high-power density batteries with applications across all segments of electrical mobility, including the aviation and EV industries. As a pioneer of silicon anode technologies, Amprius has spent the last decade developing various silicon anode structures, cell chemistries and manufacturing processes. The company has a strong patent portfolio of over 80 issued patents and pending applications. When it comes to battery performance, Amprius silicon anode batteries command a leading position in the industry. Amprius batteries deliver 450 watt-hours per kilo specific energy density and 1,150 watt-hours per liter volumetric density and have been available commercially since early 2022. In 2023, we developed a 500 watt-hours per kilo, 1,300 watt-hours per liter battery platform, which will be ready for commercial shipments soon. Additionally, Amprius' silicon anode structures and cell chemistries enable us to achieve 10C power capability and balance high energy and high power battery designs. Our silicon anode batteries have extreme fast charge rates of 0% to 80% state of charge in approximately 6 minutes and operate in a wide temperature range of minus 30 degrees Celsius up to 55 degrees Celsius, and have safety design features that enable us to pass the United States military benchmark nail penetration tests. Each of these performance parameters is critically important to electric mobility applications. Not only do our batteries enable certain aircraft and vehicles to function, but in doing so, they also enable our customers to achieve their economic targets as well. Amprius has been in commercial battery production since 2018. So the company has many years of experience manufacturing high energy density and high-power density lithium-ion batteries. It's our belief that there are no other commercial batteries on the market that can perform at these levels today. Between our two battery families, SiMaxx and SiCore, Amprius' high-performance batteries have attracted significant market attention and customer demand. The company's priority today is to build additional manufacturing capacity as quickly as we can to meet the significant customer demand for our products. 2023 was a transformational year for Amprius. We came into the year with three major goals. First, we set out to further advance our silicon anode battery technology to deliver breakthrough performance. Second, we sought new customer wins as we continue to grow our product shipment volume. And third, we strove to expand our production capacity to meet the increasing demand for our batteries. We made significant progress across each of these areas and are confident that our efforts have positioned Amprius to continue executing on its growth strategy in 2024 and beyond. Specifically, we had several noteworthy accomplishments in 2023. Last year turned out to be a banner year for our technology development. Back in March, we unveiled our 500 watt-hours per kilo battery platform, a first for our industry. To the best of our knowledge, once our cells begin shipping to customers this year, Amprius will be the first company to achieve 500 watt-hours per kilo energy density in a commercially available battery. In August, we also unveiled our breakthrough battery cell chemistry and design that enables 400 watt-hours per kilo energy density with simultaneous 10C power capability. The energy and power delivered by this cell make it an ideal solution for electric mobility applications, such as aviation and EVs. For eVTOL, this battery is designed to provide the necessary proportion of power and energy for takeoff, cruising, and landing, while also extending flight range by as much as 50% as modeled based on commercially available alternatives. We completed customer evaluations at the beginning of the year, shipping batteries to select customers in 2023 with expanded commercialization expected in 2024. We hit the ground running in 2024 as well. In January, we launched our all-new cycle product family to go along with our existing Silicon nanowire platform called SiMaxx. While SiMaxx includes our highest performance batteries, the cycle platform serves applications that demand high energy density and longer cycle life, offering up to 400 watt-hours per kilo and as many as 1,200 cycles and full end of discharge. Developed in close collaboration with Brazilian partners, we are able to achieve greater manufacturing capacity in the short term by working with toll manufacturing partners, which we expect will allow us to serve more customers and bring in additional revenue while we extend our U.S. manufacturing capacity. We believe that toll manufacturing capacities can create a bridge until our facility in Colorado comes online. The SiCore product also has additional form factor flexibility, capable of both pouch and cylindrical cell form factors. This allows them to be used in more applications and to be available at scale today. These two product platforms are the accumulation of years of work in the silicon anode space and are just the beginning of our vision here at Amprius to transform electrical mobility. Overall, when it comes to battery performance, we continue to set new bars for ourselves in 2023. We are confident that Amprius batteries can reach unmatched levels of performance, and we look forward to trying to expand our performance lead in 2024. We believe that the highest endorsement of our technology comes from customer orders. Our industry continues to notice the battery performance success that we are having, and as a result, our demand far outstrips our supply. Throughout the year, we had several customer wins; we furthered our partnership with AeroVironment in Q1, started a new technical engagement with a leading high-performance automotive OEM in Q2, and reached a long-term battery supply agreement with Tenergy in Q3. In the fourth quarter, we made significant progress on building out our book of customers, shipping to 41 total customers in the quarter, up from 38 in Q3. While many of them were repeat customers like AeroVironment, Teledyne Clear, Alto Airbus, as well as the U.S. Army and BAE Systems, 16 of them were new customers who came to us from across the electrical mobility sector. For example, we announced a volume purchase order from an eVTOL manufacturer in October and completed high-volume shipments of SiMaxx cells to the Korean Aerospace Research Institute in December. We also successfully secured the SiMaxx purchase order from three premier electric aviation manufacturers for customer 450 watt-hours per kilo cell for battery pack development and qualification. These customer cells were developed in collaboration with Amprius' strategic partners to address their unique HAPS qualification requirements and enable these customers to operate in highly challenging environments with greater energy density and longer cycle life than the previous 400 watt-hours per kilo platform. The new cells are the only known commercially available batteries of their kind that can provide enough power and endurance for HAPS overnight stratospheric flight applications. These orders help strengthen Amprius' position as a premier global battery solution for eVTOL and HAPS applications. Additionally, in the wearables market, we completed our first volume shipments of the Safe Cell for the U.S. Army in December. This shipment is an important milestone for us because it completes our scale-up manufacturing initiative under the U.S. Army Fund Manufacturing Technology program, allowing us to deploy our cells for mission-critical products. To meet market and customer demand, we have made significant progress in building out our manufacturing capacity. First, we completed our new production line in Fremont, California, in December. With this investment, we have increased our manufacturing capacity by approximately 10 times and expect to achieve 2 megawatt-hours of capacity exiting 2024. At our large-scale manufacturing site in Brighton, Colorado, we received the final rezoning permit that allows us to move forward with the site. We have made progress in recent months, ordering long lead time items such as electrical, mechanical, and plumbing systems to ensure that we remain on track with our timeline. We are also continuing the design and pre-construction work that will allow us to be operational in 2025. In addition to our manufacturing capacity development, we have developed two manufacturing partnerships to provide us with large-scale manufacturing capacity for SiCore battery production. Overall, we believe that 2023 was a highly successful year across our major initiatives. As we turn our attention to 2024, it remains critical to our growth strategy that we continue advancing our technology and expanding our production capacity. We are off to a good start. In addition to launching SiCore and making progress on pre-construction activities at the Amprius fab, we announced that we received the AS9100:2016 certification for our Fremont production facility. This crucial certification received from Smithers Quality Assessments, Inc. will help us continue to supply batteries to the burgeoning electrical aviation industry, helping to advance technologies like eVTOL, HAPS and drones. As shown in our recent customer wins and technology advancements, we believe that no other company can commercially offer capabilities that match those of Amprius batteries. Earlier this week, we were named one of Fast Company's 2024 most innovative companies, largely due to our batteries' advanced capabilities. We were also recognized at the recent International Battery Seminar, winning the best-of-show new product award for our SiMaxx 400 watt-hours per kilo cell. This is our second consecutive award in this category at IBS, as we won last year for our 450 watt-hours per kilo, 1,150 watt-hours per liter lithium-ion cell. Overall, these awards further underscore the demand for our innovative solutions. We are working hard to expand our production capacity to meet that demand, and we are confident in the path forward for Amprius. With that, I will now turn the call over to our CFO, Sandra Wallach, to review our financial results for the quarter. Sandra?

