Welcome back, everyone. Next, we have Ideal Power Inc trades on the NASDAQ under the symbol IPWR, and is the developer and innovative provider of the broadly patented bidirectional semiconductor power switch, creating highly efficient and eco-friendly energy control solutions for electric vehicle, electric vehicle charging, renewable energy, energy storage, UPS d ata center, solid-state circuit breaker, and other industrial and military applications. Happy to welcome President and CEO Dan Brdar, as well as CFO Tim Burns. Welcome back to the conference, gentlemen. Happy to have you back.
We're glad to be here. It's an exciting year shaping up for us, so we're happy to give everybody an update on the things that are going on here at Ideal Power.
Perfect. Take it away.
All right. Just kind of at a summary level, for those not familiar with the company, we've developed technology. It's a power semiconductor device. It's called B-TRAN. And it's really disruptive technology that has a lot of market advantages and applies to a lot of market segments out there for things that really have some strong macro trends behind them. We're really well positioned to start displacing the conventional power semiconductor devices that have been out there for decades. And we're specifically targeting market applications like solid-state cir cuit breakers for industrial and utility applications, renewable energy, energy storage, electric vehicles , where our technology can be used for the contactors that protect the batteries. It can be used in the drive train for inverters, and also in the EV charging infrastructure that's getting built out. It can be used for circuit protection in data centers and also motor drives.
Our approach to the market is an asset-light approach. We are a fabless business. We're really leveraging this very large investment that's already been made in the silicon wafer processing infrastructure for both wafer fabrication, packaging, and sales distribution. Our initial sales of our B-TRAN discrete device, our SymCool Power Module, and our SymCool In telligent Power M odule are already underway. We've got multiple large global customers that we're working with that have products in their lab now. Some of those we're starting to move into design wins. In fact, we actually secured our first design win for solid-state circuit breakers at the very end of last year, with a couple of key milestones coming up for that activity that we'll talk about. We've got an ongoing development program with Stellantis, who is one of the world's largest automakers, for a custom B-TRAN module for their EV drive train.
Another program that we'll be talking about here in a little bit is where our technology can be used in automotive products. Stellantis is leading that activity as well. Our technology is really well patented. There are 94 that have issued, another 53 that are pending. We have built a pretty large moat around our intellectual property so that people can't actually copy our technology. Let's start a little bit with, you know, what is a B-TRAN? Shown on the slide here is a picture of a B-TRAN die. If you were to turn it over, it looks exactly the same on the other side. It's a very unique architecture in that it has several really key advantages that are very timely for changes that are happening in the marketplace. First is it's fabricated on both sides of the wafer, which is unusual.
Typical Power Semiconductors are only fabricated on one side. We actually have the ability to actually leverage this same die across a whole variety of applications. We do not have to predict what the mix is going to be for any particular market segment as we start to ramp up the work we are doing with the wafer fabs that we collaborate with. The architecture really has some really compelling advantages. First is it is inherently bidirectional. That is increasingly important as there are more and more applications that are incorporating batteries where you have to control the flow of energy to and from the battery. It has much lower losses, particularly much lower conduction losses, which really becomes an enabling technology for things like solid-state circuit breakers and electric vehicle contactors, where the continual conducting application really needs as low a loss as possible.
Because it has lower losses, it allows the OEM products to incorporate it to be smaller. Typically in power el ectronics, the size of a product is often driven by the size of the thermal management system to dissipate heat from the power semiconductors. If you produce less heat, your thermal management can be smaller, and your OEM product can be smaller and lower cost. I mentioned bidirectional switching. There is really a growing demand for bidirectional power switching, driven by the fact that batteries are being used not just in electric vehicles , but they are being used to be deployed combined with solar and wind to make them more reliable sources of power. They are being used as backup in EV charging stations, a whole variety of applications that are really starting to take the benefit of the fact that battery costs have come down dramatically.
When you make a bidirectional switch with conventional semiconductors, IGBTs, you typically take two pairs of IGBTs and diodes to allow for or to block the flow of power in either direction. We do that all in one device. So one B-TRAN replaces four conventional devices, and we do it much more efficiently. The conduction losses using B-TRAN are more than five times better than the conventional IGBT plus diode approach, which results in significantly more energy savings available for the application. The markets that we're going after, really, we divide into two groups. The first are the short-term markets where we are either an enabling technology or they have shorter design cycles because of the nature of the market segment. The other segment are the longer-term markets where they have longer design cycles. It takes longer to adopt a technology.
