Thank you for standing by, and welcome to today's program, the Enovix to acquire Routejade call, featuring Enovix management. After the presentation, there will be a Q&A session. With that, I'd like to turn it over to your host for today's program, Charlie Anderson, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Strategy at Enovix. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our call today to discuss the Enovix acquisition of Routejade. My name is Charlie Anderson, and I'm the Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Strategy at Enovix. Joining me today are Dr. Raj Talluri, our President and CEO, Farhan Ahmad, our CFO, and Ajay Marathe, our COO. Raj will give you an overview of the deal, which includes slides that are available on the IR page of our website, and then after his presentation, we'll take your questions. Before we begin, I want to remind you that the press release we issued earlier today in this call contained forward-looking statements that contain risks and uncertainties, including expectations regarding the proposed transaction between Enovix and Routejade, along with the expected timetable for completing the transaction and the expected benefits of the transaction.
These expectations are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that may be beyond our control and may prove to be inaccurate. Our statements reflect our view as of today, September 20, 2023, based on the information currently available to us, and we undertake no duty to update these statements except as required by law. We'd ask that you please read our disclaimers in today's presentation and press release, along with our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, for important risk factors that may impact our business. With that, I'd like to turn it over to Raj to begin. Raj?
Thank you, Charlie, and thank you for joining this call. I wanted to welcome you to this presentation. As you saw in our press release, we talked about Enovix acquiring Routejade. First of all, we are thrilled to announce this acquisition. If you retain anything from this call, I want you to understand the strategic value to Enovix of owning this battery electrode coating, which is what Routejade fundamentally brings to us. This slide here, slide three, is a picture of a coating machine in Routejade's factory in Korea. This factory is just south of Seoul. This is the front end of the battery-making process. Today, we outsource this capability to a third party.
It's called third-party coating houses called toll coaters. The problem with this approach is that we are now relying on other third parties to secure high-quality battery electrode materials, the anodes and cathodes, to get them quickly and reliably. This means we get materials that we don't control and not always as fast as we want, and we get them at a higher price. Now, buying Routejade will allow us to solve this problem. We're now able to use materials quickly to immediately incorporate this into our battery, control our own destiny, and control our own destiny. Now, with this, we get a team of world-class coating expertise, two factories in Korea, which is a strategically very important location for us.
On top of that, we get an established battery business with complementary products and customers that's immediately accretive, and they have over 20 years of experience as suppliers to name brand customers. On the next slide, let's dig a little bit into the strategic rationale of this. First, as many of you know, as we start our scale-up to high volume manufacturing next year in Fab Two in Malaysia, this acquisition secures the coating capability, capacity that we need for the scale up. It also reduces the future CapEx requirements by about $35 million. Had we chosen to buy our own coating machines, is the kind of money that we would have had to spend. In addition to anodes and cathodes, that, the largest cost of making batteries, we eliminate the margin stack in support of this, back to our high-margin business.
I'll touch on that in a minute. This coating also improves the speed of our R&D. As I mentioned before, my vision is to establish a leadership position in batteries that is a material-agnostic company, which means we rely on getting quick access to new materials and using them in ways that we can then quickly get into batteries. Now, owning our own coating supports that. Historically, as a small company, it has taken us a long time to gain access to leading-edge materials. This is also compounded by waiting on a coating house to then incorporate them into a coated roll, ship them to Fremont for us to test them. This has caused a large lag between cathodes, anodes we use and what is available in the rest of the industry.
Now, we really need to be able to get these materials fast, coat them, roll them, and start testing. This acquisition allows us to do that and shorten our battery development time cycles by pre-screening more new material in Korea at a very low cost. This is on top of the efforts we've already kickstarted in India to use AI and machine learning to shorten our development cycles. Now, I come from semiconductor industry, where I'm used to fast technology development, and try... I'm now trying to bring that mindset to the battery industry, which has historically been a little bit slower in adapting to customer needs. Thirdly, owning coating enhances the manufacturability of our product.
Now, one of the issues that has caused us to lose some yield historically is that sometimes we get coated rolls of electrodes that have inconsistencies or imperfections that are not immediately apparent until we get them to production. Despite this, our yields have been rising rapidly over the last year, and I'm really pleased our recent yield performance in Gen One equipment has recently touched 60%. Because of this yield learning curve, we are already set. We are really set up now to start with Gen Two at a high level... and controlling the intake of the material will give us another lift on top of that. In addition, we want to make our batteries faster and cheaper.
