Good afternoon. Welcome to the Amprix Technologies fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings conference call. Joining us for today's presentation are the company's CEO, Tom Stepien, and CFO, Ricardo Rodriguez. 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 our financial and business performance, our business strategy, future product development or commercialization, new customer adoption and new applications, our growth and the growth of the markets in which we operate, and the timing and ability of Ampryus to expand its manufacturing capacity, scale its business, and achieve a sustainable cost structure. These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other important factors that may cause Ampryus' 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 Ampheus's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. This presentation includes a non-GAAP financial measure, which is adjusted EBITDA. This non-GAAP financial measure does not replace the presentation of Ampheus's GAAP financial results and should only be used as a Supplement 2, not a substitute for Ampheus's financial results presented in accordance with GAAP and may not be comparable to calculations of similarly titled measures by other companies. A reconciliation of adjusted EBITDA to net loss, the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure, is included in our press release, a copy of which is filed with the SEC and posted on our website. Finally, I would like to remind everyone that this conference call is being webcasted, and a recording will be made available for replay on the company's investor relations website at ir.ambrius.com. In addition to the webcast, the company has posted a press release that accompanies these results, which can also be found on the Investor Relations website. I'll now turn the call over to Ambrius Technologies CEO, Tom Stepien, for his comments. Sir, please proceed.

Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us this morning. Let's start with slide two. 2025 was a landmark year for Ambrius. Our second-generation PsyCore silicon anode batteries gained broad adoption with many unmanned aerial vehicle customers. One recent win I'd like to highlight is Nokia Drone Networks, whose commercial drone-in-a-box system is one of the most capable platforms on the market. Ampryous balanced cells provide Nokia drones with the burst power needed for takeoff and the sustained energy required for extended flight, ensuring obstacle avoidance, return to home, and other safety-critical subsystems remain powered throughout the mission. Our technology enables drones to fly longer, carry more, and operate in conditions once considered impractical, helping customers improve safety, reduce downtime, and increase emission value. In early January, we were honored to receive a Best of Innovation Award at CES. Our silicon-anode lithium-ion battery was selected from the thousands of entrants for delivering an industry-leading 520 watt-hours per kilogram. For perspective, that is nearly twice the energy density of conventional graphite-based lithium-ion cells. Our cells are lighter, longer, and stronger. In December 2025, the U.S. updated the National Defense Authorization Act. Under the revised NDAA, batteries used in Department of War UAVs must meet two key sourcing requirements. First, final battery assembly must be conducted by a non-foreign entity of concern, typically located in the United States or in an allied nation. Second, functional cell components must not be sourced from or produced by an FEOC. For new DOW acquisition programs, both of these requirements must be met by January 1, 2028, approximately 22 months from now. NDAA is important in the context of our contract with the Department of War's Defense Innovation Unit, awarded in July 2025 through a competitive solicitation from the winter of 2024, the contract was recently increased and now totals $14.8 million. The DIU contract provides prototyping funds for Ampheus to accelerate production of NDAA-compliant side-core pouch cells used in military unmanned autonomous systems. The contract includes milestones for supply chain diversification, pilot line expansion in Fremont, California, and the selection of NDAA-compliant contract manufacturing partners. Ampheus is ahead of schedule on NDAA compliance. One of our South Korean contract manufacturing partners has been delivering sales to customers since September 2025. We have expanded the Ampheus Korea Battery Alliance to three contract manufacturing partners. And in early January, we announced our first U.S.-based partner, Nanotech Energy, located in Northern California. I'm happy to report that our scorecard for the battery component sourcing is 11 out of 11. All internal PsyCore components, anode, cathode, electrolyte, separator, and seven additional elements, are now sourced from primary and secondary suppliers in NDAA-compliant countries. We are prepared to supply domestic cells to customers such as L3Harris Technologies, which delivers integrated solutions across space, air, land, sea, and cyber in support of national security. On the financial front, we completed our at-the-market financing facility during the fourth quarter. We also fully exited our Colorado facility and settled the remaining lease and expense obligations. Fourth quarter revenue reached a record $25.2 million, representing an 18% quarter-over-quarter improvement and a 137% year-over-year increase. Gross margin improved to 24%, a 9 percentage point increase quarter over quarter, and a 45 percentage point increase year over year. Full year 2025 revenue reached $73 million, 3x our 2024 level. Gross margin for the year was 11%, up significantly from the minus 76% in 2024. for. Later in this call, Ricardo will share additional financial details and color. Now turning to slide three. Ampryus customers choose our batteries because they materially improve the performance of their products. By replacing standard graphite-based cells with our silicon-based cells, customer drones achieve significantly longer flight times. One way to think about our batteries is through the analogy of Expresso. Expresso delivers the same amount of caffeine, energy, as a standard cup of drip coffee, but in a much smaller volume. And if you match the volume and weight of the two, Expresso gives you roughly twice the energy. Drone customers tell us this consistently. Ampryous batteries extend their flight time. In many cases, flight times double. Ampria's Expresso batteries give customers the extra energy they need to elevate system performance. We elevate without compromise. The Ampria's silicon-annual platform spans 22 cell designs across multiple chemistries, pouch and cylindrical formats, and a range of sizes. We have tuned and optimized cells for specific customer duty cycles, giving us the precision to deliver ideal solutions for energy-focused missions, the takeoff power required by air taxis, and applications demanding high cycle life. This tunability is a significant differentiator for AMBRIUS. Slide four looks at our market segments. We serve five principal end markets. The first is UAVs, including drones used for defense, public safety, security, and logistics. Defense platforms that require high energy density typically support long loiter missions and are primarily ISR, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. Public safety drones are typically DFR, drone as first responder, systems integrated directly into 911 emergency workflows. In the U.S., more than 1,500 emergency departments now operate DFR programs as a part of real-time response operations. Drones are pre-positioned in fixed launch stations across the city and are dispatched automatically or semi-automatically the moment a 911 call is received. The objective is to get a camera over the scene in under two minutes, well before police, fire, or EMS units can arrive. Market segment number two is satellites and space. Satellite launch providers charge customers by the gram, making our ability to deliver the same energy at roughly half the weight, our Expresso advantage, extremely valuable. Alto, a division of Airbus, is a long-standing customer in this segment. Its Zephyr high-altitude pseudo-satellites are solar-powered aircraft that operate at 70,000 feet for months at a time. The persistent ISR capability that Zephyr provides is strategically important for both defense and commercial applications. Ampria sales are also gaining strong traction in light electric vehicles, including e-motorcycles, scooters, and e-bikes. Wins in this segment typically align with the launch of new models, so revenue tends to be lumpier than in other markets. This category also includes a healthy replacement and range extender subsegment, an area we are beginning to explore. Robotics is our fourth market segment, and while still early, it is developing quickly. Robot performance is closely tied to battery capability, and Ampryus' tunable cells can deliver both the high power needed for tasks like lifting and the energy required to maximize time between charges. With strong growth rates and expanding use cases, this segment is highly promising. The final segment that depends heavily on our industry-leading energy density is the electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. EVTOL and other advanced air mobility customers are developing autonomous, point-to-point regional transport for both passengers and cargo. Several companies are currently testing our sales, and we have a customer-funded joint development program underway with one leading company. In this program, we are tuning our chemistry to meet the specific power and energy requirements of their aircraft. Turning to slide 5, Ampheus captures customer interest through our flexibility. We work closely with customers to understand their energy, power, and cycle life requirements, then select internal components that meet those needs while aligning with country of origin constraints. Because sci-core cells are produced on standard lithium-ion equipment, we can secure early design wins from our California pilot line and seamlessly transfer cell recipes and process steps to our contract manufacturing partners as volumes scale. During Q4 2025, we introduced three new cells to our silicon handle platform and retired The portfolio now stands at 22 designs, spanning energy, power, and balance cells in both pouch and cylindrical formats. We continue to offer the tunability, speed, and flexibility our customers rely on. Now turning to slide six, increasingly, customers care about the country of origin for both battery cells and internal components. Much of this is driven by the NDAA requirements discussed earlier, and the impact now extends to non-defense customers as well. Avoiding foreign entities of concern has become a compliance mandate, not just a marketing detail. Determine teams are asking detailed questions about where cells are manufactured, where anodes and cathodes are processed, and where critical minerals originate. Fortunately, we anticipated this shift and began executing more than a year ago. In 2025, we announced our first NDA-compliant contract manufacturer in South Korea, which delivered sales to customers just one quarter later. Last week, I was in South Korea with several of my Ampria's colleagues visiting component suppliers, checking in with current contract manufacturing partners, supporting new partners coming online, and meeting customers at our booth at Drone Show Korea. We still have work ahead on the NDAA supply front. With multiple contract manufacturers, 22 cell models, and 11 internal components, aligning every variable is operationally intensive. But we got an early start, we invested wisely, and we consistently share our progress with customers. They understand our roadmap for both cell manufacturing and for cell content sourcing, and they respect our ability to deliver the right cell from the right location at the right time. On slide 7, we present our high-level cell roadmap. The Ampheus roadmap highlights our industry-leading energy density on the vertical axis over the next 18 months. It organizes our portfolio into three cell types. High-energy cells, where long uptime drives range and usability. Key segments here include drones, robotics, and LEVs. Number two, high-power cells, which deliver short, intense power bursts. Applications include power tools, data center backup systems, and aviation platforms, such as ED tools and drones that require power pulses for takeoff and landing. And long life balance cells, designed for applications that demand both power and energy, along with extended cycle life, include EV tool, satellite, and ventral device applications. We routinely share this high-level roadmap and the detailed cell information behind it with customers. We listen closely to their needs, incorporate their feedback, and adjust the roadmap as required. Now let me turn the call over to Ricardo Rodriguez, Ambrace's CFO.

