Solid Power, Inc.

Greetings. Welcome to the Solid Power, Inc. First Quarter 2023 Financial Results and Business Update Call. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Jennifer Almquist, Investor Relations for Solid Power, Inc. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you, Operator, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. Joining me on the call today are Solid Power's Interim Chief Executive Officer, President and Chairman, Dave Janssen, and Chief Financial Officer, Kevin Papsiski. A copy of today's press release is available on the Investor Relations section of Solid Power's website at ir.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 ir.solidpowerbattery.com. With that, let me turn it over to Dave Jansen.

Thank you, Jen, and good afternoon, everyone. I appreciate you joining the call today. I will start with an update of our recent achievements. I will then provide a brief view of what's ahead before passing the call over to Kevin for a review of the financials. After that, I'll provide some concluding remarks and open the call for questions. 2023 is off to a solid start. I'm happy to announce that we have officially begun powder production from our electrolyte production facility. Production began in April, marking an important milestone for our path to commercialization. We've also made progress with both our 20 amp hour and EV cell development. and remain on track with our objective to deliver EV cells to our partners by the end of the year. I want to take a moment to express my kudos to the team and convey the magnitude of effort it took to bring our electrolyte facility online. Since announcing the electrolyte facility, or as we call it, SP2, in September 2021, our team has overcome a challenging supply chain environment to bring in equipment from all over the world. This includes tanks, mills, dryers, pumps, and materials handling equipment, to name a few. The team also worked through time-consuming municipal construction approvals and permitting processes. For the last three months in particular, the team has conducted in-depth environmental health and safety audits, as well as site acceptance testing for all of the equipment and processes. All the while, the team laid the foundation for safe production, establishing manufacturing and materials handling processes, while also hiring the talent needed to produce powder at a greater scale. In addition to the hard work at SB2, it's important to note that the operations team in our Louisville, Colorado facility, or SB1, continued to produce electrolyte at around 200% of design capacity to ensure we had the powder our cell team needed. The position we're in today was truly a full team effort, and I'm very proud of the team's strong execution in getting us there. So what's next? As our first batches of powder roll off the production line, we will begin comprehensive testing to ensure the characteristics and quality of the product are up to our standards. Specifically, we are measuring our powder against 12 internal metrics centered around things like viscosity, dryness, conductivity, and particle size. We expect this process to take a quarter or two. As we demonstrate our ability to meet these performance targets, we expect to begin phasing out large-scale powder production, SP1, and transition that work to SP2, which will supply powder for our 20 amp hour and EV cell production. In addition, as demand increases, we can further increase SP2 production and will continue to optimize our processes and demonstrate full SP2 production capability. We do have a few pieces of equipment to upgrade over the next couple of quarters, which will help optimize and increase production volumes. Over the next 12 months, we are working to secure demand and increase our powder production to a rate to 2 to 3 metric tons per month. The first use of that powder is earmarked for our SB1 cell builds. Powder production over and above the level required by our cell development activities is intended for additional potential customers, including BMW's solid-state prototype lines. While we grow production at our SP2 facility, we are simultaneously focusing R&D efforts on our next generation of electrolytes with a focus on conductivity, cost, and performance. We are excited about the potential of this next generation of product, though it is a ways out from commercialization. On our last call, we discussed that we have been engaging potential customers for our electrolyte powder and making plans to deliver sample products. The intent is to pave the way for future electrolyte supply agreements independent of our current partner activities. I want to take a moment to provide some additional color with respect to our strategy here. Specifically, I want to clarify the types of customers we are focusing on, how we're prioritizing our efforts, and the timing of potential commercialization of our current generation of electrolyte product. With respect to potential customers, We are initially focusing on three primary groups, auto OEMs, current battery producers, and developers of new battery technology. We speak to potential customers both inside and outside of the automotive and battery industries frequently, including aerospace and defense, storage, alternative transportation, medical device, and consumer electronics. However, to be clear, our immediate focus has been and will continue to be on the automotive industry. This is because automotive is such a large addressable market. Our partners are the intended end users from our current battery design, and the market generally is acting with a sense of urgency with respect to upgraded battery technology. Down the road, once we have fully developed product and established partners, we can begin to expand more aggressively and broadly into other battery-reliant industries. In terms of timing, while we're excited about expanding our customer base, it will take some time. First, in order to begin sampling, we have to execute contracts to protect our intellectual property. Second, the companies we are talking with want to sample product, produce that scale to ensure we have the ability to meet future demand. Third, after we have provided electrolyte samples, it will take time for potential customers to evaluate what we send them. Testing our product requires available production capacity at our customers' battery production facilities. While many potential customers are excited to test our electric light, limited capacity within organizations may delay their ability to test our product. It's also highly probable that customers will have feedback on our powder and additionally want to customize the characteristics of our product to suit their specific needs. For these reasons, we believe it could be a year or two before we're officially signing up new customers which dovetails nicely with our timeline for increasing production. Turning to cell development, with respect to our 20 amp hour cells, our team has continued to drive improvements in cell manufacturing processes. Over the last couple of quarters, yields for our 20 amp hour cells have increased to meet both our and our partners' expectations. We've also seen greater consistency within the 20 amp hour cells we're producing as we progress towards our commercialization targets. Our team brought online additional equipment and capabilities, including CT and X-ray technology, that are important to the characterization and quality assurance. With these improvements, we are now better positioned to support our partners as they continue working with these cells for module development. With respect to our EV cells, as we begin our shift towards EV cell production, Our focus will be on optimizing assembly and carrying over the lessons learned from the 20 amp hour cells. By building on our 20 amp hour improvements, we believe we remain on track with our timeline to provide a sample EV cells to our partners by the end of the year. That includes cells for BMW's demo car program. There are still significant challenges ahead. Hard cell production will bring increased complexity and quality challenges. We also have to integrate the SP2 powder. While we were making good progress scaling the strong safety performance we saw in smaller cells, we could have faced additional challenges as we scale up to the EV cells. These types of challenges are expected and are what our team faces every day in developing world-changing battery technology. To that point, We believe we are well positioned and continue to expect we will enter formal automotive qualification this year. With that, I will hand it over to Kevin to take you through our financial results. Kevin?