We'll open up the floor for a Q&A portion at the end. Just keep an eye on the time. There won't be music or anything just filtering you out after 20 minutes, but normally we just try and have people conclude their presentation at or around that mark, okay?
Yes.
This meeting is being recorded.
Very well. James, I will just do a very quick presentation. I do not want to dive into so many details, but I want to do a virtual tour quickly in the—because I have all the product in front of me here. It is an opportunity we can utilize. What do you think?
Okay, that's fine. Listen, I'm just going to kick it off, and if you want to do a quick presentation of the floor and then run through the slide deck, whichever you feel most comfortable doing. Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for joining us. Welcome to the annual Aegis Virtual Conference 2025. Up next to present, we have Micropolis Holding Company, trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol MCRP. We have Fareed and Dzmitry, CEO and CFO from the company, here to present all the way from the United Arab Emirates.
Hello, everyone. I'm happy to be with you here. I have some nice products to show you. I hope you can see them here. Now, our setup in Make It in the Emirates exhibition—actually, so many stands, if you can see it here. This is our setup, and this is our new products. Today we exhibited the robotic force unit for the Department of Environment in Abu Dhabi. We also exhibited the M1, the updated version. It's a production level, actually, with the complete autonomous stack in it. As you can see, this is a registered vehicle, which we are proud about. We have also the box cleaner. It is a collaboration between us and a Swedish company called MCS Robotics. We built this based on our M2 platform, which I will demonstrate in a minute.
We also—one of our unique customers—we have Transguard Group, part of Emirates Airlines, of course, 75,000 employees. Most of them will be robotics in the future. As you can see, this is the M2. Actually, this is made for, I mean, community security. We also presented the open model of the border control robot. As you can see, this is the M2, but this is the high-performance version. It's upgraded for the army. Now, I want to start to demonstrate the product, and this is the best way I believe that you guys can understand. This is the M2, and this is the M1 platforms. What we did here, this is a vertically—this is a vertically developed product. This is an autonomous robotic platform. It's not a vehicle 100%. It doesn't fall under the automotive standard, but this is a new standard that we created.
What we did, we designed a chassis that can be customizable, extendable. We can make it wider, narrower, depends on the customer requirement. We developed here, as you can see, a very small corner. It is a drive train, actually. It has an in-wheel motor that each wheel has its own motor that drives it with different torque and speed. We developed also an independent braking unit and an independent steering unit. We have here a suspension system with a drive brake and steer. Now, what we can do here, we can have multiple steering options, and this is very useful in various operations like mobility within a controlled environment or uncontrolled environment, off-road, in-road. It is always customizable, depends on the customer. We have also a customized battery system that we also developed. We also have here the smart power distribution unit.
This is a vertical developed in Micropolis itself. We have—it depends on the battery. For example, if we have a 48-volt battery, we can outlet whatever voltage is required. So we have here 20, we have 48 volts, 24 volts, 19 volts, 12 volts, and 5 volts in one system. It's an intelligent, very intelligent system, actually. We have also here the main robotic control unit. This is the main nervous system of our mobility-specific platform. This is exactly where all the commands come from the high-level control and go across the wheels. Same thing, whatever you saw here is exactly what is in the larger platform. This one is like, of course, higher power, and also it drives on the street. This one drives, the previous one drives in more gated communities or controlled environments.
Now, I want to show you here, I don't know if you can see it, but this is the smart power distribution unit. This is built on Cortex M4. It's a very advanced microcontroller. This is the electrical system, the complete electrical system. Here we have the main robotic control unit, MRCU. This is also built on Cortex M7, very high-end controller. Also, we have other control units. We have here the steering and braking unit, and we have here the RFS Robotic Functionality System. What do I mean by this? Is this. As I mentioned before, we have a multi-specific platform, but we also have application-specific pod. The application-specific pod is controlled by another controller called the RFS. It means the customer now can ask us to add anything they want. For example, give you this example.
Now, this is built on the M2, but the customer here said, "Can you add, for example, high-pressure water sprinklers or high-pressure CO2, dry ice, CO2 to clean the inside of a container?" We said, "Of course." We can also add, as you can see here, containers for solutions, CO2, and a big tank of water. They are all controlled by the RFS. This is exactly what this technology is all about. Whatever you saw, whatever technology in here is exactly what's in here. This one, for example, the environment, the Department of Environment, they have a challenge in remote areas because this is desert here, and they want and they have preserves, 58 preserves around the UAE, but they are all in remote areas. It is hard to deploy people there to plant trees or vegetation.
