AMPX

Image source: The Motley Fool. Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2026, at 8:30 a.m. ET Chief Executive Officer - Tom Stepien Chief Financial Officer - Ricardo Rodriguez Operator: Good morning. Welcome to the Amprius Technologies Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Joining us for today's presentation are the company's CEO, Tom Stepien; and CFO, Ricardo Rodriguez. Please note that this presentation contains forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, statements regarding the company's financial and business performance, business strategy, future product development or commercialization, new customer adoption, and new applications, the company's growth and the growth of the markets in which it operates and the timing and ability of Amprius to expand its manufacturing capacity, scale its business and achieve a sustainable cost structure. These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other important factors that may cause 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. This presentation includes a non-GAAP financial measure, which is adjusted EBITDA. This non-GAAP financial measure does not replace the presentation of Amprius' GAAP financial results and should only be used as a supplement to, not a substitute for Amprius' financial results presented in accordance with GAAP and may not be comparable to calculations of similarly titled measures by other companies. A reconciliation of adjusted EBITDA to net loss, the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure is included in our press release, a copy of which is filed with the SEC and posted on our website. Finally, I would like to remind everyone that this conference call is being webcast. 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 also posted a press release that accompanies these results, which can also be found on the Amprius Investor Relations website. Before turning the call over to management, I want to highlight a few near-term IR events. Amprius will be attending the Canaccord Conference and partaking in the UBS Energy Transition Call Series next week. The team will also be attending the H.C. Wainwright Conference and the Evercore ADAS, AV, and AI Forum in September. We hope to connect with many of you at these upcoming events. I'll now turn the call over to Amprius Technologies CEO, Tom Stepien, for his comments. Sir, please proceed. Thomas Stepien: Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us this morning. I'm pleased to report that Amprius continues to experience robust demand for energy dense silicon anode lithium-ion batteries. And in the second quarter of 2026, we achieved another record revenue as we show on Slide 3. We believe the characteristics of our cells make them a particularly strong fit for one of the fastest-growing markets in the world, battery-powered unmanned aerial vehicles, UAVs, also known as drones. Our second-generation SiCore silicon anode battery continues to gain broad adoption for drones and other applications. Given the strong quarter and promising new business, we have the confidence to increase our 2026 revenue forecast for the second consecutive quarter. Anyone who reads the news understands that low-cost drones are playing an asymmetric role in military conflicts around the world, changing the nature of modern warfare. As Barron's magazine recently reported, inexpensive drones are "upending the defense sector." We believe that this has been made possible in no small measure by the availability of high-performance batteries like those produced by Amprius. As you are likely aware, the Trump administration's proposed fiscal 2027 defense budget calls for more than $50 billion in outlays for the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group, an arm of the Department of War focused on drones and related hardware. The specific ask is for 24,000% year-over-year increase. While the U.S. Congress has yet to pass the 2027 spending authorization and the actual budget might be smaller than the original request, it is nonetheless clear that the Pentagon will be making a major and growing outlay for autonomous capabilities for years to come. Our current contract with the Defense Innovation Unit gives us a front-row seat in this arena. This is good news for Amprius, our customers and partners and for our shareholders. While we expect that the budget details will be sorted out in the months ahead, there are other positive signs from the defense sector for Amprius. For instance, the Department of War's drone dominance program has invited 19 drone manufacturers to a competitive demonstration event at Fort Carson, Colorado later this month. Half of the participants are using Amprius cells, and we have had at least initial conversations with the rest. The Department of War has said that at the completion of the Colorado event, they will place orders for 60,000 drones from the top performers. This is one more indication that the opportunity in military UAVs is in its early stages. You may recall that our contract with the Defense Innovation Unit to develop and scale National Defense Authorization Act, NDAA compliant silicon anode battery cells was increased for a third time in the March quarter and now totals $18.1 million. This funding supports expansion of a pilot line at our headquarters in Fremont, California. I'm happy to report that we now have received nearly half of the equipment required for the pilot line, which is undergoing installation. The remaining equipment is scheduled to arrive later this month and in September with production expected to begin in December 2026. Our opportunity in military drones goes beyond U.S. borders. I'm happy to report that we've received a $24 million order from a new European customer, a drone manufacturer that uses our SA124 SiCore cylindrical cells. We started to deliver our batteries to this customer in Q2 and will continue to do so for the next 3 quarters. We're excited about this opportunity and expect to have more to talk about on this topic in the months ahead. I also want to report some recent news from our customer, Redwire, a leading aerospace and defense technology company providing space infrastructure, autonomous systems, and mission-critical solutions for the commercial, civil and national security customers worldwide. Redwire first purchased our high energy density batteries in 2024. We're happy to see that their demand is growing. Redwire recently announced more than $40 million in purchase orders from the U.S. Marine Corps for the Stalker Block 30, a Group 2 drone designed for long-range reconnaissance. Stalker excels in missions where long-endurance is critical, and that's exactly what our SiCore cells enable. We look forward to Redwire's continued success. While we are excited about the rapid adoption of drones in the defense industry, we also continue to see substantial opportunities for commercial drones. In May, you may remember, we announced an agreement to provide high-density silicon anode cells to Matternet, the world's only FAA-Type Certified drone delivery platform. Amprius' silicon anode cells deliver up to twice the energy density of conventional graphite-based batteries, a critical advantage in aviation where low battery weight and high energy density directly improve aircraft range, payload and economics. Drones, both military and commercial, are a big part of the Amprius story, but they are not our only strategically important end market. Earlier this year, we announced a $21 million order from a premier electric mobility customer in China to power a suite of light electric vehicles, including scooters, 3-wheelers and motorcycles. Today, I'm excited to tell you about a new e-mobility customer win. We have signed a 3-year contract with Stark Future, a Barcelona-based premium electric motorcycle manufacturer. Stark's bikes are impressive with cutting-edge technology, world-class design, and amazing engineering. We showcased one of their bikes at our CES booth in January 2026. We expect revenues from our relationship to Stark to be at least $100 million through 2029, with shipments expected to start early next year. Let's turn to Slide 4 and discuss our go-to-market strategy. A little less than half of our sales shipped directly to end-use customers, companies that sell drones for various applications, small electric vehicles and companies in the satellite value stream. We have more than 500 direct customers, and this figure grows every quarter. The other portion of our purchase orders come from PAC partners, companies who buy our cells and package them together with appropriate electronics and sometimes a battery management system. These modules and packs are then sold to end-use customers. Our PAC partner program allows us to expand our reach and simplifies customer relationships for many end market applications. Today, we list 9 PAC partners on our website and more will be added over time. This program is a light lift for our sales team and allows us to scale without adding direct sales headcount. We expect this flywheel effect to allow us to continue strong growth through this rapidly expanding channel. Let's turn to Slide 5, and let me take a few minutes to provide an update on our capital-efficient contract manufacturing strategy. Our California pilot line gives us the ability to win new customers, allowing us to quickly deliver new cell chemistries to customers. We often do this side-by-side with our customers in joint development programs. We also use our Fremont facility to deliver small volumes of cells. We leverage our worldwide contract manufacturing partners to produce sales at volume. We have 4 manufacturing partners in China. Over the last several years, they have provided us with excellent quality and reliable delivery. Our China CMs have helped Amprius tremendously, and they will continue to be important partners in our future. We have added several partners in South Korea. In May 2025, we announced our first partner, Libest, located in Daejeon, about a 2-hour drive from downtown Seoul. Libest has been delivering Amprius commercial cells since September 2025. We recently added JR Energy and Top Material as South Korean partners. Together, these 3 CMs give us the ability to produce batteries that are compliant with NDAA rules. I met with all 3 partners in Korea 10 days ago and can confirm that our relationships are solid, our incentives are aligned, and we are expanding well together. I also want to underscore that we believe we are well on track to reach full NDAA compliance with domestically produced cells in 2027. South Korea gives us NDAA-compliant supply today, while Nanotech Energy, the U.S. contract manufacturer we announced earlier this year, provides additional U.S. capacity. We expect to talk about additional U.S. partners in the months ahead. Our partner-focused approach to manufacturing avoids substantial capital expenditures while keeping our management team focused on what matters most, extending our technical innovations and delivering these innovations to customers rapidly. Leveraging manufacturing partners rather than investing heavily in new facilities allows Amprius to scale quickly and efficiently while maintaining strategic flexibility. I want to provide a brief update on our senior management team. Last month, Ronnie Tao, a 5-year Amprius veteran, who until recently served as our VP of Sales, moved into a new role as Chief Business Officer. Ronnie will focus on expanding our reach into new markets, initially targeting robotics, where we see substantial opportunity for our high-energy density offerings. Ronnie's energy is infectious and his recall of technical details is remarkable, ideal qualities to drive growth into new segments. Three weeks ago, Anne Torricelli joined Amprius as our new VP of Sales. Anne has nearly 2 decades of experience working in energy technology sales and business development roles. She was most recently Managing Director of Energy Storage Solutions for Gotion, a top 5 worldwide lithium-ion battery manufacturer. Her multicultural background, excellent communication skills, and savvy organizational traits are a model profile to lead sales for a fast-growing international company like Amprius. We're thrilled to welcome Anne to the team. A few additional thoughts before I pass the microphone to Ricardo Rodriguez, our CFO. I continue to see wide and varied growth opportunities for Amprius in multiple markets and several geographies. As I noted earlier, there are sizable opportunities for us in drones, not only in defense, but also for commercial delivery, public safety, security, and a growing number of other applications. The massive commitment to drones from the Department of War is a positive sign, but it's not the only one, and we expect drones to expand across many parts of the economy in years ahead. As highlighted by our new relationship with Stark in Spain, there is also a fast-growing opportunity for battery-powered mobility, including robotics. We are focusing some of our key executives on this emerging market for personal and commercial robots, including delivery bots, humanoid, and industrial mobile robots. It is early, and there is no meaningful robotics revenue in our numbers today. But our ability to offer power and energy balance cells plays well in the unstructured environments in which these machines operate. We expect to have more to say about this segment in the months ahead. Another opportunity that exists for us is in satellites and space, where our high energy density cells directly improve launch economics. Satellite launch providers charge customers by weight, making our ability to deliver the same energy at roughly half the weight extremely valuable. Finally, we believe there is tremendous potential for our batteries in eVTOL, electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft for autonomous point-to-point regional transport for both passengers and cargo. It's early in development of eVTOL vehicles, but they are coming sooner than many think. Let me now turn over the call to Ricardo to review our Q2 results in detail. Ricardo Rodriguez: Thank you, Tom, and good morning, everyone. I'm happy to start on Slide 6. In the second quarter, we delivered $34 million of revenue, up 19% from the first quarter and 2.3x year-over-year. This was our sixth consecutive quarter of sequential growth, and it puts our annual revenue run rate at $136 million. We expect this to continue growing, so more on this later. For the first half of the year, revenue was $62.6 million, up 137% year-over-year. SiCore accounted for 98% of our revenue in Q2. Regionally, EMEA drove 68% of our revenue, with the rest of our revenue coming from the U.S. and Asia. Cost of goods sold was $24.8 million, up 9% against 19% revenue growth that enabled gross profit of $9.3 million and a gross margin of 27%, right in line with our expectations and improving from 20% in the first quarter and 9% in the same quarter last year. For the first half, gross margin was 24%, improving from negative 4% in the first half of 2025. Total OpEx was $13.6 million in the quarter, up $1.2 million sequentially and $5.4 million year-over-year. We continue investing in our go-to-market and R&D efforts as these continue to pay off as our team wins in the market. Our operating loss in Q2 was $4.3 million compared to $6.7 million in the first quarter and $6.8 million in the same quarter of last year. Other income was $1.1 million, consisting of $472,000 of interest income and $700,000 of government grant income tied to our work with the Defense Innovation Unit. Our GAAP net loss attributable to common shareholders for the second quarter was $5.1 million or negative $0.04 per share based on 143.5 million weighted average shares outstanding. That is 20% narrower than the same quarter last year. For the first half, our net loss was $10.1 million compared to $15.7 million in the first half of 2025. Our GAAP net loss includes a onetime noncash $1.9 million adjustment reflecting the change in fair value of the public warrants during our exchange for stock on May 6 of this year. Excluding this $1.9 million gives us non-GAAP adjusted net loss of $3.2 million or negative $0.02 per share for Q2 and $8.2 million or $0.06 per share for the first half of 2026. Adjusted EBITDA in the second quarter was negative $1 million or negative 3% margin compared to negative $1.8 million in the first quarter and negative $2.1 million in the same quarter last year. As a reminder, we define adjusted EBITDA as net income or loss before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization, stock-based compensation and other items that we do not believe are indicative of our core operating performance. In the second quarter, these adjustments were limited to the $1.9 million related to the warrant exchange, $2.5 million of stock-based compensation, $800,000 of depreciation and amortization and $1.1 million of interest and other income. For the first half of the year, adjusted EBITDA was negative $2.8 million against negative $7.3 million in the first half of last year. On a trailing 12-month basis, adjusted EBITDA is negative $800,000 with a negative 1% margin. We are within a rounding error of breakeven on a full year basis if we look at the last 12 months. Now turning over to cash flow and the balance sheet. We ended the second quarter with $74.5 million of cash and no debt, an increase of $12.2 million during the quarter. Our operations only used $2.9 million of cash in the quarter. Accounts receivable grew by $5.4 million and inventory grew by $3.3 million, partially offset by lower prepaid inventory and higher payables. Before those working capital movements, our operations generated cash for the first time. Accounts receivable ended at $40.7 million and inventory at $11.5 million. Both are deliberate. Receivables reflect a fast-growing shipment profile weighted towards the second half of the quarter and inventory position to support the ramp of the third quarter. Capital expenditures were $1.8 million, all at our Fremont facility, supporting the electrode coating build-out and primarily funded by the Defense Innovation Unit. First half CapEx was $2.8 million against the less than $10 million that we framed out for the year in March, and we are tracking well inside that. Financing activities provided $16.8 million, consisting of $12.3 million from warrant exercises and $4.5 million from option exercises. We currently do not have an at-the-market offering program. Every dollar of equity capital we took in this quarter came from holders choosing to exercise into the business as we continue to focus on minimizing dilution. Working capital at quarter-end was $113.2 million, compared to $59.8 million for the second quarter of last year, and total stockholders' equity was $125.6 million. Before I turn the call back to Tom, I want to frame our outlook for the rest of the year using Slide 7 as the backdrop. In March, we set an initial 2026 outlook of more than $125 million of revenue, over 25% gross margin and our first full year of positive adjusted EBITDA. In May, after a first quarter of $28.5 million of revenue, we increased guidance to more than $130 million for the year. Today, we are increasing our revenue forecast again. With what we know today, we expect full year revenue of at least $140 million and gross margins of at least 28%. We see upside to gross margins in the second half of the year as we focus on ensuring that the fixed cost of our contract manufacturing partners do not increase with higher volumes. We are reiterating adjusted EBITDA of more than $4 million, a net loss of $10 million or less and a loss of $0.08 or less per diluted share, assuming 143.5 million weighted average diluted shares. These updated