Earnings Call Transcript - AMPX Q1 2024

Operator, Operator

Good afternoon. Welcome to Amprius Technologies' First Quarter 2024 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, and 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. 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 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.

Kang Sun, CEO

Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us this afternoon. On today's call, I will report our accomplishments from the first quarter. We are also highlighting some of the upcoming milestones we expect for this year. 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. Before I give a recap of the quarter, I would like to briefly introduce Amprius to those who may be new to the company. As a reminder, here at Amprius, we develop, manufacture and market high-energy density and high-power density batteries with applications across all segments of electric mobility, including the aviation and EV industries. Across our battery portfolio, we offer unmatched performance, including batteries capable of a specific energy density of 450 watt-hours per kilo, and the metric energy density of 11.50 watt-hours per liter. We have 10C power capability, extreme fast charge rates from 0% to 80% in approximately six minutes. Our batteries work effectively in a wide temperature range from minus 30 degrees Celsius up to 55 degrees Celsius and include safety design features that enable us to pass the United States military benchmark new penetration test. Late last year, we achieved a third-party validation of our latest 500 watt-hour per kilo, 1,300 watt-hour per liter battery platform, which we expect will be ready for commercial shipments later in 2024. Each of these performance parameters is critically important to electric mobility applications. Not only do our batteries enable certain aircraft and vehicles to operate, but they enable our customers to achieve their economic targets as well. It's our belief that there are no other commercial batteries on the market that can perform at these levels today. Amprius is the pioneer of silicon anode batteries with over a decade of development experience, a strong patent portfolio of over 80 issued patents and patent applications, and a long track record of commercial statements and customer success. Turning now to a review of our first quarter. To start 2024, in addition to driving industry-leading performance with our battery technology, we took a critical step to drive our scale-up effort and increase our output to meet the growing demand for our solutions. In January, as part of this continued push to make our product available to the electric mobility space, we launched our all-new cycle product family to complement our existing Silicon nanowire platform, now called SiMaxx. The cycle platform serves applications that demand both high energy density and longer cycle life, offering up to 400 watt-hours per kilo and as many as 1,200 cycles at full depth of discharge. The cycle product family also has additional form factor flexibility, capable of both pouch and cylindrical sale form factors. This enables utilization across a broader range of applications, such as e-bikes and other micro-mobility market segments. In addition to having another product platform available for Amprius customers, the introduction of the cycle battery accelerates our revenue growth without additional capital investment and serves our customers without delay. To produce cycle batteries, we take advantage of existing lithium-ion battery production capacity in the industry and have toll manufacturers as a bridge between now and the operation of our own large-scale manufacturing facility. These toll manufacturing agreements provide us with 100 megawatt-hours of cycle capacity today. Overall, SiMaxx and SiCore are the culmination of years of work in silicon anode technology and are just the beginning of our vision here at Amprius as we aim to transform electric mobility. We look forward to manufacturing both SiMaxx and SiCore at our Brighton, Colorado facility in the future. So far, 2024 has been a huge success commercially for Amprius. In Q1, we doubled the number of customers we shipped to over Q4 2023, shipping to 82 customers, up from 41. Fifty-two of these shipments were to new customers across the electric mobility sector, complementing our strong repeat customer base that includes notable names such as Airbus, Teledyne Clear, the US Army, Kraus Hamdani, and BAE Systems. The cycle platform and the manufacturing capacity are primary drivers of our ability to meet this market demand. In the first quarter, we shipped cycle products to 76 customers. As we further build out our customer base for the cycle product, we are confident that we will be able to continue to meet the strong demand for our batteries as our SiMaxx production approaches large-scale capacity. As customer demand for Amprius batteries accelerates, expanding production capacity is our priority. In Q1, we continued to make significant progress in venturing our production in Fremont, California. We recently completed the qualification process for our centotherm machine, which is used in the silicon anode fabrication process. We remain on track to achieve two megawatt hour production in three months by the end of the year. We are also implementing SiMaxx production in-house to streamline our manufacturing process. We plan to have this capacity up and running in Fremont later this year. We have continued to make important progress on our largest scale manufacturing site in Brighton, Colorado as well. We currently have completed 30% of construction and design drawings and specifications for the facility and have taken several regulatory steps, including submitting our site plan and advancing all other regulatory plans and applications for the facility. As an additional step and in response to the market's strong reaction to our SiCore platform, we have updated our plans for the Brighton facility to redesign our initial production line to focus on the cycle product. We will continue to produce SiMaxx out of Fremont until a second line begins production. Looking ahead, we have already carried our momentum from the beginning of the year into the second quarter across several of our initiatives. First, we recently signed our first long-term manufacturing agreement with one of our toll manufacturing partners to confirm our collaboration and strategic alignment. This new agreement establishes overall engagement and moves us from operating transactionally to a partnership framework. Second, we have extended our partnership with several customers, including multiple purchase orders from Airbus for our SiMaxx 450 watt-hours per kilo battery. They continue to integrate these cells into their project life with SiMaxx supplying the necessary power and endurance for their startup fly operation. We have also received the first production order for the U.S. Army, which we expect to deliver later this year. This is the first order we have received after successfully completing the development contract that we discussed during our last call. Third, we have signed several new strategic partnerships in the second quarter, most notably with AIBOT and STAFL Systems. Amprius will soon provide SiCore cells to both partners, ensuring maximum power and reliability for AIBOT’s mission-critical operation and serving as STAFL Systems' preferred battery cell supplier. We look forward to partnering with both teams as they shape the future of electric mobility. I believe that these collaborations can provide Amprius with an increase in sales, expand our market reach and secure a greater market share in the high-performance battery market segment. Together, these high-profile customers and strategic partnerships have helped strengthen Amprius' traction in our industry. Just a few weeks ago, in response to the growing global awareness of our battery technology, Amprius hosted its first Taiwan Battery Forum. Over 100 attendees from industry-leading companies and institutions learned about Amprius' breakthrough technologies and partnership opportunities. Also in April, Amprius was honored with the Inaugural CleanTech Battery Company of the Year Award by the market intelligence and research group, Tech Breakthrough. This comes on the heels of Amprius being nominated to the Fast Company’s annual list of the world's most innovative companies, another significant recognition for our business. While we have long known that our products are unmatched at the commercial level, we are proud that the industry is taking notice as well. It's clear that our recent customer expansion and the new industry recognition signal a strong start to 2024 for Amprius. We are working hard to expand our production capacity to meet our substantial demand, and we are confident in the path forward for Amprius. With that, we will turn the call over to our CFO, Sandra Wallach, to review our financial results for the quarter. Sandra?

