SLDP

Day, and welcome to the Solid Power Q1 2026 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Charlie Van Gucht, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'm joined on today's call by Solid Power's President and Chief Executive Officer, John Van Scoter, and Chief Financial Officer, Linda Heller. A copy of today's earnings release is available on the investor relations section of Solid Power's website, www.solidpowerbattery.com. I'd like to remind you that parts of our discussion today will include forward-looking statements as defined by U.S. securities laws.

These forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and assumptions about future events and are based on currently available information as to the outcome and timing of future events. Except as otherwise required by applicable law, Solid Power disclaims any duty to update any forward-looking statements to reflect future events or circumstances.

For a discussion of the risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in today's forward-looking statements, please see Solid Power's most recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which can be found on the company's website at www.solidpowerbattery.com. With that, let me turn it over to John Van Scoter.

Thank you, Charlie, and thank you all for joining us today. We delivered a productive first quarter, marking steady progress across our key operational and strategic priorities. Starting with our partnership with SK On, we completed site acceptance testing in early April, marking the final milestone of the Line Installation Agreement for SK On. We believe achieving this milestone underscores our commitment to supporting our partners' ASSB efforts.

With this accomplishment, we're very pleased that there are now cell production lines using our technology on three continents: here at our facilities in Colorado, BMW's facility in Germany, and SK On's facility in Korea. We also continue to support our customers and partners in their development efforts through delivery of our electrolyte. We provided Samsung SDI with electrolyte under our three-way Joint Evaluation Agreement with BMW and continued sampling with other customers during the quarter.

Turning to our electrolyte development roadmap, we believe installation of our continuous electrolyte manufacturing pilot line will represent a critical inflection point in our path to commercialization and a clear differentiator for Solid Power. With factory acceptance testing for all key equipment complete and construction underway, we are laying the groundwork for commercial scale production.

Once installed, this line will enable our transition from batch to continuous processing, supporting near-term customer programs and driving expected cost savings relative to today's processes. The line is designed to allow us to de-risk and optimize processes in advance of full commercialization.

Importantly, we believe our wet processing methodology for electrolyte production offers scalability, yield, and capital efficiencies relative to traditional dry process methods. We also continue to explore potential partners with processing, scaling capabilities, and capital to support construction of a 500 metric ton electrolyte production facility.

We anticipate additional demand for sulfide electrolyte in Korea and are considering a potential partnership for commercial scale production in Korea. We are evaluating multiple potential partners and are pleased with our progress to date. With respect to our final development goal, we continue to leverage our Electrolyte Innovation Center, or EIC, and cell capabilities for product and process development during the quarter.

Through this development work, we're executing against our objective to continually deliver differentiated electrolyte products and secure long-term customers. With that, I will turn it over to Linda to review our financial results and provide an update on our financial discipline goal. Linda?

Thank you, John. I'll start with our first quarter results, beginning with revenue. During the first quarter of 2026, we generated revenue and grant income of $3.1 million, driven primarily by the progress towards the site acceptance testing milestone under our Line Installation Agreement with SK On and performance on our assistance agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy.

Operating expenses were $29.4 million for the quarter compared to $30 million in the first quarter of 2025. This decrease was driven by timing of supplier and material shipments relating to our development activities. Operating loss was $26.3 million, and net loss was $13 million, or $0.06 per share. Capital expenditures totaled $1.7 million during the quarter, primarily representing costs for construction of the continuous electrolyte manufacturing pilot line.

Turning to our balance sheet and liquidity, Solid Power's liquidity position remains strong. We ended the quarter with total liquidity of $435.3 million due to the net proceeds after fees and expenses of $121.3 million raised through a registered direct offering in January. In addition, contract assets and accounts receivable were $12.7 million, and total current liabilities were $17.1 million.

Overall, we remain focused on maintaining financial discipline while continuing to invest appropriately in our technology development and process improvements. We believe we are well-positioned to support our strategic priorities throughout the year. I will now turn the call back to John.

