Ideal Power Inc. 2026 Q2 Earnings Call

Please go ahead. Thank you, Jenny, and good morning, everyone.

Thank you for joining Ideal Power's second quarter 2026 results conference call. On the call with me are David Somo, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Tim Burns, Chief Financial Officer. Ideal Power's second quarter 2026 financial results press release is available on the company's website at idealpower.com. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that a number of statements on this call are forward-looking statements. All statements on this call that are not based on historical fact are forward-looking statements. While management has based any forward-looking statements on its current expectations, the information which such expectations were based on may change.

These forward-looking statements rely on a number of assumptions concerning future events and are subject to a number of risks, uncertainties, and other factors, many of which are outside the company's control, that could cause actual results to materially differ from such statements. Please refer to the company's SEC filings for some of the associated risks, uncertainties, and other factors. We would also refer you to Ideal Power's website for more supporting company information. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Ideal Power's President and Chief Executive Officer.

David? Thank you, Jeff, and thank you to everyone joining us today.

I'll begin with an update on our commercial progress from the start of the second quarter. Tim will review our financial results, and after our remarks, we look forward to your questions. Let me start with our lead Asia customer. We're finalizing our low current solid-state circuit breaker, or SSCB, prototype development for shipment to the customer later this month for their internal testing. B-TRAN enabled SSCB prototypes are expected to be available from this customer for their 800 volt AI data center and energy grid customers in the fourth quarter of 2026, with initial low volume orders to support the prototype builds also expected in the fourth quarter.

Beyond that initial project, in order of priority, we are engaged with this customer on two additional projects, one for a medium current SSCB designed for 800 volt D.C. data centers, energy storage applications, EV charging, and industrial microgrids, and a second for a low current SSCB for smart industrial buildings. Technical discussions on the medium current SSCB are already underway. Second, under the letter of intent we signed in the second quarter, we advanced our co-development with an industry partner on a B-TRAN enabled intelligent SSCB prototype for a planned evaluation by U.S. Hyperscaler in its development for the NVIDIA Rubin Ultra 800 volt D.C. data center power system. We are targeting prototype delivery at the end of the fourth quarter of 2026.

This prototype is also planned to be offered to additional hyperscalers and other AI data center operators adopting the NVIDIA Rubin Ultra Power Architecture or comparable 800 volt D.C. AI data center power distribution systems for evaluation. The Ideal Power team will be attending the Open Compute Project Global Summit in October together with our industry partner to introduce this intelligent SSCB prototype concept to AI data center and infrastructure providers for their consideration. Third, we delivered a second set of Gen 2 B-TRAN custom package samples and development kits to Stellantis for their evaluation. We are working closely with the customer on a detailed analysis of their solid-state contactor system-level specification to optimize the solution and align the remaining deliverables under the purchase order.

While this has impacted the timing of our expected completions of deliverables under the PO, it has not delayed or otherwise impacted our expectations regarding the EV contactor opportunity with Stellantis. The deliverables we have completed support the next project milestone scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2026. We will work to promptly complete future deliverables as they are agreed with the customer to support subsequent project milestones. Fourth, we achieved an important operational milestone. We entered into a long-term supply agreement with a high volume wafer foundry in Asia, not China, and achieved functional first silicon after initiating discussions with them in the first quarter of this year. This is an automotive qualified fab that has built more than 1 billion power semiconductors. This foundry has the capacity to support high volume industrial and automotive customers at a cost structure we believe supports our targeted gross margins at scale.

Fifth, we are seeing accelerating demand to support 800 volt D.C. architectures from a growing number of potential customers, including leading global electromechanical breaker manufacturers now seeking SSCB solutions. I have been asked how we are helping customers speed up adoption, and would like to take a moment to explain the progress we are making. We introduced a new SSCB reference design kit, or RDK to assist customers with evaluating our technology and accelerate the development of their own SSCB products. This is critical to adoption, as companies that have traditionally supplied electromechanical breakers may not have internal expertise with solid-state solutions, or may not have started developing SSCB products. With the rollout of 800-volt AI data center power architectures expected to start in the second half of next year, these companies need a close-to-market-ready solution to enable timely product introductions.

We are already seeing traction, as one of our distribution partners has placed its first stocking order for these SSCB RDKs for delivery in the coming weeks, and multiple customers have requested access to our new RDKs. Sixth, after recently adding a Europe-based sales director, our team met with more than 20 potential customers at PCIM in Germany. Our European sales efforts have already led to early engagements with a European-based global automaker and tier 1 automotive suppliers. We recently met with one of these global tier 1's pre-production and production teams, as we are finding significant interest in solid-state EV contactor and battery disconnect unit solutions. We also have a new engagement with a European-based circuit protection company interested in a broad set of applications, including solid state breakers for data centers and energy storage, as well as battery disconnect units for EVs.

They're targeting both U.S. and European markets on an aggressive timeline. Seventh, our newly formed advisory board now includes its first member, Dr. Sanjay Parthasarathy, Chief Marketing Officer of Coherent Corporation, a key supplier for AI data center infrastructure. Sanjay brings more than 35 years of leadership across data centers, optical networking, and related technology markets, aligning with our near-term revenue opportunities. His deep market expertise and industry network directly support our plans to accelerate the commercialization of our high-value, high-impact solutions. Let me spend a moment on the data center market. When people picture the AI boom, they think graphics chips, processors, and servers. But the bottleneck is increasingly power, getting it to the data center, then distributing and managing it once there.

The forthcoming migration to 800-volt DC power architectures in AI data centers and the supporting energy infrastructure is a catalyst that is accelerating the demand for high-voltage power semiconductors. This is reflected in the industry's growing backlog for power semiconductors and is expected to drive rapid growth over the next several years. SSCBs are essential in high-voltage DC systems, as they enable ultra-fast fault handling for reliability. B-TRAN provides an ideal solution for solid-state circuit protection with its inherent bi-directional operation, low conduction losses, microsecond fault handling, and 1,200-volt rated operation, provide ample safety margin for 800-volt power delivery systems. The industry is in the early stages of a secular mega-trend in power semiconductors that presents an exciting growth opportunity. I'll briefly discuss our product reliability testing and qualification plans.

A simple way to think about it is that industrial and automotive qualification typically reflect the requirements of each end market. JEDEC industrial qualification supports our near-term opportunities in AI data centers, energy storage, and grid infrastructure markets, while AEC-Q, or automotive qualification, is designed for automotive applications. Given the accelerating demand for power semiconductors to support AI data centers and energy infrastructure, which represent our nearest term revenue opportunities, we are prioritizing work on industrial reliability testing and qualification. We plan to begin the industrial qualification process during the current quarter and complete it in the fourth quarter. Automotive reliability testing and qualification will be planned to align with customer timelines. Importantly, automotive qualification is typically required for use in vehicle production but is not a gating item to advance product development for automotive opportunities, including our EV contactor opportunity with Stellantis.