Sandra Wallach, CFO

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 first quarter with $2.3 million in total revenue. As we previously discussed, our total revenue is the combination of two main revenue streams: product revenue and development services and grant revenue. This quarter, all $2.3 million of our revenue came from our product revenue, representing a 397% increase from the prior year period and a 147% sequential increase. These increases were largely driven by shipments to 82 customers in the quarter, a significant increase 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 three customers represented greater than 10% of revenue, a testament to our diverse customer set. As we've discussed in prior quarters, our development services revenue primarily comes from large non-recurring development programs. Moving to our profitability metrics, our gross margin was negative 190% for the quarter compared to negative 518% in the prior year period and negative 98% in Q4 of 2023. As a reminder, we see significant gross margin variation as our product and services revenue mix fluctuates. Also, we anticipated that factory startup costs would ramp up as we commence construction in Colorado, and we still expect this to be the case through at least 2024. Longer-term, we're 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 first quarter were $5.9 million, a 6% decrease from the prior year period and flat quarter-over-quarter. This decrease is primarily attributable to a decrease in G&A costs that were offset by investments in R&D and sales. Our GAAP net loss for the first quarter was $9.9 million or a net loss of $0.11 per share with a weighted average of 90 million shares outstanding compared to a net loss of $0.11 per share with 84.6 million weighted average shares outstanding in the prior year period. As of March 31, 2024, there were 81 full-time employees, up from 80 in the fourth quarter and 65 in the prior year period, with those employees primarily based in our Fremont, California location. Our share-based compensation for the first quarter was $1.2 million compared to $1.1 million in Q4 of 2023 and $0.7 million in the prior year period. As of March 31, 2024, we have 92.3 million shares outstanding. Now turning to the balance sheet, we exited the first quarter with $39 million in cash and no debt. Key drivers of our cash activity for the quarter were $9.8 million used in operating cash flow, $3.1 million used to continue our build-out of our expanded 2-megawatt production line in Fremont, $0.8 million used for progress payments to secure our production equipment for mechanical, electrical, and plumbing services; and $8.2 million of cash inflow primarily added through the usage of our ATM. 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 the remainder of the year. We expect to spend another $1 million to $2 million on equipment to support the 2-megawatt line in Fremont. This includes the necessary tools to have our cathode line up and running by the fourth quarter of this year. As Kang mentioned, we're also finalizing the design work for our Colorado facility. We expect to publicly communicate a construction cost forecast once the plan is finished. As part of our ongoing strategic planning efforts, we filed a shelf registration on Form S-3 back in October of 2023, and once effective, established a new ATM facility for $100 million. Subsequent to March 31, 2024, and through May 3, we have raised gross proceeds of about $2.1 million through the sale of approximately 1 million shares under the ATM facility. To support our strategic plan, we are pursuing additional funding through multiple vehicles, including equity issuances such as warrant exercises and sales under our ATM and non-dilutive sources such as grants, loans, and incentives. With that, I will conclude the financial discussion and pass the call back to Kang.

