Everyone, thanks for joining us for, I believe, the last or maybe the second last session of the first day of the 27th Needham Growth Conference. My name is Chris Pierce, covering Transportation Technology at Needham. It's my pleasure to welcome John Van Scoter, CEO of Solid Power.
Nice to see you.
Good to see you, John.
Nice to see you.
Thanks for coming out from Colorado.
Yes.
Yeah, I'd love to. We'll have a little fireside chat format. And first and foremost, why don't you give me? I'd love to hear, you know, 60-90 seconds on your background and a Solid Power primer, and we'll take it from there.
Okay. My background is primarily semiconductors. I spent almost 30 years with Texas Instruments, a variety of capacities, but basically doing early stage growth of technology into businesses, which is our challenge at Solid Power. I also did a stint in a solar company, eSolar in Southern California, for seven or eight years. And then I worked for a short period with SRI International, Stanford Research Institute, again doing commercialization of early stage technologies.
Okay. And can you hit on solid-state batteries as an early stage technology?
Sure.
What do we need to know, and kind of what's the high level, and what's, I don't want to say holding it back, but what's the future look like kind of?
Sure.
Yeah.
Yeah, so we're focused on the next generation of batteries, and that's all-solid-state batteries. Current lithium-ion batteries are very pervasive, and they work very nicely. They have a liquid electrolyte, which works very well to move the electrons back and forth between the plus and minus.
So that's the separator we're talking about?
Yes, that's right. It's actually the liquid that goes around both the anode and cathode and defines what passes through the separator.
Okay.
Yes, but that is a highly flammable liquid, and so the promise of all-solid-state batteries is to remove that source of safety or fire and replace it with an all-solid-state sulfide compound that acts both as the separator as well as the conduit to store and discharge electrons.
Okay. And just a dumb question to start, but if it's solid, how do the electrons pass through it? Or like, what's the right way to think about it? Or it's because it's the anode and the separator? Like, what's the right way to kind of think about that for investors newer to the story?
Sulfide electrolytes are unique. They have electron conductivity, but they also have ionic conductivity, which is basically it prevents the transfer when you don't want it of electrons. So it acts as a gate between the plus and the minus. Unlike the liquid electrolytes, we actually put some of the solid electrolyte in the anode, in the mixture. We call it anolyte. Then we do have a separator layer that is primarily electrolyte, sulfide electrolyte. And then we put also some of the sulfide electrolyte in the cathode, so catholyte. And in the right ratio, it allows that transfer, even though it is a solid, as well as the prevention across that separator barrier.
Okay. And then you kind of led with that lithium-ion batteries, they work. They're not, there's issues there. What are the issues that, you know, these solid-state batteries can solve for or do better than lithium-ion batteries?
So the big promise around all-solid-state batteries is energy density. So you can transfer that into extended range, eliminating range anxiety in EVs, or you can downsize the size of the battery, which helps with the vehicle design and weight and cost. So that's the primary. I would say secondary is safety, as I mentioned, eliminating that source of fire and hazard. And then lastly would be cost, ultimately, when we hit high volumes.
Okay. Is it just autos where solid state batteries can be a sort of can play, or anything that can take a battery could be solid state? Or what's the right way to think about the TAM beyond just auto?
I think ultimately it could be all batteries, but we are focused maniacally on EVs.
Okay.
All of the technical and scaling challenges that we have for EVs need to be solved for other market segments as well. The EV market is very large and growing. And so we're focused there first. We solve all those challenges around scaling, and then we can transfer into stationary storage, into other applications down the line.
Okay. And you talked about scaling as a challenge. What's the right way to think about the challenge now? Is it that the technology is still, you know, needs to be proven, or is it that the technology has been proven, but you haven't been able to manufacture it at scale because of yield issues, or you need a partner to put an order in for the site? Like, how do you kind of put all those pieces together?
It is around scale. So it works. But as with even traditional lithium-ion, every time you go up in size of battery and every time you go up in volume of units produced, new problems present themselves. And that would be how I would categorize where we are right now. We've started in coin cells. We got up to two amp-hour cells. We got up to 10 amp-hour cells. In 2023, we shipped 60 amp-hour cells to our partner BMW. All of that is size. And every time we went up in size, we saw a different electrochemical mechanical interaction of that battery system that had to be solved. And so that's really where we're at right now is scaling up to that level. Ultimately, our customers for the EV cells want a 100 amp-hour cell. So we've got another click to go beyond 60.
