Earnings call transcript: Amprius Tech Q3 2025 beats estimates, stock falls

Amprius Technologies Inc (AMPX) reported its Q3 2025 earnings, surpassing analyst expectations with a smaller-than-anticipated loss per share and significantly higher revenue. The company posted an EPS of -$0.03, beating the forecast of -$0.05, and reported revenue of $21.4 million, surpassing projections by 27.48%. Despite these positive results, the company's stock fell by 13.65% to close at $12.98 in aftermarket trading, reflecting investor concerns over broader market trends and sector volatility. According to InvestingPro data, AMPX has delivered an extraordinary 793.65% return over the past year, with analysts anticipating continued sales growth. InvestingPro's comprehensive analysis includes 13 additional insights that could help investors understand this high-volatility stock.

Key Takeaways

• Amprius Tech's Q3 revenue increased by 42% quarter-over-quarter and 173% year-over-year.
• The company achieved a gross margin of 15%, up from 9% in the previous quarter.
• Stock price dropped 13.65% in aftermarket trading despite earnings beat.
• The company is expanding its manufacturing capacity and diversifying its customer base.

Company Performance

Amprius Technologies demonstrated robust growth in Q3 2025, with revenue rising sharply both sequentially and annually. This performance is driven by increased demand in the aviation segment, which accounted for 75% of the company's revenue. The introduction of new CyCore battery cells and expansion of its product catalog have bolstered its competitive position in the electric aerospace market, which is projected to grow significantly by 2030.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $21.4 million, up 42% quarter-over-quarter and 173% year-over-year.
• Earnings per share: -$0.03, improved from a forecast of -$0.05.
• Gross Margin: 15%, increased from 9% in the previous quarter.
• Net Loss: $3.9 million, reflecting improved operational efficiency.
• Adjusted EBITDA: -$1.4 million, a significant improvement from -$3.8 million.

Earnings vs. Forecast

Amprius Tech's EPS of -$0.03 exceeded expectations, marking a 40% surprise over the forecasted -$0.05. The company's revenue of $21.4 million also surpassed the anticipated $16.81 million, representing a 27.48% positive surprise. This performance indicates a strong quarter, although the magnitude of the EPS beat was modest compared to the significant revenue outperformance.

Market Reaction

Despite the earnings beat, Amprius Tech's stock fell by 13.65% in aftermarket trading, closing at $12.98. This decline may reflect investor caution amid broader market volatility and sector-specific challenges. The stock's performance is notable given its 52-week high of $16.03 and low of $1.23, highlighting significant price fluctuations over the period.

Outlook & Guidance

Looking forward, Amprius Tech aims to achieve gross margins above 20% and potentially reach cash flow break-even with incremental revenue growth. The company is actively expanding its manufacturing capacity and exploring new opportunities in the defense and drone markets, positioning itself for future growth.

Executive Commentary

CEO Dr. Kang Sun emphasized the company's strategic focus, stating, "We are converting a growing number of customer engagements into formal qualification and deployments." President Tom Stepien highlighted the competitive advantage of their battery technology: "Our batteries give them more kilometers, allow additional kilograms, and provide more watt-hours." CFO Ricardo Rodriguez noted, "With another $10 million of revenues, we would have had positive EBITDA," indicating the company's path toward profitability.

Risks and Challenges

• Market Volatility: The stock's recent decline underscores investor sensitivity to broader market conditions.
• Supply Chain: Potential disruptions could impact production and delivery timelines.
• Competitive Pressure: As the electric aerospace market grows, new entrants may increase competition.
• Regulatory Changes: Evolving policies in the drone and defense sectors could affect market dynamics.
• Economic Conditions: Macroeconomic pressures, such as inflation or interest rate changes, could influence consumer spending and investment.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about Amprius Tech's manufacturing capacity in the U.S., strategies for improving margins, and opportunities within the defense market. Executives detailed efforts to expand production capabilities and highlighted the company's unique battery technology as key differentiators in a competitive landscape.

Full transcript - Amprius Technologies Inc (AMPX) Q3 2025:

Conference Call Moderator: Good afternoon. Welcome to the Amprius Technologies third quarter 2025 earnings conference call. Joining us for today's presentation are the company CEO, Dr. Kang Sun, President Tom Stepien, and CFO Ricardo Rodriguez. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. 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 Technologies' 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 Technologies' 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 Technologies' GAAP financial results and should only be used as a supplement to, not as a substitute for, Amprius Technologies' 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 shareholder letter, 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, and 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 shareholder letter that accompanies these results, which can also be found on the Investor Relations website. I will now turn the call over to Amprius Technologies' CEO, Dr. Kang Sun, for his comments. Sir, please proceed.

Dr. Kang Sun, CEO, Amprius Technologies: Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining us this afternoon. On today's call, I will begin with a brief company overview. After that, our President, Tom Stepien, will recap our third quarter performance and key accomplishments. Next, our CFO, Ricardo Rodriguez, will discuss our financial results for the period. I will share some closing remarks before opening the call for questions. Let's begin. Amprius is a pioneer and leader in the silicon anode battery space, with over a decade of development experience and a proven track record of commercial success. At Amprius, we develop, manufacture, and market high-energy density and high-power density silicon anode batteries with applications across all segments of electrical mobility, including the aviation and the light electric vehicle industries.