Kang Sun, CEO

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 density, power, charging time, and temperature performance. They are uniquely positioned for the electric mobility market. Second, Amprius batteries are commercially available today. Our breakthrough technologies are validated by over 800 customer orders. This quarter, we doubled our number of customers receiving shipments. Not only did we have our normal repeat customers, but 52 were new customers, a testament to our robust demand pipeline. We look forward to further building our customer book in the coming quarters. Third, we are scaling our manufacturing capacity through building our own production capacities and partnering with toll manufacturing partners. With our ramp underway in SiMaxx, our design process moving forward in Brighton, and partnerships with additional toll manufacturing partners in place, we remain on track to deliver expanded production capacities to fulfill market demand. Finally, we are looking forward to several exciting upcoming milestones in the rest of the year. We expect to fully optimize our SiMaxx production process and ramp up production to a 2-megawatt-hour run rate exiting the year at our three-month capacity facility. This will represent a tenfold increase in our production levels that we had exiting 2023 and give us additional products for our strategic customers. We look forward to taking advantage of the hundreds of megawatt-hours of new cycle product availability provided by our toll manufacturing agreements to reach more customers and expand our current customer engagements. During the summer, we will deliver the 100 amp-hour EV form factor cell to the U.S. Advanced Battery Consortium, USA BC, as part of our brand program. We are in the process of finalizing the design plans and are excited to begin construction of our gigawatt-scale facility in Brighton, Colorado. As we always prioritize, we will continue to bring to market new and innovative products that push the boundaries of what is possible for our industry. As part of this, we look forward to commercializing our 500 watt-hour per kilo SiMaxx cells later this year. As we look ahead, our strategy and focus on Amprius remain unchanged. We believe that the opportunity in front of Amprius is tremendous and that our product portfolio positions us to grow in the aviation market and expand to other industries seeking batteries with leading performance. Our addressable markets are growing and durable, including the 1.25-billion conformal wearable battery market by 2030, the 33-billion aviation battery market by 2030, and the 500-billion EV battery market by 2033, all of which are on track for growth in the coming years. 2024 is off to a strong start. We look forward to continuing to deliver what we have planned and promised in the year ahead. Thank you for your continued support of Amprius Technologies. With that, I will turn it back to the operator for the Q&A.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. We will now open the lines for questions. Our first question is from Colin Rusch with Oppenheimer & Company. Please go ahead.

Colin Rusch, Analyst

Thanks so much. You know, guys, there's an awful lot of new customers. Can you give us a sense of what the diversity is from a geographic standpoint and an application standpoint? You mentioned mobility. I'm just curious if you can give us a sense of who those folks are and what sort of sampling they're doing at this point.

Kang Sun, CEO

Yeah, Colin, we have disclosed some customers that we can. Our customer coverage is quite broad. We are primarily in the United States and Europe, and we also have customers in Asia, including India. Our primary battery application for these customers is still in the aviation industry.