And then we have produced thousands of those A grade cells. We call them A1. But we need to be able to demonstrate hundreds of thousands of those in order to supply the EV market.
Okay. And since we're talking about the EV market and one of your partners is BMW, can you talk about that partnership as well as your partnership with Ford as well?
Yes.
Kind of what, you know, what are they, you know, in the sense of they're looking for the ability to put a car out there that has materially more range than the competition, or are they looking to put a car out there that they can say is materially safer, both? Like, I guess what's their holy grail?
Yeah, it's a three-part value proposition from those specific OEMs that we partner with. First and foremost is range. And coupled with that is performance also. So BMW, for instance, is very performance-driven. So is Ford, but I would say that BMW is slightly ahead there in that regard. Safety is a very close second. And then ultimately, system cost reductions are a third.
The cost reductions come from putting a smaller battery in the vehicle that performs and can get the same range, and then they sort of win when they go to the drawing board to make a new car?
That's part of it. Also, the support electronics and systems around the current batteries to make them safe and to make them work also will be dramatically reduced.
Okay. Okay. And then, you know, towards the end of the year, we saw a lot of announcements in solid state battery. And, you know, and we've seen announcements in the past from Toyota. I guess I just want to get your sense of how would you frame to investors where we are right now in terms of solid state batteries in cars in three years, five years, seven years? Like, what's the right way to think about what Hyundai just put out? You know, I don't know if they're a partner or not, but you don't have to communicate specifically around that press release, but just broadly, how should investors think about being able to drive a solid state battery car?
Yeah, I would start off by saying there's a lot of announcements in the Battery Industry. And one of the things being new to the Battery Industry that I've been struck by is to be able to sort out what is real and what is just an announcement. So there's a lot of announcements. I would just caveat that with the start of the question. Secondly, though, from timeframe, we have customers that are talking about as early as 2027 to have batteries ready for EVs. But the partners that we have announced at Ford and BMW are more like 2030.
Okay.
So we have a very unique business model. We call it a Capital-Light business model. We do develop and manufacture cells to enable the sales of the electrolyte. And so even if it isn't our design with someone, say, that has a very aggressive timeline, like the 2027, we can supply them with electrolyte and hopefully make it into a platform sooner than, say, a BMW or a Ford. And so we're unique from that business model standpoint. So we're planning to be in position to support those aggressive people, but our business plan is primarily around the 2030 timeframe.
Okay. That's actually a great segue. So why don't we talk about that, the Capital-Light model in the sense that there's multiple shots on goal within this company. You're designing your own, I don't want to say anode, because it seems like that's not quite the right word, but you also have your own separator, the sulfide electrolyte.
Yeah.
I guess what are the different markets? How do you, like, what's your go-to market there? Who do you partner with in both of those markets, and how do you kind of win, you know, mind share from your customers there?
Great question. So again, our primary business model is this Capital-Light business model around shipping, manufacturing, and shipping electrolyte. That can be into customers like BMW and Ford that will use our designs to enter the market. But it can be with others as well. So we categorize our customers into EV OEMs, both ones that we have partnered with and have joint development agreements, and then EV OEMs that we don't have a joint development agreement. They have their own cell design. So those are our two major buckets. But again, the primary business model is around electrolyte. So we have multiple shots on goal, whether it's our design, whether it's their design as we go forward.
When you say their design, are they building a design, a better design in-house, or are they outsourcing it to someone like CATL? Like, how do we think about them as a potential customer for Solid Power?
Yeah, so them with their own design would be both EV OEMs. They actually have their full cell design in-house, and then there are battery OEMs.
Oh, I gotcha.
That have their full cell design in-house. I don't know of anyone that's outsourcing right now.
Okay. So unnamed?
Their design. Their design.
Yeah. Unnamed OEM taking apart, taking a cell from a partner that you could sell electrolyte powder to.
Correct.
Okay. Got it.
Yes.
Got it. Okay.
We have sampled over 15 companies beyond BMW, Ford, and SK On that have their own cell designs. And what's been exciting in the second half of 2024 is a lot of those have come back and said, "Hey, we like that electrolyte, but could you modify it slightly this way or that way?" Things like particle size, particle distribution, morphology, those sort of attributes. And as an early stage company being very nimble, we've been able to react very quickly and give them essentially custom electrolytes according to their specifications, which we think is a differentiator and will give us a good position in the market. And they've come back multiple times. One very large OEM I can't mention right now because we don't have a binding agreement yet. We've sampled them six times in agile kind of development cycles as we went through the second half of 2024.