GAAP profit guidance estimates consider the $1.9 million adjustment for the fair value of the warrants in Q2 of this year. Looking further ahead, nothing about the plan that we laid out in March has changed, except for how much of it is now visible in the numbers and in reality. As we close out the decade, we are still targeting more than $600 million of contracted capacity, gross margins above 30% and adjusted EBITDA margins of at least 20%. The resourceful culture and low fixed cost structure that brought us within rounding error of breakeven over the last 12 months are the same ones that will get us there. With that, I'm happy to turn the call back to Tom for his closing remarks. Thank you very much for your attention and continued support. Thomas Stepien: Thanks, Ricardo. We remain excited about the opportunities ahead and look forward to meeting many of you at upcoming investor events. Thank you for your continued interest and support of Amprius. And with that, let me turn it over to the operator for questions. Operator: The first question comes from Colin Rusch with Oppenheimer. Colin Rusch: Congratulations on the progress here. As we see some of the incremental regionalization, the NDAA compliance mandates starting to flow through, I just want to get a sense of how much dexterity the technology platform has in terms of using alternate inputs on the anode side as well as on the electrolyte side, whether you're moving towards like a semi-solid-state or solid-state electrolyte at some point and your ability to actually integrate some of those material advances that we're seeing in the ecosystem. Thomas Stepien: Yes, Colin, thank you. This is Tom. We have 5 chemistry platforms, a power-based one, energy-based one, balanced one. We have very good dexterity, as you say. We have had long serving suppliers over the last several years. And as a part of NDAA, we've qualified 2 sets of 11 new suppliers for the anode, cathode, separator and 7 other binders, et cetera, that go into our batteries. We have a primary set of new suppliers and a secondary set of. We are happy with those new suppliers. We are holding them in the cells that are being made in South Korea and the U.S. So it's working well. It's tricky because we have to qualify them. We have to get these suppliers under contract. So it's keeping us busy on the supply chain and operational side of things as well as the technical side. The pilot line here Fremont helps because we get quick turns and quickly validate some of those new components. But we're pretty nimble in that area. We'd always like to go faster, of course, but we're happy with where we are, and we're on track, as we said in the call, to be fully not just NDAA-compliant, but U.S. NDAA-compliant here in 2027. Colin Rusch: Excellent. And then I guess shifting to the customer base. Given that level of range from the platform, over the last 1.5 years, you've done a great job of actually getting a lot of these customers organized a little bit more methodical in terms of their purchasing patterns. But I want to get a sense of, as you move forward, leveraging the technology road map that you have some of the range of possibilities and scale that you guys can leverage into both driving incremental sales as well as operating margin, how we should think about that kind of playing out over the next 12 to 24 months? Thomas Stepien: Yes. So the PAC program certainly helps as we tried to say in the call, giving us some leverage in the flywheel effect as we tried that certainly helps. Anne joining us is a very organized methodical person who has run large sales groups. That's part of we like her. I think that will help. And then I think that the breadth of our offerings allows us to without a lot of brain damage to serve some of these new segments, right? And that's early in robotics and eVTOL, of course. But we have a couple of joint development programs underway. And it appears that some of the tweaks we're making side-by-side with these future customers are relatively small and can be done rapidly to get exactly what these customers need, energy, power, et cetera. So that, I think, will help us go deeper as well as wider on the customer side of things. On the margins, do you want to think about that? Ricardo Rodriguez: Yes. The margins really depend on both the regional mix and the product mix. And we do see, in essence, our sales are the most accretive for us. And as we launch the NDAA-compliant pouch cells, we think that will be accretive and will help us get to our margin targets just as expected, right? When we reported Q3 last year, we said the margins were going to be lumpy, and that happened in Q1 as they went to 20% on a GAAP basis and 22% if we strip out the onetime costs from the Colorado facility. And then here in this quarter, the revenue mix was pretty favorable with quite a bit of our sales in Europe and pouch cells really holding their share of the mix. So as we look at these other markets like robotics, eVTOLs, we have a team now looking at data centers potentially. I do think that all of those are going to be pursued in an accretive way. Operator: The next question comes from Mark Shooter with William Blair. Mark Shooter: Tom, we thought the L3Harris order and the Nanotech contract manufacturing, we saw that was like a creative way to find and leverage some small U.S. manufacturing capacity that's available for these domestic supply chain sensitive customers. As stricter domestic requirements from the DoW and the FCC for both military and commercial drones, they kick in on '27, '28. Do you see this as an inflection point for domestic drone manufacturing or even for the cells? Like will you have to ramp up more in the U.S. manufacturing? And if so, how -- what do you see for available avenues to do so? Thomas Stepien: Yes. So we have pretty good visibility certainly through the next several quarters. And of course, on a planning basis, we look through the rest through the end of 2027 and then 2028 with increasing certainty. We know when these stricter requirements kick in. We're happy with where we are in Korea with the 3. We need to go faster. We need to go deeper. Nanotech has delivered cells. We need to, of course, flow more through them. We're actively working with other U.S. manufacturing, as we said in the call, not quite ready to announce anybody yet, but stay tuned there. So look, we always want the boat to go faster here, but we are pleased with the demand. We think we are in a leadership role technically. We need to earn that every day. We need to deliver to L3's requirements and others. We're happy with where we are with, of course, always wanting to do more than sitting on our laurels. Mark Shooter: Great. I appreciate the color. And Ricardo, one for you. Congrats again on the beat and raise this quarter. Can you give us a little bit of color on what you're seeing that gives you the confidence to raise both revenue and the margin guidance? So what are you seeing? Ricardo Rodriguez: Yes. So the revenue rate was pretty easy just given the demand profile, right? And as the team develops a tighter relationship with some of the pack houses, as we mentioned, and several of the OEMs, we are seeing more consistent order flow flowing to our customers. And so that gives us quite a bit of visibility into the demand picture for not just the second half of the year, but even starting to get into next year. And so I mean, frankly, the demand side, there's even upside from the guidance update. But we think that updating the guide to what we updated it to makes sense just given the supply picture and how the supply chain needs to evolve here in order to deliver product, particularly in Q4 and into next year. The margin piece is actually was another easy raise, right? So if you look at our margins during the first half of the year and you strip away $0.5 million of expenses from Colorado in Q1 and roughly $1.8 million in tariffs that will no longer be there that we had to pay here in the first half and that we've pretty much gotten refunded at this point, then our margins would have been 27% for the first half. And so to raise that to at least 28% in the second half, as I mentioned in my remarks, we're getting a better understanding of the fixed cost elements inside of our contract manufacturing partners. And it would be unfair to let those fixed costs scale up at higher volumes, especially at the higher volumes that are implied in the guide here for the second half. And so raising it to at least 28%, we think makes sense. We do need to continue having a favorable mix of at least 60% of the revenue coming from Europe, at least 60% of the revenue coming from accretive out sales, and we see that playing out here for the rest of the year. Operator: The next question comes from Eric Stine with Craig-Hallum. Eric Stine: Can we just go back? You talked about NDAA-compliance and it sounds like you've made progress on the 11 needed components, both primary and secondary suppliers. But I know that one of the things, and you mentioned it is getting those suppliers under contract. So maybe I know last quarter, you indicated that you had made some progress in that regard, but would love an update. Thomas Stepien: Yes. We make progress on a weekly basis with the suppliers. I met with several when I was in Korea a couple of weeks ago. There have been obvious -- lots of discussions since getting back. We have a team working on it. We have some outside folks who are actually helping accelerate. We'll get them all buttoned up here this quarter under contract. Some of this is just legal reviews tend to take time. We're comfortable with the cost and the timing. In general, these new suppliers are large international companies that are actually larger revenue-wise than risk. So we are comfortable with their ability to deliver, but you got to go through all of the operational things just to get them all lined up, aligned on the schedules. They're shipping products to different manufacturers in different countries, it's not technically hard, but it's a little bit complex just on the planning side. Eric Stine: Okay. Okay. That's great. And then maybe second one for me. I mean, obviously, defense is and should be a primary focus here on this call. But I would just like to talk about the commercial side. I do see that recently DoorDash got this Part 135 certification from the FAA for drone delivery. And just curious, I know that, that company is one of it's like 8 to 9 companies that have it. But going forward, do you envision this as being a company-by-company certification? Does the FAA potentially do something that opens it up more broadly? Because I know that, I mean, certainly a very sizable commercial drone opportunity as well. Thomas Stepien: Yes. So we have a start with Matternet as we talked about in our last call, and that is a foothold, and we're starting to expand. I don't know that the FAA would certify batteries. I think they tend to do that on a vehicle-by-vehicle basis. We're not FAA experts here. But that's part of what the change we did with Ronnie and Anne. The new delivery drones won't necessarily help us make the next quarter. Certainly planting seeds and getting in and understanding what they require and comparing that to our current suite of is something we're asking Ronnie to do so that we can turn those seeds that we plant into revenue in future quarters. So we're on it. We'd like that boat to go faster also. But we believe that, gosh, should those delivery vehicles be able to use our batteries, can they deliver to the whole block? Can -- so can they go longer? Can they deliver a greater payload. A lot of these payloads are limited to a couple of kilos. Well, we probably could double that. So we believe the promise is there. We have work to do to earn the trust of DoorDash, who you mentioned and others. Operator: Our next question comes from Austin Bohlig with Needham & Company. Austin Bohlig: Congrats on the great results. Tom, first, just maybe wanted to dive into like the key geographies and outlook that's kind of driving the upside. Would you kind of characterize this as more momentum domestically in the U.S. or internationally? Thomas Stepien: So international has been strong. Europe has been very strong. And we talked about last quarter, it was 75%. It was a little bit less, I think, Europe this quarter. So that's a really solid base. We are happy with Redwire, as we mentioned in the remarks, and others that seem to be coming on. We see some of the slowdown from the fiscal government 2026, whether it's drone dominance programs or other spend that we're starting to see in our last call, 90 days ago, we referenced a couple of our customers that were receiving money from that. So it's starting, it's getting a little bit better balance. We also see a better balance. That's part of what we like about Stark is that there's a better balance also with not just drones, but e-mobility is starting to come on in an increasing way. So over time, I think we'll see a better balance between Europe and U.S., Asia, e-mobility and drones and then even within drones, not just defense, but delivery, public safety as we've talked about. Austin Bohlig: Okay. Well, and I just kind of to piggyback off that, so super excited opportunity. You're working with half of the drone dominance customers. Like could you maybe walk through maybe kind of like the content per drone with this opportunity? I know you included some slides in your deck, but just would love to get a little bit more clarity on what the opportunity could be here just with this one program. Thomas Stepien: Yes. So we did include -- Ricardo did a nice job of putting some of those slides in because we got that question last time, which is, okay, about with these different types of drones, what are typical size batteries and then what is the potential cell content. So Slide 10 and 11 in the deck, I think, was really helpful. And if you look at that, obviously, with the larger Group 3 drones, the Group 4 and 5 drones tend to be fuel-based, 1, 2, 3 are battery-based. Group 3 drones use more content than Group 1 drones. So I would direct listeners to that slide. Ricardo Rodriguez: There's Slide 10 and 11 in the deck. Thomas Stepien: Yes. But the nice thing is that we -- they tend to be pretty sticky, right? So once we do earn the trust of these customers, and sometimes it takes a couple of quarters to earn that trust, we -- they tend to stay with our batteries. They look to us because we're sometimes up to 50% better, 80% better in some cases for the flight time, which is super important in the scoring of these shootouts. So that's our view of DDP and some of the other opportunities. Austin Bohlig: Okay. Great. And I guess just kind of my last one for Ricardo. Just thinking about the incremental OpEx you guys think you might need as revenues scale here, and we'll see these revenues flow to the bottom line. Ricardo Rodriguez: Yes, we had a bulk of the OpEx increases here in Q2 on the -- which pulled ahead some of the investments that we want to make in our go-to-market efforts. I do think that in Q3, that will continue. We'll probably add another $1 million of OpEx per quarter. And then for Q4, we're looking at holding it flat and then really testing ourselves to see how much we can maintain the growth with that level of OpEx. The bulk of the resources that we would be adding would be really on just managing the supply chain beyond what we've already invested on go-to-market. Operator: The next question comes from Ryan Pfingst with B. Riley. Ryan Pfingst: Tom, you talked about robotics a bit earlier. I just wanted to dig in a little bit more there. Curious what Amprius is doing today that will help the company position itself with customers as that market starts to scale commercially. Thomas Stepien: Yes. Step one is to get smarter. We attended Automate in Chicago 6, 8 weeks ago, our first booth at a robotics show. Some of the takeaways for us are that ourselves perform really well with robots that are in unstructured environment. So think of the dog like robots and even some of the humanoids that aren't necessarily inside of a very organized factory or another example we're not pursuing is in a warehouse robot that can go around the corner and plug itself in. You don't necessarily need high energy density or the right power energy mix for those applications. But if you are unstructured, if there's uncertainty in whatever you're doing in a robot perspective, that's where you value the energy and power mix. We've analyzed some of the current required on some of these robots. And if you're lifting, there's a spike in current, okay, you need a certain type of battery to do that. Certainly, if you are wandering around in again, unstructured areas, you don't have the certainty of when you're going to be able to charge next. So longer run time, high energy density is prized by robots like that. So it allows us -- that learning allows us to focus. And again, some of the executive changes we've made to focus and understand where we can win, where do we play and how do we win as part of some of the change we made with Ronnie so that the seeds that he'll be planting here will turn into revenue as that market does expand and get. Ryan Pfingst: Appreciate that. And then maybe turning to another adjacent market. Ricardo, you just mentioned earlier that you have a team looking at data centers. Can you talk a little bit more about that? And just remind us where Amprius could fit in, in that ecosystem? Ricardo Rodriguez: Yes. It's a pretty initial look. But if you look at the power requirements of some of the CPUs in there, it only keeps increasing. And while they're using some super capacitors to sort of flatten the line of the high-power draws from these chips, you may need actually a high-power cell that's pretty close immediately behind those super capacitors to help, in essence, flatten the load in the system, right? And so that's where we see a huge opportunity for basically a high-power cylindrical cell that can be very close to the rack literally providing 1 to 60 seconds of run time recharging and then being there ready again for whenever the power is not available. And so yes, we do see that, that's an opportunity there for the taking. We're having some initial discussions with some of the integrators of these racks and the infrastructure around the compute. And yes, so we'll come back and report when we've got customer traction there. Operator: The next question comes from Tim Moore with Clear Street. Tim Moore: Nice execution in the quarter. You're defined to get very high operating leverage on your SG&A expense over the next few years. So I just want to follow up on the threat of your gross margin guidance hike, which is really more impressive, I think, than your revenue raise. So just going back to your 2030 financial targets above 30% gross margin, how should we think about that maybe possibly getting moved up a year earlier? I mean you're going to get some tailwinds on efficiency and shipping and logistics costs, which will probably improve a lot. I know you mentioned earlier, there should be pouch accretion from the margin profile as you grow out pouch sales more to probably offset maybe some of the couple other non-military margin profile. So if you could just maybe talk about the puts and takes on -- could you get to 30% plus gross margin in 2029? Ricardo Rodriguez: We will always try to do it sooner. And I think the elements are definitely there for the taking, right? But we also just want to be cognizant of what we're signing up for. And as you've seen us in the way that we've guided this year, our goal is to deliver what we promised and a little bit more. And so I do see your point on the 30% potentially having