Thank you, Linda. In closing, I want to thank our employees, partners, and stakeholders for their continued commitment and support. We're executing on our objectives with focus, and I'm confident we're well-positioned to deliver meaningful progress through 2026. We'll now take your questions. Operator?

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. The first question comes from Colin Rusch with Oppenheimer & Co.

Thanks so much, guys. You know, could you talk a little bit about, you know, the potential, you know, for partnerships in North America that you're starting to see move forward, given the amount of capacity that's underutilized right now for the auto space and, you know, a substantial amount of legislation and, you know, kind of, you know, government involvement in terms of tariffs and, you know, the NDAA compliance for military applications that I'm sure you're seeing some level of demand for at this point. Just curious about the potential for you guys to look at partnerships and potentially start bringing something forward that we may not be thinking about just yet.

Good afternoon, Colin, thank you for that deep question. I'll be honest with you, the demand that we see right now is really coming off the peninsula in Korea. We have yet to see, despite all the things you described, anything really substantial here in States. If we go back a couple years, that was very different.

We actually planned to do our original DOE plant here in North America. With the changes in the landscape here in North America, we shifted to just the SP 2.5, shifted to partnerships in Korea. We certainly are well-positioned, should that change, to come back and revisit that. We'd very much like to invest here in North America. Right now we just don't see the demand.

Okay. Perfect. Can you talk a little bit about the capital efficiency that you guys are enabling for your customers at this point? Like, I know it's substantial, but would love, you know, to get any detail you guys might be able to share on that.

Hi, Colin. It's Linda. On the capital efficiency, there's really a two-pronged approach to that. There is first and foremost on SP 2.5, that's bringing the continuous processing, which is necessary for commercialization down the road, a commercialization scale. We are shifting from a batch to a continuous processing.

We expect that line to be commissioned by the end of the year and on our on track for that. The second is the actual processing technology that you use for electrolyte, and we use something known as wet process technology. There's a variety of advantages to it, from dry room utilization to size of the equipment. That all leads to a very significant capital expenditure reduction by using that, as well as yield and other improvements to that as well.

Between that and with the electrolyte production versus cell production, that in itself has tremendous capital efficiencies. Amongst those three, we feel like we're very well-positioned to be able to drive costs at the commercial scale.

The only thing I would add, Colin, is around the wet processing, that's one of the reasons we're getting, I think, such a strong uptake with potential JV partners in Korea. They see the advantage that Linda just described in terms of the capital efficiencies and so forth. It's just, I think a leading indicator of the advantage we have with our process.

Perfect. Thanks so much, guys.

The next question comes from Amit Dayal with H.C. Wainwright.

Hi, guys. Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. Linda, sorry if I missed this, but can you maybe walk us through the CapEx for 2026?

We actually don't break out in our guidance the CapEx individually. We did for Q1 for our CapEx. On terms of that, we had $1.7 million on that. That also includes the amount of the reimbursement from DOE that would be considered. It's actually larger, but the net impact would be $1.7. The largest capital expenditure that we are making in 2026 is our 2.5, which we do have the grant money goes against that on our financial statements.

Understood. Thank you for that. What are the next steps with SK On from here, you know, this post site acceptance, how should we expect, you know, things to proceed from this point?

Good afternoon, Amit. John here. We view our relationship with SK as a long-term relationship like our others with BMW and so forth. I think it's a multi-year as we go forward, but we'll be transitioning, supporting them running the line from this point forward. To this point, prior to SAT completion, we were running the line in their facility.

Now they've taken that over, and they are running the line, but we'll bring in our experts as we need to support their development efforts on their cell moving through this year and out into next, and then transition to ultimately a electrolyte supplier agreement with them. We do have an R&D electrolyte supply agreement as part of the three part agreement we did in 2024. We would expect once that's completed that we would transition to a long-term supply agreement with SK.

Okay. On the electrolyte supply agreement, John, like what is the timeline? Is it six to nine months or a little bit sooner than that?

It's multi-years. It actually goes out through 27. It's for a total of 8 metric tons. However long it takes them to consume that, I guess, is the way I would encourage you to look at it as opposed to a timeframe.