We said, "What if we add, for example, a drone that spreads seeds and also a robotic arm that can actually be controlled by a human from the operation room?" We have a plowing function if necessary, like this, okay? We can add, of course, all the supplies will be in this tank, but all the controls will be controlled by one controller called the RFS. Now, of course, we manufacture this completely. By the way, believe it or not, this was the three-week challenge by the Ministry of Technology and the Ministry of Industry and Advanced Technologies. From design to production, that is the first version, of course, first prototype, three weeks only. That is why this exhibition, because we want to demonstrate it here. This is a more finished product.
The Dubai Police asked us, "Okay, apart from the security camera, which is here," I hope I'm turning the camera properly, James. Can you see it?
We can see it. Yep. You're doing great.
That's nice. We have, they said, "Okay, we have a problem with our drones. We don't know where to launch them from because the drone has like 20 minutes flying range. Can you put it in a box and control it from the operation room?" We said, "Yes, we can put it in this box." This box, this is called the drone launcher. It opens and launches the drone. Now, this is the kind of technology we are bringing to the market, especially for our government and semi-government, large operations. We're bringing this kind of products because we know that they have a big problem with labor-intensive operations or remote areas, okay?
They want, and you know, in this country, we import, for example, not only this country, across GCC, we have to bring people from outside to do, I mean, very hard labor in remote areas, harsh environments. We said, "What if we use AI, robotics, and smart mobility, combine them in one product?" Of course, like this, you're going to have a problem with that. Are we going to come up with an off-the-shelf product and make sure that everybody uses it? It's impossible. We provided customization. We built the technology to a specific level. On top of this, we said, "Okay, we're going to build a control system that we can program it every it depends on the customer and it depends on their problem.
We can program it in a specific way where they can actually benefit from the robotic function later on. This is exactly what Micropolis is all about as a product, of course. I will just go to my presentation very quickly just to explain to you guys, I mean, more about our business. I will just try to skip many slides because you can read this later. Our competitive advantage here is actually that we are in-house R&D production, okay? It means that we do the R&D and we do the production at the same time, okay? We always come with innovative solutions for our customers, okay, because of customization. We also always focus on government partnerships like ministries or authorities or departments where they can add value to Micropolis. I'll give you an example.
The Ministry of Industry and Advanced Technologies, we came to them with a problem. We said, "You know what? We didn't follow any industry standard like automotive or something else, and we will have a problem with certification and testing and validation, what we do." They said, "No, you came up with a completely new industry. We are going to help you with the categorization. We're going to create a new category for you. And we're going to hire consultants. We're going to hire whoever is there to help you to create the new category and will allow you to deploy your products." This is the most important slide I'm telling you because this is where we are. We are in UAE . Everything is fluid. Everything is agile and smooth. Whatever we do here, we have a big support from the government.
Actually, we're not just building a product for GCC or for UAE. We're building a product that will be used here also for the world to enjoy, really. I will just skip all those slides, okay? I will go to an important slide here. For example, UAE, why they're focusing on AI and digital transformation? They believe 9% of the GDP will come from robotics and AI by 2030. Dubai alone will demand 200,000 robots by 2030. They announced this news. This announcement came from the Crown Prince himself, who is actually running the government in Dubai. That's just one city. Imagine what will happen in Abu Dhabi. Imagine what happened in Saudi. Those are just like three areas of focus.
Imagine what will happen when our product will succeed and we move, I mean, let's say we go to Texas, I mean, border control, 2,300 kilometers of fence, let's say. Okay, what if we deploy our technology there? We will be the first in the market to be actually ready with our technology. This is something important, I think, I want you guys to focus on. Dzmitry, if you want to add anything, you can go. I'm done from my side, yeah.
Maybe you can show the slides on financials, the last one.
Sure.
Just to give a little bit of place on the financials and our IPO. We IPO'd on the New York Stock Exchange American in March this year. We're quite new to the public market. We are the first one from the United Arab Emirates, actually, to IPO on the New York Stock Exchange, of which we're very proud. We got IPO proceeds of $15.5 million. Currently, we are trading at around $2.20, I believe, during today. Market cap is around $70 million- $80 million as of today. Average volume is around $200,000. This is kind of as well, I mean, we're hoping for more liquidity as we go forward.