more opportunity to frankly, be higher and also to get pulled ahead. But one of the things that we're managing here over the next, let's say, 12 to 24 months is the full NDAA-compliance and that comes with a different cost structure that we frankly need to get paid for. And so executing that and giving ourselves room to execute that is why we put the 30% plus gross margin target up by 2030. And -- but yes, I mean, we'll pull it ahead if we can. And the main driver, frankly, Tim, is just revenue mix, right? So if we are able to sell more customized pouch cells, we'll be able to get there sooner. And if we go and hunt some of the cylindrical cell opportunities, which again can be accretive if we're careful, then I think that will help us get there. But yes, I mean, we'll definitely do everything we can here to pull that ahead. But again, I mean, sort of the same caution that we -- that I gave to everybody when we reported Q3 last year, it won't be totally straight up and to the right. There will be a quarter or 2 where as we manage the mix or if North America revenue increases and we haven't totally got -- started getting paid for some of the expenses to become NDAA-compliant, the margins could actually take a slight step back in that given quarter, right? So it will be a journey, but I'm hoping that with the way we've performed here, 3 quarters under our belt of delivering gross margins and telling people what it's going to be and then coming in and delivering something that's slightly ahead of that, hopefully, we've got the trust to execute through this lumpiness over the next 2 years or so as we become fully NDAA-compliant. Tim Moore: That's really helpful color, Ricardo. I appreciate. My second question, my only other one is just on the whole pouch cells. Given that you're almost fully NDAA-compliance and you got Nanotech cylindricals, I'm just shifting my thoughts to pouch cell manufacturing domestically. Would you -- without giving away too much, are you getting close to maybe purchasing an existing facility in the U.S. to retool to convert to pouch cell manufacturing? I'm sure there's some excess capacity from lithium batteries out there by a handful of players I can think of for EVs that you could retool. I mean that would really help your U.S. manufacturing. Just kind of curious around that and potential timing. Ricardo Rodriguez: Yes, Tim, I mean, you're basically reading our mind, right? It's no secret that we're out there looking for a partner to do that for us, and there's plenty of capacity from folks who leaned into EVs maybe too aggressively here over the past couple of years. And so we would just say stay tuned. Thomas Stepien: Yes. And just to clarify, Tim, it likely will not be Amprius purchasing a facility. Our model is, as everyone knows, to work with partners. But we would -- whatever we do, whether it's in the U.S. or other geographies, will very likely be done with partners. But as Ricardo says, there's lots of partners in the U.S. and there is capacity available. So watch this spot. Ricardo Rodriguez: The other bit is that if you look at the CapEx that goes into producing ourselves, like it's not all alike, right? So for example, the last thing people need is another building producing cells. Then you have the equipment inside of these facilities to produce the cells. We're seeing that the investment on the equipment can basically be about 1/3 of what it takes building or as we learned in Colorado, what it would have taken to build a building around a cell line. And then I do think that if you get your business model to work out the payback on that equipment inside of the building, which ideally we don't need to pay for, you can get that back within 2 to 3 years if you manage to fill the capacity, right? And so we're getting quite a few signals on the capacity -- the demand being there very clearly as we talk to the DOW. And yes, we just need to put the pieces together to deliver that. Tim Moore: That's great color for clarifying it won't be a purchase because you just get rid of Colorado, but that makes sense that there is much CapEx. Operator: The next question comes from Chip Moore with ROTH. Alfred Moore: I wanted to go back to drone dominance program, half of those finalists using SiCore, and it sounds like you're talking to everybody, just a real testament to the performance. Maybe expand on the competitive environment and the alternatives out there and what you're seeing. Thomas Stepien: Yes. So look, it's very competitive. We tend to win because of the energy density. And it really depends on some of the scoring, right? These shootouts, the gauntlets as they're called, are scored on a couple of different fronts, different metrics is a duration, how far, how long these drones can fly. There's videos on the drone dominance website that go through muck buildings and things like that. So in general, higher energy density is better. There is a cylindrical pouch mix. If you really want a fully optimized drone, you tend to use pouch because you get greater energy density. Pouch packs and pouch cells are a little bit harder to integrate compared to cylindrical cells. So there's a dynamic going on there. But that's exactly what our sales folks are focused on, like we tried to describe an earlier question about delivery drones. Look, all of these vehicles, even certain types of robots, even these satellites, gosh, why are they not using our cells is a question that we start with and then try to understand that and dig in so that we can learn. We have a reasonably malleable platform. I mentioned the 5 different chemistries that we have. Gosh, we should be able to get something in front of these in order to win their trust, to win their business. That's how we think about it. We got work to do. We're happy that we're in about half of the 19 for the upcoming Gauntlet here at the end of the month, but we have more work to do. Alfred Moore: Tom. And for my follow-up, maybe on go-to-market, can you -- at a high level, just talk about visibility or any differences, pack partners versus OEMs? And as we think about that flywheel, how do you see that mix evolving, say, over the next 2, 3 years? Thomas Stepien: Yes. So the PAC partners are really an extension of our team. Some drone companies and other vehicles rely on PAC partners and ask those companies to make a recommendation. And we like to be at the top of the list for those partners, right? And we're trying to build out this ecosystem, growing companies do. I referenced the 9 that are on our website, and there's a gold, silver, bronze type thinking as we go deeper and get closer to those partners. We -- in terms of visibility, it's getting better, right? Some of the companies aren't able to give us multi-quarter purchase orders because, frankly, they don't have the visibility. But as you get more companies like Redwire, we mentioned during the call and a couple of companies from the last call, as those companies start to get under contract with whoever they are supplying their vehicles to, then the visibility to us increases. So it's getting better. We still -- we have obviously very good visibility here in Q3 and in Q4, but it gets a little bit grainy as you go out to 2027. That's been natural, I think, over the last year or so, it's gotten better. But just like the last question, Chip, we have work to do there, but it's certainly going in the right direction. Operator: The next question comes from Derek Soderberg with Cantor Fitzgerald. Derek Soderberg: What's sort of your current backlog? I know backlog isn't necessarily the best metric to look at as you guys ship quite a lot in the quarter, sort of book and ship starting there. And then just on the -- I'm trying to understand kind of the margin mix between the defense versus UAV cylindrical and then the light electric vehicle opportunity. What's sort of the range on margins there? And then I've got a follow-up. Ricardo Rodriguez: Yes. On the backlog, we really don't have much to add there. So there's a point here. I mean we do have quite a bit of visibility. But I think the word backlog has historically been misused. When it comes to open POs, I mean, we feel pretty good about where we stand as we work our way here through Q3, and we see a similar dynamic to what we've seen in the last 2 quarters as we get the POs and basically work to deliver as much of that product within the quarter as time runs out on us. The margin range, I think ranges basically from the low 20s to the high 30s if you take on the lower end, the commoditized or slightly more commoditized cylindrical cell that is easily swappable versus a highly customized pouch cell. I think that range also varies by region. So I mean, in China, there are some folks that are -- where the lower end of the range is -- will start in the single digits, and we are being careful to not play them. So -- and then for higher-end pouch sales, I do think the upper end of the range is a little bit lower in China, and we're just being very careful of how we play that. So these ranges are not just for the form factor, but also for the regions. When it comes to whether the application is defense or nondefense, I think there, the same range applies. I don't think there's much pricing discrimination between the end markets. Derek Soderberg: Got it. That's super helpful. And then just as my follow-up, how much of the cycle revenue today is that cylindrical SiCore? And then just looking at the $24 million European drone order for those cylindrical SiCore, how much of that do you expect to ship in 2026 versus 2027? Any incremental detail there would be helpful. Ricardo Rodriguez: Yes. So maybe I'll just start with the $24 million order. That should be done over the next 2.5 quarters safely. And then on the mix between pouch and cylindrical we haven't broken that out for folks. We do see that as a competitive intel. Operator: The next question comes from Ted Jackson with Northland Securities. Edward Jackson: So my question is maybe pretty straightforward. You have China capacity, South Korean capacity. You've got the beginnings of capacity in the U.S. Could you give us a refresh with regards to what is the production capacity in China? What is the production capacity in South Korea? What is the production capacity in the U.S. and maybe even refine it between cylinder and pouch. And then I mean, I assume you could maybe think about it like what do you have now and where do you think it can go? Thomas Stepien: Yes. We total it up in the deck, Ted, to greater than 2 gigawatt hours a year. And in an earlier call, we broke that out. And on an average cell that's working out to be something like 12 million to 15 million cells per quarter, sometimes as should think about sell units. We don't break that out by CM. We did name the 3 CMs that we have in Korea, and we did mention that we're working to be able to share pouch manufacturers in the U.S. So we always, of course, want supply to be ahead of demand so that we never leave a nickel on the table. And that's the goal that we're working. So there's a lot of work that's done underneath, right? The duck's legs are working you see visible evidence. So we're hard at work on that. It's pretty balanced in China on cylindrical pouch. That balance is coming into play in Korea. But we're currently unbalanced in the U.S., right? We have a cylindrical identified, but we haven't shared yet on any of the pouch guys. It will get in balance. And again, the goal is always to have just a bit more of the capacity so that we can meet this demand because part of where we also win, frankly, is with speed, right? We can be nimble, whether it's at our pilot line here to win new designs or nimble because, gosh, we can get cells in meaningful quantities to customers before some deadline that other competitors can't that's where we can win. Ricardo Rodriguez: I mean, the other element to the answer is that there is some nuance to this, right? So I mean, our contract manufacturing partners don't want to have idle capacity there sitting for us. And in one way or another, we would be paying for it. But if you look at what goes on in the company within a given week, month or quarter, we're basically playing the game of Tetris with the supply where the demand comes in, in a certain mix of flavors. And then within the time period, we work to ship as much as possible given our various different supply sources and the different SKUs that we have. And sometimes we do have to be pretty dynamic here with what we're asking our contract manufacturing partners to make. And this picture is evolving, mainly in South Korea as we develop more flexibility there. We're also looking at ways to just creatively produce cylindrical cells in NDAA-compliant markets to, in essence, increase our coverage of what the scheme of Tetris looks like and how flexible we can be. But that's how we -- within the given time period, we basically match supply with whatever flavor the demand comes in. Edward Jackson: That brings up a follow-up question. It wasn't on my list. But can you walk through typically, what's the lead time for you to kind of plan for capacity with the manufacturers? So I'm saying like you're clearly in business and orders in place. What's the sort of trade-off between when you think you're going to get a piece of basis and then when you're able to contract out that capacity. What are the dynamics with regards to understanding capacity from your contract manufacturers because there's clearly a 2-way set of communication as you guys are doing the scans to coordinate production and for them to coordinate kind of their capacity utilization. That's my last question. Ricardo Rodriguez: No, it's a good question. So this lead time depends, right? For something like full NDAA-compliance and setting up capacity here in the U.S. or what we've done in South Korea here over the past year, the lead time can be a year or 2. So we are working pretty well in advance of the need by getting an understanding of the demand first and then going out and farming it out and having the right commercial relationships to get that done. If we are only talking about flexibility within region, then we can be pretty flexible and have things up and running and make the switches within a quarter, 1.5 quarters max. And that's how we've managed ourselves to be pretty flexible here over the last 3 to 4 quarters. Operator: The next question comes from Amit Dayal with H.C. Wainwright. Amit Dayal: Tom, just in regard to your comments around the 2027 spending authorization, it looks like this could get done by December. Contribution from this, should we expect it to come through beginning in 1Q '27 itself? Or is there some lag between when this is approved and when you start seeing orders from this approval? Thomas Stepien: Yes. Thanks for the question. So there likely will be a lag. That's what we've seen before, right? So a couple of the customers that we talked about last call and even Redwire this call, that's obviously 2026 defense money and the fiscal year ends here, what, in 6, 7 weeks. So it's only towards the tail end of the fiscal year. So there was 6-, 9-month lag from budget being available to the flow down to Amprius. So if the budget gets figured out here on the time line you mentioned, some of that will trickle in probably mid-2027 with the other ones falling in after that. So there's an error bar on that, I would imagine. But there'll be some lag, at least a quarter, I would imagine. We believe, as we talked about that huge 24,000% increase in the ask. Some of that's going to come through, maybe not all of it. But it certainly bodes well, and we want to do the best we can to deliver with speed to those customers. Amit Dayal: And then maybe, Ricardo, just on the receivables side, that has grown to over $40 million. Are you comfortable with your ability to collect, et cetera? Is this creating any working capital pressure as you are continuing to grow at a pretty rapid pace? Ricardo Rodriguez: No, not really. I mean, we -- going into this year, we always looked at us needing roughly $20 million to $25 million of working capital to enable a doubling of revenues. And then it just -- I mean the receivables basically look the way they look just because of when you take the snapshot as you close the quarter. But if you were to look at the balance sheet a month after we closed the quarter, you would see that a lot of the receivables have been collected. And so we feel comfortable with the AR aging and actually, the bulk of the AR aging is being driven by customers that we've had a long-standing relationship with who are pretty large. And so yes, I think we're fine with the working capital element. We also built up a little bit of inventory, and that was planned here as we look at enabling the ramp of the second half of the year. And so from a working capital perspective, we're fine. Operator: Thank you. At this time, I would like to turn the call back to management for closing comments. Thomas Stepien: To all our customers, shareholders, employees and partners, thank you for your continued support. We are at an opportune moment. Today, several markets require advanced batteries and Amprius cells lead the industry on multiple dimensions. That intersection is a powerful one, and we expect to continue to drive technical innovation, execute with discipline, and deliver meaningful results. Thank you for your time and attention this morning. Operator: Thank you. This does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation, and have a great day. 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This article is a transcript of this conference call produced for The Motley Fool. While we strive for our Foolish Best, there may be errors, omissions, or inaccuracies in this transcript. As with all our articles, The Motley Fool does not assume any responsibility for your use of this content, and we strongly encourage you to do your own research, including listening to the call yourself and reading the company's SEC filings. Please see our Terms and Conditions for additional details, including our Obligatory Capitalized Disclaimers of Liability. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Amprius (AMPX) Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript was originally published by The Motley Fool