One way to change the way is the active material is coated on a roll, so only the center of the roll is coated only on the center of the roll, not everywhere. So that when we laser pattern them, the material at the edges, you know, which is just now bare copper and bare aluminum. This is called stripe coating. We have been running tests with Routejade, and the results are promising so far. So now we will be able to waste very little raw material, which is expensive anode and cathode material, when we do this coating and putting it into the way we manufacture in our batteries. Now, lastly, we gain a presence in Korea.
Now, being in Korea is strategically very important to us, because of the importance of a lot of large material suppliers and our equipment vendors for Gen Two. Now, Routejade also has a couple of factories that are run by seasoned team that can now support us as we bring up high volume lines in the future. They have a very strong culture, which is led by their CEO, Mr. Ki Hong Park, who will continue to operate the business and report to me. Mr. Park has spent 21 years in roles such as CTO and CEO at Kokam, a large Korean battery OEM that is now SolarEdge's energy storage division. If you go to the next slide, here you can see a quick overview of Routejade.
As I mentioned, they've been at this for over 20 years and have over 150 employees. They're located just south of Seoul in Korea, with two factories, one of which is shown here. They run four automated production lines, two coating lines. They have over 75,000 sq ft of manufacturing space. They have over 90 patents and patent applications globally. As I mentioned earlier, they're existing lithium-ion battery supplier, with focus on IoT and military end markets. Now, we can accelerate the growth in these markets. If you go to slide six. As many of you know, we are a battery manufacturer with dozens of machines working in concert to build these high-density batteries in our patented architecture.
With Routejade, we are now fully vertically integrated from all the steps by adding coating to the front end and battery pack assembly, which also Routejade brings to the back end. Some customers want a full pack solution, you know, which includes all the power electronics to manage the battery. Routejade has the capability of producing those packs, which we'll now also have. Vertically integrating coating can have a large impact on our margin profile. At scale, we estimate 60% of our cost in making a battery is from material, while 40% is from the manufacturing cost, such as equipment, depreciation, labor, shipping and all that. And within that 60% budget, what costs most is buying the anodes and the cathodes. This includes a healthy markup someone has to pay to coat.
So for us to pull that coating in-house creates an opportunity for large per-battery cost savings for us going forward, in addition to incorporating a stripe coating, which, as I mentioned, will use less material and enhances our yields. So a couple of key advantages of owning our own coating. So wrapping up on slide seven. Here's the transaction overview. The deal is a consideration of 6.2 million shares of Enovix common stock and $16.5 million of cash. Again, I'll highlight that we estimated cost savings of $35 million of future CapEx and coating capacity that we have built, had we built this ourselves, plus cost reductions by eliminating margin stacking, getting a team, a team and a facility to operate for us. We expect the deal to close in Q4, subject to the customary closing conditions.
We note that Routejade's current battery business is about an $18 million annual run rate based on year to date, and we have the opportunity to cross-sell our higher energy density differentiated silicon cells into this customers base. We expect this to be immediately accretive. In closing, we are incredibly excited about this transaction and view this as a big win for our shareholders, with a positive ROI profile, which not only enhances our competitiveness and also helps de-risk our scale-up. Again, we are a material-agnostic company, and this accelerates our strategy to take advantage of the architecture and use various advances in materials very quickly to produce industry's best product. With that, we'll be happy to answer any questions. Operator?
We will now begin the Q&A session. Please note that this call is being recorded. We will now go to the queue. Questions will be answered in the order they are received. Please ask one question and one follow-up question at most. We will now pause to assemble the queue. Our first question comes from Colin Rusch with Oppenheimer. Colin, please unmute yourself and ask your question.
Thanks so much, guys. Congratulations on this acquisition. You know, the cycle time and the learning cycles that you're talking about seem critically important for your customers. Can you talk about, you know, how much that acceleration is and how impactful that is in terms of your ability to meet some of your customers' needs, particularly given the product team that you guys have put in place?
Yeah, I'll let Ajay also add a little bit color to it. Typically, it's taking us multiple weeks from the time we acquire the material to get them coated and brought back to us. Sometimes 7-8 weeks. Again, it depends upon the availability of coating capacity and coating, you know, willingness for our third-party coaters to coat for us. Some of them happen to make their own batteries, so we are also running into these priority issues there. Ajay, does that sound about right? I think Ajay looks frozen, but 7 to 8 weeks is roughly.
Okay, then I'll refine this after the fact. And then in terms of the volume of incremental customers that you're gonna be able to sell into, can you talk about, you know, just the number of incremental customers that you'll have access to and, you know, just some of the geographic concentration of those folks?