We're doing a lot of press releases as well as Fred was mentioning on the new technology, on the new MoUs that we're signing with potential customers, as well as the exhibition, right, that is going on at the moment. We had very important visitors yesterday and today where we will be able as well to announce quite soon. In terms of financials, just to add as well, we are kind of a pre-revenue company still at the moment. Our cash burn rate per month is around $500,000-$600,000 at the moment. Yeah, that's about it. Maybe as well, you can reach out with an introduction about yourself and myself for the audience as well to review.
Yeah. I started the company in 2014, actually, as a software company. We as a digital, I mean, a digital twin project. In 2018, we met with Dubai Police. When everything changed, actually, Dubai Police wanted us to build autonomous police patrols for them. This is where everything changed because we thought, "Are we going to build for Dubai Police just or autonomous police patrols when we succeed, or shall we think about it differently?" This is the vision. This is where everything changed because we thought, "No, we are in smart mobility, robotics, and AI, and we need to come with a new product for the world." Now, in 2021, Dzmitry joined us with a bunch of other guys as well.
We thought, "What if we make this company way more international in the future?" We started building, of course, together with the help of Dzmitry, I mean, an operation that's ready to scale. We were very careful with spending. Of course, this is very important because we knew every penny matters. We put so much money in engineering. We did not put so much money in PR and marketing. It was not the right time anyways to PR and market. We focused so much engineering to come up with a unique product like this one. Thanks to Dzmitry, he helped a lot with this. Alone, I cannot do it because I am not a finance guy. I am a good engineer, but nothing else, okay? This is the company. What I want to tell you about our company, we are a flat structure.
Yes, I am a CEO, Dzmitry, CFO, and we have lots of engineers. We do not have real management, I mean, because everyone is a leader in the company. No management at all. We are just great engineers working together. The company is governed by committees. We have a committee for everything. We have a committee for the mechanical system. We have a committee for the autonomous system. We have a committee for the control system. It is just great engineers working together. I mean, this is how the company is operating. Of course, we have a good corporate governance structure. We have on our board, I mean, people we know and we trust and respect. We have also an audit committee. We have a remuneration committee, nomination committee. We have good code of ethics in the company.
In the high level, we understand governance, but in the low level, we keep the company, I mean, and the whole operation towards more innovation than organization because we need people to think, and we do not want them to be afraid of thinking and executing, actually. The company is this. Yes, me and Dzmitry here in front of you, but we have everyone in the company is as important as me and Dzmitry, actually. This is what I wanted to explain.
Hey, guys. Guys, if you like, I've got a number of questions that have come in in the chat. So if you finish with the presentation, please let me know. Yeah? You good? Okay. The most interactive presentation we've had thus far today. Great job. Okay. First question, guys. What is the current status and future roadmap for your Microspot AI surveillance software, particularly regarding its integration with law enforcement agencies like the Dubai Police?
Very good question and this very intelligent question. I'll tell you something. Microspot evolved to become the main operation system for our technology. Now, let me explain it like this. Microspot is not only one software. It is like a bunch of softwares together. For example, we have the AI part, and we have the mission control part, which is the— we have also the HD map, which is like the digital twin of any operation. We have the teleoperator. The AI part can be— we can train our AI model on recognition and segmentation, classification, whatever the customer wants. We used it. We used it for Dubai Police because they said, "Can you give us facial recognition? Can you give us behavioral analysis, suspect matters, criminal logic?" Yes.
Our AI, we can train it the way you want because it's based on computer vision and large language model. Of course, we are not going to offer this solution just for security and law enforcement. We want to also offer it for oil and gas. We want to offer it for logistics, facility management, community management. Everyone has something else, like different computer vision algorithm. They share together the mission control. They share together the teleoperator. We said, "You know what? Microspot needs to evolve to become one unified software with different functions." We can always customize it depends on the customer. In a nutshell, Microspot is our main software. Yes, correct. It's not just focused on law enforcement and security. It actually can be recustomized for everyone.
We're adding now, we're adding a very unique function to it, the SOP, Standard Operating Procedure. We're adding a large language model for the SOP, which will help a lot. It's difficult to explain it in just words, but it will help a lot. It means this software can be used by everyone, but we are not going to offer it for any customer unless they partner with us because the main money comes, yes, from software, but it comes more from the robotics, the smart mobility, and it comes also from after-sales. Yeah.
Excellent. Thank you. Great answer. Next question. Is there possible future revenue opportunities for the company related to the massive NEOM, NEOM infrastructure project in Saudi Arabia?