Okay. Understood. Thank you for that. Yeah, that's all I have for now.

Thank you for joining the call today and for your interest in Solid Power. We look forward to updating you again next quarter.

Thank you. The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect. Thank you.

Good day, and welcome to the Solid Power Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to [ Charlie Van Gother ], Investor Relations analyst. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I'm joined on today's call by Solid Power's President and Chief Executive Officer, John Van Scoter; and Chief Financial Officer, Linda Heller. A copy of today's earnings release is available on the Investor Relations section of Solid Power's website, www.solidpowerbattery.com. I'd like to remind you that parts of our discussion today will include forward-looking statements as defined by U.S. securities laws. These forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and assumptions about future events and are based on currently available information as to the outcome and timing of future events. Except as otherwise required by applicable law, Solid Power disclaims any duty to update any forward-looking statements to reflect future events or circumstances. For a discussion of the risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in today's forward-looking statements, please see Solid Power's most recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission which can be found on the company's website at www.solidpowerbattery.com. With that, let me turn it over to John Van Scoter.

Thank you, Charlie, and thank you all for joining us today. We made strong and meaningful progress in 2025, marking an important year of execution for Solid Power. At the outset of the year, we set clear near-term objectives to drive continued innovation and performance in our electrolyte technology, advance our electrolyte development road map, ramp sampling activity while identifying and engaging long-term customers, execute against our agreements with SK On and maintain a disciplined approach to capital and spending. I'm proud of our progress our team delivered across each of these priorities. Throughout the year, we translated strategy into tangible milestones and strengthened our technical foundation. Collectively, our achievements in 2025 advanced our path towards commercialization and positioned us to enter the next phase of growth. Starting with electrolyte sampling, we continued our sampling efforts and saw demand for multiple generations of our material from both existing and new customers. In October 2025, we announced a joint evaluation agreement with Samsung SDI and BMW to advance the development of all solid-state batteries. We view this agreement as validation of our electrolyte sampling efforts. After announcing the agreement, we began executing under the agreement and providing electrolyte to SDI for use in the joint evaluation activities. Turning to our electrolyte development road map. We made progress towards installation of our continuous electrolyte production pilot line. In 2025, we finished ordering long lead equipment and conducted detailed design for the line. We expect to install and commission this line by the end of 2026. This line is designed to support small volume customer programs and allow us to learn and optimize the manufacturing processes ahead of full commercialization. With respect to SK ON, we continue to execute under our agreements, a research and development license, a line installation agreement and an electrolyte supply agreement. These agreements are designed to enable SK On to develop solid-state cells based on our technology and to operate a pilot cell manufacturing line using our electrolyte. In 2025, we completed factory acceptance testing and near completion of site acceptance testing at SK On's facility. This progress demonstrates our ability to deliver against key technical milestones and support our partners' ASSB efforts. Moving on to electrolyte innovation and performance. During 2025, we deepened our understanding of our electrolyte performance, identified process engineering and electrolyte improvements and work to tailor our electrolyte to meet customer specifications. We made this progress through our focus on enhancing feedback between our cell and electrolyte teams and productive customer feedback. Additionally, our cells and solid-state battery technology were demonstrated in a BMW i7 test vehicle in May 2025. BMW's introduction of this test vehicle marked a meaningful achievement in our partnership, and we're proud of our role in this accomplishment. With that, I'll turn it over to Linda to review our financial results and provide an update on our financial discipline goal. Linda?

