Solid Power, Inc.

I also thought our capital light business model was a great fit for the industry and for our investors. By not having to construct expensive gigafactories, we can partner with, rather than compete with large industry incumbents, and expand our addressable market, all while minimizing our capital outlays. And lastly, I was attracted to the depth and breadth of talent on the Solid Power team. Having been in the CEO seat now for seven weeks, I've had some time to get to know the business and the people here at Solid Power. I'm happy to report that what I've found is a business that is transformative and forward-thinking, products that are being very well received, and a team with depth and talent worthy of the task at hand. Specifically, I've found a business that that has done the hard work of creating a multi-generational technology roadmap. In my experience, this level of forward thinking is unique for a company at this stage. What's more, we have also made progress with a second generation electrolyte, as well as the development of nickel and cobalt free technologies. I've also found a team of over 250 people executing well on the strategic plan the company has laid out. with working production lines that are producing electrolyte and prototype EV cells that are being positively received by our partners. Seeing these working production lines today and understanding that neither existed 15 months ago is incredibly impressive. This is a testament to the team's strong execution and sense of urgency. It also demonstrates how well Solid Power has done in growing the team over the last few years. And I've found deep bench strength across the organization. I'm happy to say that after interacting with our employees at all levels of the organization, my opinion of the team has only improved. Our shareholders should take comfort that Solid Power has built a very passionate and talented team. Since joining, I've spoken at length with Solid Power's employees, partners, suppliers, and other stakeholders. Through those discussions, I've identified some incredible near-term opportunities that we're going to focus on. Specifically, my first near-term priority is to develop our international capability. Our team has done exceptionally well with our US and European partners. We have and will continue to drive operational and development progress in these regions. That said, we've been executing well with our Korean partners. And as we work towards commercialization, we will need to strengthen our capabilities in Korea and elsewhere in Asia. By building strong partnerships in this area of the world, solid power stands to benefit immensely. First, these partnerships can enable us greater access to our potential EV customers. Second, we will have a greater opportunity to develop relationships with material and equipment suppliers. Third, our operations and development capabilities stand to benefit from the incredible battery talent and infrastructure in this part of the world. For these reasons, we are developing a comprehensive strategy to position Solid Power to grow in Korea. I look forward to updating you as we have more to share. The second near-term priority relates to our supply chain maturity. As I'll touch on in a moment, we are significantly increasing our production of both cells and electrolytes. As such, our need for timely, consistent supply of materials will only increase from here. This growth in our operational production presents an opportunity and indeed a growing need to advance our strategic supply chain capabilities. We are investing in the tools and talent we need to elevate the supply chain competency, including an ERP and hiring additional talent. Our third near-term priority relates to increasing and enhancing our investor communications. For the last several quarters, the team has been focused on execution as we have built SP2, began powder production, improved cell assembly yields, and scaled from a 20 amp hour cell to EV cells. During this time, the team lessened their public outreach as we focused on execution in these areas. As we have made solid progress towards our 2023 goals of entering a sample, and advancing towards powder commercialization, we have an opportunity to increase our investor and public relations efforts. We are developing an outreach plan that includes greater investor interaction, educating the market on the advantages of solid state and our strategic value proposition, greater articulation of our timeline and strategy, and increasing our public relations and social media presence. The solid power team has done excellent work in bringing the company to the strong position it has today. We have incredible opportunities that I believe will benefit the company, its partners, employees, and shareholders. I look forward to keeping you updated on our progress. Turning to our business update. Overall, the company has made solid progress towards its 2023 operational goals over the first half of the year. We continue to execute well on our joint development relationships with Ford, BMW, and SKON, and across our government R&D contracts. This is evidenced by the recent extension of our Ford JDA. With respect to electrolyte, we began producing electrolyte powder at SB2 in April. Since that time, we've continued to produce powder while beginning to increase our batch sizes. Along the way, we've also been troubleshooting the production line, quickly addressing and resolving normal startup production issues. I'm very pleased to say our initial batches of powder have been performing well. As a reminder, we are measuring our powder against 12 internal performance and quality metrics, including particle size, viscosity, conductivity, and dryness. I'm pleased to say we've now qualified our powder on all 12 of these metrics. This gives us confidence in our timeline and should allow us to increase our production volumes, phase out our SP1 powder production, and redeploy our operations team towards developing our next generation powders. As we look to ramp up our powder production, we still have some equipment on order that will help increase production volumes longer term. We referenced this on last quarter's call. We currently expect to receive this equipment in the second half of this year. The team has done a nice job of optimizing the performance of our current equipment, preventing this from impacting our near-term production. In addition, during the quarter, we made great progress constructing a dedicated powder development lab at SB2. This lab is intended to help us optimize our continuous production, reduce the cost of our powder, and develop future generations of even higher performing electrolytes. With powder production now up and running, we've continued discussions with multiple potential electrolyte customers and received very positive initial feedback on the samples that we had provided. Last quarter, we communicated it would take one to two years before we had supply agreements in place. But with this great feedback, it may be possible to accelerate this timeline. Turning to cell development, the team continues to make strong progress elevating our cell builds. Back last fall, we experienced yield challenges scaling our 20 amp hour production. Since then, we have worked closely with BMW's on-site team invested in quality assurance equipment, and made key design changes to improve manufacturability. These changes allow the team to greatly improve our yields. I'm pleased to report that so far the team has translated this strong performance to the EV line. Further, we and our partners are encouraged by the initial cell performance. In particular, our performance has allowed us to start production of EV cells that we expect to deliver this year for use in BMW's demo car. That said, we have a way to go before we'll have cells ready for commercial use. Execution is critical. We need to continue to improve cell performance over the next few years before true commercialization. However, We are very excited about the possibility of our cells powering a full-size BMW demo car between now and 2025. Of course, as we have continued to build EV cells, we have been met with some challenges. First, on the supply chain side, the team has encountered issues with our material supply. In particular, we have seen inconsistencies in the supply of like-grade materials. I'm pleased to say thus far the team has adapted well and we are successfully navigating through these issues. At this time, we believe these challenges will not impact our long-term timeline. However, it underscores our near-term priority to elevate our supply chain capabilities now that we are poised to produce at higher rates. Second, as we discussed previously, we are continuing our efforts to improve safety performance in our EV cells to match what was observed in our smaller cells. One of the goals of our technology is to deliver both superior performance and safety over today's batteries. This could allow OEMs to greatly reduce the size and complexity of their battery packs, expensive safety incidents, and in turn, the overall cost of their batteries. We are working closely with our partners and are encouraged that our collective efforts can be integrated into ourselves by the end of this year. The Solid Power team has done great work to get us to the point where we are today. As a new leader in this organization, I'm energized to work with a team that is so focused on long-term execution and doing things the right way. Our strategy has not changed. nor have the short-term milestones we are focused on. For 2023, these remain scaling production of our electrolyte, continuing to deliver electrolyte to potential customers for sampling and feedback, delivering EV cells to our partners, and officially entering the automotive qualification process. With that, I'll hand it over to Kevin to take you through our financial results. Kevin?