Yes, of course. NEOM, actually, they reduced it, but they have other NEOM. We spoke to NEOM. They even sent us an RFP for the M2. Yeah, as you know, NEOM actually shrank a little bit. Now we're focusing on other in Saudi Arabia. Now we received communication from Aramco, and we are talking to them since two months now, which is, I think, they're a way bigger customer. They want us, they want to use our M2 and M1 police security patrols, but they also want us to help them customize new robots for pipe inspection, maintenance, and more remote operations. I don't know if I'm—there is no material yet. Just as a disclaimer, we didn't sign anything with them. Soon we might sign with them, but we don't know yet.
Okay. Excellent. Next question. Have you considered agricultural applications with the drone carrier for farmers who use drones?
Yes. Today, yes, of course. Today also, we received a delegation from the Ministry of Environment, and they asked us specifically if we can develop a robot for farmers. We said yes. After the exhibition, we might have a joint R&D with the Ministry of Environment, and we are going to develop a robot like this. If they fund it, yeah, of course. I think they will. Yes, we are considering this heavily. By the way, James, worth mentioning, whatever we develop with one customer, we can just sell it worldwide for anyone. It is our own IP all the time. It is our technology.
Excellent. Thank you. Next question. Could you describe the incentives in place for GCC regions to choose a local supplier? Are there tax incentives or subsidies to choose a local company versus foreign-based?
Yes. That's a great question because we are in the ICV exhibition. This ICV means in-country value. This exhibition is sponsored by the Ministry of Industry and Advanced Technologies. For example, today, if you want to participate in any RFP, any tender, you have to submit your ICV certificate. If you have a higher score, it means you are more likely to get more points, more likely to give this tender. It means if you are in-country value, it means you manufacture in the country, you vertically develop in the country, you prefer in-country suppliers or in-country raw material. Yes, the more you develop in the country, the more business you will get from the government. It is by law.
Excellent. I think we'll do one more question. Given the recent IPO and reported losses, what is your projected timeline to achieve positive EBITDA or cash flow? What are the key milestones to reaching this goal?
Dzmitry can answer this, but let me just add one point first. See, to be frank with you, we call the company Micropolis Holding. I do not think it was a smart decision by us, but I think we are going to change it to Micropolis Technologies. Maybe it will help us later on for more visibility. The second thing, I believe the minute we entered the market, it was the market crash. I do not know what happened in the States because the tariffs, whatever. We were just unlucky. We got in the market at the wrong time. We are lucky. I mean, our stock did well for some time. And we did not have a lot of publicity. Now we are working on this, actually. I believe soon things will get way better. Dzmitry, if you want to add anything.
Yeah, thanks, Fareed. It's totally true. In terms of the EBITDA positive, we don't have yet the exact date or projection when we'll hit that milestone. It will be all depending, of course, on the clients, client base with who we're signing the contracts. The good thing and the beauty of our business model as well is that with only one contract and client that we're as well targeting and hopefully delivering soon, only with one contract, our EBITDA will be already positive. Thanks to the high margins as well of the business that we are having. Yeah, I think that's it.
Excellent. Time for one more question. Which industries find your robots most useful?
To me, honestly, to be frank with you, in the future will be mining because I'm talking to many, many clients, and they're struggling, and they want someone to come up with a solution for their operation. That's in the future. Today, I think defense, border control might be our biggest contract. We are piloting now with the National Guards, the Ministry of Defense, with 1,200 kilometers of fence in UAE. Imagine we are going to place one robot every one kilometer. It means they're going to order 1,200 robots once we achieve this milestone, which is the pilot project. Those will be the biggest ones, honestly.
Excellent. Gentlemen, that concludes the Q&A portion for today. I want to thank you for your time and your wonderful presentation. You can track the company's progress trading as Micropolis Holding Company on the NYSE American under the ticker symbol MCRP. We look forward to monitoring your progress for the rest of the year. Fareed, Dzmitry, always a pleasure. We look forward to having one of your robots here in our office sometime soon.
Soon. Thank you. Thank you, James. Thank you, guys. Bye-bye.
Pleasure. Thank you so much. Great presentation. See you soon. Bye-bye.
The recording has stopped.
Hey, James. Jesse, this is Brian.
Brian, how are you?
Good, good. You want to give me some access to share my screen? I guess I've got it there.
Yeah, Brian, you should be good.
Yeah, let me just now go ahead and start the presentation, and you can just tell me if you can see the—are you able to see the slide?
There you go. There's the first slide. Brian, we're going to do roughly about a 20-minute presentation.
Sure.
