Enovix Corp (ENVX) Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Inovix Corporation's second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Currently, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. As a reminder, today's... Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Inovix Corporation's second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Currently, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. As a reminder, today's program will be recorded. And now I'd like to introduce your host for today's program, Monica Gould, Investor Relations for Inovix. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. I would like to welcome everyone to Inovix Corporation's second quarter 2020.

Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Inovix Corporation's second quarter 2026 earnings contract. Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Inovix Corporation second quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Currently, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. As a reminder, today's program will be recorded. And now I'd like to introduce your host for today's program, Monica Gould, Investor Relations for Enovix. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. I would like to welcome everyone to Enovix Corporation's second quarter 2026 Financial Results Conference Call. Joining me today are President and Chief Executive Officer, Dr. Raj Taluri, and Chief Financial Officer, Ryan Benton. Raj and Ryan will be speaking to the slide presentation displayed on today's webcast, which will also be posted along with our press release on our investor relations website at ir.novix.com they will provide prepared remarks and we will then open the call for questions before we begin please note that today's call contains forward looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties these statements are based on current expectations and may differ materially from actual future results due to a number of factors for a discussion of these risks please refer to the disclosures in today's press release and our filings with the securities and exchange commission you can also find these materials on our ir website all statements made on this call are as of today august 12 2026 and we undertake no obligation to update them except as required by law during the call we may also reference non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in the materials posted on our IR website. And with that, I will turn the call over to Raj.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. The second quarter showed momentum across all three of our primary target markets. In smartphones, we reached an important qualification milestone. Our lead customer confirmed that our sales passed more than thousand cycles on the point 2c discharge cycle test we have one final cycle life test and it's already well underway we expect to finish remaining testing by the end of 2026 and the customer with the customer acceptance and smartphone field testing to follow in smart eyewear the production ramp of our lead customer has begun we shipped approximately 2100 batteries to a tier one customer recorded our first smart eyewear product revenue from this customer and expect to deliver roughly nine times at volume in the third quarter. In drones, defense, and industrial, we grew the pipeline by 41 percent from the first quarter. Drones led the way, we advanced product development, and the drone pipeline alone exceeds over 100 million dollars now. Revenue for the quarter came in at the high end of our guidance, and we expect continued sequential growth in the third quarter. What is increasingly clear is that Innovix has multiple paths for growth that reinforce one another. Our 100% silicon anode AI platform is progressing towards smartphone deployment, while smart eyewear has entered commercial production. That sequencing is by design. From the start, my strategy has been to go after the hardest market first, smartphones, because meeting the most demanding energy density requirements forces us to build the best product. Everything we prove at the smartphone level then flows naturally into adjacent categories smart eyewear is the clearest example where the same platform is now shipping commercially meanwhile our mx platform takes that same silicon know-how and manufacturing discipline and aims it at defense a big fast-growing high-value market our established south korea operations are serving defense and industrial customers today and their extensive experience with drones in particular is opening substantially larger opportunities Briefly on the two platforms, the AI platform uses a proprietary 100% silicon anode architecture for space constraint applications where the volumetric energy density and cycle life are most critical, while the MX platform blends silicon with graphite for greater gravimetric energy density and high power performance manufactured at a proven facility in South These are not isolated businesses, they are mutually reinforcing. And we are seeing this convergence translate into new areas for growth today. We are working on silicon blended opportunities beyond our traditional drone, defense and industrial markets. Drilling down a bit further, first on smartphones, we moved materially closer to completing qualification with our lead customer. The customer has now confirmed the sales passed more than 1000 cycles under the .2c discharge cycle test. This is the same test our internal testing indicated when we shared it with you in February. The customer's own data has now borne it out. Fundamentally, this is a customer-conformed evidence that a silicon anode batteries can perform at high levels. Remaining work to be done is an accelerated cycle life test built around a hybrid protocol we defined in close collaboration with our customer to replace the traditional 0.7C testing approach for legacy graphite batteries. testing is now live across several combinations of charge and discharge conditions as well with an enhanced cell design and the same progression is underway the enhanced cells are now showing stronger capacity retention or internal work and the data is now with our lead customers hands for evaluation along with multiple variants of the hybrid protocol we anticipate completing this final test in 2026 our second smartphone oem is also moving towards a similar qualification framework and we expect to begin sample deliveries in the fourth quarter as we look towards 2027 we see the pattern repeating and expanding our lead customer moving into commercial interaction with our second oem advancing through qualification and additional leading oems with whom we are in active dialogue entering the qualification pipeline behind them we pioneered the qualification testing pathway for silicon batteries and smartphones so every customer after the first gets a faster, clearer path to execution and deployment. I'm especially proud of our progress in smart eyewear, which has now moved from initial production into early commercial revenue with a Tier 1 customer. Recently, we completed a key international safety certification