Colin Rusch, Analyst

Excellent. Thanks so much. And then, you know, as you move into working with the contract manufacturer, can you talk a little bit about how you anticipate your potential scaling of sales? It seems to me that you are in a unique position to grow fairly quickly as you get into the balance of the year from a revenue perspective?

Kang Sun, CEO

Yeah, we are strengthening our sales team with the introduction of the SiCore products. We have basically resolved the manufacturing capacity issue for that particular product. We have 100 megawatt-hours of capacity behind us, both in cylindrical and pouch forms. So this gives us tremendous support for our customer development efforts here. The company recently added more individuals to our sales force.

Colin Rusch, Analyst

Thanks so much. And then in Fremont, just the final one from me, can you talk a little bit about the tool qualification and how that's going? Are the machines and primarily the key machine working as you anticipated as you go through all the testing processes?

Kang Sun, CEO

Yes. In Fremont, the only machine we have measurement for now is the Centotherm machine, which produces the Silicon nanowire. It's off-the-shelf equipment, just like other people are using in the industry. Recently, the Fremont Centotherm machine started producing silicon for our batteries. We still need to adjust the production protocol to make it more efficient. When we see the qualification of the machine, it means the machine can produce quality silicon nano for our batteries.

Operator, Operator

Our next question is from Donovan Schafer with Northland Capital Markets. Please proceed.

Donovan Schafer, Analyst

Hi, everyone. Thank you for taking my question. I would like to inquire about the customer orders, particularly regarding the E2 deliveries to customers. To clarify, you mentioned that 52 of those were for new customers in the electric mobility sector. Can I confirm that this means if there are 82 total, then there would be 30 repeat orders in the quarter? Is that correct?

Kang Sun, CEO

Yes, that's correct.

Donovan Schafer, Analyst

Okay. Great. It seems that 76 of the shipments were for SiCore, which raises the question of whether you have some repeat customers who previously ordered SiMaxx and are now interested in SiCore. It appears they were satisfied enough with SiMaxx to explore how this other product might work for them. Is that the case?

Sandra Wallach, CFO

Yes.

Kang Sun, CEO

Honestly, we have customer interest in both products.

Donovan Schafer, Analyst

And some of it's crossing over, it seems like...

Kang Sun, CEO

Those products offer, yes, that's why...

Donovan Schafer, Analyst

Okay. So, you can have conversations about SiCore since the tolling agreements are already established with some manufacturers. This generates increased interest from potential customers who weren't initially ready to provide volume. Over time, this could lead to bringing manufacturing in-house. The question is when we might start to see revenue from the tolling partnership you've secured with one manufacturer regarding the SiCore product at scale, even if it's through tolling.

Kang Sun, CEO

Yes, we have numerous customer engagements at this time. We believe that this year, some of these customers will begin placing orders. While some customers are still in the qualification phase and not every customer makes large orders, we anticipate that a portion of our customers will make reasonable orders this year.

Operator, Operator

Our next question is from Jed Dorsheimer with William Blair. Please proceed.

Mark Shooter, Analyst

This is Mark Shooter on for Jed Dorsheimer. Kang, a question on the 76 customers, say they all come to fruition. And I know you have 100 megawatts in the toll coaters, but is there a scenario in which you'll have to restrict allocation to a certain number of customers?

Kang Sun, CEO

We have, Mark, we have tremendous capacity behind us for SiCore. I would say in 2024, maybe even 2025, we should not have supply issues.

Mark Shooter, Analyst

Understood. Okay. Do you see any potential customers facing restrictions on converting to purchase orders based on the source of the material? I'm concerned that we might miss out on a deal if there is a wait for U.S. domestic production. Is that a factor in your plans?

Kang Sun, CEO

Yes, customers engaged shouldn’t have that problem. The customers who are concerned would not engage with us for toll manufacturing.

Mark Shooter, Analyst

Understood. Okay. Thank you. And lastly here, congrats on the award with the military. Can you give any color on the unit volumes we should be expecting or ASPs or margin, any insight as to how we should be modeling that?

Kang Sun, CEO

Yeah, Sandra, let you address this.

