QuantumScape Corp (QS) Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

And welcome to QuantumScape's Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Sam Kamara, QuantumScape's Senior Director, Investor Relations, you may begin your conference.

Thank you, Operator. Good afternoon and thank you to everyone for joining QuantumScape's Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. To supplement today's discussion, please go to our Investor Relations website at ir.quantumscape.com to view our shareholder letter. Before we begin, I want to call your attention to the Safe Harbor provision for forward-looking statements that is posted on our website as part of our quarterly update. Forward-looking statements generally relate to future events, future technology progress, or future financial or operating performance. Our expectations and beliefs regarding these matters may not materialize. Actual results in financial periods are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. There are risk factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from the content of our forward-looking statement for the reasons that we cite in our shareholder letter from 10K and other SEC filings, including uncertainties posed by the difficulty in predicting future outcomes. Joining us today will be Qualmscape CEO, Dr. Silva Sivaram, and our Chief Accounting Officer, Agnes Tan. Our Chief Financial Officer, Kevin Hetrick, is recovering from a planned medical procedure, and Agnes will cover the financial portion of today's call. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Siva.

Thank you, Sam. We look forward to having Kevin back soon, and we wish him a speedy recovery. Let me start with the big news on cell manufacturing. In February of this year, we inaugurated the Eagle Line, and it has already become the workhorse of our customer engagement, allowing an increased pace of customer sampling, which is flowing into customer billings. Our progress on demonstrating scalable production has given us the confidence to take the next step for production scale-up beyond the design capacity of the Eagle Line. Today, we announced a 100-megawatt-hour mass production line with output aimed at meeting the rapidly emerging opportunities for our QSDC and QSAS business verticals. In addition, we announced a QS ecosystem partnership with Mullbauer Group to provide cell assembly equipment for this planned line. Engineering work on higher-throughput processes and equipment is already underway, and startup production for this new line is targeted for 2028. With Murata, Corning, and Molbauer, we have now announced partnerships with global players along the entire production flow, representing an end-to-end solution for mass production of our technology as we work towards gigawatt-hour scale production. Next, I will provide an update on our three business verticals, starting with QS-DC. On October 8th, we launched the QS Power Block for AI Data Center in conjunction with the Open Compute Project Global Summit. The QS Power Block is an in-rack energy storage reference design that enables AI data center architects to harness the improved energy density, high power capability, and especially the improved safety profile of the QSC 5 cell. In testing, the QS power block demonstrated four times the power density and five times longer run time than the reference specification from OCP. This is a clear demonstration of the step change performance improvement provided by QS technology and the value we can offer AI data center customers. Another important advantage of our ceramic solid-state separator is its safety profile, in particular its thermal stability. Conventional lithium-ion batteries, including LFP batteries, are not thermally stable above approximately 180 degrees Celsius, leading to the risk of catastrophic thermal runaway and making insurance and regulatory approval more onerous which slows down deployment of critical AI infrastructure. In contrast, QS solid-state batteries have been shown to be thermally stable well over 300 degrees Celsius and we recently validated this result in customer testing as well as with third-party lab testing. Next, an update on our Automotive Vertical QSEV. Engagement on automotive cell development continues to be robust across our global automotive customers. In Q3, we recorded our first customer billings from Honda agreement announced in June. This agreement encompasses joint development work to integrate our solid-state platform into Honda's technology roadmap. In addition, we have signed an agreement with a new customer to further advance automotive commercialization. This agreement is with a leading global player in mobility manufacturing whose applications and requirements are aligned with our automotive customers. We are aligning our statements of work with Volkswagen Power Co. with the goal of bringing them on to our long-term technology platform that goes beyond QSC 5 and includes other applications. Our aim is to bring all of our automotive customers onto a common technology platform. On November 11th, we will announce more details on our next-generation technology platform and collaboration models with automotive customers at our third annual solid-state battery symposium in Kyoto, Japan. Next, an update on our QSAS business vertical. QSAS is engaged with customers across many advanced applications, defense, aerospace, space, medical devices, consumer electronics, and more. We believe this diversity of applications offers an attractive opportunity set for our QSC-5 platform, with a total addressable market for QSAS of up to $75 billion by 2030. We have shipped QSC-5 samples to customers in the defense, aviation, and telecommunication sectors, and we recorded our first customer billing from QSAS this quarter. One important point of feedback from customers in defense is that supply chain vulnerabilities are not just a theoretical concern. They are already seeing restrictions put in place by foreign governments which limit their ability to procure cutting-edge batteries to power their advanced defense systems. This is a point of differentiation for QS. In addition to advantages in performance and safety, our cells are built in America and use supply chains that were designed from the beginning to avoid critical dependencies on Chinese suppliers of equipment or materials such as graphite. Finally, with Q3 behind us, I'd like to take a look back at our execution so far on our four key goals for 2026 these four goals but all focused on one strategic objective taking our solid-state battery technology and turning it into products across multiple verticals our execution towards our goals has been strong our first key goal for 2026 is to demonstrate scalable production on the Eagle Line. Eagle Line is fully operational and is producing increased volumes of QoC5 cells for our customers. This has allowed us to move to the next stage of scale-up with the announcement today of our 100 megawatt hour mass production line and ecosystem partnership with the Mohlbauer Group. Our second key goal for 2026 is to advance automotive commercialization. So far this year, we have announced our second named automotive partnership with Honda. We continue our engagement automotive development with Volkswagen PowerCore. And we have signed new agreements and expanding existing relationships with global players in automotive and mobility. Our third key goal for 2026 is to enter new high-value markets. and we are seeing strong interest in both our QSDC and QSAS vertical. With the QS power block, QSDC is addressing the need for high-performance, safer in-rack energy storage for advanced AI data center design. With QSAS, we are seeing broad interest across advanced applications, including defense aviation and telecommunication, and we have already begun generating customer buildings from QSC-5 sample shipments. Finally, in 2026, we promised to go beyond QSC-5 with an update on our technology roadmap, and we are pleased to announce that this will take place in conjunction with our third annual solid-state batteries symposium on November 11 in Kyoto, Japan. We are proud of the progress we have made so far in 2026 and while there is much work left to do the whole team is focused on our mission to revolutionize energy storage we look forward to sharing more updates soon thank you siva gap operating expenses and gap net loss in q3 were 92.4 million and 84.5 million respectively.