Today, Amprius Technologies has the most complete commercially available portfolio of silicon anode materials systems in the industry and commands performance leadership with its combination of battery energy density, power density, charging time, operating temperature range, and safety. Across our battery portfolio, we believe we offer unmatched performance amongst the commercially available batteries. Amprius Technologies has been delivering commercial batteries to the market with up to 450 Wh/kg and 1,150 Wh/L. 10C power capability, extreme fast charge rates of 0-80% state of charge in approximately six minutes, the ability to operate in a wide temperature range of minus 30 degrees to 55 degrees Celsius, and the safety design features that enable us to pass the United States military benchmark and NATO penetration test. Each of these performance parameters is critically important to real-world electrical mobility applications.

Not only do our batteries empower certain drones, satellites, and vehicles to maximize performance. They also enable our customers to achieve their economic targets as well. In addition, Amprius has developed a 500 Wh/kg and a 1,300 Wh/L battery platform that has been validated by an independent third party. It is our belief that there are no other commercial batteries on the market that can perform at these levels today. In the third quarter, we continued to execute against our strategy of developing leading battery performance, converting that innovation into customer wins and scaling our manufacturing to a capital-efficient concrete manufacturing model. With that, I will now turn the call over to our President, Tom Stepien, to detail the highlights of our record quarter. Tom.

Tom Stepien, President, Amprius Technologies: Thank you, Kang. Amprius finds itself at a very fortunate point in time at the intersection of a fast-growing electric aerospace market with an industry-leading set of battery products. This advantaged situation, coupled with strong execution by our team, allowed us to achieve record revenue in the third quarter. We attracted new customers, continued to optimize our operations, and released compelling new products. Let's start with updates on our commercialization strategy and share execution details. In the third quarter, we shipped batteries to 159 end customers, 80 of whom are new to the Amprius platform. The remaining 79 are repeat customers. Now, to be clear, we don't ship to every customer in every quarter. We do expect to gain new customers every quarter, albeit not always 80 new ones, but we expect to gain new customers nevertheless.

Since the first quarter of 2023, Amprius has built relationships with hundreds of companies and shipped batteries to a total of 444 end customers. This strong and expanding customer traction comes from the superior performance of our batteries compared to traditional cells. As we continue to move new customers through the qualification process, you're also seeing that we have plenty of room for expansion orders within our existing agreements. In the third quarter, our revenue totaled $21.4 million, a 42% increase from the second quarter and up 173% from Q3 2023 a year ago. Our second-generation CyCore batteries led the revenue charge in Q3 with a greater than 4X increase in shipments compared to Q3 2023. CyCore is a proprietary silicon anode that uses standard lithium-ion processing equipment. In August, I visited a couple of our contract manufacturing partners.

At one, they were making conventional graphite cells in the morning, and in the afternoon, they were producing our CyCore silicon cells. Same line, same equipment. CyCore standardization helped us enable a second consecutive quarter of positive gross margin. Ricardo will provide more context here when he reviews our financial highlights next. Looking at our customer base, about 75% of our revenue in the quarter came from the aviation segment, led by unmanned aerial systems, or UAS market. The remainder of our Q3 revenue was primarily derived from the light electric vehicle sector, which remains healthy but has a lumpier profile due to the customer's varying product introduction cycles. The LEV market tends to have short design and cycles, and we believe our drop-in replacement batteries can help us succeed in gaining market share in this growing market.

From a geography standpoint, 75% of our revenue came from outside the United States on a ship-to basis. Our strong customer diversification supports steady growth, even amid uncertainty driven by US tariffs and customer delays related to the US government shutdown. One of our major wins this quarter was a $35 million purchase order from a leading UAS manufacturer, which we announced in September. This order is a follow-on purchase from the same customer that placed a $15 million order earlier this year. While we continue to grow our customer base across geographies, applications, and budgets, these kinds of large repeat orders underscore the built-in growth engine that we have within our growing customer base. It also highlights the proven performance at scale of our batteries. During the quarter, we also deepened our relationship with another key customer, AeroVironment.

As a part of the US Army's X-Tech Prime program, we shipped samples of our ultra-high energy cells for evaluation in a variety of applications. These cells reach up to 520 Wh/kg and vastly improve endurance, payload capacity, and mission economics for high-altitude platforms. Another key Amprius partner in the drone segment is Nordic Wing in Denmark. In Q3, they chose our CyCore cells to power their UAV platform after an extensive qualification and evaluation period. Their Astero ISR is a fixed-wing craft with a wingspan of about 2.3 meters. In its standard configuration, it weighs around 4.5 kilograms. ISR is an acronym for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. In drone speak, intelligence is the collection, processing, and analysis of information to support decision-making.