Thank you, Tom, and good morning, everyone. I'm very happy to be reporting another record-breaking quarter on behalf of our team starting on slide 8. In the fourth quarter of 2025, we delivered $25.2 million of revenue. This translates into 18% growth over the third quarter and is over 2.3 times higher than the same quarter last year. I'm particularly excited about crossing the $100 million annual revenue run rate mark, which positions us to deliver over $1 million of revenue per employee, joining a very selective and unique group of companies. Echoing Tom's remarks are clearly the monster of old technical edge has continued driving demand for our products as we broadened the portfolio and expanded our capacity in close collaboration with our manufacturing partners. For the year, our revenues were $73 million in line with our expectations and just over three times higher than 2024. Our Q4 cost of goods sold at $19.3 million did not increase at the same rate as our revenue thanks to a favorable product mix in higher volumes. This enabled gross profit margins of 24%, a significant improvement over our Q3 gross margin of 15%. Our lower CIMAX line mix was now below 60% of revenues, providing a powerful driver of our gross margin improvements. For the year, our gross margins were 11%, reflecting a step change improvement over negative 76% gross margins in 2024 as our revenue from Psycorps increased around the world. Our resourceful culture enabled the team to only spend $8.9 million of OPEX, which excludes a one-time charge of $22.5 million, linked with our decision to not develop a facility in Colorado, and the decommissioning of some equipment in Fremont. The quarter-over-quarter increase in OPEX of $900,000 was driven by a targeted investment in our sales and go-to-market efforts, along with the reallocation of some R&D expenses from cost of goods sold to OPEX as development services agreements are completed. These expenses, including the one-time charge of $22.5 million that I mentioned earlier, bring our Q4 operating loss to $25.4 million compared to an operating loss of $4.7 million in the prior quarter. Without the one-time charge, our operating loss would have been $2.9 million, which would have reduced our operating loss by 37% quarter-over-quarter. The solar dynamic applies to our annual operating loss of $46.6 million, which would have been $24.1 million without the same one-time charge, and the 48% reduction of the operating loss of $46.2 million from 2024. Our gap net loss for the third quarter was $24.3 million, or negative $0.18 per share, based on 132.1 million weighted average shares outstanding. Without the one-time charge, our loss would have been only $1.9 million, or one cent per share. In Q4, we recorded adjusted EBITDA of $1.8 million compared to negative $1.4 million in the prior quarter. With a $1.6 million in operating costs from Colorado, we would have actually had positive adjusted EBITDA of $177,000 in Q3 of 2025. As a reminder, we define adjusted EBITDA as net income or loss before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization, stock-based compensation, and other items that we do not believe are indicative of our core operating performance. In Q4, these adjustments included $1.2 million of depreciation, $1.9 million of stock-based compensation, $1.1 million of interest and other income, along with $1.6 million of quarterly operating costs linked to the Colorado facility. If we adjust our EBITDA for the cost that we will now not be incurring in Colorado, our adjusted EBITDA in 2025 would have been negative $5.3 million, reducing our EBITDA loss by 77% year-over-year and putting us on a path to have positive adjusted EBITDA above our current revenue run rate. As of the end of 2025, we had 134.5 million shares outstanding, which was up by 4.1 million from the prior quarter. The change includes approximately 2.3 million shares issued from option exercises and RSU vesting along with 1.8 million shares issued on their Hour at the Market offering program. Now turning over to cash flow and the balance sheet. We ended the third quarter with $90.5 million in cash and no debt. The main drivers of cash flow in the quarter were the following. One, $3.5 million used in operating cash flow, which was mainly driven by a near-term $1.8 million dollar increase in accounts receivable and a 2.1 million dollar increase of inventory. Two, 2.4 million dollars of Q4 investments that are being funded by the Defense Innovation Unit or DIU as part of our project to stand up NDAA compliant pilot and manufacturing lines. This brought our total capex in 2025 to $4.4 million. And lastly, $23.1 million from financing activities consisting of $19.6 million from the issuance of common stock under our at-the-market sales agreement and $3.5 million of proceeds from warrants and auction exercises. As we announced on January 12th, we have now terminated our at-the-market offering program. Before I turn the call back to Tom, I'd like to take a moment to frame out our outlook for 2026 and the North star beyond that using SlideDine as the backdrop. With what we know today, we believe that by leveraging our platform and existing relationships, we can deliver at least a hundred and twenty-five million dollars of revenue in 2026, which would enable us to have our first full year of adjusted positive EBITDA of at least $4 million. This baseline level of profitability would translate into a net loss of $8 million for the year, or $0.06 per share, assuming 134.5 million shares. When we say at least, we mean that we believe that while we're positioned to deliver additional upside, we would rather size this incremental opportunity as it happens than commit to delivering it as we work our way through what can be a great year for Ampryus. Our CapEx for the year will be less than $10 million as we have made a decision to strategically invest in diversifying our supply chain and expanding manufacturing capacity within our Fremont facility to include electrode manufacturing. As noted earlier, we're doing this in collaboration with the U.S. Government Defense Innovation Unit and have secured a contract for $14.8 million. With what we know today, we expect this funding to cover most of our capital investment of the next several quarters as we work to develop a growing and resilient source of supply in a dynamic trade environment. Last month, alongside the announcement of our agreement to produce sales with nanotech energy in the U.S., We also reported that we eliminated a lease and related expense obligation of over $110 million in Colorado by settling it for $20 million. As a result, you can expect our cash position in Q1 to decrease by that amount, along with the reduction of $13.4 million in right-of-use assets and the $33.2 million reduction in near-term liabilities in our balance sheet. In forecasting our cash burn, we believe that our current revenue level and even slight improvements from these can put us on a path to mainly consuming cash for working capital versus funding operating expenses in the near term. Looking further ahead, we believe that as we work through 2026, it will become increasingly clear that our plans to build an efficiently scaled multi-market leader that sets the technical pace and high energy and density power cells are realistic. As we close out the decade, we are targeting making the most of over $600 million of contracted capacity by enabling our customers' most mission-critical duty cycles and positioning us to deliver over 30% gross margins. By maintaining our resourceful culture and low-cost structure, we can then translate that into at least 20% EBITDA margins. Most importantly, the capabilities in go-to-market, product development, quality assurance, and the enabling scale that we'd have by then would position us for additional growth beyond 2030. That opportunity has our team energized and motivated to work together to meet and hopefully even surpass these goals by improving ourselves and how we work. And with that, I'm happy to turn the call over back to Tom for his closing remarks. Thank you very much for your attention and continued support.