Do you know if it's them testing your electrolyte with their own battery design or them testing with a third-party battery design, or does it even matter?
It's the former. It's their battery design.
Okay.
What we're finding is in this early part of the development of the all-solid-state Battery Industry, car OEMs, EV OEMs are actually doing their own designs. Probably not going to build the gigafactory. They will probably either give that design to, say, an SK On and say, "Please produce this for us." But right now they're doing their own in-house designs, probably ultimately just to keep up with technology and to have a position with the battery OEMs.
And is that where your semiconductor experience sort of comes into play? Because you thought the same model, it sounds like.
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of analogs there.
Okay. Okay. So that's something that's new to Solid Power since you took the helm, you know, these partnerships in Korea and more sampling. It seems like faster turnaround on sampling. Is that something that sort of, I think you highlighted it as a goal when you joined the company.
Yes.
Can you talk about what it took to get that, you know, off the ground and where you're at now?
Yeah. So one of the first strategic decisions I took was to create a beachhead in Korea. And I'm pleased to say that we were able to do that in 2024. We tapped two folks from our Colorado operations that had Asian experience and made them expats, sent them over there and said, "Start up our office over there." We now have six people, those two expats and then four nationals that are working in that office. And that has given us a platform to support SK On with the line that we're assembling and going to put into their factory here in 2025. It's also given us access to battery talent. It's also given us access into equipment manufacturers and process expertise that's really hard to get in the United States. So the Korea strategic thrust is working for us. We're happy with where we are right now.
We'll build on that as we go forward. But that has been, you know, a really key part of it. The other part is the sampling program. And as I said, we had really good success in the second half of 2024 with this multiple cycles of sampling to the customers. We think because of the cell expertise we have in-house, we know why they're asking for the different flavors of electrolyte that they are. But we don't really have access into their design. It's a very, very coveted area right now for obvious reasons, geopolitical competitive nature between the various entities. But again, the signal to us is that they like what they see. They like the fact that we can adapt. And we have hope that in this year we'll close a number of additional strategic customers around that sampling activity that we really ramped up in 2024.
What does closing a strategic customer look like? Does that mean a volume commitment from them? Does that mean a commitment to, you know, take further back and forth? Like, what does that look like?
Ideally, it would be very similar to what we announced with SK On, where we have a joint development agreement for technology transfer, say, around electrolyte. But then it also has an R&D supply agreement. So actually the SK On three-part agreement that we announced in January of 2024 at CES, one of them was an R&D supply agreement where they agreed to take eight metric tons of our electrolyte over that R&D period. So that would be the ideal case for the next phase with additional OEMs.
Okay. And just eight metric tons sounds like quite a bit. But how many actual vehicles are we talking about?
Excuse me. It sounds like a lot, but it's really not.
Okay.
That would be early stage prototyping kind of volume for batteries.
Okay.
Our facility in Thornton, Colorado, right now has 30 metric tons per annum of capacity. With the DOE BIL $50 million grant that we got in October, we'll be able in phase one to get that up to 75 metric tons, and then in phase two get it up to 140 metric tons. But that will only support about, if you assume 100 kW-hour pack, about 500 cars.
The 140?
140.
Okay, so we're still in the back and forth, back and forth.
Yes.
Okay. Yeah.
Yes.
So what happens when unnamed, we'll call it German OEM says, "Hey, we like where we are with our battery tech. We like where you are with the electrolyte you're sending us. We want to make 50,000 of these cars in 2029 to sell in 2030." How do you ramp the metric tons of your solution to, you know, deliver on that order?
So the DOE BIL Grant is so crucial for many reasons, but one of them is we move from a batch process for electrolyte manufacturing to continuous flow. No one in the world that we know of has continuous flow sulfide electrolyte manufacturing process. So what's crucial is to get that work done by the middle of 2026. Then that will be scalable to tens of thousands of metric tons, we believe, because it's continuous flow.
Where would you produce those tens of thousands of metric tons? Like, if you haven't announced it, you don't have to answer. I guess what does it look like? Does your semiconductor experience play in that as well? Because you have experience with fabs in Asia and that type of thing.
Yes. We believe that we're going to have to be next to the battery manufacturing plants.
Okay.
Yeah. And the strongest signal we have right now is out of Korea. So although we haven't announced it, we haven't made decisions, it's trending towards we would probably do something on the peninsula first in terms of that next stage up into the thousands and tens of thousands of metric tons.