For example, drone cameras will see the beginnings of the forest fire, and the built-in smart analytics will make a decision to send a dispatch signal to the appropriate firefighting equipment. Surveillance is the systematic observation of an area, person, or activity over time, continuous monitoring of a border or a convoy route, for example. Reconnaissance is a specific mission-focused gathering of information, usually short-term and targeted. Is the fire really extinguished? The Astero ISR, with the Amprius CyCore batteries, flies 90% longer than with standard cells. 90% improvement, almost twice the flight time. Astero stays airborne longer, covers more ground, and delivers real-time intelligence without interruptions. This enhanced endurance does not just improve performance; we believe it redefines what is possible in every mission and can mean the difference between success and failure. Looking a bit further out, we continue to make inroads in our relationship with Amazon.

After being selected for the inaugural Amazon Device Climate Tech Accelerator cohort in July 2023, we successfully advanced to the integration assessment phase. This stage involves comprehensive testing of feasibility, customer value proposition, sustainability impact, and supply chain readiness. We are excited about this opportunity to continue working with Amazon in this next phase, and we'll share further updates as we are able. All of these recent customer wins further demonstrate our ability to scale up to meet volume purchase orders, which we believe will continue to increase as we expand our customer funnel and continue to extend the state of the art that our cells provide. State of the art includes external testing. We rigorously test new products both internally and send them to external labs where they are tested against international safety standards. These include UN 38.3.

Standards maintained by the International Electrotechnical Commission, and for our customers in India, the Bureau of Indian Standards. This quarter, we introduced two new CyCore pouch cells and three new CyCore cylindrical cells that are optimized for unmanned aerial systems, high-altitude platform systems, and the electric airplane duty cycles. We call these balanced power and energy cells. Electric aerospace platforms typically require balanced cells. You need high power, high C rate, capability for takeoff and landings, and you need the high energy to enable long range. Products like these balanced cells further differentiate Amprius from traditional battery players. Many of our end customers participate in shootouts and fly-offs competing for their own contracts. They need to demonstrate best-in-class performance. We help them win. Our batteries give them more kilometers, allow additional kilograms, and provide more watt-hours that support their onboard intelligent components.

We believe that the electric aerospace is on the cusp of a multi-year transformation propelled by defense and commercial demand for a new era of AI-driven autonomy. McKinsey estimates this market is $40 billion-$50 billion today, growing to $80 billion by the end of the decade. About 10% of that market and 10% of a drone's bill of materials is for batteries. Recent regulations and policy changes appear to be market accelerants. The U.S. executive orders over the summer that promote domestic drones are one piece of evidence. A second is the proposed changes to the beyond-visual line-of-sight rules that the U.S. Federal Aviation Authority is debating. BVLOS is a significant unlock for drones. We expect these policy actions will accelerate adoption timelines and open new opportunities across the board.

We've already experienced strong traction from the defense market and expect growing interest from these customers in the year ahead. Estimates show that more than $10 billion from the one big beautiful bill will be allocated to defense and unmanned systems, and we believe that we are well-positioned to benefit from this increased funding. Anecdotally, we have already seen optimism surrounding the government funding translating to strong buyer intent. Last month, we exhibited at the AUSA conference in Washington, DC, where we met with dozens of defense contractors that were either interested in or already using our products for their drones. We also attended US and international conferences: Commercial UAV Expo in Las Vegas, Defense and Security Equipment International in London, and the DroneX Expo also in London. At all of these events, we heard a similar message.

Drones are an important part of the future, and Amprius batteries are at the forefront of innovation to power them. As a key component supplier for unmanned drone systems, we have had our own success working with the US government. As we discussed during our August 2023 call, we are working closely with the Defense Innovation Unit. Our DIU contract gives us funds to increase the capacity of our Fremont, California pilot line to 10 megawatt hours and expand our capabilities to support quick-turn CyCore customer prototypes. Since our last update, we have received an additional $1.5 million follow-on contract, bringing our DIU contract total to $12 million. Our program mandate includes qualifying individual lithium-ion battery components from National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) compliance suppliers, which will allow us to work more seamlessly with the DOD. This includes considerations of the anode and cathode active materials, electrolyte, and separator.

This effort is part of a large momentum shift to US domestic production of batteries. As we work on building out an NDAA-compliant supply chain and production capacity for our customers that require it, we have continued to utilize our contract manufacturers to support our rapid growth. As a reminder, we have over 1.8 gigawatt hours of capacity available to us through our partners, including our most recent added partner in South Korea. Let's put that 1.8 gigawatt hours in context. Our SA08 cell is our best-selling battery. It has an energy rating of 38 watt-hours. 1.8 gigawatt hours over 38 watt-hours works out to be about 50 million cells per year. We have tremendous headroom on our manufacturing capacity. This capital-efficient model provides production-grade cells for qualification today and supports our ramp to volume while still allowing configuration control and aerospace-aligned quality systems.

We are also opportunistically sourcing additional partners to provide us with greater geographic diversification and operating flexibility. As we head into the tail end of the year, we've carried our momentum into the fourth quarter. A few weeks ago, we announced that ES Aero, another leading UAS company, chose our CyCore SA08 cell to power the Group 1 and Group 2 UAVs that support defense, security, logistics, and public safety applications. They chose us because, in their words, Amprius "offered the best combination of advanced battery technology, production readiness, and cost competitiveness to meet the program demands." We have talked extensively about our defense applications for our batteries. We see a large and growing opportunity in the public safety markets also. According to a PoliceOne article, more than 1,500 US police departments have DFR programs, drone as first responders.