Thanks, John. Good afternoon, everyone. I'll start off with an overview of our financial results and position. Then I'll review our 23 financial outlook and view on the second half. Overall, we continue to track right on our projections for the year and believe we remain well positioned for the long term with our strong liquidity and balance sheets. Our second quarter 23 revenue of $4.9 million was in line with our expectations. We continue to execute well on our expanded BMW agreement and on our government contracts. Second quarter 23 operating expenses were $27.1 million, up $9.8 million from Q2 of last year. This increase represents our expansion of cell and electrolyte development efforts, including the startup of electrolyte production at SP2. These efforts drove increased labor as we've grown the team, as well as increased materials spend in Q2. As we continue to execute on our JDAs, increasing our EB cell and SP2 powder production, we expect our development-related investments to increase in the back half of the year. Our second quarter 23 operating loss was $22.2 million and net loss was $12.2 million. Turning to our balance sheet and liquidity position, during the second quarter, we invested $36.3 million into operations. With the expected ramp in production of both electrolyte and cells, we expect cash used in operations for the back half of the year to be slightly higher but still leave us in our original guidance range. In the second quarter, we also invested $21.2 million in CapEx. Most of our CapEx year-to-date went towards SP2 as we progressed towards our April production startup. We ended the quarter with total liquidity of $443.4 million, consisting of cash, marketable securities, and long-term investments. Looking ahead to the rest of 23, we are reiterating all of our guidance for the year. We continue to expect revenue in the range of 15 to $20 million. As we execute on our JDA deliverables, we expect revenue in the back half to be slightly higher, but again, still in our guidance range. We are also continuing to guide to total combined cash investment in the range of $120 million to $140 million. This breaks down into $70 to $80 million of expected operational investment and capital investment between $50 and $60 million. We have some remaining equipment to install at SP2 to help us scale, which John discussed previously, and we are continuing to build out our new powder R&D lab. We expect ending liquidity for 23 in the range of $355 to $375 million and believe that positions us well from a longer-term perspective into the late 2020s with upside all the way through commercialization if we are successful in attaining various grant funding available or project finance which we are aggressively pursuing. With that, I'll now turn the call back to John.