And then just to back up from that.
Excuse me.
Like, why Korea? I guess sort of educate us on battery technology in Korea or OEMs in Korea. Or, you know, when I think about EV leadership, I think of China. So I guess, like, why Korea?
There is a raging battle right now between China, Korea, and Japan primarily for the next generation of all-solid-state batteries, is my read. And we are not playing in China. We are playing heavily in Korea, as I said, and we would like to play in Japan. So it's really the geopolitical nature of what's going on for the next generation of batteries that is why Korea is so, we have access to it. They have very strong battery OEMs. They have very strong EV OEMs there. And they have very strong battery expertise up and down the chain in Korea. So that's why Korea.
And is it right to think of this as something that, you know, the U.S. would want to own this technology? And that's sort of the umbrella you fall under, even though you're partnering with Korea, who's a friend to the United States. Like, I guess, is there some level of, on one hand, we've got EV adoption where people are maybe getting a little more bearish with the new administration, but on the other hand, we've got technology that the United States wants to own. How do those sort of tie together?
Yeah, of course, we don't know what's going to happen under the new administration completely, but I think you framed it very, very well. We could see pluses and we could see minuses. If we were having this meeting in Korea, you get a very different feel for the market in Asia than you have in the U.S. There is a bearish sentiment in the U.S. But in Asia, it is full steam ahead in terms of electrification and in terms of the next generation of all-solid-state batteries. So I don't know how it's going to land. We could benefit from the protectionism around the U.S., but the overall EV market could be dampened because of subsidies going away. It just remains to be seen. Now, can the U.S. own this technology? I don't think so. Can we be a dominant player? I think so.
Should we strive to do that? I think so. And I think Solid Power is uniquely positioned to do that.
Okay, and if we were in Korea, what would the conversation be? Hey, EV adoption is 25%. We see it going to 50% sooner. Like, or the government wants to do that. Like, what would be the driving force behind their enthusiasm towards EVs? Is it their local OEMs? Or like, what is, like, what's pushing the ball forward there that's not happening in the U.S.?
My comment was really more around all-solid-state battery frenzy is that everyone believes now, and I think Solid Power was certainly an early evangelizer and leader in sulfide-based all-solid-state batteries, and everyone now has one of those on their roadmap, so it's again validation of things that we've been talking about for years and years and years, but everyone believes that to stake that claim and their portion of it is happening right now, so the frenzy is around all-solid-state battery getting to that point that you don't feel when you're in the U.S.
The frenzy is because the OEMs see the benefit in terms of cost for input cost for them and that.
Safety, energy density, cost.
Okay. Okay. So I guess what, if we go back to the BMW and Ford partnerships and we think about the cells that you're delivering them, but then we think about the electrolyte solution that you're delivering to theoretically anybody that wants to partner with you, how do you bucket those terms? Like, if I look at, if I have a model in 2028, what am I building out for revenue lines? Am I building out cells that you're selling someone? And I'm also building out metric tons of the sulfide electrolyte. Like, how do I think about the price per, or do you get paid when they sell a car that's based on your technology? How does the model look?
So we have most of our business based on electrolyte sales. So there will be some royalties that we'll get off of our cell partnerships with BMW and with SK, but that's the minority part of our business plan. So 90%+ of our planning is around the electrolyte manufacturing, scaling, and partnering across the board.
Okay. And how can you, for like a layman, how do you, you know, you talked about particle sizing, you talked about morphology. How do you, like, who are you competing with in electrolyte solution technology? And how do you know that you're, you know, winning the race? Or is it that the opportunity is so big there's going to be multiple winners? Like, how do you frame that to investors?
So I'll start with the second question first. I do think the market's big enough for multiple winners. Full stop. But how do we gauge it? We gauge it based on the sampling activity and what kind of reaction we're getting as we give them materials. And there's probably a dozen companies that we're competing against right now for sulfide electrolytes. Most of those are in Asia. And we keep up with them as best we can, but it really is the sampling activity, the feedback we get from our sampling activities that we're using to gauge our success. One of the things I think that really is differentiating us right now against the bulk of the competitors is we have that combined cell capability under one roof with the electrolyte. And so that's an integral system.
The way that feedback loop between the cell performance and the electrolyte characteristics, we're unique in being able to do that very rapidly in-house and offer value at the electrolyte level that others can't.