Their systems are tied into the 911 emergency systems and are dispatched to help find a lost child, monitor smash-and-grab suspects, and understand if the fire is a spark or an inferno. We look forward to continuing to support the drone sector as it scales and evolves into more mission-critical and business-critical use cases. On a final note, we also made the exciting announcement that Ricardo Rodriguez has joined Amprius Technologies as a new financial officer. Ricardo has a proven track record of driving growth with financial discipline and high-performance markets, and he will serve as a valuable guide as we expand our commercial reach, scale global manufacturing, and reinforce Amprius' leadership in the advanced battery technology. Since he joined on October 6th, exactly one month ago, we have aligned on objectives, agreed strategies, and developed plans. He is a tremendous addition, the right person at the right time.

I look forward to working with and learning from him. Ricardo, it's all yours. Please share our financial results for the third quarter. Thank you, Tom, and good afternoon, everyone. I'm really happy to be on board and reporting our quarterly results on behalf of our team for the first time. After several weeks on the ground working in Fremont, getting to know our team, meeting some of our customers at AUSA, and reconnecting with many familiar faces in the investment community that are interested in supporting our company and strategy, I could not be prouder of wearing the Amprius shirt. In the third quarter of 2025, we delivered $21.4 million of revenue. This translates into 42% growth over the second quarter, following the previous quarter's 34% quarterly growth. This is also a 2.7X multiple of the team's revenues during the same quarter last year.

Echoing Tom's remarks, our revenue growth was driven by the addition of new customers combined with larger orders from existing customers. Within our customer base, only one customer accounted for more than 10% of our revenues in Q3. Going forward, we plan to continue adding to our customer mix to diversify our revenue base, and we believe that as we develop more diversified contract manufacturing capacity, additional demand can potentially be unlocked. At the end of Q3, we had $53.3 million of orders, including the $35 million order that Tom mentioned, to be fulfilled in the near term. This backlog is 83% higher quarter over quarter, and it highlights our team's ability to drive demand. Our cost of goods sold at $18.1 million in Q3 did not increase at the same rate as our revenue, thanks to a favorable product mix and higher volumes.

This, in turn, enabled gross profit margins of 15%, which is a significant improvement over our gross margins of 9% in the previous quarter. As I discover what makes our team unique, I continue to be impressed by its resourcefulness to make the most with what we have, and that is evident in our quarterly operating expenses of $8 million in Q3, which were down very slightly relative to the previous quarter. The year-over-year increase in quarterly OPEX of $1.9 million was driven by targeted investment in our sales and go-to-market efforts, along with the reallocation of some R&D expenses from cost of goods sold to OPEX as development service agreements are completed. These expenses bring our operating loss to $4.7 million. Compared to an operating loss of $6.8 million in the prior quarter, shrinking our operating loss by over 30% quarter over quarter.

Our GAAP net loss for the third quarter was $3.9 million or negative $0.03 per share, with 126.6 million weighted average shares outstanding. Our adjusted EBITDA in Q3 was negative $1.4 million compared to negative $3.8 million in the previous quarter, thus reducing our adjusted EBITDA loss by over 60%. 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 Q3, these adjustments included $1.2 million of depreciation, $1.8 million of stock-based compensation, and $450,000 of interest income. As of September 30, we had 130.4 million shares outstanding, which was up by 5.4 million shares from the previous quarter. The change includes approximately 2.2 million shares issued from option exercises and RSU vesting, along with 3.2 million shares issued under our at-the-market offering program.

Now turning over to cash flow and the balance sheet. We ended the third quarter with $73.2 million in cash and no debt. The main drivers of cash flow in the quarter were $9.2 million used in operating cash flow, which was mainly driven by a near-term $11.2 million increase in accounts receivable at the end of the period due to our increase in sales. $400,000 of CapEx invested at our facility in Fremont, California. Lastly, $28.7 million from financing activities consisting of $25.9 million from the issuance of common stock under our at-the-market sales agreement and $2.8 million of proceeds from option exercises. We still have approximately $20.1 million left available on the at-the-market offering facility as of September 30, 2025. Before I turn over the call to Kang, I would like to take a moment to discuss our outlook for the remainder of the year.

We have made a decision to strategically invest in diversifying our supply chain and expanding manufacturing capacity within our Fremont facility to include electrode manufacturing. We are doing this in collaboration with the US Government Defense Innovation Unit and have secured a contract for $12 million, awarded in the third quarter of this year. With what we know today, we expect this funding to cover the majority of our capital investment over the next several quarters as we work to develop a growing and resilient source of supply in a dynamic trade environment. As we previously stated regarding the Colorado facility, the designs for the project are effectively complete, and we are continuing to monitor the larger industry dynamics associated with building a factory in the United States.