Amprius Technologies, Inc. AMPX raised full-year expectations again as stronger drone demand, European sales and improving manufacturing economics increased management's visibility. The call also emphasized NDAA-compliant supply, U.S. manufacturing partnerships and new end markets, while keeping a capital-light contract manufacturing model at the center of the growth plan. Second-quarter revenues of $34.0 million exceeded the $28.9 million consensus mark. The company incurred a loss of 3 cents per share, in line with the Zacks Consensus Estimate. Amprius Technologies, Inc. price-consensus-eps-surprise-chart | Amprius Technologies, Inc. Quote CFO Ricardo Rodriguez raised 2026 revenue guidance to at least $140 million from at least $130 million and gross margin guidance to at least 28% from at least 25%. Amprius reiterated adjusted EBITDA of at least $4 million and net loss below $10 million. In Q&A, Rodriguez said demand visibility supported the raise and that additional upside remained. He kept the outlook measured because the supply chain still must scale to support fourth-quarter and 2027 deliveries. CEO Tom Stepien highlighted a $24 million order from a new European drone manufacturer using SiCore cylindrical cells. Shipments began in the second quarter and should be completed over roughly the next two and a half quarters. Stepien also said about half of the 19 manufacturers invited to the Department of War's upcoming drone dominance demonstration use Amprius cells, with the company having at least initial discussions with the rest. Management also cited Redwire's more than $40 million of U.S. Marine Corps orders for its Stalker Block 30 drone. Amprius supplies SiCore cells for that platform. Stepien said three South Korean contract manufacturers can produce NDAA-compliant batteries, while Nanotech Energy provides U.S. cylindrical capacity. Amprius still targets fully U.S.-produced NDAA-compliant cells in 2027, while Fremont pilot-line production is expected to begin in December 2026. In Q&A, Stepien said Amprius had qualified primary and secondary sets of 11 new suppliers covering battery inputs and expected remaining supplier contracts to be completed this quarter. Rodriguez and Stepien also clarified that domestic pouch-cell expansion would come through a partner rather than an Amprius-owned plant, consistent with the company's contract manufacturing strategy. Rodriguez said second-quarter gross margin reached 27%, up from 20% in the first quarter. He attributed the improvement to regional and product mix and said Amprius is working to keep contract manufacturers' fixed costs from rising with higher volumes. During Q&A, Rodriguez put gross margins in a low-20% to high-30% range depending on form factor and geography. More customized pouch cells sit at the more attractive end of that range. Operating spending will still rise near term. Rodriguez expects about $1 million of additional operating expense in the third quarter, then plans to hold spending roughly flat in the fourth quarter. Stepien said the three-year Stark Future agreement should generate at least $100 million of revenue through 2029, with shipments expected to start early in 2027. The deal expands Amprius' e-mobility exposure. Management is also developing commercial drone, robotics, satellite, eVTOL and data-center opportunities. Stepien said robotics does not contribute meaningful revenues today, keeping that market in an early development phase. In Q&A, Stepien focused robotics efforts on machines operating in unstructured environments, where energy density and power balance matter. Rodriguez described data-center discussions as preliminary and centered on short-duration high-power cells near computing racks. Management's closing posture centered on scaling demand without building a heavy fixed-cost base. Contract manufacturing, the Fremont pilot line and supplier diversification remain the main tools for preserving speed and flexibility. The priorities are converting drone demand into shipments, completing the domestic compliance path, improving margins through mix and scale, and developing adjacent markets without changing the partner-led manufacturing strategy. AMPX carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy), a favorable rating in the Zacks framework. Its Value, Growth, Momentum and VGM Scores are all F, the weakest grade in the Style Score system, so they do not reinforce the Rank. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. Style Scores are designed to complement the Zacks Rank, with A or B scores considered more favorable. The Zacks Rank can change as analyst estimates are revised after the just-reported results, so the current reading should not be viewed as static. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Amprius Technologies, Inc. (AMPX) : Free Stock Analysis Report This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com). Zacks Investment Research

This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Release Date: August 05, 2026 For the complete transcript of the earnings call, please refer to the full earnings call transcript. Record Q2 2026 revenue of $34 million, up 19% sequentially and 2.3 times year-over-year, marking the sixth consecutive quarter of growth. Raised full-year 2026 revenue guidance to at least $140 million and gross margin guidance to at least 28%, reflecting strong demand and improved cost management. Secured a $24 million order from a new European drone manufacturer and a three-year contract with Stark Future expected to generate at least $100 million through 2029. Gross margin improved significantly to 27% in Q2, up from 20% in Q1 and 9% in the same quarter last year, with adjusted EBITDA nearing breakeven on a trailing twelve-month basis. Expanded NDAA-compliant manufacturing capacity through new South Korean partners (JR Energy, Top Material) and U.S. partner Nanotech Energy, positioning for full domestic compliance by 2027. Ended the quarter with $74.5 million in cash and no debt, with operations generating cash before working capital movements for the first time. GAAP net loss of $5.1 million in Q2, though narrower year-over-year, still reflects ongoing unprofitability. Accounts receivable grew to $40.7 million, a significant increase that could strain working capital if collection slows. Dependence on a few large customers and regions, with EMEA accounting for 68% of Q2 revenue, creating concentration risk. Operating expenses rose to $13.6 million in Q2, up $5.4 million year-over-year, with further increases expected in Q3. The company faces potential margin pressure from the transition to full NDAA compliance, which may introduce higher costs and lumpiness in financial results. Revenue visibility beyond Q4 2026 remains limited, with management noting a 'grainy' outlook for 2027. Warning! GuruFocus has detected 3 Warning Signs with AMPX. Is AMPX fairly valued? Test your thesis with our free DCF calculator. Q: Can you provide color on what gives you the confidence to raise both revenue and margin guidance for 2026? A: Ricardo Rodriguez (CFO): The revenue raise was driven by strong demand and tighter relationships with pack houses and OEMs, providing better visibility into order flow for the second half and into next year. The margin raise to at least 28% was based on stripping out one-time costs (e.g., $1.8 million in tariffs and $0.5 million in Colorado expenses) that won't recur, and a better understanding of fixed costs at contract manufacturing partners, which we won't let scale up at higher volumes. We expect a favorable mix with at least 60% of revenue from Europe and 60% from accretive power cells. Q: How much dexterity does the technology platform have in using alternate inputs for NDAA compliance, and are you moving toward solid-state electrolytes? A: Tom Stepien (CEO): We have five chemistry platforms (power, energy, balanced) and have qualified two sets of 11 new suppliers for anode, cathode, separator, and binders as part of NDAA compliance. We have primary and secondary suppliers, and we are folding them into cells made in South Korea and the US. The Fremont pilot line helps with quick validation. We are on track to be fully US NDAA compliant in 2027. Q: As stricter domestic requirements from the DOW kick in around 2027-2028, do you see an inflection point for domestic drone manufacturing, and will you need to ramp up US manufacturing? A: Tom Stepien (CEO): We have good visibility through 2027 and 2028. We are happy with our three South Korean partners for NDAA-compliant supply today, and Nanotech Energy provides US capacity. We are actively working with other US manufacturers and expect to announce additional partners soon. We are pleased with demand and our technical leadership, but we always want to move faster. Q: Can you provide an update on getting NDAA-compliant suppliers under contract? A: Tom Stepien (CEO): We make progress weekly and met with several suppliers in Korea recently. We expect to have all contracts buttoned up this quarter. These new suppliers are large international companies, so we are comfortable with their delivery ability. The complexity is in planning and aligning schedules across different manufacturers and countries, but it's not technically hard. Q: With the Drone Dominance Program, half of the 19 finalists are using Amprius cells. Can you walk through the content per drone opportunity and the competitive environment? A: Tom Stepien (CEO): Slides 10 and 11 in the deck detail typical battery sizes and cell content for different drone groups (Group 1, 2, 3). Group 3 drones use more content than Group 1. The competitive environment is intense, but we win on energy density, which is critical in scoring these "gauntlets." Customers tend to be sticky once they trust us, as we can offer up to 50-80% better flight time. We are in about half of the 19 finalists and have had initial conversations with the rest. Q: Can you talk about the robotics opportunity and how Amprius is positioning itself as that market scales? A: Tom Stepien (CEO): We attended Automate in Chicago and learned our cells perform well in unstructured environments (e.g., dog-like robots, humanoids). High energy density and the right power/energy mix are prized when robots can't predict charging times. We've analyzed current requirements, and our cells can handle current spikes for lifting. We made executive changes (Ronnie Tao as Chief Business Officer) to focus on planting seeds in robotics that will turn into revenue as the market expands. Q: You mentioned a team looking at data centers. Can you elaborate on where Amprius could fit in that ecosystem? A: Ricardo Rodriguez (CFO): It's an initial look, but power requirements for CPUs are increasing. While supercapacitors flatten high power draws, there may be a need for a high-power cell immediately behind them to provide 1-60 seconds of runtime and recharge. We see an opportunity for a high-power cylindrical cell placed close to the rack. We are having initial discussions with integrators and will report back when we have customer traction. Q: Regarding your 2030 target of above 30% gross margin, could that be pulled ahead to 2029 given current tailwinds? A: Ricardo Rodriguez (CFO): We will always try to do it sooner, and the elements are there. However, we are managing full NDAA compliance over the next 12-24 months, which comes with a different cost structure that we need to get paid for. The main driver is revenue mixmore customized pouch cells will help us get there sooner. We caution that margins won't be totally straight up and to the right; there could be a quarter or two of slight step-backs as we manage mix or North America revenue increases before we get paid for NDAA compliance expenses. Q: Are you close to purchasing an existing US facility to retool for pouch cell manufacturing? A: Ricardo Rodriguez (CFO) & Tom Stepien (CEO): We are out there looking for a partner to do that, and there's plenty of capacity from EV players who overbuilt. It likely won't be Amprius purchasing the facilityour model is to work with partners. The equipment investment can be about a third of what it takes to build a new building, and the payback can be within two to three years if we fill the capacity. We are getting strong demand signals from the DOW, so stay tuned. Q: What is the current production capacity in China, South Korea, and the US, and how does it break down between cylindrical and pouch? A: Tom Stepien (CEO): Total capacity is greater than 2 GWh per year, working out to roughly 12-15 million cells per quarter. We don't break it out by CM. China is balanced between cylindrical and pouch. Korea is coming into balance. The US is currently unbalanced with cylindrical identified, but we haven't shared pouch partners yet. The goal is to always have supply ahead of demand so we never leave a nickel on the table. For the complete transcript of the earnings call, please refer to the full earnings call transcript.

Interested in Amprius Technologies, Inc.? Here are five stocks we like better. Record results and raised guidance: Amprius reported second-quarter revenue of $34 million, up 19% sequentially and 2.3 times year over year, with gross margin improving to 27%. It raised its 2026 revenue outlook to at least $140 million and expects gross margin of at least 28%. Strong drone demand: The company cited growing military and commercial drone activity, including a $24 million European customer order and potential demand tied to the U.S. Department of War’s Drone Dominance program. Expansion and manufacturing progress: Amprius is developing a fully U.S.-produced, NDAA-compliant cell supply chain targeted for 2027, while expanding into electric motorcycles, robotics, satellites and other markets. A three-year agreement with Stark Future is expected to generate at least $100 million through 2029. 5 Tech Stocks to Buy on the July Pullback Amprius Technologies (NYSE:AMPX) reported record second-quarter revenue and raised its 2026 outlook for the second consecutive quarter, citing demand for its silicon-anode lithium-ion batteries in military and commercial drones, electric mobility and other emerging applications. Revenue for the second quarter of 2026 totaled $34 million, up 19% sequentially and 2.3 times from a year earlier, CFO Ricardo Rodriguez said. The result marked the company’s sixth consecutive quarter of sequential revenue growth. First-half revenue reached $62.6 million, a 137% increase year over year. → SpaceX’s First Earnings Report Could Decide Whether Shorts or Bulls Have Control Time to Sell? 3 Winners With Fading Technical Momentum SiCore batteries represented 98% of quarterly revenue, while Europe, the Middle East and Africa accounted for 68% of sales. Gross profit was $9.3 million, producing a 27% gross margin, compared with 20% in the first quarter and 9% in the prior-year quarter. Rodriguez said Amprius now expects 2026 revenue of at least $140 million and gross margin of at least 28%. The company had previously forecast revenue above $130 million. It reiterated expectations for adjusted EBITDA of more than $4 million, a GAAP net loss of $10 million or less, and a diluted loss per share of $0.08 or less. → 3 Drone Stocks That Should Soar After the Summer Slump 5 Under-the-Radar AI Stocks to Watch in June The company reported a GAAP net loss attributable to common shareholders of $5.1 million, or $0.04 per share, compared with a $6.8 million loss in the same period last year. Adjusted EBITDA was negative $1 million, improving from negative $1.8 million in the first quarter and negative $2.1 million a year earlier. Amprius ended the quarter with $74.5 million in cash and no debt, an increase of $12.2 million during the period. Operating activities used $2.9 million of cash, while financing activities generated $16.8 million from warrant and option exercises. The company had $40.7 million in accounts receivable and $11.5 million in inventory at quarter-end. → The Bitcoin Comeback May Already Be Underway—2 ETFs for Exposure Rodriguez said the higher margin outlook reflects a better understanding of fixed-cost components at contract manufacturers, as well as expectations for favorable regional and product mix. He said customized pouch cells generally offer higher margins than more commoditized cylindrical cells, though results can vary by geography and product mix. CEO Tom Stepien said the company continues to see robust demand from battery-powered unmanned aerial vehicle markets. He pointed to the U.S. Department of War’s Drone Dominance program, which has invited 19 drone manufacturers to participate in a competitive demonstration at Fort Carson, Colorado. According to Stepien, about half of the participants use Amprius cells. The Department of War has said it expects to place orders for 60,000 drones from top performers after the event, Stepien said. He added that Amprius has had initial discussions with the remaining manufacturers participating in the demonstration. Amprius also received a $24 million order from a new European drone-manufacturing customer for its SA124 SiCore cylindrical cells. Deliveries began in the second quarter and are expected to continue over the following three quarters. Rodriguez later said the order should be completed over the next two and a half quarters. Stepien also highlighted customer Redwire, which recently announced more than $40 million in purchase orders from the U.S. Marine Corps for its Stalker Block 30 reconnaissance drone. Redwire began purchasing Amprius batteries in 2024, according to Stepien. Amprius is working to expand its supply of cells compliant with National Defense Authorization Act requirements. Its Defense Innovation Unit contract, which supports development and scaling of NDAA-compliant silicon-anode cells, totals $18.1 million after being increased for a third time during the first quarter. The company has received nearly half of the equipment required for a pilot line at its Fremont, California headquarters, with the remaining equipment expected later in August and September. Production at the pilot line is expected to begin in December 2026. Stepien said the company has qualified new primary and secondary suppliers for 11 battery components, including materials used in anodes, cathodes and separators. He said Amprius expects to have the suppliers under contract during the current quarter and remains on track for fully U.S.-produced, NDAA-compliant cells in 2027. The company currently works with four manufacturing partners in China and has expanded its South Korean network to include Lebest, JR Energy and Top Material. Stepien said the South Korean partners provide NDAA-compliant supply today, while U.S. contract manufacturer Nanotech Energy provides additional domestic capacity. Amprius said it expects to discuss additional U.S. partners in coming months. Management said it intends to continue using a contract-manufacturing model rather than make large investments in owned production facilities. Rodriguez said the company has more than two gigawatt-hours of annual capacity across its manufacturing network, though it does not disclose capacity by individual manufacturer. Beyond drones, Amprius announced a three-year agreement with Barcelona-based electric motorcycle manufacturer Stark Future. The company expects the relationship to generate at least $100 million in revenue through 2029, with shipments anticipated to begin in early 2027. Stepien said Amprius is also pursuing opportunities in robotics, satellites, electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, and potentially data-center infrastructure. He emphasized that robotics does not yet contribute meaningful revenue, but said the company’s ability to offer different power and energy profiles could suit robots operating in unstructured environments. To support expansion into new markets, Amprius moved former Vice President of Sales Ronnie Tao into the newly created role of chief business officer, with an initial focus on robotics. The company also named Anne Torricelli, most recently managing director of energy storage solutions at Gotion, as vice president of sales. Amprius Technologies, Inc (NYSE: AMPX) is a U.S.-based developer of high-energy-density lithium-ion batteries that leverage silicon anode technology to deliver performance levels beyond conventional graphite-based cells. The company's batteries are designed to offer industry-leading gravimetric energy density, enabling longer run times and reduced weight for portable power applications. Amprius blends advanced materials science and scalable manufacturing processes to commercialize next-generation battery solutions. At the core of Amprius' product portfolio are cylindrical and prismatic cells that employ a proprietary silicon nanowire anode, which supports high charge/discharge rates while maintaining cycle life. This instant news alert was generated by narrative science technology and financial data from MarketBeat in order to provide readers with the fastest reporting and unbiased coverage. Please send any questions or comments about this story to [email protected]. The article "Amprius Technologies Q2 Earnings Call Highlights" was originally published by MarketBeat. View MarketBeat's top stocks for August 2026.