2025 was a very strong year. We delivered consistent quarter-over-quarter revenue growth, expanded our customer base to more than 550, demonstrated state-of-the-art technical performance, and achieved three consecutive quarters of positive and growing gross margin. The lithium-ion battery market is intensely competitive, and we embrace those challenges. In 2026, we remain focused on delivering next-generation silicon-ano performance that raises the bar for energy density and sustained power without compromising safety or reliability. We are equally committed to meeting the cell manufacturing and content country of origin requirements our customers expect. We will broaden our product portfolio to unlock new market opportunities and convert a growing number of customer engagements into formal qualifications and deployments, particularly across mobility-centric platforms. We are starting 2026 in a financially clean position, having completed our ATM program, fully exited the Colorado facility, and transitioned all legacy Symax Generation 1 customers to our Generation 2 Sycor platform. We are incredibly bullish by the opportunities in front of us. We look forward to meeting and reconnecting with many of you as we participate in a number of upcoming investor conferences. Thank you for your continued interest and support of Ampryus. With that, I will turn it back to the operator for questions.

Thank you. We'll now be conducting a question and answer session. We ask you to please give yourself to one question and one follow-up. If you'd like to ask a question at this time, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad and a confirmation tone to indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you'd 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, please, for our first question. Thank you. The first question is coming from the line of Eric Stein with Craig Callum. Please proceed with your question. Hi, Tom.

Hey, Eric. It's great to have you here for the first time with us.

Yeah, good morning. So, curious, maybe if we could start just with the selection of the 11 components. I mean, obviously, a quite significant step, but just curious, you talked about it a little bit, Tom, but just maybe a little bit more in depth about, you know, what you need to do now, what some of the milestones might be in 2026. Obviously, you've got a head start, but those steps as you work towards gaining that full compliance, and I would assume you're trying to do that well in advance of the Jan 1-28 date. Yeah, good question. So we have

technically selected anode cathode electrolyte separator that make up the internals of our battery and give us the performance that we talked about. We have primary vendors and secondary vendors. It went to a pretty rigorous testing process. This all started with the DIU project back when it started in July 25, so we've had six, eight months to turn the knobs here. So we're happy with the performance of the cells with the different internal components. In fact, in some cases, we see slightly improved performance compared to the legacy components. So that is where we are today. The work that remains includes productizing and getting all of those new suppliers under multi-year agreements. Part of what I was doing in South Korea last week is talking to some of those suppliers because Korea is, outside of China, is probably the second largest country in terms of suppliers. There's ones in Japan, there's suppliers here in the U.S., et cetera. So we need to put those agreements in place, make sure that we can operationalize it, get to deliver their components to our contract manufacturers. So there's some operational work, there's some supply chain work that is still on our plate to complete, to finally deliver full sales at the quantities that our customers are demanding.

Got it. But you, I mean, so it sounds like you're really through all the technical or the engineering side of it. It is now more about just making sure that, yes, you've qualified those sources, but can you, you know, do you have those locked down? to be able to incorporate those in your products for, you know, obviously much larger volumes.

That's a good way to summarize it. The heavy lifting on the technical side is done, and now it turns over to our operational folks who need to do exactly that. I get the supplies.

Yep, I appreciate that. And then just maybe for my follow-up, you know, saw the first gauntlet awards under the drone dominance plan, and I know there were 25 awardees. I don't know if you're able to, you know, give specifics or any color around this, but, you know, of those 25 awardees, just kind of curious, you know, how many of those are your customers? How do you view that as an opportunity? And then obviously just your outlook for the next steps under the executive order.

Yeah, the Gauntlet 1 of the Drone Dominance program had 25 invitees. We should see here in the next couple days the results of the actual fly-off that has completed. Our understanding is that it was done last week, and there's a down-select going on. We are all over that in terms of understanding where is Ampheus inside in each of the 25. We are looking forward to understanding the official down select list that, again, as I mentioned, should be . So that's where we are. Stay tuned on specifics. I think as that list is published, we may be able to talk about it. Understand there's a second, third, and fourth gauntlet. So this will happen over the next 18 months or so. This is early, but we feel good about where we are today. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Eric.