Does that mean someone might ask you for something on the electrolyte level and you say, "Well, we tried that and that's not the avenue you want to go to"?
That's exactly right. That's the kind of thing that we could give advice to our customers about. Say, "Okay, if you're after this performance and this characteristic in the cell, we would recommend you do this."
Okay, so you can.
And maybe not that if they have, you know, an alternate idea.
So their runway instead of looking like this can look more like, "Okay. Yeah, I got it."
Add value to their cell design based on our understanding of cell, but actually putting those characteristics into the electrolyte.
Is there a way, since you said the cell design is so proprietary, is there a way, or is it that they can't disguise what they're looking for? Or you know from the OEM level, like, how can you help them if you're sort of blind to what they're doing on the battery side?
It really is, again, back to having cell expertise under our roof, and so when they say we want this or that, we can pretty much say, "Well, that's probably the separator and they probably want it because they're trying to achieve X." Now, are we 100% right? No, but are we in the same zip code and probably speaking the same language? Yes, and that's what we aspire to do, be able to add value to what they're doing. It really isn't that important that we know what they're doing other than try to help them, and again, because we have that cell capability in-house, we can do that today, and that's the feedback we're getting from the OEMs.
Okay, and going back to the 8 metric ton agreement with SK On, so the idea is the federal government, the grant that you got, you'll be able to, right now, I think you threw out number 24 or 20 in Colorado in terms of capacity for.
30.
30, yes, going to 40 and then going higher, so the idea is you can have more of these agreements to send more of the electrolyte solution to more partners, and that's what, and then that increases the aperture to get a larger order, and then you move into expansion in the peninsula to build a larger type battery.
That's exactly right.
Okay. Got it.
And that may be off our balance sheet. It may be a joint venture. It may be a licensing scheme. We haven't eliminated any of that. You know, we've got, as of the third quarter last year, about $350 million of cash. So we've got great runway into 2028 at least and potentially beyond. So we have the capacity to be able to do it, but we would like to partner as we move forward to even make the capital appetite for our shareholders, you know, less.
Since you brought up the cash balance, can you talk about, you know, what was the burn or what's the estimated burn in 2024? Like, how long of a runway do you have before, I don't want to say something needs to happen, but before you kind of, as you move through this cash runway, you're signing up more partners, you're getting more agreements for larger tonnage? Like, what's the right way to think about the, you know, as you move forward?
Our cash usage guidance in 2024 was between $100 million- $120 million. We're in a quiet period right now, so I can't comment beyond that further. Our next earnings release will come out at the end of February, and we'll update that, but that's the guidance for 2024. In the current environment and wanting to extend our runway further, we've been looking the last six months or so of ways to reduce our cash burn in 2025 as a way to extend our runway. We've got some pretty good actions underway and have more coming that will do exactly that. Without changing our business plan or our operating plan, we have cash all the way through 2028 at this point. With some further financial work, we think we can get it into 2029.
And then my hope would be by then we will have commercial supply agreements that we then could monetize and potentially use traditional debt vehicles to extend into the SOPs of 2030, 2031.
That looks like a partner saying, "I want this much tonnage of electrolyte solution." You take that to a bank, they have a firm order against it, they finance the.
That's exactly right. SOP start of production. I shouldn't have used that acronym.
All right. So what, you know, what gets you most excited about 2025 and what sort of keeps you up at night as we sort of, the calendar rolls forward here?
I would say the progress that we've been able to make with partners is very exciting, but on the other side of the coin, and what keeps me awake is being able to close a binding agreement with one or more of those in 2025. I feel really good about the cell progress we made in 2024. We'll be looking to ask our partners to do more of that cell work on their lines. You know, BMW will have a line by the end of this year in Parsdorf, Germany. SK On will have their line that we are making for them by the middle or certainly the end of this year. So we'll have our line in Colorado, we'll have the BMW line in Germany, we'll have the SK On line in Korea, all collaborating and driving our designs forward. So I'm pretty excited about that piece of it.
On the cell side, I think that the BIL Grant is also very exciting in order to minimize the cash strain for our shareholders, and then again, get to this, what we believe is going to be the only continuous flow sulfide manufacturing process in the world by the middle of 2026.
How do you know if you're going to one of these partners and it's the fifth iteration of the solution, that they're six, seven, what's the magic number? Or do you have, can you draw on your experience like with other, how do you know you're close to getting to this, the binding agreement?