Sandra Wallach, CFO

So that is a larger order that is scheduled to go out this year, but we haven't given guidance on pricing and margins for that.

Mark Shooter, Analyst

Okay. Understood. Thank you.

Operator, Operator

Our next question is from Chris Souther with B. Riley Securities. Please proceed.

Chris Souther, Analyst

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. So about six months ago we were talking about customer commitments of tens of megawatt hours and indications of hundreds of megawatt hours for SiMaxx. Are most of those commitments for customers that can switch over to SiCore, at least in the interim, if that's the first line you're going to have up and running and maybe even utilize some of the toll manufacturing in the interim? Or can you help kind of understand what the customer evolution is a little bit better as far as switching over to this newer product just because you're going to have a lot more capacity quicker for that product?

Kang Sun, CEO

Yeah. The customers who are interested in SiMaxx, they would not easily shift to SiCore because, as you know, we sold out our 2024 capacity for SiMaxx. The demand for SiMaxx is still very strong. So the customers want to have a SiMaxx product for specific reasons. SiMaxx not only offers super high energy density, but also very high power capability. We have customer interest in both products, but I have not seen a customer willing to compromise, saying since the SiMaxx is not readily available, I'm going to use the SiCore.

Chris Souther, Analyst

Okay. So what are the conversations like as far as those customers who were expecting the first line to be in Colorado to be SiMaxx and now it might be a little bit further that they'd have to wait? Is that going to impact any product launches with some of the key customers you talked about previously? Or how do you kind of address that in the interim? I'm curious.

Kang Sun, CEO

At this time, our design looks to have a first line for SiCore. That doesn't mean we have to wait for two or three years to build SiMaxx. The SiMaxx will have a full manufacturing protocol validated at Fremont with this two-megawatt facility. We are ready to go larger scale. So now our plan is to design this factory not only for SiCore but also for SiMaxx. We just procured our first line and production line for SiCore.

Chris Souther, Analyst

Okay. And then can you quantify in any way beyond the customer numbers being impressively quick to grow here? How commitments and indications are for SiCore, that you're kind of clarifying that one for the first line? And are there significant expectations of CapEx savings for that initial line for SiCore versus SiMaxx?

Kang Sun, CEO

Yes. The SiCore line, of course, is based on our estimate that the SiCore line is relatively lower cost. This is an off-the-shelf production line, right? So it's a proven manufacturing process. Currently, we are using a partner to do for us. We know exactly how the process looks like, and we should have the machine configuration properly.

Operator, Operator

Our next question is from Jeff Grampp with Alliance Global Partners. Please proceed.

Jeff Grampp, Analyst

Afternoon. Curious, going back to the customer count that you had in the quarter. Curious if you have kind of a percentage of rough numbers that are taking both SiCore and SiMaxx, and wondering if you have a sense or any insight as to the ones that maybe are taking both. Is that to assess a better fit within a specific use case? Or might there be customers that could ultimately be customers of both products for different use cases? Any insight there?

Kang Sun, CEO

As we mentioned in our call, the primary driver of our revenue last quarter came from nearly equal amounts of SiMaxx and SiCore. However, we have a lot more new customers for SiCore products because we have capacity available to them. If we had more capacity for SiMaxx, we would have a lot more SiMaxx customers as well.

Jeff Grampp, Analyst

Understood. That's helpful. And for my follow-up, maybe for Sandra. Any rough numbers or timeline in terms of when you might have a final number to share publicly on the cost of Colorado? Is that something that's months away at year-end or just any kind of benchmark to think about here without holding it to too tight of the timeline?

Sandra Wallach, CFO

Yes. We've completed the 30% construction drawings. We believe we will have the 100% construction drawings at the end of the summer. That will allow us to get a more high-confidence cost estimate as well as the schedule. I think we should be able to give some sort of guidance by the end of the third quarter.

Jeff Grampp, Analyst

Great. Look forward to it. Thank you.

Operator, Operator

At this time, this concludes our question-and-answer session. If you have any additional questions, you may contact Amprius's Investor Relations team at ir@amprius.com. I would now like to turn the call over to Dr. Sun for his closing remarks.

Kang Sun, CEO

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

Operator, Operator

This will conclude today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and thank you for your participation.