for cells and battery packs, as well as a full suite of customers' reliability tests. We shipped approximately 2,100 AI1 batteries in Q2 and recognized our first smart eyewear product revenue. We have now delivery orders in hand for approximately 19,000 packs, which we are planning to deliver in the third quarter, a roughly nine-fold increase from Q2. Those delivery orders are part of the customer's 50,000-unit pack order. We expect to ship the remaining balance in the fourth quarter. Beyond 2026, we expect shipment volumes to grow as our customers' downtrend deployments expand. Turning to our defense sector, I'm proud of the team's execution from initial product launch in the first quarter to substantial increase in our drone pipeline in second quarter to customer sampling beginning now in the third quarter. The pipeline for products manufactured in South Korea increased 41 percent to approximately 183 million dollars from the 130 million dollars at the end of first quarter. As a reminder, this figure represents the estimated peak annual production value, the lifetime opportunities often many multiples more. More than half the growth came from grown opportunities, which now exceed $100 million on their own. Let me walk through what's inside that number. Because the funnel you see on the slide, more than $40 million in this pipeline is at stages where customers are actively evaluating and testing ourselves or designing them into products. And the breadth is striking, including some of the most recognized names in defense technology and consumer electronics. We also introduced MX-1 to a broader set of customers and industry events in the United States and Europe. At approximately 360 Wh per kilogram while supporting high continuous and pulse discharge, MX-B01 is designed to improve mission execution, flight time, range, and payload capability. We have already ordered additional production equipment for the MX-1B01 and we expect it to be operational by mid-2027 with initial commercial shipments and revenue expected to follow as that capacity comes online and customer programs complete qualification. This pipeline growth is also a commercial execution story. For the past two quarters, we've been deliberately building out our commercial organization, adding application engineers and product management talent, and we then brought in Steve Berkos, a seasoned sales veteran with more than 35 years in the global semiconductor industry with most recently running large global accounts at Infineon to lead our sales and application engineering teams under Samira Naragi, our Chief Business Officer. You are seeing the early results in that funnel. Our South Korea operation is a meaningful advantage in pursuing these programs. It combines an established history serving defense customers with in-house manufacturing, quality, and supply chain capabilities in a TAA-designation country. Our South Korea supply is TAA-compliant today and ready for the expected mid-2027 capacity ramp and we expect NDAA compliance across multiple product SKUs. In July, our drone battery completed UN38.3 transportation testing, clearing an important step for commercial shipment and we are commencing sampling with numerous customers in the third quarter. The next phase of Korea capacity is expected to come online in mid-2027. A very capital-efficient expansion utilizing existing land and buildings we own and using readily available equipment. The economics are attractive as well. ASPs are healthy and because we own our own manufacturing, we believe the scale's volume can support solid margins. Beyond the current product, MX2 remains targeted for 2027 with the goal of reaching 400 watt-hours per kilogram. Let me now come back to the AI technology platform. We produce the first AI2 engineering samples in the first quarter. AI2 is expected to provide approximately 20% higher volumetric energy density than AI1 by combining thinner materials, better packaging efficiency, and higher cathode voltage through our EX3M technology node. We sample cells to one Tier 1 smart eyewear customer in Q2. Many of the same EX3M innovations are expected to carry into the future smartphone batteries and support another meaningful step forward in performance in that area as well. I want to give you some insight into how our pace of innovation is also accelerating, as this is something I'm particularly focused on. In batteries, the grading factor and development speed is cycle life testing. A full cycle life test has historically taken four to five months that sets the tempo of learning in the entire industry. We are developing AI models that can predict cycle life outcomes much earlier in the CycleLife test than has historically been the case. Our models for iWear cells are getting close, and we're making very good progress on smart fault cell modeling as well. To be clear, customer qualification will always be the physical test, but this is about how fast we can learn and iterate internally. If we get this right, every design generation arrives faster, and that speed itself becomes a durable competitive advantage. Turning to manufacturing, the second quarter showed continued improvements across Fab 2, with particularly strong results through most of the smart eyewear production flow. In fact, our smart eyewear cell output came in well ahead of our internal plan for the quarter, and our integral yield, the cumulative yield across the entire production line, has now improved for three consecutive quarters. outside zone one all but one process step operated yields of at least 95 percent with individual steps as high as 99.6 percent zone one dicing remains our primary throughput bottleneck and a top focus but the yield has improved to approximately 84 percent from 80 percent in the first quarter zone one has been a stubborn constraint for a long time this is exactly why we changed the approach rather than simply tuning it the hybrid dicing configuration uses laser and mechanical processes where each is most effective and is designed to lift zone 1 throughput to multiples of today's rate. The step change we need to support the production volumes we are planning for 2027. Several of the key mechanical dicing steps are expected to come online around the year end. Supporting all of this execution is our growing team in India. A team in addition to conducting advanced research directly supports manufacturing execution at both Malaysia and South Korea factories. Finally, I want to spend a moment on leadership because I'm thrilled to have Michael Vaivoda on board as a Chief Operating Officer. Michael brings decades of operations experience, including at Apple. He has a full scope mandate across manufacturing, supply chain, quality, and customer delivery. His immediate priorities are increasing smart eyewear output, preparing manufacturing for smartphone field test bills, and driving the cost, yield, and delivery output improvements underway. Adding Michael gives me even more confidence that you are the right team for the next phase of scale. With that, I will turn the call over to Ryan to review our financial results and outlook.