Thank you, Kang. I would now like to spend a few minutes covering some key financial updates. As a reminder, our detailed financials can be found in our shareholder letter. We finished the fourth quarter with $3.9 million in revenue, a $3.1 million increase compared to $0.8 million in the same quarter last year, and up $1.1 million sequentially. There were three drivers of this net increase in Q4 versus Q4 of 2022. First, our product revenue increased by $0.3 million from the prior year period to $0.9 million, largely driven by shipments to 41 customers in the quarter, a second consecutive quarterly record for Amprius. Although our product revenue remains largely driven by customer purchase orders that can arrive at uneven times throughout the year, we have shown consistent new customer growth and diversification in recent quarters. Of these customers, only two represented greater than 10% of revenue, a testament to our diverse customer set. Second, our development services revenue increased by $3 million, a reflection of the successful completion of the U.S. Army Manufacturing Technology Program delivery that Kang mentioned earlier. Development services are non-recurring in nature due to disparate programs. Third, these two increases were partially offset by a $0.2 million reduction in government grant revenue period-over-period due to the completion of the DOE program in Q3 2023. Pivoting to our full-year results, we closed 2023 with $9.1 million in revenue. This represents a growth rate of over 100% from 2022. Moving to our profitability metrics, our gross margin was negative 162% for the full year compared to negative 128% in the prior year period. As we've discussed in prior quarters, we see significant gross margin variation as our product and services revenue mix fluctuates. We anticipate that factory start-up costs will ramp up as we start Colorado design and construction. Long term, we are confident that our GAAP gross margin will begin to normalize as we approach our capacity expansion goals. Now on to our operating expense management. Our operating expenses for the full year 2023 were $24 million, a 94% increase from the prior year. While we continue to maintain a lean cost structure, the increase is primarily attributed to increased G&A related to public company expenses and transaction-related costs as well as targeted staffing increases in R&D and sales and marketing. Our GAAP net loss for the full year 2023 was $36.8 million, or a net loss of $0.43 per share, with 86.2 million weighted average number of shares outstanding compared to a net loss of $0.24 per share with 71.3 million weighted average number of shares outstanding. As of December 31, 2023, there were 80 full-time employees, up from 76 in the third quarter and 59 at the end of 2022, with those employees primarily based in our Fremont, California location. Our share-based compensation for the year was $3.9 million compared to $2.7 million in 2022. Turning to the balance sheet, we exited the year with $45.8 million in cash and no debt. Key drivers of our cash activity for the year were $25.6 million used in operating cash flow, $17.6 million used for costs related to the build-out of the Fremont and Brighton facilities and $19.2 million inflow added primarily through the usage of our equity financing. Considering our business achievements and ongoing projects, we believe we are efficiently using capital to drive Amprius forward. Before I turn the call back over to Kang, I would like to take a moment to discuss our outlook for 2024. We expect to spend another $2 million to $3 million completing the new cathode line and other support equipment for the megawatt hour line in Fremont this year. As detailed design work on our facility in Brighton is finalized and construction gets underway, we expect to finalize our construction cost forecast, and we'll provide updates as the year goes on. As part of our strategic planning efforts, we filed a shelf registration on Form S-3 in October 2023 and once effective, established a new ATM facility for $100 million. We have terminated the committed equity facility concurrent with the effectiveness of the shelf registration statement. Subsequent to December 31, 2023, we have raised gross proceeds of about $6.5 million through the sale of approximately 2 million shares under the ATM facility as of March 18, 2024. To support our strategic plan, we are pursuing additional funding through multiple vehicles, including both equity issuances such as warrant exercises and sales under our ATM and non-dilutive sources such as grants, loans, and incentives.