Our next question is from the line of Austin Bully with Needham & Company. Please just see what your questions.

Hey, guys, thanks for taking my question, and congrats on the great results. I just wanted to dive in to the new customer wins. Historically, this was a metric you guys were giving. In the deck, it says that you're working with 550 customers. So my question is, is it fair to assume you guys added over 100 new customers in the quarter? And then just trying to get a sense of where they are in, like, volume production. Like, are we still kind of in the early design phase for the majority of these? And, like, when do we get to those high-volume production?

It is fair, Austin, to assume that it's more than 100. It was 444 in the last call in November. said 550 is so yeah we continue to add to that we have both repeat customers of course which is an interesting that we've earned the trust and can you grow that and we continue to expand the funnel with over 100 new in general the hundred new ones are new right some of these are a couple hundred cells for testing come from their free pilot line just set up for exactly the wind of design. So we keep track of those because we're planting seeds. The average PO, we looked at that just the other day, the average PO during Q4 increased relative to Q4. The customers are purchasing larger volumes of that, but it is still early days here in terms of trying Try to provide some. You can obviously do the math on our revenue. Single-digit market share in these markets growing, of course. So it's early. We have a lot of work to do to capture what we believe is our fair share, given our tech.

Okay. Thank you for that. And I guess just one quick follow-up, just looking at your guys' guidance and kind of like what's baked in from like a geographic perspective. Historically, Europe or international has been the main driver. Could you just kind of dive into kind of what's baked into that, like what we should be expecting from a regional perspective?

Yeah, sure, Austin. We see a continuation of the same trends that we saw, especially in Q3 and Q4, and are really waiting to see where the U.S. comes out in terms of enabling us to deliver additional upside. So, frankly, within the guide, we expect our mix to look pretty similar to where we were in Q2, Q3 of last year.

All right. Well, thank you, guys, and best of luck for the rest of the year.

Austin, thank you.

Our next question comes from the line of Mark Shooter with William Blair. Pleasure to see you with your question.

Hey, Tom and Ricardo. Congrats on the great progress in 2025.

Thank you, Mark.

A question about some recent geopolitics. The war in Iran, we're starting to see the U.S. drone warfare capabilities. But at the same time, we're starting to see some strain in the munition stockpiles. So I'm wondering, in the past six days, have you had any increased urgency from any U.S. military, DOW, defense contractors, or are they looking for you to ship more batteries yesterday?

Yeah, over the weekend, we actually had one customer who themselves have a reconnaissance drone, tends to fly for hours and days at a time, that was a little bit on hold that is getting a pull themselves, which creates a pull for us. And that's where this pilot line we have here where Ricardo and I are in Fremont can quickly do a student body write, okay, let's make those in this 108 cells, deliver them quickly, i.e., in a couple weeks to that. So we're seeing some of that. It's hard to talk about more than that, just a single customer, but that is one data point to share.

There's also a dynamic in play right now where some of the traditional interception hardware is running low on inventory, and so that is pushing folks to migrate to drones as the next generation of interception hardware. So we'll see how that trend plays out here this year.

That's great. I appreciate the color on both of you. You did mention the Fremont pilot line, and that brings me to my next question. The nanotech partnership, we thought, was a creative solution to find some capacity. How much demand are you seeing from these super NDA-compliant customers where they need U.S. manufacturing? And are you looking to find more creative solutions, like a partnership with another nanotech? or do you think that the pilot line that you're increasing capacity in Fremont with the DIU investment will provide enough capacity later this year?

Yeah, the pilot line is well-named because it's primarily to win initial designs, and once there's a volume that's a couple thousand cells, that's when we transfer to one of our partners. So Nanotech helps us on cylindrical cells, and we're getting a really strong pull. I was at a, as they had DA changes, they're okay with some of the cells they're getting today from the countries and contents today, but they really want to understand the when. We mentioned that earlier. So we share with them the roadmap. hey, here's when we're really going to have volume from either nanotech or others. And there will be more coming. That's clear. The pull is there. This will balance out in a couple of years. And some of our customers are insensitive to this. So great, we have a really strong existing set of partners. Some are not comfortable with that setup, and Korea is serving that, as I mentioned. As we know, we are selling from Korea today, and some must have the U.S. So it'll balance out maybe a third, a third, a third in a couple years, creating that transition. Thank you, Mark.

Our next question comes in the light of Colin Rush with Oppenheimer. Please receive your question.