Thanks, Raj. We delivered another quarter of revenue growth and positive gross profit. We came in better than our operating loss guidance, and we ended the quarter with over 550 million dollars in cash on the balance sheet all while continuing to invest in the customer programs and manufacturing work that support the next phase of commercialization. Second quarter revenue was nine million dollars up 21 percent year-over-year and 19 percent sequentially at the high end of our guidance. Our fifth consecutive quarter of year-over-year revenue growth. Defense shipments from South Korea remained the largest contributor while smart eyewear generated its first product revenue. Modest in amount, but an early proof point of contribution from AI-powered wearable devices. Gap gross profit was $1.3 million and non-gap gross profit was $1.8 million, representing gap and non-gap gross margins of 14.4% and 19.9% respectively. The year-over-year decline in quarterly margin primarily reflected the mix of battery products sold through our South Korea operation rather than a change in underlying execution. Even with that change in mix, this was our seventh consecutive quarter of positive gross profit on both a GAAP and non-GAAP basis, and the first half non-GAAP gross margin was up year-over-year to 22.8% from 21.3%. Non-GAAP operating expenses were $30.6 million compared with $28.8 million a year ago. The increase reflects continued spending on smartphone qualification, product development and manufacturing readiness including support for the smart eyewear ramp non-gap loss from operations came in at 28.8 million dollars better than our guidance range of a loss of 29 and 32 million dollars adjusted ebitda was negative 18.9 million dollars compared with negative 20.1 million dollars in the second quarter of 2025 and non-gap net loss per share was $0.13, at the favorable end of our guidance range of a loss of $0.13 to $0.17, an unchanged year-over-year. Turning to cash flow, net cash used in operating activities was $21.8 million, down from $25.9 million in the second quarter of 2025. And free cash flow was an outflow of $31.4 million versus $33.8 million a year ago, both better year-over-year despite higher capital expenditures supporting our manufacturing scale-up. The operating improvement primarily reflected favorable working capital changes. Capital expenditures were $9.6 million, principally supporting manufacturing readiness and capacity expansion. We ended the quarter with approximately $552.1 million in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities, including restricted cash. That liquidity allows us to fund the qualification and and commercialization milestones already underway while preserving flexibility for selective strategic investments. We did not repurchase any shares during the quarter. Our capital deployment priorities remain unchanged, product qualification completion, disciplined manufacturing investment, and commercial execution. For the third quarter, we expect revenue between nine and $10 million up approximately 13 to 25% year over year. The range assumes continued defense in industrial shipments from South Korea, and a significant sequential increase in smart eyewear deliveries. We expect non-GAAP loss from operations between $29 and $32 million, and non-GAAP net loss per share between $0.13 and $0.17. We expect capital expenditures between $8 and $12 million, primarily for Fab 2 initiatives and South Korea capacity expansion Raj discussed. As always, quarter-to-quarter revenue and gross margin can vary based on product mix, customer delivery timing, and the pace of qualification and commercial program ramps. For the third quarter specifically, two factors will shape gross margin, product mix in our South Korea business, and the early cost of the smart eyewear ramp before volumes reach scale. We will continue to manage spending with discipline and align our investments with measurable customer product and manufacturing milestones. And with that, let me turn the call back over to Raj for some closing thoughts before we open the call up for questions.