Q2 2026 revenue more than doubled year-over-year to $34.0 million. Net loss of $5.1 million, representing a 20% year-over-year improvement, including a $1.9 million non-cash impact from the increase in fair value related to the warrant exchange. Net loss improved 50% excluding the impact of the warrant exchange. Increasing 2026 revenue outlook to at least $140.0 million, reiterating targets for net loss below $10.0 million, and positive non-GAAP Adjusted EBITDA of at least $4 million. FREMONT, Calif., August 04, 2026--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Amprius Technologies, Inc. ("Amprius" or the "Company") (NYSE: AMPX), a leader in silicon anode lithium-ion batteries, today announced financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2026, and discussed recent business developments. Revenue for the second quarter of 2026 was $34.0 million, up 126% from $15.1 million in the second quarter of 2025. Net loss attributable to common stockholders of $5.1 million, includes the $1.9 million non-cash impact of the increase in fair value related to the warrant exchange ("Warrant Modification"), compared to a net loss of $6.4 million in the second quarter of 2025. Excluding the $1.9 million impact of the Warrant Modification, net loss for the second quarter of 2026 was $3.2 million. GAAP net loss per common share was $0.04, compared to net loss per share was $0.05 in the second quarter of 2025. GAAP net loss per share for the second quarter of 2026 adjusted to remove the $1.9 million Warrant Modification was $0.02. Q2 2026 Financial Highlights Record revenue of $34.0 million, up 19% sequentially and 2.3x year-over-year (YoY). Gross profit of $9.3 million, up $8.0 million and 593% YoY. Delivered GAAP gross margin of 27%, improving from 20% in Q1 2026. Net loss attributable to common stockholders of $5.1 million, a $1.3 million improvement YoY. Net loss adjusted for the $1.9 million Warrant Modification was $3.2 million. Non-GAAP Adjusted EBITDA of ($1.0) million, a 53% or $1.1 million improvement YoY. "Amprius delivered another robust quarter, with revenue growing 2.3x year over year and gross margin expanding to 27%," said Amprius Technologies CEO Tom Stepien. "We saw healthy demand across drone and e-mobility markets. We secured the trust of several leading customers, including a $24 million order from a new European drone manufacturer, and a multi-year contract with Stark Future, which we expect to exceed $100 million. The strong results and the depth of our pipeline give us the confidence to raise our full-year 2026 outlook for the second consecutive quarter." Reconciliations of GAAP net loss to non-GAAP Adjusted net loss and non-GAAP Adjusted EBITDA are provided in the financial schedules that are part of this press release. An explanation of these non-GAAP financial measures is also included below under the heading "Non-GAAP Financial Measures." Quarterly Financial Comparison Business Highlights Established multi-year supply agreement starting in 2027 with Stark Future, a Barcelona-based manufacturer of electric motorcycles, representing a total revenue opportunity exceeding $100 million Awarded a $24.0 million order from a major European drone developer for SiCore cylindrical cells Supplied Redwire, a leading aerospace and defense technology company, with SiCore cells for the Stalker Block 30, a long-range intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance drone Advanced the Fremont, California pilot line expansion partially funded by the Defense Innovation Unit, by initiating installation activities of about 40% of the production tools Expanded the Company’s network of contract manufacturing partners in South Korea, enhancing the Company’s cell production capacity Adding pack partners, enhancing the Company’s ability to scale without adding direct sales headcount Updated 2026 Financial Outlook Amprius updates its 2026 full year outlook as follows: Total revenue is now expected to be at least $140 million, raised from at least $130 million Gross margin guidance is now expected to be at least 28%, raised from at least 25% Net loss is now expected to be less than $10 million, accounting for the $1.9 million non-cash fair value charge impact of the Warrant Exchange Net loss per share is now expected to be under $0.08, accounting for the $1.9 million non-cash fair value charge impact of the Warrant Exchange Reiterating targets: Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be at least $4.0 million Capital expenditure is expected to be under $10.0 million The Company's 2026 outlook assumes depreciation and amortization of $4.7 million, stock-based compensation expense of $8.3 million, interest income of $1.0 million, and weighted average shares outstanding of 136.9 million for the full year. Amprius’ CFO Ricardo C. Rodriguez added: "This was a strong quarter for Amprius, with robust sequential growth, and gross margins on the path that we’ve been expecting. Our updated guidance reflects the increased visibility that we’re developing as we execute the first innings of this revenue ramp." Amprius may recognize additional charges, realize gains or losses, incur financing costs or interest expense, or experience other events in 2026, including those related to capacity expansion, supply chain disruptions, or further cost inflation, that could cause actual results to vary materially from this outlook. See Forward-Looking Statements below. Amprius has not provided a reconciliation of the 2026 outlook for non-GAAP Adjusted EBITDA in reliance on the unreasonable efforts exception provided under Item 10(e)(1)(i)(B) of Regulation S-K due to the uncertainty regarding, and the potential variability of, reconciling items such as, the amount and timing of potential non-recurring items. The Company is unable, without unreasonable efforts, to forecast certain items required to develop meaningful comparable GAAP financial measures. Conference Call and Webcast Notification A conference call with Amprius management to discuss second quarter 2026 results and recent business developments will be held on Wednesday, August 5, 2026, at 8:30 a.m. EDT. During the call, management will respond to questions concerning, but not limited to, Amprius’ financial performance, business conditions, and financial outlook. Management's discussion and responses could contain information that has not been previously disclosed. Shareholders and other interested parties may call 866-424-3442 (domestic) or +1 201-689-8548 (international) and reference conference ID "13761698" to participate in the conference call. In addition, the conference call and an accompanying slide presentation will be available live as a listen-only webcast here and hosted at the Investor Relations section of Amprius’ website, ir.amprius.com. Amprius uses the Investor Relations section of its website to disclose material information for the purposes of the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) Regulation Fair Disclosure. Shareholders and other interested parties are encouraged to monitor this website in addition to Amprius' other public announcements and SEC filings as information posted on that page could be deemed to be material information. Following the live event, an archived version of the webcast will be available on Amprius’ website for convenient on-demand replay. A copy of this press release is posted in the Investor Relations section on Amprius’ website. About Amprius Technologies, Inc. Amprius Technologies, Inc. is a leader in advanced lithium-ion battery technology, delivering high-energy and high-power silicon-anode batteries with up to twice the energy density, range, and flight time of conventional graphite-based cells. Headquartered in Fremont, California, Amprius operates an R&D lab and pilot manufacturing facility for silicon anodes and cells. To support scalable production, the Company employs a contract manufacturing strategy, enabling rapid capacity expansion with minimal capital investment. Committed to driving innovation in energy storage, Amprius powers next-generation applications in aerospace, defense, and mobility. For additional information, please visit amprius.com and the Company’s LinkedIn page. Forward-Looking Statements This press release includes "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and the "safe harbor" provisions of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, each as amended, including Amprius’ expectations, hopes, beliefs, intentions or strategies regarding the future. Forward-looking statements may be identified by the use of words such as "estimate," "plan," "project," "forecast," "intend," "expect," "anticipate," "believe," "seek," "will" or other similar expressions that predict or indicate future events or trends or that are not statements of historical matters. These forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding the ability of Amprius to serve more customers, bring in additional revenue and expand applications, the strategic benefits of Amprius’ Fremont, California pilot line to its business, the ability of Amprius to further expand this pilot line and the benefits of such expansion to Amprius, the benefits of the existing governmental award and recent governmental policies to Amprius’ business, the capacity of Amprius’ contract manufacturing partners with respect to Amprius’ batteries, Amprius’ ability to meet customers demand with contract manufacturing capacities, the development and size of the addressable markets for Amprius’ batteries and the benefits of the expansion of such addressable markets, the potential application and performance of Amprius’ batteries, the ability of Amprius to secure additional contract manufacturers that can offer greater geographic diversification and operating flexibility, Amprius’ liquidity position, capital strategy, strategic business plans, and Amprius’ financial and business performance. These statements are based on various assumptions, whether or not identified in this press release, and on the current expectations of Amprius’ management and are not predictions of actual performance. These forward-looking statements are not intended to serve as, and must not be relied upon by any investors as, a guarantee, an assurance, a prediction or a definitive statement of fact or probability. Actual events and circumstances are difficult or impossible to predict and will differ from assumptions. Many actual events and circumstances are beyond Amprius’ control. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including market demands for Amprius’ batteries; the ability of Amprius to execute its business model and strategy, including the ability to expand manufacturing capacity or develop production lines that meet its requirements, deliver high performance products to customers at acceptable prices and meet their demands via the contract manufacturing arrangements; the effect of macroeconomic factors, such as tariffs, trade barriers, retaliatory actions imposed on Amprius’ partners and suppliers, including regulatory developments proposed in China, abrupt political change, geopolitics, currency fluctuations, embargoes, shortages, terrorist activity, armed conflict and public health emergencies, on Amprius’ business; third-party producers of Amprius batteries continuing to produce such batteries in the expected quantities and caliber and at the expected prices; Amprius’ customers continuing to purchase batteries from Amprius; risks related to the rollout of Amprius’ business and the timing of expected business milestones; the effects of competition on Amprius’ business; Amprius’ liquidity position and its ability to raise additional capital; the possibility that Amprius may be adversely affected by economic, business or competitive factors, including supply chain interruptions, further cost inflation and developments in alternative technologies, and may not be able to manage other risks and uncertainties; changes in governmental policies impacting Amprius’ customers and addressable markets; and changes in other domestic and foreign business, market, financial, political and legal conditions. More information on these risks and uncertainties that may impact the operations and projections discussed herein can be found in the documents Amprius filed from time to time with the SEC, all of which are available on the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov. If any of these risks materialize or Amprius’ assumptions prove incorrect, actual results could differ materially from the results implied by these forward-looking statements. There may be additional risks that Amprius does not presently know or that Amprius currently believes are immaterial that could also cause actual results to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements. In addition, forward-looking statements reflect Amprius’ expectations, plans or forecasts of future events and views as of the date of this press release. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing Amprius’ assessments as of any date subsequent to the date of this press release. Accordingly, undue reliance should not be placed upon the forward-looking statements. Except as required by law, Amprius specifically disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements. Non-GAAP Financial Measures To supplement our financial results presented on a basis in conformity with generally accepted accounting principles in the United States ("GAAP"), we use the non-GAAP measures: Adjusted Net Loss, Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA margin, which excludes from our GAAP net loss, interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, as well as other significant expenses including stock-based compensation that we believe are helpful in understanding our past financial performance. Our non-GAAP financial measures are not meant to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for comparable GAAP measures and should be read only in conjunction with our consolidated financial statements prepared in accordance with GAAP. Management believes that these non-GAAP financial measures reflect our ongoing business in a manner that allows for meaningful comparisons and analysis of trends in its business, as it excludes expenses and gains not reflective of ongoing operating results or that may be infrequent and/or unusual in nature. We exclude the non-cash impact of the increase in fair value related to the warrant exchange, as the exchange of warrants for common shares is not related to our ongoing operations. We exclude the operating costs for our former facility in Colorado, as these costs were recurring in the past but with the termination of the lease in January 2026, they are no longer indicative of our ongoing operational results. We also adjust for the effect of stock-based compensation expenses noting that such expenses will recur in future periods. Although stock-based compensation is a key incentive offered to our employees, we continue to evaluate our business performance internally excluding stock-based compensation expenses. Management also believes that these non-GAAP financial measures provide useful information to investors in understanding and evaluating our operating results and future prospects in the same manner as management and in comparing financial results across accounting periods and to those of peer companies. These non-GAAP measures may not be comparable to similarly titled measures presented by other companies. In this press release, we provided reconciliations of non-GAAP net loss and non-GAAP Adjusted EBITDA to GAAP net loss, the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260804904743/en/ Contacts Investors Tom Colton, Greg BradburyGateway Group, [email protected] Media Zach Kadletz, Brenlyn MotlaghGateway Group, [email protected]

Amprius Technologies, Inc. AMPX is scheduled to report second-quarter 2026 results on Aug. 5, before the opening bell. The company’s earnings surprise history has been impressive. It surpassed the Zacks Consensus Estimate in three of the last four reported quarters and missed once, delivering an earnings surprise of 15.6% on average. Amprius Technologies, Inc. price-consensus-eps-surprise-chart | Amprius Technologies, Inc. Quote The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the top line is pegged at $29.08 million, implying 92.6% growth over the year-ago quarter’s actual. Multiple factors, such as new customer wins and accelerating adoption of the company’s second-generation SiCore battery platform, are likely to have boosted revenues. Recent notable customer wins, such as defense-related contracts with AeroVironment, Teledyne FLIR and Kraus Hamdani Aerospace, are likely to have led to improved revenues. Moreover, securing a $21 million multi-quarter purchase order from a leading Chinese light electric vehicle manufacturer and expanding its Defense Innovation Unit contract to $18.1 million are likely to have further driven revenue growth. The consistent traction of AMPX’s batteries in the light electric vehicles (EV) market, such as e-motorcycles, scooters and e-bikes, is likely to have supported margins. The consensus estimate for loss per share is 3 cents, indicating a year-over-year improvement of 40% from the year-ago quarter’s actual loss of 5 cents. We expect expanded margins, driven by controlled operational expenses, to have improved the bottom line and narrowed the losses. Our proven model does not conclusively predict an earnings beat for AMPX this time around. The combination of a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) increases the odds of an earnings beat, but that is not the case here. You can uncover the best stocks before they are reported with our Earnings ESP Filter. Amprius Technologies has an Earnings ESP of 0.00% and a Zacks Rank of 3 at present. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here. Here are a few stocks from the broader Business Services sector, which, according to our model, have the right combination of elements to beat on earnings this season. Duolingo, Inc. DUOL has an Earnings ESP of +9.02% and a Zacks Rank of 2. The company is scheduled to report its second-quarter 2026 results on Aug. 5. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for DUOL’s second-quarter 2026 revenues is pegged at $297.4 million, indicating year-over-year growth of 17.9%. For earnings, the consensus mark is pegged at 61 cents per share, implying a 33% decline from the year-ago quarter’s actual. Duolingo beat the consensus estimate in each of the trailing four quarters, delivering an earnings surprise of 32.3% on average. Dave Inc. DAVE has an Earnings ESP of +1.42% and a Zacks Rank of 2. The company is scheduled to declare its second-quarter 2026 results on Aug. 5. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for DAVE’s second-quarter 2026 revenues is pegged at $169.8 million, indicating 28.9% year-over-year growth. The consensus estimate for earnings is pegged at $3.69 per share, implying a year-over-year increase of 17.5%. Dave beat the consensus estimate in each of the trailing four quarters, delivering an average earnings surprise of 47.8%. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Amprius Technologies, Inc. (AMPX) : Free Stock Analysis Report Dave Inc. (DAVE) : Free Stock Analysis Report Duolingo, Inc. (DUOL) : Free Stock Analysis Report This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com). Zacks Investment Research