Adjusted EBITDA loss was $60.7 million in Q3, in line with expectations. For full year 2026, we reiterate our adjusted EBITDA loss guidance of between $250 million and $275 million. A table reconciling gap net loss in adjusted EBITDA is available in the financial statements at the end of the shareholder letter. Capital expenditures in the third quarter for $4.4 million. Q3 CapEx was primarily composed of investment into our technology roadmap and associated facility spend. For full year 2026, we reiterate our guidance for CapEx to be between $27 million and $37 million. Customer billings in Q3 were $9.8 million. Customer billings as a metric represents the total value of all invoices issued by QS to our customers and partners in the period, regardless of the accounting treatment. As a reminder, customer billings may vary from quarter to quarter due to fluctuations in activity as we progress through various phases of engagement. This operational metric is not a substitute for revenue under U.S. GAAP. Customer billings in Q3 included both automotive and non-automotive customers and reflected the mix of development activities, payments from ecosystem partners, and sell shipments. We ended Q3 with $819.8 million in liquidity and will remain prudent with our strong balance sheet going forward. As always, we encourage investors to read more on our financial information, business outlook, and risk factors in our quarterly and annual SEC filings on our Investor Relations website.

Thanks, Agnes. We will begin today's Q&A portion with a few questions we have received from investors or that I believe would interest investors. Siva, today we announced a 100-megawatt-hour production line, as well as a partnership with Mobauer to provide cell assembly equipment. Why take this step now, and why Mobauer?