Thank you Ryan. This quarter, all three of our markets moved forward at the same time. Smartphone silicon batteries passed a critical milestone, smart eyewear entered its revenue generation stage, and our drone and defense pipeline is growing rapidly. The milestones to watch from here are just as clear. Completing the final accelerated smartphone qualification test, initial sample deliveries to our second smartphone OEM, the smart eyewear ramp, converting drone and defense opportunities in the design means and continued improvement in manufacturing, throughput, and cost. With that, operator, we're ready to take questions.

We will now begin the Q&A session. Please note that this call is being recorded. If you'd like to ask a question, please use the raise hand feature on your screen. Questions will be answered in the order they are received. Please ask one question and one follow-up at most. We'll now pause a moment to assemble the queue. Our first question will come from Colin Rush with Oppenheimer. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Thanks so much, guys. I just want to get a sense of volumes. As you start to ramp the eyewear business line, how do we want to think about total volumes to get to that optimal margin level? And how many quarters do you think it'll take to get there?

Yeah, thank you, Colin. I can take a shot at it, and then Ryan will add some more commentary on margins and so on. You know, firstly, you know, we're actually very pleased with the progress in manufacturing on these small cells, right? Going from a few thousand packs to now roughly 19,000 next quarter, and on the way to fulfilling a 50,000-pack quarter. This shows our confidence in manufacturing of this cell on our technology platform in our Penang fam. And I'm really proud of what the team has done there. Look, the market itself, as I said the last quarter, the market is multiple millions of units and expected to grow year after year. We are sampling now to different customers who are in various stages of building the products. Exactly how much we'll ship will depend upon how successful their products are and what share we win. But I can say this, the feedback we've got from the customers is the sell has been very strong, mainly driven by the energy density we provide in this small farm factor. And it's translating into much longer battery life, particularly with AI running on these glasses. So maybe Ryan, you want to take on margins?

Yeah, no, that's fair. I mean, look, not to be repetitive, but we ship 2,100 units in queue. The absolute revenue from that is nominal. Of course, on pricing specifically, I'm not going to quote a number there, particularly because we're dealing with one single important customer. And so I can't really go into those economics. But what matters for us really, you know, I consider most important is that we build scale, is that we get into a position of incumbency into the growing market. We want to be the default battery choice for smart airwear, specifically kind of finishing off on margins. You know, of course, even at the 50,000 unit level for the year, that can't absorb the overhead burden that it will face as those costs start to move in geography from operating expenses up above the gross margin line. And so we expect it to be negative margin for the balance of the year. It really, as we ramp, ultimately, as we get to some version of scale, and I'm not going to quote a specific number of what the break-even point is. Raj talked about the market growing. As the customer adoption, the pull-through starts to happen, we do expect to have healthy gross margins.

And then in the drone market, obviously, there's a lot of different applications. And so I want to get a sense of how you're sitting within that opportunity and which applications you're competing well on? And, you know, what are the key drive, which products are really driving some of that progress that you're making in that end market?