Image source: The Motley Fool. Thursday, May 7, 2026 at 8:30 a.m. ET Chief Executive Officer — Thomas Stepien Chief Financial Officer — Ricardo Rodriguez Operator: Good morning. Welcome to the Amprius Technologies First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Joining us for today's presentation are the company's CEO, Tom Stepien; and CFO, Ricardo Rodriguez. [Operator Instructions] Following management's remarks, we will open the call for questions. Please note that this presentation contains forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, statements regarding our financial and business performance, our business strategy, future product development or commercialization, new customer adoption and new applications, our growth and the growth of the markets in which we operate and the timing and ability of Amprius to expand its manufacturing capacity, scale its business and achieve a sustainable cost structure. These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other important factors that may cause 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. This presentation includes a non-GAAP financial measure, which is adjusted EBITDA. This non-GAAP financial measure does not replace the presentation of Amprius' GAAP financial results and should only be used as a supplement to, not a substitute for, Amprius' financial results presented in accordance with GAAP and may not be comparable to calculations of similarly titled measures by other companies. A reconciliation of adjusted EBITDA to net loss, the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure is included in our press release, a copy of which is filed with the SEC and posted on our website. Finally, I would like to remind everyone that this conference call is being webcast. 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 press release that accompanies these results, which can also be found on the Amprius Investor Relations website. Before turning the call over to management, I want to highlight a few near-term IR events. On May 12, Tom Stepien will be at Xponential in Detroit. Any investors that are attending the Expo are welcome to stop by the company's booth. At the same time, Ricardo will be at the Needham Conference in New York City on May 12 and 13. His fireside chat will be streamed online and will be available for replay on the company's IR website. On May 14, the management team will be in New York City and taking investor meetings with KKR. The following week, management will be attending the B. Riley Conference on May 20 and 21 in Los Angeles. And to round out the month, management will be at the Craig-Hallum Conference in Minneapolis on May 28. Looking to June, the team will start off the month in Chicago for the William Blair Conference. Management will then attend the Jefferies eVTOL Summit on June 8, the TD Cowen Technology Summit on the 17th, the ROTH London Conference on June 17 and 18 and the Northland Conference on June 23. We hope to connect with many of you at these upcoming events. I will now turn the call over to Amprius Technology CEO, Tom Stepien, for his comments. Sir, please proceed. Thomas Stepien: Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us this morning. Let's start with Slide 3. Last quarter, I compared the advantages offered by our batteries to the difference between standard brewed coffee and espresso. It's an idea that illustrates the difference between our cells and those of our competitors. In this analogy, a standard graphite battery is like normal drip coffee and we're the concentrated power of espresso. Our batteries contain the same energy as standard cells in a much smaller package. If you match the volume and weight of standard coffee with a double espresso, you achieve twice the energy. When you double the energy in a battery, you can double flight time for an unmanned aircraft or double the travel distance of a light electric vehicle. That's the Amprius Espresso advantage. Turning now to Slide 4. This energy advantage continues to drive robust financial performance. And in the first quarter, we sustained our strong business momentum. Our second-generation SiCore, silicon anode batteries are gaining broad adoption across unmanned aerial system customers, and we are pleased to see the momentum we have built in Europe is now taking hold in the United States. U.S. defense spending is at an all-time high with a growing emphasis on UASs, commonly referred to as drones. Three Amprius customers leveraging our SiCore batteries have recently received notable multimillion dollar awards. First, I'll mention Kraus Hamdani Aerospace, a Northern California-based drone manufacturer. Their K1000ULE is a fully electric ultra-long-range Endurance UAS capable of 24-hour flight in a 1,000-mile range, designed for autonomous intelligence, surveillance and communication missions across land, sea and air. They recently received a major sole-source award from the U.S. Department of War for their UAS and a separate contract worth up to $270 million from the U.S. Air Force Central Command. Then there's AeroVironment, a leading U.S. defense technology company and a long-term Amprius customer. March 2026, AV won a $117 million firm fixed-price U.S. Army contract to deliver P550 UASs designed to provide frontline units with real-time intelligence and targeting in contested environments. And then there's Teledyne FLIR, a global leader in thermal imaging, surveillance sensors and unmanned systems and another tenured Amprius customer. They recently announced a European order for their Black Hornet 4, a palm-sized nano drone measuring just 25 centimeters long with a 200-millimeter rotor diameter. The Black Hornet 4 provides soldiers with live video feeds, target data and real-time situational awareness for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance in both dismounted and vehicle integrated operations. We commend these 3 customers on their recent wins. Their success boosts our visibility into future purchase orders for SiCore cells. We look forward to continuing to earn their trust and business. We are pleased to announce that our silicon anode cells were selected by a leading light electric vehicle customer based in China. This customer placed a $21 million multi-quarter purchase order for batteries for 2- and 3-wheeled vehicles. China is home to many of the world's most successful battery companies, which makes it especially satisfying to win business in this highly competitive region. Meanwhile, our ongoing project with the U.S. Defense Innovation Unit continues to expand. In July 2025, Amprius won a development contract from the DIU. In the March quarter, the contract was increased for a third time and now totals $18.1 million. This recent increase adds delivery of 3 types of silicon anode cylindrical cells and 4 standard-sized pouch cells. Standardization is really critical for the government. It reduces cost, simplifies logistics and ensure systems can use the same safe, reliable NDAA-compliant power sources. It is gratifying to receive awards from credible and independent media and trade groups. After winning a competitive CES Innovation Award in January, we were recently named a top 100 Greentech company by TIME. Turning now to our financial performance. I'm pleased to report Q1 revenue of $28.5 million, up 2.5x year-over-year and 13% higher sequentially. The strong results give us the confidence to increase our revenue guidance for the full year to at least $130 million, $5 million above our previous forecast. While it is not our practice to provide specific guidance for the current quarter, I would note that our revised annual forecast implies a reacceleration of sequential top line growth in the June quarter. Ricardo will provide more highlights on our financial performance and outlook shortly. He will also share details on our press release earlier this morning in which we announced an agreement to exchange our outstanding public warrants for common shares, which will simplify and strengthen our capital structure. Let's now take a look at Slide 5. Taking a step back, I'd like to review our substantial opportunity set in 5 principal end markets. The first is UASs, including drones used for defense, public safety, security and logistics. Defense platforms that require high energy density typically support long loiter missions and are primarily targeted for ISR, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. Public safety drones include DFR, drone as a first responder, systems integrated directly into emergency workflows. DFR programs are expanding nationwide because they deliver faster situational awareness, reduced response times and materially improved public safety outcomes. As more agencies adopt DFR as a core part of 911 operations, demand for higher performance, longer endurance batteries continue to accelerate, and that plays directly to our strengths. Our second market segment is satellites and space, where our high energy density cells directly improve launch economics. Satellite launch providers charge customers by weight, making our ability to deliver the same energy at roughly half the weight, our Espresso advantage, extremely valuable. The $21 million multi-quarter purchase order I mentioned earlier is an example of our traction in a third segment, light electric vehicles. The customer advantage here is sitting more capacity into standard packs or constrained spaces and enabling range. We're optimistic about the opportunity in a fourth segment, robotics. Robot performance is closely tied to battery characteristics as our CTO, Ionel Stefan, recently shared with a leading battery journal. "Balancing the extreme discharge demands of actuation with the computational intensity of real-time AI processing requires a new generation of energy solutions." He said, "high silicon anode cells represent a breakthrough, delivering the energy density needed to extend operational run time while minimizing the weight penalties that constrained efficiency." Our fifth market segment is eVTOL, electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft. eVTOL and other advanced air mobility customers are developing autonomous point-to-point regional transport for both passengers and cargo. These vehicles only work with high energy density batteries because aircraft must lift a heavy structure, a pilot and 3 to 4 passengers. Without enough energy per kilogram, the vehicle simply can't achieve the required range, payload or safety margins. If standard cells are chosen, the aircraft can likely get off the ground, but it likely cannot perform the required mission. Working with a third-party research firm, we size these 5 end markets, as shown on the right-hand side of Slide 5. Lithium-ion battery applications across these markets are estimated at $7 billion this year, growing to $13 billion by the end of the decade, nearly doubling in just a few years. Looking further out, we expect growth to accelerate meaningfully, reaching $35 billion by 2035. Let me now turn over the call to Ricardo to review our Q1 results in detail. Ricardo Rodriguez: Thank you, Tom, and good morning, everyone. I'm happy to report that Amprius had another record-breaking quarter. As shown on Slide 6, we delivered $28.5 million of revenue in Q1, which translates into 13% growth over the fourth quarter of last year and a 153% increase year-over-year. As Tom mentioned, those results give us the confidence to increase our 2026 full year revenue forecast by $5 million to at least $130 million. I'll provide more color on the outlook shortly. As Tom noted, our revenue growth was driven by continued expansion in our SiCore customer base, combined with increasing order volumes from existing customers as they scale their own deployments. Cycle represented 97% of product revenue in the quarter, continuing our transition away from our legacy SiMaxx platform. In the quarter, we generated 58% of our revenue from Europe, the Middle East and Africa, 21% from North America and 21% from the Asia Pacific region. The North American share increased meaningfully, both sequentially and year-over-year, consistent with the growing interest we're seeing from U.S.-based customers. While we expect this mix to fluctuate over the course of the year, we think the U.S. business could accelerate in the second half. Now moving on to cost of revenue and gross margins. Our Q1 gross profit was $5.7 million, producing a gross margin of 20%. For context, Q4 gross margin was 24%. So we did step back quarter-over-quarter, and I want to be transparent about why. Overhead costs associated with our Fremont facility are being absorbed across a larger SiCore revenue base, while the SiMaxx product line continues to wind down. Our Q1 SiMaxx-related overhead costs were up more than $3 million. Essentially, these are fixed costs against only $618,000 of revenue. That created a material but temporary drag on the blended margin. We also had 1 month of expenses from Colorado in the quarter, which are gross -- without which our gross margin would have been 22%. Turning over to operating expenses. Quarterly R&D expenses were $3.8 million. SG&A was $8.6 million, bringing total operating expenses to $12.4 million, which was down approximately $19 million quarter-over-quarter, though that comparison is heavily distorted by the $22.5 million noncash impairment charge for Colorado in Q4 of last year. On a clean basis, our adjusted OpEx run rate is up modestly quarter-over-quarter, driven by targeted investments in our sales and go-to-market organization as we build the team to support the commercial momentum Tom described. Putting these elements together, our Q1 operating loss was $6.7 million compared to a clean operating loss of approximately $2.9 million in Q4 after removing the Colorado onetime charge. The increase reflects the gross margin stepback I described and the continued investment in commercial and R&D capabilities. Q1 adjusted EBITDA was negative $1.8 million, which compares to negative $5.2 million in the same quarter of last year. After 2 quarters of positive adjusted EBITDA, we had expected a modest step back in Q1 due to the SiMaxx phaseout and the 1-month Colorado cost carryover that I described. Our Q1 GAAP net loss was $5 million or negative $0.04 per share based on approximately 136.9 million weighted average shares outstanding. Now turning over to the balance sheet and cash flow. We ended Q1 with $62.4 million of cash and no debt. Our cash position is down from $90.5 million at year-end due to several factors, which consumed $37.3 million of cash in the quarter. First, accounts receivable increased by $11.5 million, reflecting the strong revenue growth we experienced near the quarter's end. Over $6.5 million of that figure has already been collected. We also paid approximately $20 million to settle our Colorado facility lease obligation as previously announced. That agreement settled what would have been an expense of more than $110 million in highly favorable terms. Largely due to that transaction, our liabilities were reduced by $29.8 million in the quarter. Q1 capital expenditures were of $980,000 funded largely through the DIU contract. Total shareholders' equity stood at $109.4 million at quarter's end. Before turning the call back to Tom, I'd like to spend a moment framing our outlook and commenting on the warrant exchange agreement transaction that we announced this morning. Let's also please turn to Slide 7. When we communicated our 2026 baseline of at least $125 million of revenue, we said we would rather size the upside as it happens than commit to it ahead of time. We continue to see healthy demand indicators, a growing backlog, higher production volumes at all of our manufacturing partners and increasing urgency from defense-related customers around NDAA-compliant supply. With this in mind, we are raising our revenue guidance to at least $130 million in 2026. The setup for the rest of the year is constructive for our economics, particularly as our collections normalize and additional capacity from our Korean and U.S. manufacturing partners comes online. We continue to expect 2026 adjusted EBITDA of at least $4 million and a net loss of no more than $8 million or less than $0.06 per share, assuming 136.9 million shares. Our CapEx will ramp up over the course of 2026, but remain below $10 million for the year, and we expect this to be funded by our contract with the Defense Innovation Unit. Finally, I'd like to briefly comment on the recent announcement of our agreement to convert over 7 million public warrants that were held by institutional investors into common stock. This agreement reduces future dilution by converting warrants that would have been exercisable at lower prices into a fixed number of shares on terms that we believe are favorable to existing shareholders. It is consistent with the broader optimization of our capital structure that we've been executing, such as closing the ATM, settling the Colorado lease and now managing our warrant overhang proactively. We're constantly looking for opportunities to simplify the balance sheet and optimize the capital structure as our operating performance gives us the leverage to do so. Thank you to everyone who worked with us on this and to the Amprius team for enabling it, thanks to the prompt execution of our plans. Now I'm happy to turn the call back to Tom. Thank you all for your continued attention and support. Thomas Stepien: Our Q1 performance bodes well for a successful 2026. Revenue increasing at double-digit percentage points quarter-over-quarter, continued gross margin at or above 20% and with our warrant exchange underway, we are removing a potential dilution overhang. Competition in the lithium-ion battery space is fierce, and we embrace it. In 2026, the team is driving next-generation silicon anode performance with higher energy density and sustained power without sacrificing safety or reliability while meeting all manufacturing and country origin requirements. We're expanding our portfolio to reach new markets and converting more customer engagements into formal qualifications and deployments, particularly in mobility-focused platforms. We remain deeply bullish about the opportunities in front of us, and we look forward to meeting and reconnecting with many of you at the investor conferences we'll be attending in the weeks ahead. Thank you for your continued interest in and support of Amprius. And with that, let me -- I'll turn it over to the operator for questions. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Now our first question will come from Colin Rusch with Oppenheimer. Colin Rusch: Tom, you've been with the company now about a year, and one of the big focuses was around driving better visibility on customer volumes, so you could plan on production. Given some of the fluctuation that we're seeing with mix and margins here, I just want to get a more fulsome update on where you're at in that process and how much there is to go in terms of being able to drive increased volumes with key customers and do a little bit more work around planning and supply chain optimization. Thomas Stepien: Yes. Thanks, Colin. There is a lot of upside going forward here. We are in early days. We are starting to see some of the one big beautiful bill dollars. The bill was signed, what, 10 months ago. The 3 customers that we referenced in the call are starting to receive contracts. The suppliers to those customers, including Amprius on the battery side are next. We see that also in some of the light electric vehicle work. We announced a win. We've been a little bit of vague about that in the past because it's been smaller purchase orders, but now there's larger ones coming in. So there is a lot of opportunity out there for us. We are going to robotics conferences that we have not attended in the past. So we're going on offense. We're adding people to the team. We have some additional firms that are helping us. We just signed up a new group in South Korea that's helping us get started there before we establish our own team in place there. So we are very bullish about this market in general, and we are making plans so that we can capture as much as we can get. Colin Rusch: And then for my follow-up, I just want to focus in on some of the mobile robot opportunities here. And given the form factor and the flexibility that you guys have with the different SKUs and the potential for multiple zones within some of these spots, particularly on the humanoid side. I just want to get a sense of kind of product market fit, what you're seeing from a competitive standpoint and the evolution of that opportunity to move into more substantial production. Thomas Stepien: Yes. It's early days on robotics. We don't have any real meaningful revenue in our Q1 numbers. We're starting to have some really good discussions with folks in the U.S. and in Asia about what really is ideal. And to a certain extent, some of these companies are learning for themselves. One thing that we have learned is Amprius' strength, our high energy density really helps us in unstructured environments. If you have a warehouse robot and you can go around the corner and plug in, okay, maybe we're not as strong. But if you have a variety of different power needs, I referenced Enel's analysis in the call, where you have some intense power needs if you're lifting and then you have some low energy needs for extended use. Those play to our ability to have blended batteries, some that are power focused, some that are energy focused, a lot of which are balanced. So we're getting started. We have some really good conversations with customers and done well that will start to show up in terms of revenue toward the end of this year, early next. Operator: Your next question comes from Mark Shooter with William Blair. Mark Shooter: Congrats on the progress in the quarter. So last earnings call, I believe we had just entered the Iran conflict. So I'm wondering how have your conversations developed over the last 3 months, especially with the U.S. military and the defense contractors? Has there been any increase or a sense of urgency from these drone programs that you can talk about? Thomas Stepien: Yes. Again, we're starting to see some of the flow in. We referenced some over the weekend calls, I think, in the March quarter, and that has translated to some of the business. One of the customers that we talked about in the call was one of those customers. So We, as a nation here in the U.S. is getting serious. I think we've seen that in a number of public announcements, and we're starting to see that flow down to us. It will likely continue the Gauntlet 2 and the drone dominance program. The Gauntlet itself starts in August. There are some qualifiers next month in June. We know the 11 winners in Gauntlet 1. There's more that are entering into Gauntlet 2. So we're really close with that community and intend to stay close and intend to emphasize our ability to have a longer loitering time, which for many of the scoring in these drone contest is super important. Mark Shooter: And one follow-up for Ricardo about the warrant transaction at the tape this morning. Can you unpack a little bit more of the strategy around the transaction? And is there any more color you can provide to us on what the potential dilution would have been and what it will be now? Ricardo Rodriguez: Thanks, Mark. Yes, definitely. So I mean, just to get us all on the same page, right? So there were basically just nearly 16.5 million public warrants that were issued back in 2022 in September, when the company went public with a strike price of $11.50. And here, what we're basically doing is we took $7.1 million of those warrants and negotiated with the holders of those warrants to convert them into stock at an exchange ratio that will be determined here next week. Per our math, we are basically saving shareholders at least $70 million of dilution that would have otherwise happened if those warrants were exercised. The other bit is when these warrants are held by institutional investors, they manage a hedge, right? They generally just want the performance from the warrants rather than the performance to be linked to the stock and its volatility. And given where the stock has been trading meaningfully above $18 a share, which is the level at which we can call the warrants, if we trade above that level for 20 out of 30 trading days, they, in essence, had a 100% short position relative to those warrants. So I do think that this should relieve some of the short interest on the stock to the tune, if you believe the math of about 7.1 million shares at least. Operator: Your next question comes from Derek Soderberg with Cantor Fitzgerald. Derek Soderberg: I wanted to start with the $500 million in defense orders awarded to your long-standing customers. What's 6:35 PM Amprius' typical attach rate look like on those programs? And can you sort of frame the timing of when those might translate into POs? Thomas Stepien: Yes. So we haven't traced attach rates because some of these programs are brand new, right? We enjoy those 3 customers, and these are long-standing customers, right, that have been with us for a number of years. So we are in some of the programs, but not all. And then some of the companies, of course, have changed over time, and there's different divisions. AV bought BlueHalo. So it's a bit of a different company than it was when we first got close to them 4 or 5 years ago. So the good news is that we are a known quantity and the groups tend to talk to each other. We were getting to the point where we're starting to share road maps. As these companies are concerned about getting to U.S.-made batteries and U.S. content, we're able to share our road maps on exactly when we will get there, who will build those for us. That gets us closer and that allows us to have the right kind of discussions with the engineers and the program managers that are selecting different components, batteries, motors, cameras, et cetera, for these unmanned systems that they're either producing today or have on the drawing board for release in future quarters. Ricardo Rodriguez: And Derek, maybe just to add, I think a rough guide when thinking about what this could mean for us is the batteries are usually 5% to 15% of the bill of materials depending on how advanced UAV is. And the timing -- I mean we do think that this will have to be fulfilled in the second half of this year spilling over into the following year, but that's being determined by the manufacturers right now. Derek Soderberg: Got it. Super helpful. And then just on the gross margin guide for '26, 25% for the full year. It looks like Q1 came in around 22% ex-Colorado. What specifically gets you back to that 25% for the full year in the back half of the year? Ricardo Rodriguez: Yes. I think there are 3 points that are worth considering here. The first one is our U.S. mix continues accelerating due to what we just discussed, right? U.S. customers pulling demand ahead of even our own schedule and really driving quite a bit of the growth of the business. There's also the mix of China within that, which we are working to manage as well. Our sales there, along with the rest of the Asia Pacific region are accelerating too. And so if you look at what the team basically does every single week, month and quarter, we're kind of playing this game of Tetris, where the demand comes in, in a certain set of flavors, and then we work to sprint to supply it across our different SKUs and manufacturing partners within a certain period of time and not leave any revenue on the table. And so you can gear that for profit or you can gear it for revenue depending on what growth rate you're managing to and we are managing that process pretty extensively day by day literally. And so were there another 3 to 4 percentage points of gross margin on the table if we had the logistics coordination capabilities of a couple of hundred million dollar revenue company? I think so. And so this is just a matter of us sharpening our acts, when it comes to that regard, developing those capabilities and in essence, getting that margin back into the company. It's easy to fulfill as much revenue as possible and then have all of your profits go to the FedEx and UPS if you don't manage that. And so we continue sharpening our acts in this regard. The team is pretty focused on it. And we do believe that the 25% gross margin target that we set externally is still pretty well in sight -- and we'll catch up in the -- mainly in the second half of this year. Operator: Your next question comes from Austin Bohlig with Needham. Austin Bohlig: Congrats on the nice quarter. First question has to do with kind of your current customer base. I think last quarter, you guys revealed like a customer base of 550. Curious on what like the new customer add was in the quarter? And then secondly, it sounds like you guys continue to go deeper with these current customers. So just wanted to talk about -- or if you could talk about the cadence on how that is going with current customers. Thomas Stepien: Yes. On the first part, the counts, Austin, thanks for the question. It continues to be robust. And more than 50% of our shipments in the first quarter were for new customers, which certainly bodes well for the future. It's a little bit of a misleading statistic, the actual number of counts, so we're going to tend to move away from it. But it's very robust, lots of interest. We'll be at Xponential, the drone conference that is coming up starting Monday in Detroit. So that's -- that continues to go well. And we're starting to see, again, increased interest, some of that because of the mandates for U.S. Batteries, National Defense Authorization Act approved batteries. Korea is coming online. We have 3 CMs there. There's work underway at the 1 cylindrical CM in the U.S. and more coming. We're not ready quite to announce who's next. But we are getting ourselves organized in order to intersect that demand that we see. Ricardo Rodriguez: And Austin, maybe just to add, I think the reason why the customer count metric has sort of run its course is we are seeing a lot of scalability with small customers by leveraging our battery pack partners. So if you look at a lot of the folks that were competing in Drone Dominance, even some of the ones who won they're buying ourselves through our pack partners. And so that's giving us even more scalability than we thought of only a couple of months ago. And it does tend to, over time, maybe give us a lower customer count that's kind of meaningless when the real customer count is actually increasing and accelerating relative to where we were in the last quarter. Austin Bohlig: Okay. And then I guess, Ricardo, one follow-up for you, like a modeling perspective, how should we think about OpEx kind of progressing through the year off of this Q1 number? Should we expect it to grow sequentially or kind of taper off as maybe SiMaxx continues to roll off? Ricardo Rodriguez: Yes. So through the year, and I think we have it there on Slide 7. So through the year, we do expect it to, in essence, top out at $50 million for this year. And with the main change basically being this reallocation of roughly $1.4 million of costs from cost of goods sold over to OpEx. Some of the main hires that we were looking to make this year actually started in Q1 already. So they're reflected there. And then any incremental ones will be managed below this level of roughly $50 million a year. Operator: Your next question comes from Ryan Pfingst with B. Riley Securities. Ryan Pfingst: Could you provide some commentary broadly on how you've progressed with Nanotech to gear up for production with them and where you might stand related to signing up additional U.S. or other allied manufacturing partners? Thomas Stepien: Yes. So Nanotech is a cylindrical provider in Chico, California, north of Sacramento. Step 1 with them was to validate the cell and make sure that they can handle our silicon anode materials and produce a product that is on par with some of our CMs that do that in Asia. They've done that. Percentage-wise, they are about 10% better. We have a 6.8 amp hour, those who are keeping score here, which is above the 6.6 amp hour cell of its kind. This is a 21700 cell. It can handle up to 20 amps and some of the competing cells and can handle less. So we are pleased with the technical performance of the cell that they make for us that we make together. And we are in the process of scheduling demand. There is demand for that cell. There is demand for U.S. cells, and they're a go-to company to do that. The second part on others, we have numerous discussions underway. We are being encouraged by the Department of War to continue to advance those discussions, and we are. We're not quite ready to announce anybody yet, but we are actively working on that. It will be focused on the pouch cells. The pouch cells are about the size of the T bag. That's what the DIU has funded us to advance both in Fremont with our prototype line as well as manufacturing in Korea and in the U.S. So stay tuned. We are hard at work, and we will eventually be able to share news of who we're working with there. Ryan Pfingst: I appreciate that detail, Tom. And then secondly, curious if you can talk about the potential opportunities that the recent defense budget request might provide you guys. Thomas Stepien: Yes. So as we all know, the big beautiful bill puts it about $1 trillion in defense spending and a couple of analysts have commented that, that is heavily weighted, more biased to the unmanned aerial systems, which, of course, is our strength. As we have commented in the call and previously. The proposed $500 billion addition has more of that coming. There's this group called DAWG, Defense Autonomous Working Group, I think it stands for. And that group is -- the proposed budget is something like $58 billion, which is the size of the marine budget today. A lot of that is, again, with drones and counter drones. So that is our sweet spot. So we're starting to see more of that come. We are in the right discussions. Ricardo and I were just on a call with some guys from the DoD just yesterday about some of this. So we are in a privileged position. It's wonderful when -- the market is expanding and the product characteristics that we have align up. So we're seeing really strong product market fit. We got more work to do. There's areas that we want to reinforce, but it's coming together, and we feel good about where we are. Ricardo Rodriguez: And the other thing there, Ryan, is basically that you can apply the same rough rule that we mentioned to Derek, right, roughly 5% to 15% of the bill of materials is battery inside of it. And I don't think our current market analysis captures the effect of this budget request if it were to be approved. Operator: Your next question comes from Eric Stine with Craig-Hallum. Eric Stine: So I know last quarter, you talked about or highlighted that for the 11 key components of your battery that you had reached NDAA compliance. And I know that an objective there or near-term objective is to get those suppliers under long-term agreements. So just curious where that process stands, I guess, a couple of months later. Thomas Stepien: Yes. So getting the 11 components, the internals, anode, cathode, separator, electrolyte, et cetera, is super important. And as you commented, Eric, we checked that box last quarter. We have several under contract, several of the major components, not all, but several. And the nice thing is that we have primary and secondary, and we have a very good understanding of the landed cost. What will it take to get Japanese anode