Changes in demand, supply, battery cost structure, government incentives, trade tariffs, and other considerations, including the timing and availability of funding, will influence our decision on next steps and near-term timing. We have secured adequate capacity for the foreseeable future through our contract manufacturing network and plan to further expand that without deploying additional capital. We also believe that our current revenue levels and even slight improvements from these can put us on a path to mainly consume cash for working capital versus funding operating expenses in the near term. With that, I'm happy to turn the call over to Kang for his closing remarks. Thank you very much for your attention and continued support. Looking ahead, we remain focused on delivering next-generation lithium-ion battery performance that raises the bar for energy density and sustained power without compromising safety or reliability.

We are also broadening our product portfolio to better align with customer requirements and unlock new market opportunities. We're converting a growing number of customer engagements into formal qualification and deployments, particularly across mobility-centric platforms. As demand scales, we will continue to leverage our contract manufacturing partners' capacity to efficiently translate that demand into revenue with disciplined quality and minimal additional capital investment. We are excited about the future ahead and looking forward to meeting and reconnecting with many of you as we attend several upcoming investor conferences. Thank you for your continued interest and support of Amprius Technologies. With that, I will turn it back to the operator for questions. Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press Star 1 on your telephone keypad, and a confirmation tone will indicate your alignment to the question queue.

You may press Star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the Star keys. One moment, please, we'll look for questions. The first question comes from the line of Colin Rush with Oppenheimer & Company. Please proceed. Thanks so much, guys, and congratulations on all the progress. Just on the US capacity, could you talk a little bit about the cadence of how that will come up and how much capacity it'll actually be and where that electrode will ultimately end up getting turned into batteries? Are you looking at potentially qualifying some incremental contract manufacturing in the US, or will that electrode end up getting shipped overseas and returned back to the US as batteries? Yeah, thanks, Tom. This is Tom.

Answer is that we will have, in the future, both a US contract manufacturer and contract manufacturers in what are called NDAA-compliant countries. That includes South Korea. We have a contract manufacturer already today in South Korea. We announced that in May. You will see over time, both for pouch cells and cylindrical cells, additional partners in this network as it continues to expand. That's super helpful. Being able to qualify different configurations of performance, whether it's through different electrolyte or different balances within these cells, is a pretty substantial accomplishment. Can you talk a little bit about the cycle time and how much work you've done previously to be able to get some of those different battery configurations, just so we have a sense of how quickly the platform is evolving from a technology perspective going forward?

Yeah, to fully qualify the 11 major components that make up our battery, it will take us—we've started that already—it will take us to next summer. That is largely being done in cooperation with the $12 million DIU contract that we have. We are turning knobs. As of today, we have five of those 11 components fully qualified, NDAA-compliant. We're turning the knobs on the other six, and we think we'll do that between now and next summer. Just one last one from me. Just in terms of the cadence of how you're moving customers through the sales funnel, as folks have had these batteries for a fairly substantial period of time here, and you guys have talked about kind of roughly an 18-month qualification period, sometimes longer, sometimes shorter for customers, and you've been sampling now for about seven quarters out of some of these facilities.

Are you seeing folks move towards purchase orders a little bit faster than they have in the past or move to larger purchase orders? Just want to get a sense of how we can think about some of this pipeline moving into backlog and production. It's pretty distributed. Some qualification happens within two quarters. Some take more than a year. It really depends on the complexity of the components at the end. And some are larger. Some are, right, the nice $35 million per yacht. And the other one. It's across all the 400-some-odd customers that we have. Okay. Thanks so much, guys. The next question comes from the line of Mark Schuter with William Blair. Please proceed. Hey, team. Congrats on the great execution this quarter. The new customers was a big win and a nice jump. It's almost doubled the normal cadence the past few quarters.

I guess I'd like to dial in on what led to that big step up in new customers this quarter. Did we get a capacity or a yield breakthrough at the silicon supplier or your battery contract manufacturers that allowed you to shift to more cells? Or did you see an actual two-times increase in demand this quarter from last quarter? We're definitely seeing an increase in demand as the awareness of Amprius gets out there, as we attend more conferences, as we have more wins like we talk about. It gets the attention of other folks. The 80 that we have, the 80 new that we added this quarter, was a little bit of timing. Some of those seeds were planted, as I said to Colin's question, more than a year ago, and now are coming through and turning into real purchase orders.

Other ones were planted earlier this year. It is a combination of those factors that is leading to the uptick. Great. That is very helpful, Tom. Thank you. Ricardo, one for you. Congrats on joining Amprius, especially this quarter. I am hoping if you could shed— Of course. Question for you. I am hoping you could shed some light on the gross margin. The improvement this year has been great, specifically this quarter. Going from 9% to 15%, could you try to break that down to maybe how you see the improvement if you put it into buckets? If I am thinking about that, higher revenue or product mix, or are you able to maybe raise prices this quarter seeing the performance of your batteries and the demand for your batteries in the marketplace? Yeah.

I mean, I think mix was the main driver of the increase from 9% to 15% quarter over quarter. If you look at the 15%, I mean, it's in no way where we believe it needs to be, right? A lot of the battery peers, even at higher scales, are above 20% on the gross margin line. Our goal is obviously to get there and even higher. On pricing, I do feel pretty good about where the pricing levels were for the CyCore product. That, in combination with just a larger share of our revenues being CyCore, is what drove the increase. Plus, of course, the run rate itself contributed to that. I think the biggest contributor was really mix because of our contract manufacturing model, right? That's helpful. Thank you, Ricardo. Anytime. The next question comes from the line of Derek Soderbergh with Cantor Fitzgerald.