Thanks, Sandra. I'd like to reemphasize a few key points before closing. First, Amprius' silicon anode technology continues to demonstrate unmatched performance in our industry. Amprius' batteries command a firm lead with their combination of energy, power, charging time, and temperature performance and are uniquely positioned for the electrical mobility market. Second, Amprius batteries are commercially available today. We have been shipping commercial products since 2018, and our technological advancements continue to bring in significant customer demand. This quarter, we not only delivered to repeat customers and expanded our technical engagements, but we also added 160 new customers as well. Our demand pipeline is robust, and we look forward to further building out our customer book in the coming quarters. Third, we are scaling our manufacturing capacity to serve significant demand ahead and support a U.S.-based supply chain. We believe that the introduction of SiCore helps us meet some of the near-term demand. Finally, we are looking forward to several exciting milestones in the year ahead. In 2024, we are looking to begin construction of our gigawatt-scale facility in Brighton, Colorado, fully optimize our SiMaxx mass production process in Fremont, add new customers, and deliver additional cells to current customers as we increase our SiMaxx cell production. We aim to ramp up our toll manufacturing efforts to secure hundreds of megawatts of capacity in 2024 so that we can maximize our opportunity to deliver SiCore batteries to customers, commercialize our 500 watt-hours per kilo cells, and continue to innovate and push the boundary of what is possible for our industry. As we look to the rest of the year, our strategy and focus at Amprius remain unchanged. We have a tremendous opportunity ahead with a product portfolio that positions us for growth in aviation and expansion into other industries seeking batteries with leading performance. The opportunities in front of Amprius are enormous, including the $1.25 billion conformal wearable battery market by 2030, a $33 billion aviation battery market by 2030, and the $591 billion EV battery market by 2033. 2023 was a very productive year for the company, and we believe that 2024 is off to a strong start. We look forward to continuing to deliver on our plans and promises in the year ahead. Thank you for your continued support of Amprius Technologies. With that, I will turn it back to the operator for Q&A. Thank you.