Sam, we have announced the QS power block at the OCP conference, and we have shipped cells to a number of aerospace and defense customers. The response from both markets has been very strong. These customers don't typically have their own cell manufacturing capacity, so we need to provide a manufacturing solution. The Eagle line, our highly automated pilot line, along with our Cobra process, is demonstrating scalable production. We are sampling to more customers, generating billing, and this pilot line is laying the groundwork for the next step up in scale and for this step it is crucial to bring in an ecosystem partner with deep experience in automation and cell manufacturing equipment development to partner with us and that's where mulbauer comes in when we take our material supply partners separator partners including murata and corning and put that together with downstream cell assembly with Müllbauer that gives you an end-to-end process flow enabled by a set of world-class experts. This line lets us serve high-value markets directly while keeping our capital light licensing model for automotive.

This quarter we recorded our first billing from Honda and added a new agreement with a mobility manufacturer. Where does automotive commercialization stand and what should investors expect for the rest of the year?

Sam, automotive continues to be a large and important market for us. On commercialization, in June we announced our agreement with Honda and this quarter we recorded our first billings from Honda. In Q3, we also added an agreement with a global player in mobility manufacturing. Beyond Honda and Volkswagen PowerCo, our active customer engagements include two other top 10 OEMs. As we have done on a regular basis, we are in the process of updating our statement of work with VW PowerCore. As part of that process, we have amended our collaboration agreement to eliminate transition payments and are working to add milestones tied to technology advancement. We continue to make substantive progress in advancing our technology platform, and we are aligning our automotive customers to take advantage of this. Regarding our Kyoto event, I won't give too much away today, but keep in mind that our ceramic separator enables an anode-free lithium metal architecture that is cathode agnostic. Getting the automotive industry aligned on this one platform positions us to become the de facto operating system for the solid-state battery industry creating enormous potential for value creation and capture that's what we are aiming for and i'll save the rest for the symposium in Kyoto on november 11th we launched the qs power block at the ocp conference in san alde what's been the feedback from ai data center customers so far we are extremely excited about this market and OCP was a great chance to get customer feedback. We heard three consistent themes. First, for data center architects, the role of energy storage is changing rapidly. I'll use an automotive analogy. In the past, batteries were basically like a spare tire in a car, you carry it along but you hope you don't need it. As we enter the 800 volt DC transition and as single rack power is headed towards one megawatt, the battery is becoming more like a suspension system. It is working constantly to smooth things out and without a suspension system something will break pretty quickly this is a totally new use case and data center architects need fundamental innovation to make it work second for in-rack power safety is the absolute priority that means architects today are generally limited to using LFP batteries and they are paying a big performance penalty to maximize safety. That gives us a clear opportunity to deliver systems that not only have longer run time and better power density, but also a safety profile that beats even LFP on thermal stability. Last, this transition is already happening. Customers want to see the QS power block in volume, and that's why we are announcing this 100 megawatt hour line today. Startup production in 2028 aligns well with the data center industry timeline and now is the time to take that next step up.

Okay, thanks so much, Debra. We are now ready to begin the live portion of today's call. Operator, please open up the line for questions.

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again.

One moment for questions.

Our first question comes from Winnie Dong with Deutsche Bank. You may proceed.

Thanks so much for taking my questions. First one is on the 100 megawatt hour line with Neubauer. Just curious to see what the economic arrangement might be in terms of, you know, who owns it, who pays, and then what does it do to the CAPEX-like model?

Winnie, thanks for asking the question. Just to put the Muhlbauer announcement in context and the 100-megawatt-hour line in context, the longest lead time aspect of the project is designing, building, and installing the equipment. And now that we have started on that, we are announcing the planned 100-megawatt-hour line today. And obviously, the next question is, where is this going to be? And on site selection, the process is underway. We will keep it confidential as you would expect and announce it at the appropriate time. We will provide a capital plan and in the 2027 financial guidance on our Q4 earnings call. We are targeting equipment costs to QS of less than $100 million. But in terms of funding, we are pursuing non-dilutive funding sources, including customers, government, ecosystem, and licensing partners. And we'll keep you updated.

That's helpful. And then you mentioned, you know, you've recorded your first long-term billings in the third quarter. I was wondering if you can help cite that. And then, you know, what does that mean in terms of timeline to eventually signing a licensing agreement with them?