Please proceed. Yes. Thanks for taking the questions. And my congrats to Ricardo as well. I'm just hopping on the call just now, so my apologies if any of these have been asked. The second-generation CyCore, what's the margin profile of that battery? Yeah. We haven't laid out explicitly, but the goal is to get that north of 20%. At closer to 80% of our capacity, which we still haven't reached, right? But our goal is to just keep pushing that. And we're frankly testing where that should be as the revenue materializes. Got it. And what are some of the trade-offs between the first-gen and the second-gen? What might slow down that path to 80% mix of the second generation? What are some of the trade-offs from your customer's perspective? Derek, the—yeah, I mean, I think the first gen. We refer to the first gen as SiMax. Yeah.

SiMax is our first-generation product, and CyCore is our second-generation product. We don't have—So it's not second-generation CyCore. No. We don't have—we keep improving. We could say we have a second generation, but we may have a third generation already in the lab. But we don't. Separate that way. Okay? We consider SiMax as the first-generation Amprius product, and CyCore is the second generation. Got it. Okay. That's helpful. And then. Could you just give us an update on the timeline to cash flow break-even? I think previously, you guys were expecting that to happen sometime in 2026, potentially. Or maybe even early 2027. It feels to me like the company's growing faster than expected. You have quite a bit of scale to work with here. It seems like the customer growth is quite a bit ahead of at least my expectations.

Can you just provide an update on path to cash flow break-even? Yeah. I mean, I think it's tough to pin down a specific quarter for that. If you take our results from here, the most recent quarter, with another $10 million of revenues, we would have had positive EBITDA. Our EBITDA is a very good proxy for cash flow, right, given that it's pretty clean. D&A is not huge, and in essence, it's only the stock-based comp, and we have no I and no T in there. It's really just a matter of time for us to get that incremental revenue. At that point, we can be not just EBITDA positive, but also pretty closely behind cash flow positive as well. Got it. That's helpful. Thanks. Anytime. The next question comes from the line of Ryan Finks with B. Riley Securities. Please proceed.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions here. I'm jumping around calls, so apologies if anything's repetitive. On the margin side, Ricardo, another nice jump quarter over quarter here in the second quarter. Just curious if you could give some color on what you expect as we continue to see revenue expand on the margin side. Yeah. I think it's, again, echoing my earlier points, it's really more driven by mix. We do believe that incremental revenue, depending on the mix of that and the customers that it goes to, could be accretive beyond where we're currently at at the gross margin level. I'd love to get the company 20% and above here as soon as we can. Obviously, understanding that there are quite a few puts and takes, especially as we look to make a larger portion of our revenues come from the CyCore product versus SiMax.

I think as we manage that transition, you'll see us pick up a couple of points of gross margin here. One thing to note is that this will be lumpy, right? Given not just the customer diversity, but also the product diversity. I do think we're not totally out of the woods of having fluctuating gross margins. I would caution here on modeling something that's just straight up into the right on gross margin as we pick up incremental revenue because there are quite a few puts and takes within it, mainly mixed-driven, that we certainly need to keep in the back of our minds to make sure that these expectations are realistic, right? Kind of going back to what I said earlier, frankly, I'm more focused on the EBITDA margins.

Even if gross margins stayed where they were, with another $10 million of revenues, we would have had positive adjusted EBITDA. That is very meaningful progress. I think it puts us well ahead of our peers, well ahead of anybody scaling a similar product. That is just a testament to the team's focus on having the leanest cost structure possible at the OpEx level. Appreciate that detail. Turning to your manufacturing capacity update, which I know you touched on in the prepared remarks, but curious how important it is to establish contract manufacturing capacity in the United States for certain customers, maybe on the defense side or otherwise related to national security. Does that make it more of a near-term priority for you guys, or are you able to be patient here with establishing something in the U.S.? It is important. We should—I do not have.

Again, I'm going to throw your head in the woods by a certain date in 2026. We know where the tea leaves are in the desire for domestic batteries, and we just need some more time. Yeah. Seems you cannot hear from Tom clearly. Let me elaborate a little bit more. We have a fraction of the customer that demanded the product made in the United States. Currently, the driver for our activity in the United States is primarily from this DIU program. The DIU program, the Department of Defense, granted us a $12 million contract. It requires us to build an advanced battery, a silicon anode-based battery pilot line. Okay? You can call it a pilot line, you can call it a small production line by next summer. I appreciate it, guys. Yeah. Majority of our customers still oversee customers. Got it. Thank you, Ken.

Thanks, guys. I'll turn it back. The next question comes from the line of Chip Moore with Roth MKM. Please proceed. Hey, thanks for taking the question. I wanted to ask maybe on the $53 million in orders, near-term orders, maybe you could put a finer point on that. Should we think about the next couple of quarters, potentially, on that? And then, Ricardo, to your point around mix and potential for some lumpiness or margin impacts, just anything to call out there? Yeah. I mean, maybe I'll start with the second part of the question, if that's okay. I mean, really, nothing much beyond what I've already mentioned, Chip. I think we have to work through this backlog, obviously, and that'll keep building up. At the same time, we also need to have the supply in place to fulfill it, right?