We're going to open up the floor for Q&A portion, sort of five-minute quick-fire round at the end. Just keep an eye on the time. I won't kick you out with any sort of music or pointers, but 20 minutes or less for your presentation is normally about how we're doing it. As soon as the—
Yeah, I'll have a—
This meeting is being recorded.
Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for joining us. Welcome to the annual Aegis Virtual Conference 2025. Up next to present, we have Expion360 Inc , trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol XPON. We have Interim CFO, CEO, and Director, Mr. Brian Schaffner. Brian, welcome. Pleasure to have you back.
Thank you, Jesse. I appreciate that. Do you want us to start now, or do you want us to wait?
The floor is yours.
The floor is yours.
Okay. We'll go ahead and take the extra time. Thank you so much. Welcome. I'm Brian Schaffner. I'm the CEO, a board member as well, and interim CFO for Expion360 . We've been operating in the clean energy battery space since 2016. I do encourage you to take a look online at our investor portal as we had an earnings call on May 15th. Things went well. One of our biggest goals is replacing lead acid with energy storage solutions that are UL 1973 compliant. UL 1973 is the strictest lithium battery standard. We currently also focus on developing unique footprints, meaning sizes of batteries in the RV and recreational space. We've just come out with a home energy product. We are also pivoting to onshoring the production.
Currently, we are assembled in the United States, but we are working on setting up a cell plant here in the U.S. in partnership with our Asian partners to be able to get the benefit of lower margins or better margins for the company when we make something. We serve our customers through our core values: safety, quality, and service. We are the high-priced leader in the industry. We are a more expensive battery in general, lithium iron phosphate battery than the competition. We bring to the table, we back that up with a warranty, industry-leading warranty of 12 years. We have never experienced any recalls. Currently, our auditors are confident enough in our warranty costs. They do not require us to do a warranty reserve. That is a very unique thing to be able to say when you are producing batteries in this space.
Just a little bit of overview for us. Again, leader in lithium iron phosphate, LiFePO4, if you're taking a look at the chemistries. We consider ourselves to be an engineering company that just happens to make batteries. We have a fantastic former COO and now President of the company, Paul Shoun, who's responsible for our battery designs and is one of the reasons why we can stick with safety, quality, and service and be able to sell a premium battery in a space where a lot of our competition does a dive for the bottom. We're currently leveraging our experience in RV and marine to expand our influence in home energy. The home energy market, as I'll talk about in a second here, the home energy market is growing.
Not just home energy, but energy storage in general, as people try to set up little microgrids and create themselves some grid stability, whether they want to have a business that can still be online in the issue of a power shortage from one or two hours or if they're shooting for something that could be done indefinitely with the help of solar. We're there to help them do that. We have developed two home energy storage products. One of them that's modular. One of them that has an inverter in it that looks kind of like a Tesla Powerwall. We have backed this up with patents and proprietary technology. We have a fantastic management team down to our board of directors that understands the technology and the finance in the space.
Again, talking about leveraging our experience in RV, we are very excited that the RV market is returning. That helps cover the base of our expenses while we expand into home energy and while we work on onshoring our product, our cell production. I'll show you what I'm talking about with that cell in just a minute. The RV Industry Association did a survey in March of 2025. They show that shipments are increasing by 14%. We have seen the benefit for that. In the fall, when we did our road shows in Elkhart in September and October, we had more systems installed in the recreational vehicles that were on display there than at any time in our customers' history.
We did make an announcement that based on those relationships, we had picked up an incremental $5 million in revenue that could be expected to be seen in 2025. We also have huge opportunities in the RV market to retrofit, not just to provide batteries in new RVs, but to retrofit through our partnership with Camping World. As an example, with retrofitting, there are over 10 million RVs on the road. Most of those have lead acid batteries that last about three years, two years. I do not know about you, but the last time that I put a battery in my boat, which is similar to the batteries that we put in the RV, it lasted a year and a half. Safety in the RV industry is very important to us, which is why we use the safest lithium chemistry, lithium iron phosphate, or LiFePO4.
It has less of a chance of thermal runaway than you sometimes see in EV fires. A lot of those chemistries, they're using NCM or nickel cobalt manganese, which requires a much more complicated heating and cooling system to keep the battery in the proper operating temperature. We also have our proprietary battery management system or BMS that helps avoid those types of issues as well. We are in the battery or the energy storage space. That is the vertical that we're in. This just gives you a look at where we've come and where we're going. Started out in recreational vehicle and operation. We're operating in marine, light EV, now into home energy storage, working with industrial applications such as electrification of forklift and supply movement within warehouses.