Thanks so much, guys. You know, Tom, I'd love to get a better understanding of what's happening here within the technology roadmap, you know, are these fundamental changes in some of the electrolyte and binder technologies or any of those separator technologies as you move towards these higher performance cells? And how mature is the testing process to give you comfort that you'll be able to execute on these over the next 18 to 24 months? Yeah, we think. Thanks. Let's go inside the battery

a bit. So the anode, we believe, with our silicon design, which took us a little while to get right, we think is pretty strong. So the big question is, okay, why can't we go above 450, 500, depending on the cell type, watt hours per kilogram? Is that some of the other components, as you allude to? So there's knobs being turned by our R&D folks, primarily on the cathode. The thinking is that cathode may be slowing down the overall package, so there's some work being done. We had a board meeting yesterday and shared our goals to the board on specifics related to this, and it's very focused on proving that. We're big believers, you get what you measure. We are measuring our energy density here inside. We are of R&D focus on that. On the testing part, we feel pretty good. We've got a pretty robust system here at the small scale, right? The manual scare, D&L, and R&D folks are turning. And then as these 30 different tools arrive, funded by the defense unit, that's getting stronger. So we feel pretty good about that. Stay tuned. We all want to make the goals that we set up here internally, of course, and we'll be able to report out that as we achieve some success.

Thanks so much, guys. And then the follow-up here is really around the 2030 guidance. The performance that you're talking about here from a technology perspective is just fundamentally advantaged and looks defensible in a pretty material way. And the target markets that you guys are looking at are so much larger than what it looks like the target is for 2030. So can you talk a little bit about the considerations around the pacing of growth, pricing and margin, kind of internal targets? As you think about growing this platform and doing it sustainably, how should we think about the key gating items and how we should think about potential acceleration relative to those targets?

Yeah, Colin. So, again, I think this all really just starts with the technical performance that we're able to deliver. So in our view, if we deliver everything that's there on slide 7 and the markets grow, maybe not even to the full extent, but half of what we have on slide 4 when we look at some of the main drivers. And as we were looking at the markets, one element that people forget about is that there's a bit of a replacement dynamic within some of these end applications. and then it really comes down to us leveraging the capacity that we've contracted, having that capacity in the right place so that we can deliver the right cell at the right time from the right place. And, yeah, when we look at it, I agree with you. I think that's why we have $600 million plus. We'll find out over time what capacity is needed in 2030, but the way we're looking at the world today, I think this is, as you mentioned, pretty achievable.

Thanks so much, guys.

Thank you, Colin.

The next question comes from the line of Ryan Finkst with B. Riley Securities. Please proceed with your questions.

Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. Hey, Ricardo. Tom, you mentioned market share earlier. Could you frame how you're thinking about your aviation market share today, maybe for drones globally, or if you could get more specific within military drones or advanced drones? Yeah, thanks, Ryan. It's, as we have said,

it's single digits. These markets are large and growing. We have updated, and you see that on slide four, our understanding, but that also into our 10K. We're trying to really double-click on that for some of the specifics. Drone taxonomy is groups one through five. Okay, we know that batteries are used in one, two, and half of three, but not in four and five. How much of that is industrial versus defense? What's going on on the mission? DFR, drones. We have not yet found a good source for that double click. We've got the first click to understand as we present it, but our goal is to have more definition that we can have both internally and share externally. We've started, we have a good third party who's helping pull that together, but it's so early and it's changing so fast, right? This Don't Dominus program, the U.S. has admitted that, hey, we got to catch up. So what we have today is what we can share. We're not holding anything back, but we are certainly trying to get smarter and understand that better.

And, Ryan, I think the point that we're trying to drive here is that in some cases, our batteries basically enable the duty cycle, right? By the time you power the drone, a camera, a gimbal, a radar, multiple sensors, you wonder how there's energy left in the battery to still make the drone fly a couple miles away. And so we're seeing our share be pretty high on those drones that have a lot of our other power-draining devices, while those more inexpensive drones, some of them are frankly using remote-control car batteries, and therefore that's not a market for us to play in, even though the volumes are pretty high. So we do believe just through process of elimination of the folks who aren't yet customers that we are positioned to do very, very well in that high power, high energy draw drones, which tend to be the larger ones that are used for surveillance or more complex missions.

Yeah, I appreciate that detail. And then just to follow up on guidance, could you give more detail around what's baked into the baseline revenue estimate, maybe what needs to happen to exceed it, and what your revenue capacity is roughly today?

Yeah, I'll answer it sort of in reverse order. So, I mean, our capacity can definitely deliver the guidance, and we've got plenty of headroom above it. What's baked in our assumptions is what we see from current customers and some prospects that we're looking to convert here into customers in Q3 and Q4. sort of going back to austin's question we still see the the uav market accelerating and from being pretty well established in in europe and what isn't baked in fully just yet is any upside that could come from additional drone production and sourcing here in the u.s so in our guide we're still assuming that the mix is meaningfully outside of the U.S. for 2026 and as I said we'll size the upside here as we deliver it because there are some pretty quick decisions being made on the U.S. side around what this demand could be. Just alongside some of the calls that we got here this weekend and have been getting this week. We do see this evolving favorably from a demand perspective, but sizing it, we want to size it with POs, not with some loose idea of what the pipeline is.

I appreciate it, guys. I'll turn it back.

The next question is from the line of Ted Jackson with Northland Securities. Pleasure to see with your question. Thanks very much.

which I hope you can hear me, a xylophone band.

