SES AI Corporation (NYSE:SES) Q1 2023 Earnings Conference Call May 8, 2023 5:00 PM ET

Company Participants

Eric Goldstein - VP, IR

Qichao Hu - Founder, Chairman & CEO

Jing Nealis - CFO

Conference Call Participants

Shawn Severson - Water Tower Research

Winnie Dong - Deutsche Bank

Operator

Good afternoon. Thank you for attending today's SES AI Corporation First Quarter Earnings Call. My name is Cole, and I will be your moderator for today's call. [Operator Instructions].

I would now like to pass the conference over to our host, Eric Goldstein. Please go ahead.

Eric Goldstein

Thank you, operator. Hello, everyone, and welcome to our conference call covering our first quarter 2023 results and financial guidance. Joining me today are Qichao Hu, Founder and Chief Executive Officer; and Jing Nealis, Chief Financial Officer. We issued our shareholder letter just after 4:00 p.m. today, which provides a business update as well as our financial results. You'll find a press release with a link to our shareholder letter in today's conference call webcast in the Investor Relations section of our website at ses.ai.

Before we get started, this is a reminder that the discussion today may contain forward-looking information or forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities legislation. These statements are based on our predictions and expectations as of today. Such statements involve certain risks, assumptions and uncertainties, which may cause our actual or future results and performance to be materially different from those expressed or implied in these statements.

The risks and uncertainties that could cause our results to differ materially from our current expectations include, but are not limited to, those detailed in our latest earnings release and in our SEC filings. This afternoon, we will review our business as well as results for the quarter.

With that, I'll pass it over to Qichao.

Qichao Hu

Thanks, Eric. 2023 is starting out to be a great year for SES. A few years from now, when our lithium metal battery technology is in mass production, I think we will look back and say 2023 was a key turning point as we laid several crucial foundations.

First, I'd like to give you an update on our 3 OEM JDAs. As we have discussed previously, we were the world's first lithium metal battery company to enter automotive A-sample JDAs, and we did so with GM, Hyundai and Honda. Our biggest value to them, in addition to deep material development capability, is the ability to build and test many large 100 mPOWER lithium metal cells. With this ability, our ideas become data and data become intelligence. Even Elon Musk tweeted after the Starship launch that high production rate solves many ills.