powder to Korea? What would it take to get Korea anode powder to the U.S. So we understand the details of that. We understand what they should be costing and those that we have not entered into long-term agreements with, we're having the arm wrestling on the should cost versus the landed cost. So we're progressing well. We have shipped -- the company has shipped full NDA cells. And then as we bring on South Korea and really get them hitting their stride, one of our CMs there is delivering to customers, including one of the customers that we talked about in the call and on Slide 3 of the deck. We need to get the other ones up to speed. Nanotech, as I mentioned, in the U.S., checks a full box on technology. We need to get them up to the delivery cadence that we want to get to. And a lot of that will occur with these suppliers. So progression on track. The DIU is pleased with where we are as evidenced by they're continuing to provide us some incremental funding based upon good work done to date. Eric Stine: That's great. And then for my follow-up, just on light electric vehicles, I know that obviously, UAS, drones, robotics, all of those other end markets, the growth profile is quite significant. But I'm just curious, I mean, you're now into the Chinese market. It's -- I mean, it's not even arguably, it is the best electric mobility market. Is there a scenario where light electric vehicles could match, could exceed the growth in some of these other end markets, which arguably right now might be more top of mind. Thomas Stepien: Yes. So it is a nice win, and it's a nice win as we commented in that region because it's super competitive. And there are other areas, right, India, Vietnam, right, a lot of 2-wheelers and 3-wheelers there, and they care about some of the same things. So we have aspirations of expanding our technology into those. Will it be dominant? I think at least for the next year or so, it will be second, maybe third place if some of the other segments that we show on Slide 5, if we get some of the traction that we aim to get, right? So today, LEDs are #2. We'd like to think that as some of the other ones come on, robotics, in particular, even some of the space activities that they would rival LEDs. They are very early today. So it will probably stay at #2 for the next year or so. Eric Stine: Okay. I appreciate that. I guess good problem to have if it's because some of the other end markets growth is that significant. So... Operator: Your next question comes from Chip Moore with ROTH. Alfred Moore: I wanted to go back to that importance of standardizing for the government customers. Just maybe talk a bit more about that process and then the cells you've called out, any sense of size of opportunities those specific cells could translate to? Thomas Stepien: Yes. So the cylindrical cells are standardized, as many of us know, so that flashlights and headlamps and night vision goggles all can be interchangeable. That does not exist with the very popular pouch cells. Pouch cells tend to have a little bit higher energy density, and they're very popular with drones. And that is exactly why the DIU funded us. And we're the only company, as we've talked about in the past, that was funded under this program last year in a very competitive situation. The goal is to make pouch cells in the U.S. to make them at our prototype line. Some of the funding that we received is to increase the capability and capacity about the prototype line in Fremont. Standardized has been talked about. And in the discussions during Q1 that got solidified with the incremental $3 million to our grant. It's all about making standard cells in the pouch format, and they are the size of the pouch cells. So again, a T bag is one of the smaller sized ones ranging to an iPhone size pouch cell. And it's about the same thickness, by the way, as an iPhone, so just so folks get a sense of what we're talking about. We are maybe the first, certainly among the first that are pushing standardized cells. We want to make those available so that, that interchangeability that we enjoy on the cylindrical side can be done. You don't want to have to worry about batteries for a lot of these components. And to get the friction out, that's a big part of what's happening in the defense land these days is just to make it easier to source components, batteries, cameras, motors. There are websites, Amazon-like websites for the military where they -- these components are available just to add some of the efficiencies that we all see on our daily lives to the military side of things. So we're all over that standardized pump sales certainly makes sense to us. We will deliver to that incremental funding, make these cells available. It's very much in line with our interest as a company and certainly the Department of Works interest for the reasons we mentioned. Alfred Moore: Very helpful, Tom. And maybe for my follow-up, I think in your closing remarks, you talked about mobility focused platforms and qualifications. Is that mostly LEDs to your point on the last question? Or should we think about broader mobility applications? Thomas Stepien: It's LEDs. It's also some of the robotics, right? I mentioned that we're going to some of the first conferences. It's certainly early days. We're getting smarter. We have some really good discussions going on. But look, anything that moves, and then we all know that we have that in our daily lives, should be able to benefit from higher energy density, which is our claim to fame. And sometimes it's also a better volumetric energy density. You don't have so much space. But if you can get more energy out of that space, out of that volume, then that should win. These are higher-performing cells. So we're at the high end of the market, and that's okay. So we're not -- we don't make sense today for large electric vehicles like we would drive. But for the light electric vehicles, that certainly makes sense for robotics, it makes sense. As we've said, when you pay per kilogram to get something up in space, if you can save some kilograms, but you have the same energy, that should be a win. That's how we think about these markets, and that's how we try to reference our advantage and then listen to customers and see, of course, if it resonates. Operator: Your next question comes from Ted Jackson with Northland Securities. Edward Jackson: Congrats on the quarter. So my first question is around the Fremont plant and the overhead cost with SiMaxx. I mean, is there a point where you just go to -- you do an asset impairment and write it down? And I mean, like how does that play out? You've got equipment in there that's very bespoke for the manufacturing of that product. That product is clearly fading out. I mean it's a some cost. It's not like it impacts cash flow. But at some point, is there a case to be made to where you either write down the assets that are in there? Or you mean like -- or just as you get rid of SiCore, I mean, SiMaxx that's my first question. Ricardo Rodriguez: Yes, that's a good question. The asset impairment actually happened in Q4 of last year. You may have seen our D&A went down pretty meaningfully from well over $1 million to only about $800,000. And so this was, in essence, just -- this is where accounting is really an art more than a science, but we literally allocated the cost of Fremont by square foot and what that square foot is used for now to drive the allocation. And we feel pretty good with where we landed here for Q1 and carrying that going forward until we start producing a little bit of SiCore in Fremont again late this year, early next year. Edward Jackson: And is there a road map to just get out of that product? Or you're just kind of tied to it because of the customer base that's already there? Ricardo Rodriguez: We'll definitely be out of it here in Q1. So the last $600,000 of revenue were delivered in Q1. Quite a bit of that was inventory that was produced in Q4. And so we should be out of the woods on SiMaxx. Thomas Stepien: Yes, we converted all of our customers from SiMaxx to SiCore. Edward Jackson: Okay. Okay. That's good news. My second question, on your battery pack partners, I know that's a good way to leverage your business and grow revenue. I guess my question on that is, can you kind of walk us through maybe a time line and like maybe how many partners do you have? Maybe kind of what percentage of your revenue is coming from that and where it's come from? And how do you see those partners helping drive your forward revenue? Thomas Stepien: Yes. So some of our customers are vertically integrated, take our cells, build them into packs and some electronics to manage the battery to worry about, okay, is the battery full? Is it empty? What is the state of charge, et cetera. Other of our customers do that through pack partners that we have, who in turn receive ourselves. So they're an intermediary. There are about 40 different pack companies that we work with in any given quarter, about 6 to 10 of those are major volume pack providers, those that we have under a certain program. There's 3 or 4 on our website that we have worked with. We're formalizing that program so that there are standard gold, silver, bronze type of partners, where we share our road map with the pack partners. Those that we are close to will be in our booth at shows. We've had joint press releases with a couple of the pack partners that we work with closely. They are a multiplier, force multiplier for us because they often are asked by component companies, gosh, whose cells do you recommend? So they will listen to their customers and then say, well, look, if you want to optimize your energy density, there's really only one choice here. So they help and then add to our customer base. So we like that relationship. It allows us to focus on what we do really well, which is make these industry-leading cells. It allows them to add the level of customization. I want this connector, we have this battery management system. We need it in this size or shape. You'll often hear that you need to match voltages -- to the voltages of the systems. So they'll put 6 of our batteries in series and then put 2 of those groups in parallel in order to do that. They do all that customization. So they're great partners, and we're formalizing even stronger our relationship with them. Edward Jackson: Is it fair to say that as a percentage of your revenue, have they grown in terms of how they -- the percentage of revenue that's coming through them? And you're talking about them being a force multiplier and they're allowing you to, let's just say, reach a customer set that you might not be able to reach otherwise? Ricardo Rodriguez: Yes. For standard cell sizes, they're a key driver, and they -- and we do expect their portion of sales to increase on some specific cell sizes. Operator: Your next question comes from Amit Dayal with H.C. Wainwright. Amit Dayal: On the pouch cell performance, should we expect -- the pouch cell performance, should we expect this to match or even improve over the cylindrical format? Thomas Stepien: Yes. So because the pouch cells have less overhead, they don't have a metal can, you take a little bit of weight out and the gravimetric energy density tends to be higher. So if you look at the 450 watt hours per kilogram, those cells are pouch in format. The cylindricals tend to be 330 to 350. So a bit lower, again, because of some of the overheads. That's where the pouch lines up. And that's why the pouch are preferred for some of the high-end drones because you're really trying to eke out any weight that you can. If you can use a carbon fiber container to -- for the pack housing versus metal, a little bit more expensive, but it's lighter. Those choices, again, back to the last question about pack partners, those choices would be made with the pack partners. So that's super important. So if you're trying to max energy density, you would choose our pouch. Amit Dayal: Understood, Tom. And just as a follow-up to that, once the pouch cell is cemented and confirmed all the design, et cetera, is that when you get a little bit more aggressive about sort of building the pipeline for maybe the U.S. non-drone defense opportunity? Thomas Stepien: Yes. So that's where some of the standardization comes in. So standardized cells and then putting them into standard packs can really make a lot of sense. There's standard voltages in automotive, right? We all know 12 volts and then 24 volts and then even the data centers, 800 volts standards that are either here or emerging. The same thing is happening in drone land, where there are preferred voltages and components. And then if you have standardized cells, you can put them together into packs that meet those voltages, so you can be part of this ecosystem. Again, all that's focused on adding some of the efficiencies, taking out some of that friction on the engineering side, so you can get these iterative better drones available with using off-the-shelf, but in our case, premium products to maximize the missions that these crafts might be addressing. Amit Dayal: Great to see the agregation guys. Operator: Thank you. At this time, this concludes our question-and-answer session. If you have any additional questions, you may contact Amprius' Investor Relations team at [email protected]. I'd now like to turn the call back over to Tom for his closing remarks. Thomas Stepien: I want to thank all of our shareholders, employees and partners for their continued support. At Amprius, we believe the next decade belongs to those who push the limits of what is possible. And that's exactly what we intend to do. Thank you for your time and attention this morning. Operator? Operator: Thank you for joining us today for Amprius Technologies First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. You may now disconnect. Before you buy stock in Amprius Technologies, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Amprius Technologies wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. 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As with all our articles, The Motley Fool does not assume any responsibility for your use of this content, and we strongly encourage you to do your own research, including listening to the call yourself and reading the company's SEC filings. Please see our Terms and Conditions for additional details, including our Obligatory Capitalized Disclaimers of Liability. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Amprius (AMPX) Q1 2026 Earnings Transcript was originally published by The Motley Fool

There's been a major selloff in Amprius Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:AMPX) shares in the week since it released its quarterly report, with the stock down 24% to US$16.11. Amprius Technologies beat revenue forecasts by a solid 11%, hitting US$29m. Statutory losses also blew out, with the loss per share reaching US$0.04, some 60% bigger than the analysts expected. The analysts typically update their forecasts at each earnings report, and we can judge from their estimates whether their view of the company has changed or if there are any new concerns to be aware of. Readers will be glad to know we've aggregated the latest statutory forecasts to see whether the analysts have changed their mind on Amprius Technologies after the latest results. This technology could replace computers: discover the 20 stocks are working to make quantum computing a reality. Taking into account the latest results, the most recent consensus for Amprius Technologies from ten analysts is for revenues of US$128.0m in 2026. If met, it would imply a huge 42% increase on its revenue over the past 12 months. Losses are predicted to fall substantially, shrinking 80% to US$0.057. Before this latest report, the consensus had been expecting revenues of US$126.1m and US$0.054 per share in losses. So it's pretty clear consensus is mixed on Amprius Technologies after the new consensus numbers; while the analysts held their revenue numbers steady, they also administered a moderate increase in per-share loss expectations. See our latest analysis for Amprius Technologies Despite expectations of heavier losses next year,the analysts have lifted their price target 9.5% to US$21.63, perhaps implying these losses are not expected to be recurring over the long term. The consensus price target is just an average of individual analyst targets, so - it could be handy to see how wide the range of underlying estimates is. Currently, the most bullish analyst values Amprius Technologies at US$25.00 per share, while the most bearish prices it at US$18.00. This shows there is still a bit of diversity in estimates, but analysts don't appear to be totally split on the stock as though it might be a success or failure situation. These estimates are interesting, but it can be useful to paint some more broad strokes when seeing how forecasts compare, both to the Amprius Technologies' past performance and to peers in the same industry. We would highlight that Amprius Technologies' revenue growth is expected to slow, with the forecast 59% annualised growth rate until the end of 2026 being well below the historical 92% p.a. growth over the last three years. By way of comparison, the other companies in this industry with analyst coverage are forecast to grow their revenue at 13% annually. So it's pretty clear that, while Amprius Technologies' revenue growth is expected to slow, it's still expected to grow faster than the industry itself. The most important thing to note is the forecast of increased losses next year, suggesting all may not be well at Amprius Technologies. Happily, there were no major changes to revenue forecasts, with the business still expected to grow faster than the wider industry. There was also a nice increase in the price target, with the analysts clearly feeling that the intrinsic value of the business is improving. With that in mind, we wouldn't be too quick to come to a conclusion on Amprius Technologies. Long-term earnings power is much more important than next year's profits. We have estimates - from multiple Amprius Technologies analysts - going out to 2028, and you can see them free on our platform here. And what about risks? Every company has them, and we've spotted 2 warning signs for Amprius Technologies you should know about. Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.