Of course, as I mentioned earlier, if we can produce the majority of our product or our products here in the U.S., that'll help us with a competitive advantage related to our gross margins. All of this is driven by our President and Paul Shoun. He's an electrical mechanical engineer. He does the design and the development, so everything is done in-house. We protect our IP with 11 pending patents. Again, we back that up with our warranty, 12 years. We've had no product recalls, 100% replacement for the first six years, prorated replacement after that. We do something that a lot of companies don't do. We service and provide support for the entire system that's sold to the customer, not just the battery. That's a big deal since we are a master Victron distributor.
If you buy something from us that has a solar panel, a Victron component, and the battery, we help our customers figure that out. You can probably go on social media and see our customers are very happy that we'll help them and not push it off on another supplier or another manufacturer of a part and say that it's not our problem. Home energy storage market, home energy, battery storage, and then the production of battery cells. That's really the future of the growth. We're thankful for the growth that we get in the recreational vehicle industry, but the $170 billion market in home energy and the $200 billion market in cells that are produced for energy storage far outweigh anything that we would see as an opportunity or as a total market with RV.
The demand is the fastest of any of our service markets as predicted in home energy. It's driven by a lot of factors, including grid instability, rising energy costs. Our consumers also have a desire for control over their own lives, their microgrids. Interestingly, that you can get a return on investment with the home energy system without having solar. You can imagine in some places, like in New York, from midnight until 4:00 in the morning, they have a very, very low energy cost per kilowatt hour, sometimes as low as $0.02-$0.04 . During the day, you could have $0.30-$0.40 a kilowatt hour.
The battery system can be programmed in conjunction with its connection to the grid to bring power into the battery when you're paying $0.02-$0.04 a kilowatt hour and then use it during the day when it would have cost you $0.30-$0.40. We've seen some ROI projections on that as low as two to four years for a customer. If you know anything about the solar industry, usually the payback on a solar system in the past has been somewhere in the eight to twelve-year range. That really gives an advantage to a customer who would like to see a return on their investment. Light electrical vehicles, seeing a lot of growth in that, people wanting forklifts, wanting small townie cars that don't go over 30 miles an hour and have a 30-mile range. I used to have one of those myself.
It was actually fantastic around town. I loved having it. It was made by a little company in Canada called Zenn, Z-E-N-N. We loved it so much we named it. It was Myrtle the Turtle. We would like to provide the batteries and battery systems for more companies like Myrtle. That is the light industrial market that we service. Let me run through quickly kind of the technology and design and innovation that makes our product unique and allows us to be a premium price leader and quality leader in our industries. If you take a look here, lithium ion in general is recognized as one of the safest battery chemistries, as I have talked about before. It charges two to three times faster. It has higher energy density than a typical battery, and it is lighter.
The lightness may not make a difference in a home energy installation, but it certainly makes a difference in the marine industry where they are very worried about balancing loads and cargo hauling capabilities. In the RV industry as well, sometimes with the limited load capabilities of some of the trucks and trailers that our batteries are in, the weight of the battery is definitely an advantage. We have our own mobile app, Expion 360 Bluetooth. We have an extended life, 12 years, which is usually 3,000-5,000 charging cycles. That's 10 times the charging cycles that you'll get out of a lead acid battery.
The most interesting thing that's happening with us right now, which is why I was in Washington, DC, this last week to talk about tariff relief, is we have an opportunity with our 10-year relationship with our current supplier to onshore the IP and onshore the equipment that's been building these batteries. If you take a look at the cell that's on the picture there, there's one standing up and one that's kind of lying on its side. We make 4.0 amp hour and 4.5 amp hour cells through our relationship with our Asian supplier. The standard cell for a 26650 cell, and that's a very standard cell in the industry, is 3.4 amp hours. We can get up to 30%-32% more power out of the same footprint.
Those cells and that technology to put that much energy density into one of those cells is not available, does not exist here in the U.S. We are very, very excited in working a two-prong attack there, both with private investors and with the Department of Energy to bring that technology, that IP, and to make our batteries, our BMSes, and ourselves 100% U.S.-made. How does that help our bottom line? That would open up to us quite a few contracts, whether it was state, federal, military contracts. Anytime we can say we are 100% U.S.-made and you are dealing with a product that has some type of a BMS or Bluetooth connectivity, they really like it to be a U.S.-made product. This gives you an inside look at one of our batteries.