At this time, we’ll open the line for questions. We ask that each participant limit their comments to one question and one follow-up. Thank you. Our first question comes from Colin Rusch with Oppenheimer & Company. Please state your question.

Hi. This is Lidya on for Colin. Could you speak to the customer direction and opportunity you're pursuing with SiCore? What is the initial feedback thus far?

We have been working on SiCore for some time. We explored this market since the middle of 2023. We received very strong feedback from the customers. SiCore has form factor flexibility. Currently, we are not only supplying the pouch cells we have been making for the past few years. This particular product enables us to supply significant energy cylindrical cells as well.

Great. And then for my follow-up, on ramp, are there any surprises you're running into on the ramp-up of your megawatt scale pool? And then, in Colorado, how is the permitting and procurement of equipment going? Have you figured out the best use of your balance sheet? Thank you.

Let me address the ramping up question. We have a full facility established in Fremont, California that allows us to produce about 2 megawatt-hours of product by the end of the year. In Colorado, the rezoning was successful, and now we are focusing on obtaining air permits and developing our emergency response plan.

You have Mark Schutter on for Jed Dorsheimer. Thanks for your time, Kang. Could you give a little bit more color on the revenue breakdown between SiMaxx and SiCore?

So Mark, this is Sandra. We have not disclosed the separation of those two. It's reported under our product revenue in our filings.

Okay. Directionally, do you think that for 2024, there will be more of one than the other?

We will still be limited in 2024 by the capacity that has already been spoken of here in Fremont, as 2 megawatts. There is no capacity restriction on SiCore because it's being made by our toll manufacturing partners, so it has the potential to be much larger.

Okay. Great. Could you speak to a little bit of the IRA subsidies? Are you participating in any of that with the facility in Fremont?

Yes. We have gone through our study with our tax advisers, and we are pursuing the 45x tax credit, a manufacturing tax credit, which is 10% of the anode manufacturing cost and $35 per kilowatt-hour. That will be part of our tax planning for 2023. We can take advantage of it with this year’s filing and as part of our financial planning going forward.

Awesome. Thank you, Sandra.

Yeah. Hi. Thanks for taking my question. On the SiCore, how does the pricing compare to kind of commodity batteries that are out there as well as SiMaxx? I'm just kind of curious about where that sits as far as premium pricing; would be helpful to understand.

Yeah, Chris. Since we have a large-scale manufacturing facility available to us, today, we certainly have a competitive production cost. In terms of ASP, the pricing, what we charge to our customers, because of the superb performance our battery delivers, we command a premium for these applications.

Got it. Could you elaborate a bit more on the application focus for SiCore? It seems like it targets similar end markets as SiMaxx, which we've discussed previously. Does the new form factor allow for a broader range of applications or potential customers? At a higher level, is there any differentiation in the end market focus with this new product?

Yeah. Our end market focus remains the same, but the SiCore product offers flexible form factors, certainly enabling us to participate in other market segments. We have our product catalog available. From that, you can see we have already achieved the EV performance, meaning energy up to 350 watt-hours per kilo, 1,200 cycles, and meeting other EV battery specifications. The cylindrical cell opens a new market for us, not only for aviation but also for other electric mobility segments.

Hey, everybody. Good to see you earlier this week. I wanted to ask another one on SiCore. I think you talked about the potential for 100-plus megawatt hours of demand there in the future or already. Maybe just help us think about the ramp of tooling capacity and how we should think about potential revenues there?

We have been developing our customers and partners for some time, and our manufacturing capacity exceeds 100 megawatts. The key issue is qualification; our customers need to qualify the product. We have received some purchase orders for commercial applications, but a significant number of customers are still in the evaluation phase. We anticipate that commercial revenue will begin to materialize later this year. While our capacity is sufficient, customers must complete factory and product qualifications.