We're attacking both of those because they both take a considerable amount of time to get the industry up the learning curve. We're going to see our first revenue here really driven by things like solid-state switchgear, where people are making circuit breakers for the transmission and distribution system for industrial applications where they need a really low-loss breaker. That is going to be our early revenue here for 2025. We'll also be going into the energy and power segment where things like renewable energy or energy storage will use our technology to produce more useful kilowatt hours for the solar installation or the energy storage installation. Those segments alone will drive us to profitability, and we will start to see the revenue from these segments this year. In parallel to that, we're also working on these segments that take longer, and in particular, the automotive segment.
They have much longer design cycles, typically three to five years. We are working with a whole variety of tier-one companies and also OEMs to incorporate our technology into their next generation electric vehicles. Those will obviously provide very large volume as we ramp up the business here as they start to incorporate it into their next generation vehicles. We look at B-TRAN and solid-state circuit breakers . There has really been a growing need to have a solid-state solution. It is really driven by the fact that we have all these direct current sources that are being put into the utility system and the industrial systems, and they are all connected to the grid. You need solid-state circuit breakers that are fast-acting, that can handle a lot of current for things like renewables, energy storage, EV charging stations that are connected to the grid.
They have to have a lot faster circuit protection than what can be typically done with the traditional electromechanical devices. solid-state circuit breakers typically are more than 100 times faster than the traditional mechanical breaker. Because they act so fast, they eliminate arcing when the contacts of a breaker open. They are inherently safer since there's no arcing, and there's no wear from contacts opening as there is in a traditional breaker. You don't have maintenance and reliability issues associated with it when you go to a solid-state solution. Plus, the breakers, if they're solid-state, they're programmable, and they have diagnostic capability. It's really a technology that's needed as we go to an increasingly electrified society. Where B-TRAN really becomes an enabling technology here is its very low conduction losses.
That all translates to more energy delivered to the end user, less heat that has to be dissipated. The economics around a solid-state circuit breaker that use B-TRAN are more attractive, particularly on a lifecycle basis. Also, for many applications, you need bidirectional control for the circuit breaker because direct current faults can be on either side of the breaker itself. Being inherently bidirectional means that can be done with fewer parts and smaller breakers, making them more cost-effective. We announced at the end of last year our first design win for a solid-state circuit breaker. The customer that awarded us this design win is one of the largest circuit protection equipment manufacturers in Asia, targeting particularly industrial markets, utility markets, data centers, renewable energy applications. The prototype builds that we are going to be providing them take an existing circuit breaker design they have.
They will replace the silicon carbide devices they had in them and will put our B-TRAN devices and controls in its place. It's targeted for Q2, but candidly, we are about ready to ship those. We're well ahead of schedule on that program. It's expected to be the first of multiple products incorporating B-TRAN into solid-state circuit breakers, both with this customer and then leveraging that to others that are looking for solid-state solutions. We expect this to be one of our first customers that are going to generate revenue for us here in 2025 because they're very eager to bring a product to market. We represent a fast path for them to bring a really differentiated, highly competitive solution to the marketplace. We talked a little about electric vehicles. You know, electric vehicles have a lot of power semiconductors in them.
We're going to see a need to really bring more cost-effective, more efficient solutions because the challenge for electric vehicles today is cost and range anxiety. Our technology directly helps both of those. We're finding really strong interest with the OEMs and the tier ones to use our technology for things like EV contactors that are used to protect the batteries, the traction inverter, the DC to DC converter, really all looking for better solutions that do not rely on silicon carbide because of the fact they need to tackle cost and improve performance at the same time. The typical power semiconductor content in electric vehicle drive train is about $1,100 per vehicle.
As you start to think about the volume of vehicles that are produced every year, you know, even one design win means tremendous volume for us as a company, which is why we're so focused on making sure that we're delivering on our program with Stellantis and looking to get into other programs with other automakers. As I mentioned, Stellantis, you know, we have a program with them where they are looking to use our technology as part of the drive train inverter. We've already completed successfully the first two phases of this program. We are working with them on finalizing the scope of work for the third phase.