Yeah. You know, there's a little bit of overlap in the customer base, but quite a bit will be new customers for us. You know, they sell a lot in Korea, they sell in Europe. As you know, as an early-stage company, we still have a small sales team, and it really augments that applicability for us to go into a lot more of the IoT and wearables kind of spaces where you know, they've had the you know, ability to sell.
All right. Thanks so much.
There's a few customers that overlap, but even there, you know, we think we have the batteries are actually very complementary, so we're able to start from there and cross-sell our products.
Next question comes from Bill Peterson with JP Morgan. Bill, please unmute yourself and ask your question.
Yeah, hi. I was hoping to ask a little bit more on the cathode side. You talked about, you know, improvements, and I would like to make sure, is this both on the cathode and anode side? Is there materials considerations where you see the improvements? I'm trying to understand, is this, is this a unique process, or is the equipment set unique? And I guess secondarily, you know, how much capacity can they, can they truly support in terms of... Like, when would you need to add more CapEx to the system?
Yeah. So, Ajay, you want to take that?
Sure. So this, what Routejade brings to the party here is the capability to coat whatever material that we prescribe, right? So the thing to remember here is the independent toll coaters which are out there, yeah, that's what they do, right? We buy the powders, we give it to them, and they toll coat for us, and they do the, you know, the rest of the process. So what Routejade does is actually will accelerate that whole, you know, cycle, both for cathode, anode. It'll shrink down our, you know, times, you know, cycle times of when we place the order, because it's vertically integrated now. And so, yeah, that's how the biggest advantage comes in, for Routejade.
I mean, Bill, both the cathodes and anodes are coated, so we have to coat both.
Okay, and then the capacity you can support?
Yeah. So the capacity, the Routejade, you know, what we are when we finish this acquisition, the installed capacity, they have two lines there in Nonsan, Korea. That will be enough for us to feed four of our auto lines in Malaysia. The next CapEx we will need is when we expand beyond, beyond line four, which we then have to decide, you know, where that goes. But yeah, that's the capacity statement.
Yeah. So that, that's a good lead into the second question. In terms of available space, how do you envision using their site long term? Is it mainly gonna be for, you know, roll coating and packaging, or is this even a potential site for even auto lines for your main product to support a local market? Just kinda what's the long-term, you know, view on this site or their sites?
Yeah, so we have-
Yeah, so I can start, and maybe Ajay can add on to that. For sure, initially, we'll start with helping with toll coating, which helping with coating, so we absolutely need that. You know, as we mentioned, we have the first four lines in Malaysia that we have the space and fabrication to do. But as our manufacturing scale expands and the customer base and demand expands, we do have to consider other places. And this will be one of the places to think about, you know, particularly given, you know, there are some really big customers in Korea, as you can imagine, both in cell phone space and other spaces. So this is a great place for us.
Our next question comes from George Gianarikas from Canaccord. Please unmute yourself and ask your question.
Hey, everyone, thanks for taking my questions. Just a couple quick questions on the financial impact. So first, you had... I know this is before your time, but you did have some gross margin projections out there for the 2025 time frame, and they were in the 50% range plus. But to the extent you can share what the financial impact will be in the out years, you know, what sort of percentage increase could we see in your margins based on you bringing this competence in-house?
Sure. So let me take that. So in terms of the cost impact, it does reduce our cost somewhere between 5%-10%, depending on the size of battery and the type of battery. We had already contemplated in our long-term plans that we will be bringing the coating capacity in-house to bring down our cost. So overall margins, you should still think that they're very healthy, but you should not think that the target that we had put out previously that had not contemplated us bringing the capacity in-house in the long term for the coating, the coating capacity in-house.
But what it does do is to accelerate that.
That's correct.
We get it sooner.
Okay. And maybe just as a follow-on to that, you did say there's $18 million of revenue on a run rate basis in 2023. Is that something we should think about adding to our models, you know, in the out years, you know, in 2024, 2025, that you'll continue to sell these cathodes out to the marketplace?
Yes. The way you should think about it is that they have about $18 million per year revenue run rate based on their year-to-date revenues. It's a mature business. It should remain at that level, maybe grow a little bit. You know, that's how you should think about the revenue. You should add it to your models. In terms of the margin profile of this business, you should think about it as more of a margin profile that is consistent with the traditional graphite battery makers.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Derek Soderberg with Cantor. Derek, please unmute yourself and ask your question.