Got it. That’s very helpful, Kang. I appreciate that. For Fremont, is there anything we should consider as the year progresses regarding the cathode line or any other equipment? Should we be aware of any downtime or other factors?

Yes, our cathode line will come in probably the third quarter. That's the only missing piece of equipment at this time. The reason is we have specific coating specifications for our cathode. So the suppliers want to make sure they can meet our specifications.

Good afternoon. A question for you guys on the 500 watt-hour product that's going to be commercially available this year. Just curious to dig in on the timing a little bit more. Is that going to be a back half of '24, kind of in line with that cathode line? And just big picture, kind of the pipeline that you guys are seeing in terms of demand there?

Yes. The cathode line will not affect the shipment of this product. We are planning to have this product shipped to customers this year.

Okay. Thank you. And for my follow-up, on the R&D side of things, curious about the main initiatives or goals for 2024, if you had to bucket those in terms of key objectives, whether those relate to things like density, cycle life, different form factors or just any other big picture objectives you guys are thinking about for R&D in '24? Thanks.

We have very ambitious goals for ‘24. You will see energy improvements in energy density and power, particularly the balance of energy density and power. We are working on additional safety features for our batteries. In 2024, you will see some breakthrough performance delivered from Amprius.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. So just really quick for the first one. Sorry if I missed this, and I'm guessing with the cathode line not coming on until Q3. I just want to clarify. So is it correct to say that the run rate for the megawatt hour capacity in Fremont right now is, from that incremental equipment, is essentially zero? It's still just 250 kilowatt hours of capacity at the moment or are you actually able to get some incremental capacity out of whatever has been put in place already?

The line has started running and is already producing anode. As I mentioned, we just set up this line in December. However, this line certainly helps us meet our revenue plan.

So we absolutely expect to see our revenue continue to ramp up through 2024 over 2023. As Kang mentioned, we've got two drivers of that. One is the capacity for Fremont, that will be coming online and starting to contribute to revenue soon, getting to what we think is capacity exiting 2024 in Q4. We also have the SiCore product, which is available today. We've been sampling that under market exploration. That’s, again, not capacity constrained, but it will continue to increase as customers get through their qualification and testing.

2024 is certainly going to be an exciting year for us. We have two product families, one of which has significant production capacity behind it.

So the procurement of long lead time items around mechanical, electrical, and plumbing work for things like the dehumidifier, switch gear, and transformers, those purchase orders and down payments were placed in Q3 with some additional payments in Q4. That’s already been taken care of. Those are the long pole in the tent. We’re focused on permitting and finalizing the design in order to share a high-confidence construction and build-out budget.

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Sandra, in terms of costs in 2024, should we expect some improvements in the gross margin side, given volumes could be a little bit higher for you? And then on the operating costs, also, how should we expect costs in 2024 relative to 2023?

Great question. We will get economies of scale on Fremont. You're absolutely right, but we'll also continue to incur costs in Colorado without the benefit of revenue in 2024. There are design costs and pre-construction work that is ongoing. I think the margins are still going to be under some pressure in 2024. And again, we’re not expecting to have a significant change in operating expense. We had $24 million in full year 2023. We continue to look surgically at where we need to add resources, but I wouldn’t expect to see something significantly different.

Thank you for that. And then for 2024, do you have a sense of what your military versus commercial revenue mix could be?

So that’s hard for us to tell because we sell through OEMs. We’re not selling directly unless we’re doing a development program. So that’s hard for us to estimate. What we do know is that we continue to build our relationships with folks like AeroVironment, Teledyne Clear, Alto Airbus, as well as BAE Systems. The development program that we just wrapped up, the $3 million for the U.S. Army was the largest one that we had in the backlog.

Thank you. At this time, this concludes our question-and-answer session. If you have any additional questions, you may contact Amprius' Investor Relations team at [email protected]. I'd now like to turn the call back over to Dr. Sun for his closing remarks.

Thanks again, everyone, for joining us today. As a reminder, you may learn more about our company from the additional updates and learn about the upcoming events and presentations from the Investor Relations section of our website. We hope to see you at our upcoming investor conferences, and we'll continue to update you on the exciting progress we are making in Colorado. Finally, I'd like to thank our employees, partners, and shareholders for their continued support. Operator.