They've also surprised us with, because of what they're seeing with the performance, they actually want to now award us another program where they use our technology for a replacement for the EV contactors they've been exploring where they need a better lower loss solution. Our relationship with Stellantis continues to expand, and they're very happy with the performance that we've had here to date. We look forward to continuing to grow with them as part of their planning for their next generation vehicles. We have a whole variety of customers in a variety of market segments that we're working with now that have product in-house, that we're working closely with them on their applications. They include three global automakers. They include one of the top 10 global power conversion suppliers to the solar industry. We've got two Fortune Global 500 power management companies.
These are companies like Siemens, ABB, Schneider that produce protective relays and circuit breakers for data centers and utility industrial markets. We are working with three tier-one global automotive suppliers. We have a global provider of backup power and energy management solutions, and then a global power conversion supplier. A whole variety of companies are now, you know, using our technology, looking at how it can apply to their product. We are targeting these folks as the ones that we are hoping to have our next design wins here in addition to the circuit breaker design win that we recently announced. The commercial products that we are putting out there today, the first is a discrete device. It is a single die. It is rated at 1,200 volts and 50 amps. We have actually tested it up to 150 amps. The second product that we came out with is our SymCool power module.
It's a multi-die module rated at 1,200 volts and 200 amps, really targeting things like solid-state circuit breakers. That device really leverages all the things that we've learned on the discrete and gives a higher power rating capability for the circuit breaker folks that can parallel as many of these devices as they need for whatever breaker rating they want to target. The product that we've come out with after that is our SymCool IQ, which basically incorporates intelligent controls within the module, which is really targeting applications like renewables and energy storage and EV charging. Our expectation is as we ramp up the business, our gross margins for these products is going to be about 50%.
If we need to satisfy very large customers like automakers and others, we would actually license our technology as well, which would be further margin enhancement beyond what we're targeting for the products themselves. Looking at our milestones for 2025, we'd really like to lay out what we plan to capture and do during the year so that people can track our progress. Obviously, one of the things that we are very focused on is securing the next phase of our development program with Stellantis. It's building on the success we've had with them already here with the first two phases. We look to complete our deliverables in the first half of this year for our first circuit breaker design win. We look to leverage that activity and other things that we're doing to capture additional design wins and custom development agreements.
People will start to see that path to revenue for us that we're expecting to lead to our initial sales rep here in the second half of this year. We also intend to increase the power rating of our products. We've been conservative in how we've rated the technology. As we get more and more operating hours and go through our reliability testing, we are finding that we can actually increase the power rating, which allows the customers to actually get more power out of each device, which makes the product even more competitive from their perspective. We have begun our third-party automotive qualification testing. We expect to finish that this year, where we will take devices through all the testing and certification requirements to make it a qualified part for the automotive industry because this also helps our industrial sales as well.
Talking just briefly about our patent estate, you know, I mentioned we have 94 patents that have already issued. About 45 of those are outside of the U.S. So we have coverage in places like China, Japan, South Korea, India, Taiwan. They cover the core architecture itself, some of the unique things that we've developed from a control standpoint, some of the application-specific things. Even more importantly, we want to make sure that if somebody chooses to intentionally violate our patents, we still have protection. The really unique process that we've come up with for double-sided wafer fabrication, we treat as a trade secret. It took us quite a bit of time to go figure that out. It gives us an added layer of protection.
We really make sure that people really don't have access to that process flow that we have figured out on how to make a double-sided device in a conventional silicon wafer fab. Just looking at some of our recent news, it's really been around commercialization, announcing our first design wins, securing orders for our SymCool IQ, the work we're doing now with orders from tier-one suppliers, the work we're doing with the automotive folks. Our news flow will be continued to be focused around that commercialization and customer engagement activity. Keep an eye out for the announcements that we'll be making as we go along. Looking at the balance sheet, we have a little over 8 million shares outstanding. Very clean balance sheet. At last reporting, we had $15.8 million in cash with no debt on the balance sheet.
If you think about just from a cash view standpoint, last year we used over a little $8 million in cash. We have plenty of cash that takes us well into the middle of next year without any contribution from revenue. With that, I just want to open the call up to any investors that have questions for us. We'd be happy to tell you more about what we're doing.
Great. Thank you. We do have some questions for you. Let's talk with the company's design win. Also open other opportunities with the company and other companies. What efficiencies does that present for other companies?