Thank you, John. We delivered revenue of $21.7 million in 2025, an increase of $1.6 million compared to 2024. The year-over-year growth was driven primarily by work performed under our line installation agreement with SK On, reflecting continued execution against our customer programs. Operating expenses for the year were $122.6 million compared to $125.5 million in 2024. The year-over-year decrease reflects our cost discipline partially offset by investments in research and development as well as equipment purchases and services performed in support of the SK On agreements. Operating loss for 2025 was $100.8 million and net loss was $93.4 million or $0.51 per share. Turning to capital expenditures. 2025 CapEx totaled $10.2 million, primarily representing costs associated with planned construction of our continuous electrolyte production pilot line. Cash investment, which is comprised of cash used in operations and capital expenditures totaled $84.5 million for fiscal year 2025. This came in at the lower end of our revised cash investment guidance, reflecting our continued focus on prioritization and disciplined capital allocation. Moving to the balance sheet. Our total liquidity as of December 31, 2025, was $336.5 million, an increase of $9 million compared to year-end 2024. As of December 31, 2025, contract assets and accounts receivable were $9.6 million and total current liabilities was $16.8 million. During the fourth quarter, we raised $56 million of net proceeds under our at-the-market or ATM program, bringing total 2025 net proceeds from the ATM to $88.8 million. Looking ahead, we expect 2026 cash investment, representing cash used in operations and capital expenditures to be in the range of $85 million to $100 million. This outlook reflects our continued focus on investing and advancing our electrolyte development road map, including commissioning our continuous pilot line while maintaining financial discipline and preserving liquidity. I will now turn the call back to John.

Thank you, Linda. As we look ahead to 2026, we remain focused on disciplined execution, continued advancement of our electrolyte technology and maintaining a strong financial position as we work towards commercialization. First, we intend to strengthen relationships with our partners through continued execution. In 2026, we expect to continue providing Samsung SDI with electrolyte under the joint evaluation agreement while also continuing to develop our technology and pursuing electrolyte innovation. We also expect to complete site acceptance testing of the SK On line in the first quarter of 2026. Following site acceptance testing, we plan to work with SK On to conduct validation activities for the line and begin delivering electrolyte to SK On to support the validation efforts. Second, we will continue executing on our electrolyte development road map. We expect to commission our continuous electrolyte production line by the end of 2026 which we designed to expand our annual electrolyte production capacity to up to 75 metric tons. This year, we also intend to pursue a potential partnership for commercial scale electrolyte production in Korea. To complement our technical expertise, we plan to evaluate potential partners with process capabilities and capital to support construction of a facility capable of producing up to 500 metric tons of electrolyte annually. Third, we are focused on advancing our electrolyte product competitiveness. During 2026, we will continue to enhance our understanding of how electrolyte performs relative to other sulfide electrolyte products to enable customer success in utilizing our electrolyte. We believe this will support our efforts to develop competitive differentiated products and secure long-term customers. To support these efforts, we will utilize our Electrolyte Innovation Center, or EIC, to develop, improve and test electrolyte manufacturing processes as well as electrolyte products. We also intend to continue focusing on our cell research and development activities on improving our understanding of how and why our electrolyte performs in the solid-state cell and using that knowledge to help our electrolyte customers improve their cell development. Finally, we expect to remain fiscally disciplined. We believe maintaining and using our strong balance sheet to best position Solid Power to reach commercialization is critical for our success. During 2026, we intend to balance extending our runway through financial discipline, with investing appropriately in technology development and process improvements. In support of this objective, we successfully completed a $130 million registered direct offering last month which further strengthened our liquidity and enhanced our strategic flexibility. We believe this capital positions us to execute on our objectives while preserving optionality as we progress towards commercialization. I would like to thank our employees, partners and stakeholders for their continued commitment and support. We remain focused on disciplined execution and look forward to continued progress in 2026. We will now take your questions. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Colin Rusch with Oppenheimer.

We know that you've been able to produce a set of incremental volumes of material and truly are collecting a fair amount of data around that process. Could you talk a little bit about your cycle times and evolving the manufacturing process at this point? And what other levers you have within the platform to continue to accelerate some of that development?

Thanks for joining, Colin. Sure. We've run a variety of batch sizes, which will directly affect the cycle times. We have a very rapid turnaround in our electrolyte innovation center. In that center, we do 2 kilograms or less depending on what the customer request is but we can turn those batches in days. When we look to the larger batch sizes, and we typically run between 40 and 50 kilograms in our current SP2 batch facility, and the cycle times on those run approximately a week, again, depending on batch size and the specific parameters that we're trying to control.