That'll ultimately be the gate of what the revenues can be in the near term. On the gross margin side, I'll just echo what I said before, right? I think it can still be lumpy. We do expect progression as we sell more CyCore as a proportion of the total sales. I mean, if we would have had another $10 million of revenue that we could have fulfilled, we would have had break-even or slightly positive adjusted EBITDA in the quarter. On the first part of the question, Chip, hopefully, I'm coming through here. The large purchase order is for a year. It's not necessarily a year that they don't want $35 million divided by four every quarter, but there are these different layers of revenue that we're building in. The backlog is going the right direction.

We like to see that versus some of the quick-turn. Purchase order comes in, and we ship within the quarter. We're building some customer-facing muscle, and we're getting into these longer-term contracts. They're really synchronized with the customers' end use, right? They have deliveries to their customers of their crafts. That's really what sets the rhythm of when we deliver sales. That's great. That's helpful. Maybe, Tom, just to follow up there. Sort of this flywheel effect of repeat orders. You had a nice one here. It feels like you're starting to hit critical mass. Just understanding things will still be lumpy. How are you thinking about potential for these repeat orders to keep coming in and get bigger? We are incredibly optimistic, right? I mean, we have a great product. It's industry-leading. The market is strong. There's a number of data points there.

We feel good about what we got. We feel good about where we're going. This is a tricky quarter because of Thanksgiving and Christmas here in the U.S. Next quarter, we'll have some lunar holidays. We got to work through some of that. We feel good about where we are. Perfect. If I could maybe ask one last one. Related, I guess, you talked about some funding, anecdotally seeing some interest out there on defense and drones. Any more detail there? And then government shutdown, is that another thing you have to navigate that could slow things down? Thanks. Yeah. We're seeing some announcements. One of our customers announced today that they won an Air Force shootout, and we're obviously very excited to hear that. It's starting. If you take apart the beautiful bill, as a couple of analysts have, these numbers are.

Four or five times. In the 2026 budget on what they were in previous years. That bodes well for the future. We are trying to make sure that everyone is aware of what we got, doubling flight time, extending payloads. That all is very meaningful in the eyes of our customers. If I may add just one last thing there, addressing your point on the shutdown, Chip. Our DIU contract has been getting paid on schedule even through the shutdown. We feel confident about that. Great. Appreciate it. Thanks very much. Anytime. The next question comes from the line of Samir Joshi with HC Wainwright. Please proceed. Hey, good afternoon. Good evening, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. It was good color in the prepared remarks and some good questions as well. I would just like to dig into the pipeline.

Dig a little bit deeper into the pipeline over the next, say, four to six quarters. And see whether it is mostly UAS-related or LEV is part of that mix as well. In relation to that, how does the margin profile, the gross margin profile, change? I know, Ricardo, you had a very exhaustive discussion about the lumpiness that we can expect over the few quarters. Does this product mix or end customer mix make a difference in the gross margins? Yeah. Maybe I'll address that latter one, and then I'll let Tom address the points on the pipeline. Yeah. I mean, I think I would look at the current gross margin that we have as a good base to build on, with much of the variation sort of happening above this level, especially if we're able to get incremental revenue. We're not concerned on.

Falling below the current levels. Above the current revenue levels, right? Definitely, some of the longer, larger volume agreements have different pricing than shorter-term, very specialized applications. That is what will drive the potential fluctuation in the gross margins. At the same time, we're managing, obviously, a pretty dynamic tariff and logistics environment. Fortunately, we're able to price for a lot of this stuff. That can drive lumpiness in this as well. Yeah. On the first part there, Samir, about the complexion of the pipeline. It's strong, as we mentioned, and it's growing. This quarter, we said it was 75% aerospace, right? That includes these high-altitude platform systems, drones, electric aircraft, both the conventional wing and the vertical takeoff.

That 75% was actually down a little bit on a percentage basis compared to Q2, but the revenue was up by the 42% that we spoke of. I look at that as a better balance between some of the other segments that we're serving, especially light electric vehicles. It will be similar, maybe a little bit higher, a little bit lower in terms of that 75% next quarter. Better balance, I think, would be my main message there on the pipeline. And just to make sure, the margin profile for these two sectors is different, right? Or are you maintaining the margins for the LEV as well? The margins are similar for the LEV as for the aviation market. Yes. Yep. And then just a clarification or maybe a little bit of color on this Amazon Device Climate Tech Accelerator program. How significant should we.

Consider this to be for you as a company going forward? It's a multi-phase program that we're in, and we've made it to the second, third round. We're actually up in Seattle today, as a matter of fact, talking to them again. We think of it as having a seat at the table. It's sometimes hard to break into some of these large companies. When you get invited in, as we have, you get quick access to the engineering folks, and you're able to tell your story more efficiently. Look, we still got to do a lot of work, and we still have to win their trust and their business. We have a seat at the table. Understood. Thanks for all the color. And Ricardo, congrats on joining the company. Thanks so much. Happy to be working together.