Oh, good question. With that customer themselves, we actually can do other circuit breaker products. In fact, we've already begun a discussion with them because most companies offering circuit breakers, they actually bring a whole variety of products. The fact that we've got one that we've started with really opens the door to do more with that same customer for additional products. We're not constrained in any way. We're taking the lessons that we have learned from their product and things we've learned in terms of that testing and going to others because we're now more knowledgeable about the application. We can basically work with any of the circuit breaker providers that are out there. We're engaged with about half a dozen of them at this point in time. Really getting a lot of leverage out of that first design win.
On the design win customer, what other technology did that customer consider?
Interestingly, the circuit breaker that they sent us actually had silicon carbide devices in it. They asked us if we could take those devices out and the silicon carbide controls out and put our solution in place. Since we have much lower conduction losses, there is less heat to dissipate, we actually could fit it very easily into the same prototype breaker that they had already made.
What steps are you doing to expand the industrial and automotive pipeline?
Yeah, we're doing a really targeted outreach for all the players that are involved in things like protective relays and solid-state circuit breakers on the automotive side, particularly targeting things like EV contactors. Stellantis, as an example, was involved in a program that was using silicon carbide devices for EV contactors, and it was not meeting their performance and cost requirements. We are leveraging that activity now with multiple OEMs and tier ones to make them aware that we can be used as an EV contactor. We have things like the last week, the Applied Power Electronics Conference that took place in Atlanta, where we had a whole suite of very large companies that we met with that were interested in learning more about our technology or learning more about how it can be used in their application.
Pretty significant engagement from our commercial team on a whole variety of areas.
Great. Regarding the solid-state contactors, you mentioned five to eight per vehicle. How does this translate into revenue per vehicle?
Yeah, the contactor folks will actually incorporate our devices into the contactor. We won't actually be making the contactor for them. From a semiconductor standpoint, for every vehicle, there's probably $200-$300 just for the contactors that will go into it to provide the circuit protection they need.
Just talk a little bit about what investors might be misunderstanding about Ideal Power and why now is a good time to look at this stock.
I think a lot of people don't necessarily understand that new technology adoption takes time. You know, you've got to educate the target customer base. If you think about the engineers that we're working with at all these large companies, they didn't learn about B-TRAN in school. So, you know, we've got to find them, we've got to reach them, we've got to educate them about the technology, get devices in their hands, let them go into the lab. And we're finding that that response is really positive. So you've got to get them through that learning cycle. For us, we think it's a great time because we now have products that are out there that are performing well. Nobody has to worry about being the first because we're already starting to get those design wins. And we bring a solution that really just isn't available elsewhere.
As these companies are looking for lower loss devices that don't bear the high cost of some of the wide band gap materials, we can bring them a really competitive solution to help make their products higher performing and lower cost.
Does the current political climate pose any hurdles or opportunities?
You know, it's interesting because there's always kind of a lot of noise around what's happening with the government. If you look at the electrification of society that's going on, you know, the adoption of electric vehicles, the buildout of an EV charging infrastructure, the adoption of renewables and energy storage, it's global. In fact, the pace of that development and adoption in some parts of the world is actually getting faster and faster. Anything that happens kind of near term here doesn't seem to have much effect on it. The customers that we've been working with, we've seen no slowdown whatsoever in terms of their engagement and their desire to bring out new products. I think it's just, it's one of the things that you always have to keep an eye on it.
You have to make sure that there's not something that actually becomes an impediment to the adoption of technology. We're seeing just continued momentum around because it is a global change in terms of where we're going from the use of electricity.
Do you have any competition in the EV market? If not, it seems like other majors should follow suit with Stellantis.
There is always competition. You know, when you have a new technology that is not as mature as the existing technologies, sometimes, you know, companies want to play it safe. They want to see you get further along. They want to see more operating hours. We are seeing that repeatedly now that silicon carbide that was in programs that they are now starting to evaluate us for because they see an opportunity to use a technology that brings lower conduction losses and lower cost because it is such a big driver in the EV space. You have to fight and win every one of them. I think, you know, we have got a solution that as customers get more knowledgeable about it, as they get devices, as they start to look at incorporating it into their application, the benefits become apparent.
In light of the recent tariff wars, are there any plans to certify any domestic chip manufacturers to make your product?