Excellent. And then as you look at the different form factors that could deploy the technology at the cell level, could you talk a little bit about efforts that you're seeing on the horizon and interest that you're seeing from incremental customers to diversify some of the form factors you're working on?

Great question. But quite honestly, Colin, we haven't seen a great diversification yet, although we could envision as some of these newer segments beyond EV are considering all solid-state batteries that they could take prismatic format or others. Right now, it's primarily pouch across all of our engagements with primarily EV customers.

Our next question comes from Chris Pierce with Needham.

Just one. I guess if you're talking about -- I just want to make sure I heard you right, the SK On pilot line is up and running by the end of 2026. And what is that -- how should we think about '27 and '28 as sort of we hear more about ASSB batteries in these vehicles and sort of not in the United States part of the world, but other parts of the world. I guess should we think of '27 as a jumping off point? And if we do think of '27 as a jumping off point, against the burn that you kind of guided to for this year, should we think about you guys as having enough capital to get to that jumping off point? Or is there still too involved in here to sort of have certainty around that?

Chris, again, thanks for joining. Great questions. I'll take the first part and then let Linda address the second burn rate part of the question. SK On has specifically -- when they did their ribbon cutting at the pilot facility last year stated that they wanted to have SOP for their batteries in 2029 and that's a 1-year pull-in from prior public statements around ASSBs. So I would envision -- I'll let SK On talk to the details, but just knowing what we know about the time and takes to get from where we are to 2029, I would expect 2027 to be, again, a strong development year at the cell level and then probably '28 being more mature leading up to the SOP in '29.

And then, Chris, in terms of our runway, you have seen us shore this up. We did give guidance for this upcoming year of $85 million to $100 million in terms of cash investment. And then if you look at where our ending liquidity is plus with our proceeds from the RDO, we think we're well positioned to be able to work with our partners and be sufficient on that, but we are continually looking at our runway and ensuring that we can be there for our partners.

Our next question comes from Jake Sekelsky with Alliance Global Partners.

That last question a bit. Looking at the pilot line and the strengthened balance sheet, are you able to leverage the balance sheet at all to kind of accelerate the time line for the line? Or is it less dependent on capital availability.

Well, Jake, it's Linda again. I believe we are in a good position in our balance sheet that if there were to be an opportunity that would allow us to shorten the time line to be able to be in commercial production. We certainly are there. We can make those long-term investments at this point in time. Obviously, we will continue to be opportunistic in the capital markets and as well, focus on our own cash burn so that we should be in a good place.

For clarity's sake, though, the line is installed in SK On's facility in Korea, and they will begin running that line by themselves largely with our just support once SAT is completed. So any additional capital improvements or those sort of things will be their responsibility for that line. But as Linda said, if there's something that we could do to assist, we'll certainly consider that moving forward because of the strength of our balance sheet.

Got it. Okay. That's helpful. And then just on existing partnerships, can you just touch on any upcoming milestones you might keep an eye out for as those processes move forward this year?

Well, I think we've established through the announcement last fall with BMW and SDI, our preferred approach moving forward to expand these partnerships where we are dealing directly with the OEMs to create the demand in the platforms, but then really have the Tier 1 battery partners step in and provide the batteries with us providing the material and some of the expertise to achieve performance targets. So that's our preferred model going forward, and we would like to duplicate that in other areas as we move forward. I would also, though, point to the comments earlier in the prepared remarks, and that is around our intention to explore potential JV partnerships around the electrolyte manufacturing in Korea with a target of a 500 metric ton annually capacity through a partnership with Solid Power bringing the technical expertise, the IP, the process knowledge and then relying on the partner from a manufacturing and capital standpoint. So that would be the other partnership that I would point to for 2026. I look for some developments there as we move through the year.

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the call back over to John Van Scoter, President and CEO, for any closing remarks.

Thank you for joining the call today and for your interest in Solid Power. We look forward to updating you again next quarter.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.