They tell us. They say, "All right, let's have a meeting in three weeks. We have test results and we'd like to start talking about the next phase of development agreement." We have a number of those that are at that stage.
So it's conceivable, things that are exciting about 2025 is potentially, like you talked about, you know, new binding agreements with.
Yes.
Okay. Got it.
Yes.
Okay.
It's on a personal level, a very high priority of mine.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
I'll be on the plane quite a bit to Asia, I think.
What are they? Do those binding agreements come with some sort of cash or like will you deal with SK On or how, or is it more about future deliveries of the solution?
The latter. It would be future deliveries of the electrolyte.
Okay. And can you talk about? You talked about the lines and I just want to make sure, you know, to, you know, conflate things. The lines in BMW, is it a battery line? The lines at SK On are an electrolyte solution line? Or they both have both lines? Like what's the right way to think about?
They're both cell manufacturing pilot lines.
Okay.
So they're taking our cell technology, the pouch-driven multi-layer, basically 10 centimeters by 30 centimeters cell and duplicating that in their location. And then they will improve upon that is our expectation. They'll improve performance, they'll improve yield, they'll improve cost.
The only electrolyte line is in Colorado.
Correct.
That's where you send the samples back and forth.
Correct. Exactly right.
Got it. And then how do, can you talk about continuous flow versus the method you have right now, go a little deeper on that and what that means?
Right. So current process is batch. There are four major operations within the electrolyte manufacturing process. There is mixing, there is drying, there is crystallization, and then there is packaging and shipping. Those same four basic processes have to be duplicated for continuous flow. And we basically have. Think of it like an auger moves dry material through a pipe. So we will have that first operation of mixing and then an auger will move from that into the drying step and then it will move into the crystallization step and then the manufacturing step, but it will all be along a continuous process.
Nobody does this now or is it something?
Our understanding is no one has done this now. The other cool thing that we've done is to de-risk that whole program. It's all of the equipment manufacturers we've selected for those four processes have pre-pilot size equipments. We've actually sent engineering teams to those locations and we've taken our material and we've processed it through each one of those individual equipments, and so we know at the pre-pilot level, all those equipments will work, and all of those vendors have pilot scale, you know, the next larger capacity, if you will, for each of those operations that is what we're going to be using for the BIL project, so we've de-risked completely, you know, the pre-pilot level at this stage, put it together at the pilot level, but high confidence because of what we've done previously, so pretty excited about that too.
Okay.
I think it was one of the reasons that we got the DOE grant was we'd done that pre-work. They commented as much that it was an important part of their decision.
Okay. And on pouch versus cylindrical, is there anything investors need to know there or all-solid-state pouch or like what's the right way to think about those? Because right now I think most EVs are cylindrical, right? So like what?
Yeah, yeah. So because of the mechanical design, currently all-solid-state batteries are pouch. There is a small R&D effort that is underway at BMW to try to produce a cylindrical cell with all-solid-state, but I would say it's very early research, not even research and development. I think it's very early research. So I think people will experiment with cylindrical, but it's a really hard problem to solve because all-solid-state batteries require a degree of pressure to maintain connectivity between the various layers. And that's very hard to do in a cylindrical format. In a pouch format, you have layers that are much easier to apply.
Oh, they're on certain adapt to each other.
Yeah. We call it Stack Pressure.
So, what is on a pouch basis? What is that? Is it the pouches that help with the sizing and the, or is it just the energy density and it doesn't matter that it's in a pouch when you talk about getting more range and better safety for these EVs?
I guess I don't understand your question.
Like does a pouch bring an advantage or a disadvantage versus a cylindrical cell?
Oh, I don't think it's either way. I think it's, again, back to the Stack Pressure.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay. So just lastly to close, you know, we talked about 2025. What keeps you up? If you're here at the Needham Growth Conference in five years, the 32nd annual Needham Growth Conference, sort of what kind of, what story would you be telling if sort of the future lays out as you kind of hope it will?
We would be a multi-hundred-million-dollar business. We would be profitable and we'd have our eyes towards a billion-dollar business.
What would, like, how would investors value that business on an EV to EV basis on a, like where, I guess what are like the comps that I'm trying to think of some of that could be like a comp to you guys in the sense of?
You know, I was learned very early on not to tell analysts how to value us, so I won't go there, but there are analogs you can look at in other industries around materials and chemicals that you could draw from.
Okay. Well, thanks for your time. Appreciate it.
All right, Chris.
For coming to New York.
Thank you very much.