We actually have some that we already work with. If we needed to go to a domestic source, we think we can do that, you know, pretty straightforward because we've developed and validated this process flow now at two completely separate silicon wafer fabs. If we have to engage with, you know, a fab here in the U.S., it's a relatively straightforward process. We don't see any pressure to do that at this point in time, largely because of the fact that if you are particularly looking at EV vehicles, they're longer design cycles. I think people are trying to evaluate whether these tariffs are really a negotiating tactic or whether they're going to be around for any substantial length of time.
The engineering teams we're working with are really just keeping their head down and focused on just developing their next generation vehicles and are not really focusing too much on the tariff situation.
Sure. Are you on pace to be at commercial yield for when the first SSCB goes into production?
Yes, we actually, you know, we spent quite a bit of time developing this process flow. We worked a lot at a fab that is operated by Teledyne here in the U.S. and some other fabs to develop it so that it was pretty portable. Even our very first run at the fab that we selected in Asia for our first production fab, we got yields that we were really pleasantly surprised with. The fab was actually pleasantly surprised as well. We are actually in good shape in terms of the ability to produce devices at a good commercial yield with good performance as we start to ramp up the business and customers start to place significant orders on us.
Does this commercial yield impact your margin level to achieve higher commercial yield to reach 50% margin, or is that more a function of the number of wafers needed to be processed to realize the 50% margin at scale?
It's largely driven by volume because when you're making things in small volume, obviously your cost per unit is higher. For any semiconductor device, you're always working to continue to improve that yield. It starts to become asymptotic at some point in time. We see opportunity for continued yield improvement. The biggest risk of that is already behind us in terms of getting to a level that we're comfortable with in terms of being able to make devices in sufficient quantity with sufficient performance.
Does a double-sided wafer provide more challenges?
Oh my gosh, yeah. It's very difficult. It's part of why you don't see it done, you know, often in industry because you've got to be able to figure out how you're protecting one side of the wafer while you're processing the other side. That processing goes back and forth between front and back. A lot of that was really figuring out how do we do that, how do we make sure we have good alignment of features between the front side and the back side and not have any issues with contamination or variability between the performance on one side and another. It was a very substantial development program that we had to go through. We've successfully completed that, so we're pretty excited about it.
If one B-TRAN replaces four other devices, can you explain the cost and efficiency savings? How dramatic is it?
If you look at a bidirectional application like circuit breakers, I mean, we're talking about losses that are more than five times better. There is a significant impact in terms of the rest of the product because the amount of surface area that the OEM product needs to dissipate all that extra heat from the conventional technology is a lot less. There is impact not just comparing the device to the conventional devices or to silicon carbide devices. It is significant impact to the cost of the OEM product also because of lower thermal management. That varies by application and product size. Since we're using existing silicon wafer fabricators, the comparable cost of our device in terms of producing it compared to a conventional IGBT is going to be pretty similar. It will be a little bit more expensive, but not a lot more.
We can bring a lot of value for just a very marginal increment in cost.
With Stellantis, can you discuss being awarded phase three for the module?
Yeah, you know, Stellantis actually had a kind of a tough year last year. So it kind of delayed them getting into phase three as they worked through changes in the marketplace, some inventory challenges they had. They've come through that. We actually had a very thorough review with them of the program that included Stellantis U.S., Stellantis France, Stellantis Italy, and of course us, all in Detroit where we went through the program, came out of that very, very pleased with the progress we've made in the technology and how it applies. It's also where they brought up, hey, we can use this for EV contactors. Let's get a program going for that. We are now at the point where they've asked us to draft the statement of work for phase three, which we've done. We've submitted it to them.
We have a review of that, I believe next week, where we'll get their feedback on it. We just have to get through that process of theirs internally that is all the buyoffs that need to happen in a very large, fairly bureaucratic company for any program approvals and funding awards.
When do you think you'll be able to put a name on at least a second automotive OEM?
I would hope we can do that this year sometime because we're actually pretty far along with one in particular. Now with so many of the tier ones that we're working with, really focusing on EV contactors, I think we'll hopefully have some tier ones that we'll be able to start to name here as well.
Perfect. Do you have any closing remarks for our viewers today?
I just want to thank everybody for joining us. We think 2025 is really shaping up to be a pretty exciting year for us. We've got several things in the works that I think are going to be some great commercial announcements. Please keep an eye on the news flow that's going to be coming out from us. I think you'll see some things from us in very short order.
Wonderful. Thank you so much, Dan, and we'll see you again real soon.
All right, thanks for having me.
All right, everyone, we'll be right back.