Yeah, we can hear you, Ted. Loud and clear. Loud and clear.

A xylophone band literally set up behind me in the airport while we're on this call. So it's really loud. I've got a lot of really nice ambient music for you.

Don't worry.

Yeah, I've got a couple of questions. So a real simple one. You know, you made a comment, if I recall, that your Symax revenue has fallen about 60% of total. And I guess where I'm going, and that you've transitioned your, you know, Gen 1 CIMAX customers to Gen 2 SciCore. So I guess my question is, you know, what was the mix of revenue, CIMAX to SciCore coming into the year? What was it coming out? Where do you see it at the end of 26?

At the end of 26, we see it at zero. And coming in, it was about 25%. Okay.

Then my next question, you know, with the NDAA compliance success that you've had, you know, in terms of, you know, getting all your suppliers in place and your contract manufacturing in place, where do you think you stand in that process vis-a-vis the market as a whole? Do you think that, you know, you're, you know, are you, you know, in a path? Are you, you know, I get a sense you're either in a path with everyone else or probably perhaps you're a few lengths ahead, maybe some kind of thought with that. And then, you know, do you see the ability to get there first as a competitive advantage? And then I've just got one more behind.

Yeah, so we think that we are near the front. It's hard to know whether we are at the front. Every battery manufacturer got the memo and is looking to serve. We tend to take only the paranoid survive, so we never really want to think of ourselves as being at the front. We are happy with our industry-leading advantages. We're working hard. We've got work to do, for sure. As I mentioned, there's more announcing here. Work's underway. You can imagine that there's a lot of effort long before they get announced. So we're happy with where we are. We are very focused on making sure that we keep up with it because it's a market. So happy, but work to do.

Okay. And then my last question, just looking over at slide four over to the right where you have your OEMs and key market players, you know, you have a lot of corporate logos up here. Have all of these logos, you know, in some form or fashion, you know, sampled or looked at Ampere's products? Are they, you know, customers or, you know, some of them you've clearly announced as customers. Some of them, I guess, the question is, you know, are all these people that you actually have taken your battery in the past for some form or fashion?

Yeah, you're right. Some are customers. The title of that column on slide four is appropriate, key market players. So some are customers that we can talk about publicly. Some are potential customers we are in testing, and other ones we have to earn their trust. So that's the mix that we have on that right-hand column.

In general, these are all folks who we see it would be logical for them to buy sales from us, and they may have bought sales at low volumes for testing as well.

Okay, I'll step out of line. Thanks very much, and congrats on the quarter.

Thanks, Ted.

Our next question is from the line of Derek Soderbergh with Cantor Fitzgerald. Please proceed with your question.

Yeah, hey, guys. Thanks for taking the questions, and my congrats as well on the results. First one on the Nokia. Hey, the first question is on the Nokia drone networks. Is this sort of a single product win, or is it more of a platform win? Can you talk a bit about the unit volumes and ramp timing for that, And then, you know, as we sort of look into exiting the decade, can you sort of talk about how large the opportunity would be with, you know, the Nokia piece?

We like Nokia, Derek, because it is a communications platform generally, right? Our understanding of this platform is that it's able to beam 5G signals, difficult to reach places where you can't sell your network, easily installed. It is a platform. There are, if you talk to the Nokia guys, a lot of work that they have planned in the future, and they have their roadmap, of course. We don't tend to break out specific customer volumes and share those. We do like this because it emphasizes what we say, right, this Expresso advantage as we tried to. Nokia drones with our batteries can fly 40%, 50% longer, and other customers twice the flight time compared to just standard batteries. That's what led them to us in that same camp.

Got it. That's helpful. And, you know, Tom, you've got a validated technology, hundreds of customers. You've been commercial for seven, eight years now with Fortune 500s. You really have had a head start, at least in the drone opportunity. How do you think you can best leverage that position to really accelerate the growth of the business?

Yeah, it's about execution on the operational side, for sure, to get the customers what they want, when they want it, and, again, from the right place. We're also investing into the customer-facing side of the house. We've added to our sales team. We have a pack partner program that is embryonic but growing. Some of our cells go directly to the folks who make crafts, products that fly or roll or walk around like robots do. Others go through pack houses, and those packs then go into those and use products. So we're investing there for sure. We're investing in some of our internal processes. we want to be able to meet and exceed this demand that we see coming.

Super helpful. Thanks, guys.

Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Chip Moore with Roth Capital. Pleasure to see you with your question.

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the question.

Hey, Chip, morning.

Hey, Ricardo, I want to follow up. Actually, you brought up a good point on the replacement dynamic for batteries. Have you done any sort of analysis on, you know, what replacement can become as some of these markets mature, you know, understanding that they're still – some of them are still pretty nascent? But, you know, where do you think that can go over time?