Yeah, on the drone market, we are seeing tremendous amount of interest from many customers. You know, one of the main reasons is we now have an extremely competitive cell, you know, with the main metric is, you know, know, watt hours per kilogram. And that cell actually is made fully in our own factories. And it's a, you know, TIA compliant country in South Korea. And we expect it to get to NDA compliant path across multiple SKUs in 2027. And this, this, this factory, you know, you might remember Colin has, you know, more than a decade of production history on this site. So, you know, military applications. The main markets we're getting into there are markets where, you know, they want a few hundred cycles, for example, of flying time and also safety, you know, public safety, interceptor drones, you know, ISR and markets like that. These are the markets that I feel like have a good margin profile and a lot of demand. And our expectation is that the demand is actually going to outstrip the supply here very quickly with many, many, many customers wanting that. And we are super excited that we have our own factory that we're able to make it in where the margin profile will be really good. And we are adding more capacity there. And as I mentioned in the prepared remarks, we expect that capacity to come online in mid-27.

Yeah, if I could chime in as well. I mean, as we go through the names of the pipeline and look at it, these are some of the best companies in the world. So some really exciting opportunities. Of course, drones is a big portion, the majority of that fund that's building right now. We expect that to be strong for many years to come. But then there's other technologies that we think will build right on top of this. So I think robotics is another example that we look a few years out. We think it's going to be a big market as well.

Your next question will come from Ruplu Bhattacharya with Bank of America. Your line is open. Please go ahead. Ruplu, your line is open if you could unmute and please ask your question.

Hi, can you guys hear me now?

Yes, sir.

I had two questions. Raj, now that both the lead smartphone customer as well as the second smartphone OEM, they've moved to a silicon-specific qualification framework. How standardized do you think this will become in the industry and what steps are you taking to enable that? And does the second OEM now have essentially the same qualification path as the lead customer? And when do you expect POs from the first customer as well as the second customer? And I will follow up.

Yeah, so good question. Yes, I think what has happened is, or the work we've done over the last couple of quarters, we've really been able to convince the customers that when you move from, you know, graphite anodes to 100% silicon anodes, some of the legacy tests are not very representative of how the battery will actually perform in real life, which is, I think, a huge step forward that we've been able to accomplish. And as I mentioned, in February, we talked about this point-to-see cycle life test where we're internally seeing that we should be able to go past 1,000 cycles. Now the customer has confirmed that on their own test. So we are very happy about that. And the one test that's left is really the accelerated cycle life test, where, you know, if you just do at a normal cycle life point to see, it just takes a long time. So people really need an accelerated test. We've now worked with the customers to come up with a hybrid protocol, which is, you know, some combination of the different rates of discharge. And that's what the customers are running. My lead customer is running now. There's two or three different protocols that we work with them on. And, you know, our expectation is one of them will meet the requirements that they have in the fourth quarter. Then we expect to get to, you know, a small build of, you know, they'll put the battery inside the phone to see how it performs. And then we start getting into volume production in 27 and so on. We do continue to talk to our other customers too. And then we talk to them about, we have a good engineering relationship where we talk about these protocols. I do expect in time that the market will adapt and change to these kind of protocols because, you know, silicon behaves differently than graphite in accelerated tests.

Okay. Okay. Thanks for the details there. As a follow-up, can I ask, you've made many manufacturing improvements in Fab 2. What is the manufacturing capacity now as it stands today of HVM1 as well as the agility line? And can you give us a sense for like how much max units or smartphones and eyewear that each of these lines can support? Thank you.

Yeah. I mean, look, like I said, when we first said what the lines were, we have continued to keep that, you know, 1350 UPH was what the nameplate capacity of the line was. We haven't really staffed to all of that because we are, you know, managing that through the qualification timeline with the customer so that when the demand is there, we are there. And again, And it's not really a question of how much capacity we have. It's more a question of pacing that line with the right number of people and working on the yields and working on the RAM in line as the customer qualifications are going. So that's kind of where we are on that.