Yeah. Hey, guys, thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to ask about the battery pack manufacturing side. Can you just elaborate on some of the technology that they have there that can help you guys, you know, wondering how you're gonna leverage that aspect of the business? Just any commentary on that from the business would be great.
Yeah, I'll start a little bit, and then maybe Ajay can add some color. What we find is that when we go into the market, many customers will take our cells and put them in packs through some pack houses, or they'll do it themselves. A lot of the small customers don't have the capability, and they really want to get a packed cell. When I say packed cell, there's a couple of cells in there, and there's some power management circuitry that lets the cell be, you know, not go to over-overcharge and overheat and manage it. It's a capability that's required one way or the other. Either our OEM does it through somebody they like, or they do it, or we have to provide it.
For the many large customers, many wide breadth of customers, this is a capability that, in particular in IoT, that's important that a cell manufacturer have. So I think this does augment what we already have, because we don't have the capability today. Anything else you wanna add?
Then, no, just to build on that, what Raj said, right? They have a very sophisticated pack capability which they currently use. It's currently using that capability. They are currently using that capability to make the military business for large applications. We can learn a lot from that, but not only that, we can make that as our enabler for our batteries, actually, to do the pack designs. And that'll help us help the customers who don't have their own capability or don't have very sophisticated, you know, access to pack technologies.
Got it. Got it. And, just on, just on the CapEx, it sounds like most of that $35 million is coming out because you had already planned on, adding this equipment. So is that the entirety of the $35 million? Am I understanding that correctly? And, and if so, should we be taking that out of, you know, completely out of 2024 numbers, or, you know, how should we, sort of use that, you know, when it comes to updating our models?
So maybe I'll, I'll take that. So don't take it out of your models. The way you should think about it is that our alternate strategy would have been to continue procuring this from third-party suppliers, at least in 2024, 2025, and then subsequently, we would have started building our coating capacity. The alternative path basically starts would have required us a long lead time for getting this equipment. So, and we would have lost a lot of margins because we would have got these materials from a third-party supplier.
The most important thing actually is just the stripe coating and the innovation that we can do to reduce the material usage within the manufacturing of our batteries, so we can get the material usage down quite a bit by bringing some innovation to how the coating is being done. So basically, don't take out the model, take out the CapEx, but instead, like, you know, like it'll help us reduce the cost, is how you should think about it.
Thanks, guys.
Our next question comes from Gabe Daoud from Cowen. Please unmute yourself and ask your question.
Hey, thanks, everyone. Was hoping we could just maybe talk about the facility there for automated battery production lines. So what's the capacity out of those facilities? And then should we expect that capacity, I guess, to just remain idle, or do you anticipate still selling, I guess, the Routejade's products here that they have on their website of various form factors of batteries?
Yeah, we absolutely plan to sell those. We'll run it as a separate, you know, unit, and we'll continue to sell those, you know, and cross-sell our products on top of those. In time, you know, it'll all become, you know, silicon batteries. For now, you know, absolutely, we'll continue to sell those.
Okay. Got it. Got it. Because there's a lot of interesting form factors on here. So the architecture would be applicable or complementary, I guess, to some of these, like, L-shaped type pouch batteries and asymmetrical design batteries. Just, just kind of curious, I guess, like, the how complementary the, the product suite is.
Well, at this point, they're totally complementary, right? Because the graphite cells in different shapes. In time, we'll need to figure out that knowledge, technology they have, making different shaped batteries, whether we can apply that to our architecture or not... Or maybe there's something we learn from there that will help us, you know, make our batteries in different shapes. But that's just one element of it. I think really the main thing is the coating capability, the pack capability, and cross-ability to cross-sell into customer base.
Got it. Thanks, Raj. Okay, I'll leave it there. I'll take the rest offline. Thanks, guys.
Our next question comes from Sean Milligan with Janney. Please unmute yourself and ask your question.
Hey, Raj. Thanks for taking my question. I was just curious, like, the $18 million in revenue that you talk about, Routejade doing, is that from battery cell sales, or is that, like, split between, you know, some coating, some pack sales? Like, how should we think about that $18 million that they're doing right now?
It's mainly cells. It's sale of their cells, either in packs or just by cells, right? So the coating is not included in that revenue. We expect to take all that coating.
Okay. And then just to think about the CapEx. So you mentioned earlier that the current capacity on the coating lines would help you ramp your four auto lines in Malaysia. How do we think about the, like, the equipment CapEx for an additional four lines if, you know, we were contemplating a model ramp to $1 billion in revenue for you?