Just so you know, before we go to the next slide, one of the batteries that we have is designed, it's so thin that it's just barely bigger than the width of one of those rows of cells. IP66, it's rated for dust and water incursion, three and a half times the capacity of your normal RV battery with a great warranty. The neat thing is one of our patents is related to heating the battery. If you don't know this, a lot of there are heated options for batteries. In the RV industry and in the marine industry and in the industrial industry, the battery is providing the power to heat itself. The solution in our industry is to wrap a blanket around the battery.
You can imagine if you wrap a blanket around something and start to heat it up, the interior of the battery is not as warm as the exterior. If you take a look at the pink on the outside of this cutout and then there is a thin pink line on the inside, this is proprietary technology, our vertical heat technology. It has a heating element on the positive and the negative terminal of each of these stainless steel cells, and it heats all of the batteries simultaneously. Even more even heat distribution and less power to heat the battery. Here is a look at our full line that we have right now outside of our home energy system. The battery that I was talking about that is 4.2 inches wide is the one that has more green on it down in the bottom. That is our Edge.
It's been very, very well received. Market channels, where do we sell into? We have dealer direct. We have distributors that sell for us. We put a lot of batteries in new equipment that's coming out of Elkhart, Indiana. We also do private labels for people. We have associations with Camping World, Interstate Battery, Meyer, Alaskan, to name a few. It's one of the reasons why we just posted our fifth sequential quarter of growth, and we expect that to continue. Home energy. Again, we moved up our home energy development time due to the downturn in RV sales in 2023. Even though we did gain market share in 2023, we knew that home energy was our future mainly because of the quality product that we can put into it at a good price, competitive price, but also because the market is so much larger.
Proper UL certification is really key on these. You usually have two different UL certifications, one for the battery and one for the inverter. You are required to have a UL 9540 certification that certifies the battery and the inverter as a system. That is going to be required in states that have tax credits that require you to have the UL certification, such as California. I am proud to say that shipments started in January, and that provided a nice bump in our revenues for the first quarter. Here is a look at our two home energy storage solutions. One of the things that you might know in the industry is that some of our competitors do not allow our installers and implementers to mark up the battery. We provide a healthy margin for our installers, for our partners that sell this and install this with customers for us.
We're able to provide that margin with still being price competitive with some of the big boys out there like Tesla. Our system on the left can hold up to 20 kWh, kilowatt-hours of power in 5 kW blocks. You can imagine it's a less expensive option for you if you just want to start out small. If you decide that you want more energy backup or you want to be able to be off the grid longer, sometimes an electrician has to come out and do this, but in some states, they would just allow you to put in another brick, and the system would recenter itself, restabilize itself, and you would double, triple, or quadruple the backup power in your house if you only had one of those. The AC coupled all-in-one on the right has an inverter in it.
That is more like our Tesla Powerwall offering that you saw a picture of it on this page. Again, the price point, the MSRP that we have there has a built-in margin for our installation partners, and we're very proud of that. Our relationship with our Asian manufacturers and our global presence has really been allowed us to start an onshoring effort with our 26650 high-density cells. They're currently not made anywhere in the U.S. We have a 10-year relationship with our manufacturing partner, and we are leveraging that relationship to purchase high-density cell manufacturing IP and equipment, move that to the United States as demand for energy is growing at 20.7% year- over- year, according to Grand View Research, and should be reaching a $200 billion market by 2030.
One of the nice things, one of the benefits for us, is that the financial burden of setting up this joint venture is not going to be borne by us. We are bringing the technology. We are the engineering partner. We have two paths, one private path, one DOE path to bring the cash to the market to this project. Why do I bring that up? Because that means that we're not stressing our cash situation, our cash position to move into a project which will take one to two years, depending on what solution we end up bringing over from Asia. The other benefit to us is that we'll have access to our high-density cells at cost plus. That'll help our margin significantly.
We also, with that distinct advantage of the 32% more energy density, we will also be receiving as part of the joint venture partnership, whichever method it ends up being in, whether it's private investment or whether we do something through the DOE, we will receive royalties on every battery sold. That is a big deal to us because we will essentially have an additional revenue stream, which is a project management stream, engineering stream outside of the dollars that we bring in for our current manufacturing and sales efforts. Finally here, it looks like I got two minutes left. We've made a big effort to minimize tariffs. We did that by purchasing quite a bit of inventory October, November, and December. That really showed with supplier concessions and a few small price increases.