I think it can be pretty meaningful depending on the market. In EV tolls, it could very well be even more than the initial install volume if these things are almost the same way. If you look at jet engine manufacturers in planes today, the maintenance and the replacement of parts within those jet engines make the Rolls Royces of the world more money than selling the jet engine the first time. And that's a dynamic that you obviously don't see in EVs because you hopefully don't have to replace the battery of it. You just replace the whole car. But in UAVs, in robotics, in EV tolls, we are seeing a little bit of a razor blade dynamic, right, where the replacement market could be even larger than the initial sale market. And so, of course, depending on what assumptions you have for for that you end up with completely different market sizing and there's also a lot of work that can be done here to develop a standardized uh battery pack and so this is something that we think about pretty frequently we're looking for the right way to frame this out for the industry so that we don't have customers pulling in different directions when the duty cycle and The requirements are pretty clear and where we can drive meaningful convergence.

Yeah, no, that's helpful, Ricardo. And maybe just for my follow-up, I appreciate all the new detail in the slides. Great job. Maybe, you know, on the market slide, on slide four, you know, huge opportunities. What about opportunities outside of those core markets, you know, fast charge and discharge capabilities, you know, data center at the RAC level? There's obviously higher volume electronics. Just maybe could they address some of the adjacencies?

Yeah, we alluded to this in slide seven. There's a little picture of a data center there for the high-power cells. I think Tom mentioned it in his remarks as well. That's an opportunity. Another one that we're looking at are, you know, battery packs for military applications. So, you know, the average soldier carries over 100 pounds of gear, and there are the standard battery packs that currently use standard lithium-ion cells. And, of course, if we bring higher energy density, we believe that we can cut the weight of those packs in half, potentially even make them more powerful. And if you combine them with something like a supercapacitor, or you can even trim the upper bounds of power peaks that tend to degrade batteries further. So theoretically, we could cut the weight of those things in half or double their capacity, and then at the same time almost double the life of those battery packs, therefore reducing the need to replace them as frequently. So, yeah, I think outside of what we have in slide four, high-power cells for data centers are obviously a market. And then, you know, anywhere else where you're using a battery pack, particularly in military applications, looking to leverage some of the customers that we already have, those would be other ancillary opportunities.

And maybe just to pile on, some of the characteristics that we show on slide 3 are inherent with the silicon platform, right? Fast charges, and oh, by the way, we also can charge a lot faster. Oh my gosh, no kidding. Oh, and also we have a wider temperature range. So we lead with our strengths, right? Our onlyness is energy density, metric density. But some of these other ones really help secure the win and secure the long-term relationships that we're building.

Excellent. Thank you very much.

Thanks, Chip.

Thank you. Our last question comes from the line of Amit Dhal with H.C. Wainwright. Please proceed with your questions.

Thank you, guys. Good morning. Hey, Ricardo. I'm doing well. Thank you. So, you know, with respect to trying to bring sort of manufacturing costs down or the price of the batteries down, do you have any room, you know, as you iterate on your side and, you know, how much of that may come from, you know, sort of the engineering side, you know, from your end versus what the contract manufacturers can support you with?

yeah so certainly design is a big lever on the for sure volume plays a part also and as we get some of the volumes up there's some pricing that we see with the 11 supplier and then we're getting into that as we mentioned as we go full NDAA with the contracts and the negotiations with suppliers on the 11. So we're in the midst of some of that. But the good news is, is that volumes are increasing. That's a big lever. And then we'll see that when we do talk to customers and they are insisting on U.S., that's where this interesting dynamic comes in where they want U.S., but they want pricing. So we tend to have a little bit of an arm wrestle. But in general, We're happy with the margins we see, and you, of course, understand the guidance on what we can get.

Yes, understood. Thank you, Don. And then just last one from me, you know, in terms of your balance sheet, it looks really, you know, solid with over $90 million in cash. It looks like at this point you really don't need to tap at the ATM anymore. What, you know, and especially going into sort of a capitalized strategy with Colorado out of the picture now, What are the uses of that cash that we can think of, you know, that could maybe accelerate sales or product development? Any color on that would be helpful.

Yes, I mentioned in my remarks, Amit, with the current balance sheet, we are really only looking to fund working capital. As I mentioned, our CapEx will be funded by the DIU here in Fremont. Any little bit of incremental capex that could be needed at the contract manufacturers to accelerate production if demand ramps up even beyond our expectations can also be funded by the balance sheet. We're also looking at putting in place a working capital line with some of our banking partners to further scale the balance sheet. And then, yeah, as you mentioned earlier this year, we put out an announcement saying that we are basically done with the ATM. I think the ATM did its job over the last two years. And right now, as you mentioned, the balance sheet is solid. We think our current strategy is more than fully funded.

Understood. Thank you, guys. That's all I have.

Thanks so much. Take care, Amin. Thanks, Matt.

Thank you. This concludes our question and answer session. I'll now turn the floor back to management for closing comments.

Thank you so much for joining us on the call. Stay tuned. We look forward to meeting some of you on the road here as we attend a couple of investor relations events. And be well. Thanks for your support.

Absolutely. As we talked about, 2025 was a great year. We think 2026 can be even stronger as we play to our strengths, our energy density, and continue to push new products, expand our portfolio, respond to the country of origin request. We're in a fortunate position. We're certainly in it to win it, and we appreciate your support.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this will conclude today's conference. May disconnect your lines at this time, and have a wonderful day.