Yeah, I can take that. So it, yeah, to add capacity beyond line four for our auto lines, auto lines in Malaysia or wherever we put it, you have to think of it as, you know, every four lines or so, you will need one big coating line, which consists of one cathode, one anode, and that's roughly $40 million, including facilitization, building, you know, $20 million roughly for equipment and about $15 million-$20 million for facilitization in the building. So $40 million for every four lines or so.
Okay. Just one other kind of clarifying question. You mentioned 5%-10% cost savings. Is that, like, on a total cost basis, or are you talking about the materials portion of the 60%?
That's also a total cost.
Okay, thank you.
Our next question comes from Ananda Baruah with Loop Capital Markets. Please unmute yourself and ask your question.
Hey, yeah, thanks, guys. Thanks for the question, and yeah, congrats on the transaction and getting the capability in-house. I guess the first one is, in terms of, you know, latency points, and, you know, correct me if this isn't sort of a useful way to think about this, but in terms of latency points, you know, where does this rank? Are there other opportunities of this magnitude that could also be addressed?
I think this was one of the main ones that we were aware we were losing time. Clearly, now, see, most people buy anodes and cathodes as powders, and then they coat them on top of metallic strips, right? So this is one of the main problems that we've had, that we didn't control this part. I would say, I don't know, Ajay, any others you can think of? I feel like this is a key one that we were missing.
Yeah, I would say this was the key one. When I first joined the company, Raj and I both, you know, we were exactly the same discussion. You know, we don't know of any battery company who doesn't have their own coating capability in a large scale. If you're gonna be a high-volume manufacturer of batteries, if you don't have a coating capability, there's something wrong with this, with that picture. So that's, we would say this was the main, one of the biggest knobs we had.
Super helpful. I guess just the follow-up is, you know, sort of like loud and clear that they were focused on, you know, IoT and defense. Assuming that you guys can use this for all of your verticals, all of your product areas, not just limited to IoT and defense. Is that accurate?
Yeah, we can.
Absolutely.
You know, the product portfolio, the coating, absolutely, we can use everywhere. Is your question about their product portfolio, or your question about the coating?
A question about, will you be able to take their coating and use them in product areas in addition to your IoT and your defense?
Absolutely. The coating itself, we can use in all our products everywhere. The coating is just fundamental to making electrodes. Where you sell the batteries after you get the electrodes is a product go-to-market topic, but coating itself is fundamental to making batteries, so it's gonna go everywhere we sell.
Totally got it. Awesome. Thanks, guys.
Our next question comes from Bill Peterson with JP Morgan. Please unmute yourself and ask your question.
Yeah. Hi, thanks for taking the follow-up. I just wanted to ask a little bit about how to think about OpEx, OpEx trajectory. So with 168 employees, which I guess is actually kind of flat or even down, based off what the website said at 175, what's the right way to think about OpEx run rate? And I just want to ask, I guess, for clarification, if it's... Is this business profitable today on a operating margin basis, or is it actually still loss-making?
It is, so Bill, it is profitable business, not very strong profitability. Think of it as, profitable and free cash flow positive, but comparable to more mature battery companies. So that's how you should be thinking about it. So low, low levels of operating profit and free cash flow, but some modest levels of profitability... Going back to your question on the OpEx, I think, it's probably better to address this question after we close the transaction, and we can probably give you more guidance after that.
Okay, thanks for taking the additional question.
Our next question comes from Gus Richard with Northland Capital Markets. Please unmute yourself and ask your question.
Yes, thanks for taking the question. You know, clearly you're doing this acquisition for capability and cost savings. I'm curious, is there any sort of unique or proprietary technology that will help you down the road?
I mean, you know, I think, ability to coat is very fundamental to being a battery maker. Once you get it, I'm sure, you know, they're a very capable team. They've been there for a long time. 20 years they've been doing this. They know a lot about shipping batteries and scale. I'm sure there's a lot of things we learn from that as we, you know, do our scale to journey- our journey to scale. But in coating itself, you know, different kind of materials need different kind of coatings. Since we are material agnostic, we try different cathodes, different anodes. Holding your own coating helps us really take advantage of those materials quickly. And, you know, I think, Ajay, and we're chatting, I mean, you're telling me about calendering and all the other aspects.
Maybe, Ajay, you want to comment a little bit on, you know, nuances in coating?