Your next question will come from Mark Shooter with William Blair. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. You can hear me, right? And hey, Raj. Congrats on passing the 1,000 cycles. That's a big accomplishment. I do think that we thought that this would be the last milestone, the stage gate, though. So can you walk us through the last test? What are we trying to prove there? I mean, I know it's a hybrid approach, but is there something that your lead smartphone customer saw that required a little bit more digging in? Any color there would be helpful.

Yeah, the last test basically is what I call an accelerator test, which basically means that they would like to discharge at a faster rate, as I mentioned, but not just all the way at the high rate, but some combination of a faster rate and some combination of a slower rate, which is kind of more representative of what a phone might actually do in the real world. And we are working with them on the protocol that actually will get that done. And they have a number that we need to meet to get to that. And that's what we are working on. The next stage after that is to actually do the test inside a phone, right? These are bench tests on the battery on the table. So that's the next step to it. Like I said, the main gating item right now is an accelerated cycle life test so they can complete the test in time. And we have multiple protocols that we are working jointly with the customer, and they're all underway. And by fourth quarter, we expect to see some good results.

And Mark, at the risk of being repetitive again, it's like, go back to the February print. And we showed in the presentation and talked about how we passed the 0.2C test internally. We're waiting on the customer to run that test themselves, and that's what we've put in the headline here today, and we're very proud of that we've got that independent verification from the customer. What we also talked about in the February print and follow-up in the May print was the 0.7C test, and that's the traditional graphite test that we needed to find a proxy or a substitute. And now we've, you know, we've got the framework in place, we mentioned, you know, last quarter. And now we have cells running under a handful of separate variant protocols. And we expect, you know, one or more of those to pass by the end of the year.

Okay, got it. Switching over to the drone opportunity, which is increasing here with a $100 million pipeline, that's a big number. And it's an exciting business. What I'm interested in is, can you walk us through maybe some of the timeframe of what that engagement looks like with a customer? So you have $5 million in wins already, but can you walk us through how long it may take to move somebody from a pipeline opportunity to down subsequent steps? Is it nine, 18 months? And when do you see some of a decent conversion from that pipeline opportunity in the backlog?

Yeah, as I mentioned, I think we have a pipeline that has grown significantly. Now, the $5 million is only just a design been awarded one. The better number is like there's 40 million already in active testing and design. And so the customers are ourselves right now. Defense qualification cycles are shorter than smartphones because just of the need of what they need to get to production faster. And the revenue and scale aligns with our Korea capacity coming online in mid-2027. So we start to expect to see, you know, ramp of this, some of this pipeline in mid-2027. And again, this capital expansion is very capital efficient because it's on the land and buildings we already own.

Yeah, and I could comment as well because I said to those same pipeline reviews, there's some splits within that group as well, right? So the drone companies themselves, they're all trying to move really fast, in my opinion. And so it's six to nine months, and we're sampling those. And quite frankly, within our internal teams and cell teams, everyone's fighting over, fighting over samples in terms of how we prioritize. And then there's the separate split of the defense primes. And as we start to focus on supporting, you know, those types of activities, those tend to be a little bit longer runway. So, you know, 18 months is, you know, I think it's not an unfair number to say what we think the average time is to get to production with some of those. But those represent some enormous opportunities. And so in both of these areas, it's really about us, you know, putting capacity in place. And the equipment that we've ordered and is in flight right now, pardon the pun, is just hopefully the beginning.

Your next question will come from Derek Soderbergh with Cantor Fitzgerald. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Yeah, hey, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. Just a clarifying question here first, Raj. You were talking about the testing earlier. Just wanted to confirm the second smartphone OEM is accepting the 0.2C testing standard, or are they, I think you had said they're, you know, sort of a few different options, but just wanted to confirm that second smartphone customer is sort of accepting the 0.2C.

Yeah, I mean, look, we are focused on the first one first and when that one gets to the right stage, we will sample the second one. But we have talked to all of them about silicon being different and they all understand that. And I think some of them have launched some amount of silicon-doped batteries already, so they do understand that they behave differently. So I think my expectation is the whole market will move towards that in time.

It's fair to say each one should be easier and easier. Yeah, because once you do it first time, right.

