Ideal Power Inc. (NASDAQ:IPWR) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

And then we’re going to be married together. The way the program itself works, Phase 1 is really up doing our part and the packaging firm doing their part independently, where we provide them test data, we provide them devices and we provide them a bunch of technical documentation as it relates to the technology itself. Then Phase 2 which we expect to move into here in the not-too-distant future, will be us providing devices to the innovative packaging company who will incorporate those into the packaging design that they have come up with. And then Phase 3 will be that module with B-TRAN devices being extensively tested to meet the auto certification standards which are pretty substantial. The program is really on a pretty fast time line to try and get this thing to the point where it is production ready by 2025.

That is the stated goal of this program. So it’s really us and the packaging company working independently in Phase 1 and us providing devices to them for incorporation into the module in Phase 2 and then Phase 3 is really all about the testing and certification of the module itself.

Jeff Christensen: Our next question is about the target markets and more information about it. When do you expect each of your target markets to generate revenue? And how do you foresee the revenue opportunity and ramp for each market?

Tim Burns: I’ll just to expand a little bit on what Dan shared for David’s question earlier, the longest path to revenue is the EV segment but it’s also the largest opportunity. As Dan had mentioned in that development program with the top 10 global automaker, the target is a production-ready module in 2025. So it’s still a couple of years out. If you look at our SymCool power module, that’s targeted at solid-state circuit breaker market. So we expect initial sales of that product here in the second half of the year and we expect that revenue to start ramping in 2024. When you look at other target markets, renewables, renewables with storage, EV charging, we think those would be a logical fit for our second commercial product, the intelligent power module that we expect to launch here in the third quarter of this year.

So that revenue would start to ramp and likely in 2024 as well as it gets through that design cycle. So we’ll provide some more specific revenue expectations and we get a little bit further along with these prospective customers. But I assume through the test and evaluation program, we’ll really get a good handle on their technology evaluation processes, their product design cycles as well as their commercial plans and we’ll look to be able to provide more specific guidance here in the future.

Jeff Christensen: Thank you. Now that you’ve introduced your first product, do you still foresee government funding to be part of your go-forward commercialization strategy? And how is the company impacted by the chip act?

Dan Brdar: I’ll do this one. Yes, we actually think that government programs are a good opportunity for us. It helps cover some costs that we would spend on development in our own. It gives us the ability to partner with other technology companies and customers, particularly for things that are application-specific opportunities so that we can turn those into some longer-term relationships and really helps us stay connected with where some of the major players are going, whether it be on the application side or on the technology development side and we see the government continuing to want to spend quite a bit of money on energy technologies and now semiconductors with the Chips Act. We think the Cytec is going to be favorable for us.