Thanks, Kevin. Before I turn the call over for questions, I want to take a moment to discuss some news that we'll formally put out later today. Dave Jansen will be retiring from the company effective October 8th. John Stevens, our lead independent director, will take over as chairperson effective September 1st. Dave will remain on the board of directors until his retirement date. We are sad to see Dave go. We, the board, and Solid Power shareholders all owe him a debt of gratitude for his leadership and guidance of Solid Power. As you know, Dave has been involved with the company since the beginning. He has always stepped up when the company has needed him. Initially as an advisor in 2014, he became the board chair. In 2017, he became president and took on an operational role to help us with our capital raising and lead the build-out of our executive team. In the height of the pandemic, Dave extended his role by helping Solid Power navigate its Series B, Pipe, and SPAC deals, all of which proved far more difficult in that environment. Finally, he stepped up again last fall when the company needed an interim CEO. He did this at great personal sacrifice, delaying his retirement and leading this organization through major change amidst some personal health challenges. With new talent added to the board and a permanent CEO at the helm, the time has come for Dave to finally get his well-earned retirement. Dave will remain at the company for several more weeks, transitioning both myself and John Stevens into our new roles. On behalf of Solid Power, I want to thank Dave for his service, his sacrifice, and his support of Solid Power for these many, many years. His mark on the company is indelible, and the strength of the company and its management team is a testament to his hard work. Wrapping up, I want to underscore my faith in the team here at Solid Power. While we still have work to do, The progress this team has made establishing solid power as a leader in solid state battery technology cannot be overstated. I'm proud to be part of this organization and look forward to continuing to drive shareholder value. With that, let's open it up to questions. Operator?

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw from the question queue, please press star then two. The first question is from Brian Dobson of Jarden. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thanks very much for taking my question.

So, congratulations on the positive feedback that you've received on the powder from your potential clients. Can you share what some of the feedback you've received from BMW and others is and perhaps what changes you've made?

And do you think that that will ultimately make the product more marketable? Thank you for the question, Brian.

Yes, we have on-site BMW staff. We're continuously getting feedback through those engineers as well as staff back in Munich with regard to the electrolyte performance. The power of the learning loops through BMW evaluating the cells with our electrolyte and the feedback into the powder team is crucial to continuing to drive the improvement and the robustness of the powder. It's really been crucial to get us to where we are today. But I mentioned the internal metrics that we are hitting on, the 12 metrics. That's one state, but then all the way through the battery feedback has been crucial. through BMW and other partners.

Yeah, very good. And then, you know, regarding the exciting expansion that you alluded to in Korea, you know, is there any more color that you can share with us, or when do you think you'll be able to, I guess, further articulate your build-out strategy in that region?

Yeah, honestly, it is early, but, you know, there's – There's so much going on on the peninsula that I just feel based on my prior experience with international operations and global reach in some of my former lives that it's really crucial for us to be there and be part of the action, be close to the EV OEMs, be close to the battery OEMs. And then all the talent that is there on the island also to tap into that. So we'll be looking forward to updating you much more as that strategy and position takes shape. But it's really early on right now, given, you know, my seven weeks in the chair.

Yeah, that's right. You know, I understand it's early. But do you think it would be fair, a fair characterization to say, you know, you're making this move because you have received positive feedback from players on the peninsula?

I think that's a fair statement. Very good. Thanks very much.

Again, if you have a question, please press star, then 1.

There are no questions at this time. This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to John VanSkoder, President and Chief Executive Officer, for closing remarks.

Well, thank you all for joining us today. And myself and the rest of the team here looks forward to updating you again next quarter. Thank you.

Thank you all for joining us today. We look forward to updating you again next quarter.