The next question comes from the line of Ted Jackson with Northland Securities. Please proceed. Thanks very much. I'll try to run through them quick because I know we're coming to the end of the call. Just a housekeeping one. With regards to revenue, did you have any design service or government grant revenue in the quarter? And if so, what was it? The government grant was actually in our other income. And it was roughly $400,000. Thanks. You introduced five new CyCore cells during the quarter. I mean, the last time you gave any kind of color with regards to the number of SKUs the company had, it was at 14. Where are you at with the SKU count right now? Twenty. We had 20 SKUs, more common, but the catalog today shows 20.

You kind of backed into your capacity, saying that you had about 50 million cells of capacity based upon your most popular cell, which begs the question, with—I don't know, we could talk about the quarter, year to date, however—kind of what's your run rate with regards to that capacity? If you can make 50 million, theoretical 50 million cells, like it, you're calling it $21 million of battery products that you sold in the quarter, what would that be on an annualized runway? Yeah. I don't think we would break it up explicitly. Yeah. That one is tough to pin explicitly because given the different SKU count, right, and the fact that—no, I'm asking if you—I'm asking if you assumed that it was just the same battery. You see what I'm saying?

I'm just trying to get a sense with regards to you've got this much capacity. Where are you in terms of filling it? Where we get to the thing that your margins are going to be north of 20%, you're at 80% of that capacity. You see where I'm going in terms of the thought process. So where you are right now, how far are we to getting to that 80%? Because then it can kind of think about, well, that's where we can think about your margins. It's kind of the thought process. I'm not asking—I'm just kind of asking if you assumed that you were—I don't know. But you get where I'm going, I think. Yeah. I mean. It's a highly theoretical question because in reality, it's not working that way, but it would be a couple of hundred million dollars, right? Yeah.

I remember we said—yeah, I think we said, wasn't it, Kang, in our May call that if we actually utilized that 1.8 gigawatt-hours of capacity, we'd be a billion-dollar company? Right. You just use our ESP today times the capacity availability. We are going to be billion-dollar business. Okay. A little nuanced question with regard to the gross margins. You're at the point now where you're taking a lot of your engineering work out of cost goods and bringing it down engineering. It's just kind of part of the process of the growth of the company. That happened this quarter. Do we have to see—are we going to see more of that in periods to come? And was that something that. We're not going to see as much of an impact with regards to margins?

What kind of noise will we see with that in the coming quarters or the coming year? Very little. I mean, that adjustment here, quarter over quarter, was just a couple of hundred thousand dollars. It did not cross the million-dollar line. Within our cost of revenue. Okay. I will ask one more that is more fun because these are all kind of little piddly ones. With regards to you being funded to build a pilot line with this DIU contract. What is the end game with that? You have this pilot line that you have put together, done a proof of concept for the government that you can make what it is they want. I mean, is that something then that they have the process, and then they are going to fund you to.

Make a bigger factory that then they're going to go out and bid for someone else to do it? You see what I'm saying? What's the vision for that, assuming that it goes forward and you get success? Yeah. Let me take that. The DIU. A couple of points here. First and foremost, it was a competitive solicitation. I think there were several other companies that took a swing, and they chose Amprius. We have a pilot line in Fremont. The dollars that we have received helps increase the capacity of that pilot line. And then, as Ricardo mentioned in his part of the script, also the capability. We are adding electrode manufacturing. That part of the factory of a pilot line did not exist. Their interest, the DIU's interest, is domestic batteries. They see us. In the.

Front of the pack, and they want to encourage us to make those available. There are certain sizes that are very popular. I mentioned the SA08. That's a very popular size. They want us to make those. The idea of a pilot line, of course, is that we have those capabilities for many of the defense customers, whether it's Primes or the companies that serve those Primes. I mean, is it like—I mean, a pilot line's still not making—it's not a production-level facility. The goal is for them to—the goal, clearly, is for them to develop a domestic battery production capability. I mean, do you ever have any discussions with them with regards to what that might look like as they go forward with a larger factory? Does Colorado come into play?

If you go and prove all this out, would they want you to go license your capabilities? You see where I'm going? What's kind of the longer end game with it? I mean, unless you don't—. Yeah. We're very close with the DIU and the DOD generally. Their interest is, as you say. Had domestic batteries. They have said publicly that there are solicitations that are coming out early in this fiscal year, probably delayed here because of the shutdown. I think we'll see some specific additional solicitations related to domestic production. It is 5:00 P.M. I could keep going. Congrats on the quarter. Super exciting to cover you. Talk to you soon. Thank you. Thank you. 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 ir@amprius.com.

I would like to turn the call back over to Dr. Sun for his closing remarks. Thanks again, everyone, for joining us today. As a reminder, you can find out more about our company, receive additional updates, and learn about upcoming events from the investor relations section of our website. We look forward to updating you on the exciting progress we are making in transforming the electrical mobility market. Finally, I would like to thank our employees, partners, and shareholders for their continued support. Thank you for joining us today for Amprius Technologies' third quarter 2025 earnings conference call. You may now disconnect. Have a good day.

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