We had a gross profit of 24.5% in Q1, where a year ago in the first quarter was 22.9%, and in 2024, it was 20.5%. We have been able to do really well with our margins based on some of our strategic initiatives around tariffs. Q1 2025 was our fifth sequential quarter of growth with revenues at $2 million, up 111% over the previous year, and we expect that to continue. Finally, we have done a lot of work on SG&A expense reduction, reduced by 24.7% compared to the fourth quarter of last year. Legal fees, professional fees way down, a few positions here or there, termination and consolidation of a warehouse. We have stuff stacked all over the place, but financially, it is a good thing. Again, we are expecting sequential sales growth to continue. As an investor, I would implore you, I think that we are a pretty good deal.
Our market cap right now is less than our inventory on hand, and we have almost no debt. We are a strong contender to benefit from current initiatives to move manufacturing to the United States. How would you like me to turn that back to you, James? Do you want me to stop sharing what works for you?
Let me give you a screen up, Brian. That was a fantastic presentation. Thank you so much. We have a number of questions that have come in here. We have about seven minutes. We will see how many we can get through. First question, could you describe the possibility of partnership with major OEMs in the RV sector, such as THOR, Forest River, or Winnebago?
We are already selling into several of those OEMs.
If you go back and take a look at our press releases, as far as a partnership, I mean, we'd love a partnership, but we've seen in the past that a partnership with a THOR tends to alienate some of the other OEMs. We've seen it strategic to bring ourselves in just as a supplier. I think that one of our competitors did that. Once they went full bore with THOR, they had a very hard time selling into Forest River, selling into Winnebago. From a strategic standpoint, we might like those sales, but I'm not sure what it would do with our relationship to the OEMs that we already service.
Okay, great. Thank you. Next question. Other than possible tariffs, are there other incentives in the RV sector for buy American-made products for your category, such as tax incentives or otherwise?
Not any tax incentives that I know of. Right now, most of the manufacturers that are in lithium iron phosphate are doing assembled in the U.S. There's one of them that says made in the U.S., but I happen to know that there are some components in their battery that really aren't made in the U.S., so it's not 100%. I think the real value to us in doing the onshoring effort, and we are hot on this trail, which is why we started mentioning it. You can go back and take a look at our earnings call last week.
The real benefit to us, number one, are the royalties that come to us from managing the project, the fact that we have little to no financial risk or skin in the game as far as dollars, and yet we're benefiting from being able to get royalties and being able to get our product at a lower price point when we put it into the batteries. I mean, I would take a deal like this any day. You lined up five of these, I'd say, "Let's do the next five." You're telling me that I'm not going to be risking my funds, and I'm going to be getting a better price for a product I'm already selling, and I'm going to be getting a royalty once this product is produced. I mean, it is a fantastic opportunity for us.
Excellent. Excellent. Next question.
If HESS demand and new OEM orders both spike, do your current cell supplies and contract manufacturers have room to keep up, or will you need new capacity?
You're talking about with our current product?
Mm-hmm.
It would have to be a 10x spike for us to start having issues with supply. Like any other company that's our shape, if I ended up with a non-cancelable PO for a 10x move, we'd be going back to our valued partners at Aegis for probably some inventory financing or doing an announcement to do a capital raise. Obviously, I don't have the cash to bring in $40 million or $50 million worth of inventory if that's what we were looking at. Currently, I do not see any supply-side issues with being able to support that type of growth.
Okay. Excellent. Excellent. One more question.
What progress have you made in diversifying your supply chain, and how does this align with your goal to onshore production in the U.S.?
We have the same supply chain that we've had before. The diversification piece that we've spoken to in the past is that we have two main suppliers in Asia. One of those has successfully moved some of its production to the Scandinavia area. We have thought that if tariffs got really, really bad, we could potentially source from the U.K., the Scandinavia area, if that was a way to get some tariff relief. I believe that our best path for tariff relief relates to the fact that this product, our high-density cell, is not available in the U.S.
There is a lot of interest at the DOE and Department of Commerce in people who are willing to go out, buy that IP, move it to the U.S., and then make it 100% a U.S.-manufactured product. I am less concerned about my supply side and having one or two suppliers today than I was before, just because the current attitude of cooperation at really all levels of government is high for us to be able to successfully onshore this product. I am very excited about it.
Excellent. Excellent. Brian, that really does conclude the Q&A portion for today. I want to thank you so much for your time and your wonderful presentation. For everybody tuning in, you can obviously keep an eye on the company's stock trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol XPON, Expion360 Inc.
We look forward to tracking your progress for the rest of the year. Thank you.
Thank you, James.