So Vinny, let me, by the way, finish up on a point you asked earlier. So what happens to a capital light model with the 100 megawatt hour? And this deals back with your Honda question. We still are keeping our capital light licensing model to address markets such as automotive that have their own manufacturing capacity. So our expectation is that whether it is with Volkswagen Power Co. or with Honda, we will be transferring technology to them so that they can ramp up their own production. Now, with respect to products and product lines, as we are prone to do, those announcements have to come from our customers. But the engagement with Hyundai has been very, very strong, and we are working very closely with them.

All right. Thank you. I'll turn it back to you. Thanks.

Thanks, Vinny.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Mark Schroeder with William Blair. You may proceed.

Hey, Steve. Congrats on the PowerBlock product launch. Just a quick question on that. I'm just trying to get your thoughts on the application. The BVU product spec or application space is defined by high power, high pulse. This is a very different vector space than what you have been optimizing for EVs, which is more long cycle life. You need probably in the order of 1,000 cycles and more full depth discharge, not just the high pulse application. I understand that theoretically lithium metal has far better power density. But in practice in the lab, I'm wondering what have you done to maybe retune the cell off of the EV design and optimize it for the BVU application?

Mark, you're perceptive. That's a very, very good question. The application for automotive use case is very different than in the BVU use case, where we don't need to worry about low temperatures. There's the occasional brownouts where you do full depth of discharge is probably a couple of times a month, if not a few times a year. Most of the time is used for high frequency ups and downs and towards the middle of the depth of charge and discharge. And what we have done is shown a couple of specs that are remarkably good for our technology. first is power how much power can I produce out of this and we are 4x better than anything that the OCP spec calls for and then how much run time can I support so when you get to be a megawatt hour rack and you are taking care of ultra high frequency changes with capacitors but the rest of it is supported by the battery how much can you support on your own and we found that compared to the spec we are 5x longer run time so the lithium metal technology naturally is a better fit for this application but most important than anything else is safety you are sitting adjacent to very high value GPUs and people are ultra scared about putting an NMC battery or something that could cause a thermal runaway. Here, the better safety profile of the QSC5 is a very, very good fit for them in the ability to withstand thermal runaway. So, in all, this is a very good fit, and the QSC-5 seems to have found an interesting home.

Great. Thanks for the color, Steve. I appreciate that. Just to pivot to the 100-megawatt-hour line announcement, congrats on that as well. I heard you also say to Winnie about $100 million in CapEx, and that's where you're seeing the top end. What are you seeing behind the scenes that's changed or that would have you divert from the CapEx Lite model you were pursuing? and DW, I believe, has right of first refusal in the first five gigawatt hours if they choose to take that. And I'm just wondering, are they in play here for the ownership or who ends up developing this line, who ends up owning the asset?

Yeah, so you are correct in pointing out that in our contract with PowerCore, they have a capacity to add non-automotive applications. However, what has come out of this is how well the Eagle line has done. And remember, Volkswagen Power Co. is here with us developing it. They are in our shop working hand in glove, so that relationship is going well. But this equipment design is built off of our advancements on the Eagle line, and Mulbauer will develop a full back-end cell assembly line for us. That's the structure that we are going in. And we'll be looking at, as you said, a capital light model for any automotive applications that we do it either at PowerCo or at Honda. And this line will be directed primarily at the high-value applications, such as aerospace, defense, and data center.

That's very helpful. I mean, should we look at that as maybe a DOW stepping in for some non-dilutive funding like we've seen in some of the private sector and maybe some other smaller battery players?

We have seen those, and we have seen other grants, loans, and many other instruments from the government being applied, and we will be looking at those as well.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Ben Callow with Baird. You may proceed.

Hey, good evening. I was just congrats on everything just in terms of you know automotive versus data center versus aerospace could you just talk about you know how competitive the environment is and all three of those protocols and thank you guys thank you thanks Ben so as you would expect these markets are substantive different substantively different in their customer base, especially with respect to the QSAS advanced solutions that covers defense, aerospace, communications, et cetera.