Got it. That's helpful. And then just on the zone one yields, you know, improved quite a bit since Q1. I was wondering if that was mostly the Dicing configuration.

And then just kind of a high level question on yield. um where do you guys feel like you need to get before you can really ramp up production um you know maybe a yield number that gives you the confidence to you know invest in additional capacity just you know with the assumption that demand's not not the issue you may have like that one you know i think you know raj has talked for several quarters and i've emphasized as well in terms of you know we're we're making steady progress and we're doing things in in kind of an orderly fashion and uh in order to kind of meet our customer commitments and so i think there's just been it has been time to put a lot of steady progress um and a lot of focus on just kind of grinding out you know discipline yield wins and so there's a lot of there's there's a lot of tactical things that go into represent and be reflected in that you know four percentage point increase so there's there's you know mechanical changes there's process changes there's a lot of different things. And the team in Malaysia has done just a fantastic job grinding out those wins. And Michael, who's joined as COO, we think is a great addition and adds to the team. And he's over there in Malaysia this week and reporting good things. And I think he's going to just help with the momentum of progress. In terms of yield to be able to start a ramp, well, I mean, we're starting the commercial ramp with smartware so we feel we feel good about it um and we feel good that we're on a glide path and we've got a path to to the gross margins that we want to need and and i don't i don't think the the margins that we would target is as baseline margins in order to start a real high volume ramp is is going to be any different than any other typical manufacturing concern yeah and just continuous improvement yeah thank you your words yeah Your next question will come from Bill Peterson with J.P.

Morgan. Please unmute your line and ask your question.

Yeah, good afternoon. Thanks for taking the questions. Maybe picking up on that last topic. So you have the new COO, Michael. Do you expect that he'd be probably more focused on Malaysia, improving the areas you just spoke to, or Korea, or somewhere in the supply chain? Just kind of any sort of tangible area where you think that you can get the most continuous improvement using your words?

Yeah, I mean, you know, we don't, we don't, we know, I think we mentioned last time with the KH, you know, who came to us with the tremendous experience from our route jet acquisition is now responsible for manufacturing of both the factories. So Michael will be responsible for both the factories in addition to advanced manufacturing machines that we need to build, you know, in addition to supply chain, you know, getting the right materials in place. So the entire operational side will be under him. And I said in the prepared remarks, you know, our Malaysia factory is benefiting quite a bit from our learning in Korea because we've done that battery manufacturing know-how. And with KH being there, you know, the cross-pollination is happening tremendously. And also our Korea factory is benefiting tremendously from our silicon knowledge and how that's actually helping us make a very competitive drone cell. And our India team is actually helping both of those. We have tremendous R&D team in India. So it's a kind of a holistic, you know, set of teams that are all working together. And we don't separate that much as Malaysia and Korea, as much as battery know-how across both those.

Thanks for that, Raj. So the next one, I guess, maybe probably for Ryan, but the gross margin took a step down in the second quarter. You called mix primarily sold from South Korea. Can you provide some more color on that? And I guess it sounds like you didn't really have any impact yet from the small volumes of the eyewear, but it sounds like based off your expectations, that might be a bigger impact. So how should we think about gross margin trajectory based off the prior comments around eyewear and maybe other mixed ramifications from South Korea?

Yeah, good question. I mean, look, first I'd caution against reading, you know, one quarter as a trend. And, you know, I think more appropriately, if you look at the first half on a first half basis, non-GAAP gross margin was 23%, I think, versus 21% in the prior year. So year to date, actually up two points. Q2 specifically, again, reflects the product mix and, you know, principally in the CREA-based business, which can be lumpy. Some SKUs carry better margins than others. It's just the case. um you know looking forward we don't you know obviously we don't guide gross margins um but the shape to understand is that the base business is there um last year if i recall 25 q4 ended up being a stronger margin quarter than than q3 um but there's no doubt smart eyewear as as we ramp it won't be big numbers but it'll be drag it'll be a drag on margins as we move into that ramp as the overhead gets moved into gross margins. Again, from an operating income, from a cashflow basis, it's largely geography moving. And really, again, as we scale to 27 and beyond, we expect that to rationalize as we scale.