Yeah, so absolutely. So the coating capability itself, I mean, coating consists of mixing the right powders in the right slurry, then, you know, going ahead and coating the base material, and then what is called a calendering. Calendering and process, which in itself is quite tricky if you don't get it right. The thickness, the control on the coats on this material, and to make sure that the material doesn't wave. Currently, we are buying material from a couple places, right? And it has all kinds of issues with it at incoming, for example. When we develop this center of excellence here at Routejade, and the material that we'll get is gonna be...
Because it's our own facility, and, you know, we are gonna do all kinds of good work with these guys, which has already, you know, started to happen. As I said, you know, we have been engaged with these guys more than a year, and getting material which is free of all this. So I want my incoming material to have 100% yield, and this is what is gonna give us that capability, actually. So this is a big one, and the other one is the pack capability. Pack is very important because people do actually use our batteries, as we have learned through pack vendors. It's like Apple using Foxconn. It's similar to that. Yeah, and this is our own, you know, Foxconn, if you will, right?
Who does the packs and who teaches us and enables the electronics and all the on-circuit to be able to, you know, get the most out of our battery in a given application. To have that in-house, huge capability.
Got it. You guys have mentioned it a couple of times, that you're materials agnostic. You know, if I stitch the pieces together, I think, you know, customers are coming to you asking to use different materials in your, you know, constraint system, if you will. This capability gives you the flexibility to, you know, sample your constraint system with a different chemistry for a different application rather than a, you know, silicon anode. Is that part of the motivation here?
Yeah, I mean, I, you know, like, again, I think if you look at a battery, right? I mean, there is the cathodes, there's the anodes, there's the electrolytes, there's the separators. Because of the huge investment that's going on, because of EVs and so on, there's a ton of R&D and CapEx going into all these materials. I mean, for example, we had one silicon anode that we are using now in our batteries. We have samples of four other ones that are in our labs. We have one cathode we're using. There's four other different cathodes we've got from different suppliers. There's many different electrode formations. You know, the recipe of using the right cathode with the right anode, and they're all silicon anodes, you know, with the right electrolyte for the right application.
Like, if you go into smartphones, you know, there are important things, cycle life and, in addition to energy density, in addition to fast and then fast charge, and so on. So that takes a slightly different material stack, as maybe, for example, when you go into watches, maybe something else is important or a medical device. So we our constraint system, our architecture-first battery making technology is applicable to all these materials, you know? So unless we are able to quickly get different kinds of materials and try them, and try them and standardize on a particular kind of recipe for particular kind of applications, that is how we unlock the best value for our, for our, you know, intellectual property and the ability to manufacture.
Our manufacturing lines that Ajay and team are building are not specific to any one material. So you can change the anode, you can change the cathode, you can change the electrode, we can do it. But this piece was missing because we couldn't get the materials we are getting into rolls that we can feed into our machines. So we were losing a lot of time and a lot of, you know, kind of, some yield because they were not coated properly like how we wanted, and some quality because as Ajay said, the calendaring is a little bit off. And then we were losing margin because we are paying some people to give these.
So that part of the bottleneck had to be taken out so that we can focus on, and get the best value for what we are good at, which is making batteries at scale, differentiated batteries of high energy and great cycle life and great charge density, great, you know, fast charging. So that's, that's why it's so important to have this part, you know, kind of handled.
All right. Our next question comes from Tim Moore with EF Hutton. Please unmute yourself and ask your question.
Thanks. For this strategic acquisition, how long have you been speaking with them? And was the acquisition decision instead of another vertical integration target that you might have been reaching the final stages of on your wish list? Or were you exclusively focused on this target the past couple of months?
No, we've been talking to them for about a year now. They've been our coating supplier, one of our coating suppliers. You know, again, I think we will have other suppliers that we will use in smaller amounts once we get our own coating. You know, we don't rely 100% on this, but we were using them as a supplier, and we were very happy with their capability and the kind of work that they were doing and how good the coating that we got was. So, you know, we also realized that they have experience in shipping batteries, so it was very complementary in that sense, that it also gives us that know-how, and they had the pack capability.
Among all the ones we looked at, this quickly rose to the surface as the right one for the stage of the company we are in right now, because we don't have our own coating, we don't have our own pack capability, and the customer base was complementary. In many ways, it just fit the bill.
Great. Thanks a lot, and congratulations.
There are no further questions at this time. With that, I'd like to turn it over to Dr. Raj Talluri for any closing remarks.
Yeah, nothing more from me. Thank you very much, for all your, you know, time and, you know, all the questions. We are super excited by it. I think it's the next stage in our journey to scale, you know, taking out a key piece that was missing in our capability. So we are super excited, and, thank you for your time.