There, the supply chain is a big asset for us. A, we are a U.S.-based cell manufacturer. B, we constructed the supply chain to have no dependence on graphite. we don't have in our architecture any graphite and we are partnering with as the government calls it non-FEOC non foreign entities of concern partners so every one of whom is done with a friendly partner to go make this happen so this is particularly relevant for our defense in aerospace applications and more and more we see that even with the data center partners that they are looking for a supply chain from a friendly source. Add on top of it the better safety profile. That makes us have some additional advantages over any competition. And then of course intrinsically the cell is better in energy and power and all of the conventional applications that you look for.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from Mark Delaney with Goldman Sachs. You may proceed.

Hi, you've got Ayush Ghosh on for Mark Delaney. Thanks for taking the questions.

Congrats on the new production line and sort of with that, how are you thinking about the relative timing of commercialization across the three verticals and how, if at all, has that timing changed uh over the last year so the 100 megawatt hour line the startup production is targeted for 2028 um we are looking at uh both qsdc and and qsas as maybe a faster time to market than than the more rigorous qs ev application but that does not mean other targets for qs ev has changed we are continuing to work with our partners uh with that same original target of getting it into revenue and commercialization what we have done here is uh with an end-to-end solution for mass production uh with very trusted ecosystem partners uh like murata corning or is to make sure we have a high confidence in us being able to address these high-value markets very, very quickly.

Thanks for the color there. Helpful. And then separately wanted to ask about VW, given the restructuring efforts going on there. Can you speak to what, if any, implications that may have for the PowerCo relationship? And then separately, how do you see the relationship of PowerCo evolving here? You noted aligning the statement of work um beyond QSE 5. Thanks.

Yeah Ayush, the relationship with PowerCore remains very strong and the overall goal of the collaboration remains unchanged. But as you know this partnership is constantly evolving. As we said last quarter we are moving the PowerCore engagement towards milestone-based payments. As part of this we'll also be expanding to cover other applications such the data center and robotics so overall we are continuing to evolve this relationship towards these applications as well thank you for that I'll pass it on thank you thank you and as a reminder to ask a question please press star one one on your telephone our next question comes from Gabriel Gonzalez with UBS you may proceed hey team thanks for taking my questions um i guess so the decision to move forward with the 100 megawatt hour line it kind of suggests growing confidence in the demand across qsdc and qsas um i guess what sort of level of customer interest supports that decision how many customers are currently testing samples and over the next 12 months what what commercial commitments would you like to see if you are asking the right kind of questions we have increasing confidence coming from three mutually orthogonal directions first when we introduce the power block and when we started sampling to multiple qsas customers across multiple verticals the feedback has been very very strong and everyone has been asking for volume as soon as possible independently we have obviously ramped up the eagle line and we are seeing the capability of the eagle line to form as a foundation for the next higher level of step up the third is a partner such as bull bar coming in and validating the eagle line and proposing a structure to ramp up from on top of it and taking ownership in this partnership to get that going. All three of them put together give us the confidence. The markets, the demand from our customers, the confidence in the technology based on the Eagle line, and the support of our ecosystem partners all give us the confidence to take this 100 megawatt hour step right now.

And I guess just in the timeline between like an award win to start a production, you know, In the Western markets, in automotive, it's typically a two- to three-year timeline. Obviously, the data center is a completely different end market, but could we see some awards be announced within that 2027 timeframe before 2028 started production?

You see how fast both of these markets are moving, the defense marketplace, drones, and other applications, similarly on the data center marketplace. This BBU concept for instance was a novelty barely nine months ago and already we are seeing racks being displayed in conferences. This is moving very very rapidly and we want to be there in the middle of it to take advantage of it and that's why we want to have started production in 2028 and we want to have multiple customers signed up before that to make sure that the uptake is there.

Great. Thank you. And wishing Kevin a speedy recovery. Thank you. We too.

Thank you. I would now like to turn the call back over to Siva Sivaram for any closing remarks.

Thank you, operator. I would like to recognize the entire QS team for their execution this quarter, from the Eagle line to the launch of the QS power block to the 100 megawatt hour line we announced today. Thank you to our shareholders for their continued support, and we look forward to updating you on our progress in the months ahead.

Thank you. This concludes the conference. Thank you for your participation.

You may now disconnect.