Your next question will come from Ananda Barua with Loop Capital. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Thanks a lot for taking the questions. I really appreciate it. I apologize if this has been asked already. Raj, memory availability, does that have any impact, just because it's a prolonged tightness, on any of the SKU qualifications on smartphones or PCs that you guys are targeting? And then I have a quick follow-up, thanks.

Not much for us yet. We're not in high volume, so we're really in qualification stage. So I think, you know, we don't see too much impact right now. The customers are worried about it, but not impacting us.

And is there, you know, there's a component of what's going on where low-end phones, low-end SKUs are, you know, are unable. They're just exiting the market to some degree. Would that impact you at all? Where exactly would you consider yourselves to be positioned inside of sort of that heat map, that SKU heat map?

I mean, really, we're in technology qualification stage and people really want to use us in our leadership products because that's where they see most advantage of our technology and differentiation. And that's where we are being qualified. But I do expect that the water falls down. And like I said, at this point, the SKU mix is not impacting us that much because we are working in the qualification stage. That'll come in time, not right now.

And if you sort of just, if you, I mean, this is for our benefit, but if you thought about what your revenue mix is, you know, three years out, five years out like that, different product segments, what do you think is a useful way for us to envision what the REV contribution is to the company? Sort of anecdotal percentage, percent this, percent that, not necessarily a REV outlook.

Maybe I'll turn it to you. Of course, we can't necessarily quote it. We can't quote a number or a specific. I will say it's going to be, I think, a pretty good horse race. You know, a year ago, if I think you asked that question, we were talking, you know, principally about about smartphone to be the obvious answer. I think the way that the drone market, the defense market has developed and the progress that we've made with product development, customer qualifications and building the team that has an opportunity to be a really big business really fast. Yeah.

And again, smart eyewear could take off and become huge and that could be good, too. So it's hard to call the mix, but I think all three markets for us are attractive and where our technology provides clear benefit to our customers. So that's probably the best way I'll say it. It's exciting times because everybody wants better batteries.

Awesome. That's helpful. That's helpful, guys. Thanks. Appreciate it.

As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please use the raise hand button at the bottom of your screen. Your next question will come from Jeff Osborne with TD Cowan. Your line is open. Please ask your question.

Thank you. Just a quick one, Ryan. Could you update us on where annual production capacity is at the South Korea facility now? And then Raj mentioned that you would be expanding, and that would be up and running, I think, by the middle of 27. So I'm just curious, where is it now, annual revenue capacity? Where are you headed? And then how much will it cost?

Okay, I think I got all those subparts. Okay, Thanks for the question. In terms of capacity there, I mean, we're not operating at full capacity, so there's some headroom there. There is some complexity layer down because there's different sets of equipment, so each different equipment line has different, some are at capacity, some are not. That's the reality of the current building. In terms of the capacity for the drone business, we have minimal right now. We have placed orders for new equipment that gets us what we think is significant material capacity coming on in the summer. And that equipment is going to be tailored and customized to standard equipment, but configured for our specific product SKUs. Are you preparing for this to be like a $100 million business 18 months from now? is there any yeah answer that the capacity of that equipment i guess i can quote that number is roughly a million units um and it's it's um you know it's all embedded in the capex forecast that we're starting to make payments on and you see i think it's eight to twelve minutes that we guide guided so the it's he has raj cited uh capital efficient um we have additional buildings and land there in south korea so we can add incremental capacity beyond that so hopefully this is just the first inning of that baseball game yeah and our goal is to make sure that you know as Samira and her team converts the pipeline into opportunities into wins

we don't get capacity limited right so and we are staging it in that way we are building the factory in that way so that incrementally we can add capacity quickly but you know up to a million units a year as as uh as Ryan mentioned we are already on track so we can keep driving more on that as we see the design events come in. We have the space and the building, so it's really not a problem.

Got it. Thank you. That's all I have. Okay. Thanks. Thank you. Yeah.

There are no further questions at this time. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Dr. Raj Taluri for closing remarks.

Yeah. Thank you all. Really great quarter. We're happy with all the progress we've made and look forward to seeing you next quarter.