Lion E-Mobility AG

Lion E-Mobility AG

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Q2 FY2026 · Earnings Call TranscriptAugust 13, 2026

Moderator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the conference call of LION E-Mobility AG regarding the half-year 2026 results.

This call will be recorded. Currently, all participants are in a listen-only mode.

My name is Jens Hecht and I am the moderator today. On the call, we have the LION management team: Dr.

Joachim Damasky, CEO, and Tom Schmidt, the new CFO. First, Tom Schmidt will provide an overview on the H1 financial results, then Joachim Damasky will give you an update on the overall business development and the outlook.

After the presentation, as always, the LION team will be available to answer any of your questions. I would now like to hand over to Joachim for the introduction.

Joachim Damasky

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm very happy to present what we have achieved so far for the changes in our production and everything, and also our growing BESS business.

Before I will tell you what we are currently working on, first I would like to give a short introduction to our new CFO, Mr. Tom Schmidt.

Mr. Hahn has decided for personal reasons to leave the company, and we found, I would say, a very good successor with Mr.

Tom Schmidt, and he now wants to give you an overview over the financial situation of LION E-Mobility AG ending June this year. Tom.

Tom Schmidt

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Good morning, everybody.

Happy to participate in our today's presentation. I will, of course, speak about financial figures so far for the first half-year of 2026.

Most importantly, as you can see, the revenue declined in the first six months due to two major effects. As usual in the, let's say, duration of the business year, our customers, they proceeded to higher orders at the end of 2025, and this time even higher in order to ensure their inventory for the old battery technology, for which reason we had an impact in the first quarter 2026 with less quantity of orders.

What also has affected a little, let's say, the typical recovery is that we had to stop our manufacturing. We had a shutdown with a good reason.

We now have switched over to a new battery technology, and our manufacturing line had to be modernized for that technology, which is the NMC+, and for that reason we didn't manufacture in May and June 2026, and so we are not able yet to ship orders to our customers. Consequently, the EBITDA decreased as well.

It remained still positive, but of course the missing revenue had its impact. In terms of operating cash flow, we also have a decrease, of course, also caused by less business, but we also have faced higher prices.

As the current political environment is not business friendly, and unfortunately we also suffer from these conditions. Here going a little deeper in our P&L, I just mentioned how revenue evolved.

You can see in terms of capitalized own work, an increase. The new battery technology I just mentioned, NMC+, required more, let's say, intense R&D, which of course also is reflected in our numbers and has then accordingly increased our capitalized own work.

Nevertheless, total earnings, given less revenue, are below 2025 first half-year. The other operating income what we have this year contains a penalty one customer has to pay, about a half a million, and that's expressed here in this number.

You can see a decrease of cost of materials, but this is just the absolute number. In terms of the cost materials ratio, this has increased due to the previously explained current business environment.

We also have a slight switch in terms of our product portfolio this year. Last year, we were able to run higher service revenues, which comprise a higher margin, and this year we still have that service business, but the demand was a little slower in the first half.

We could reduce our personnel expenses, just following some streamlining in project management and also in the administrative and accounting part. Again, in terms of other operating expenses, the explained R&D expenses, also from an accounting point of view, result in slightly higher other operating expenses.

The EBITDA I just explained. In terms of financing, we have strong support from the shareholder side, for which reason we could transform our financing landscape and accordingly obtain a lower interest expense.

Going into more detail for our cash flow, we are able to maintain, yeah, let's say, positive cash flow from operating activities. Again, the current business circumstances are not easy, but we are working, let's say, on a more focused working capital management, and this helps us to remain the cash flow positive, and should also result, now knowing better the current circumstances, in an increase.

Investing, I just mentioned the new NMC+ battery technology. Joachim Damasky will further explain it from a business and technology point of view, but financial management-wise, this investment has caused a negative cash flow for investing activities.

Typically, this should result in positive business results later. Financing again, cash flow, given our let's say changed financial management in terms of financing, results in a positive cash flow now for first half-year 2026.

Again, our important changeover from NMC, the old battery technology, to NMC+ has also its positive impact on our balance sheet. We just have a higher capitalization in terms of the new technology.

It just stands for a higher value for the company. When it comes to current assets, we reduced already our trade receivables.

Again, we have a more focused working capital management. It consists of banking and non-banking activities, and in terms of non-banking, of course, we focus on working with our suppliers and customers to get a more positive, more stable situation for ourselves, since at the end, our company has to focus on the product and not being, let's say, a finance partner for our business partners.

Equity-wise, of course, given the decreased result, we also have a reduction in this position. In terms of non-current liabilities, our long-standing financing, we have, as mentioned, a shareholder financial support, strong support, which also expresses in the balance sheet.

I will just hand over to Joachim Damasky.

Joachim Damasky

Tom. Thank you very much for presenting us the numbers.

I would like to give you now an overview on that what we have been doing in the last six months in this year to show how we have been able to arrange the handover from the old SE09 battery packs to the NMC+ battery packs. I think last time I mentioned that we are planning to produce the last packs in March.

We have been producing until April because we still have got some additional old SE09 cells, and we had customers who wants to have as much as possible from the old battery. The last final spare parts that we do now have in stock have been produced end of April, and then we started the change of the production line.

In May and in June, we have been doing all the reworking, especially for the handling of the modules and the busbar welding, and also the changes that have been necessary for the end-of-line test. This is now already finalized.

We have been able to ramp up all these changes, because you may ask, what is the difference between the old cells and the new ones, because the battery pack from the outside is the same. Yes, this is the case, but as we have higher energy density now.

The new battery has 53 kWh, what means that the voltage, but also the current of the new battery is higher. We also have been able to manage the change of the electronics.

I explained that we had to develop a new BMS, that we have also rearranged of the S-Boxes, the safety boxes, where the relays are, where the measuring shunts are in, and so we have been able to arrange all the switchover. We have still some work to do with the last final software issues together with our supplier, Munich Electrification, who is doing the BMS software for us, but we are on our time plan, and we are also now on the electronics for the integration into the BMW i3.

Last shipments of the old batteries, we still have some in stock because customers have been asking to get them until August. We will have the last shipment of the SE09 batteries in the next week to one of our major customers in Canada, Lion Electric.

I think we have now already achieved a good and stable production process, although not all the changes have been arranged to the final state. We are now still in a semi-manual production, as we have planned it, for the cell stacking and for the module welding.

These changes will be finalized end of September, so that we also switch over to this production on the automated manufacturing line. We are already able, with a very intense quality control process, to produce the numbers for our customers of batteries that they order with us.

We have started the serial production end of June, and as I said, the second step of the automated welding will be finalized in September this year. We have also now arranged, and you may know that the logistics situation is not so easy, this was also one of the things, how to get the cells from China.

That we buy them from SVOLT to Europe. The shipment time, unfortunately, they have been going up from 6 weeks to 8 weeks, because most of the ships are now going around South Africa, and also there is, unfortunately, not enough shipment space, you have a lead time until you get a place on the boat for a container of another 4 weeks, the shipment times by sea now are coming up to 12 weeks, maybe in some areas some 14 weeks.

This is the situation now, but we have been able to manage to get the serial cells with a short delay of about two weeks, but more or less in time, in Hildburghausen, and now we have established our serial production process. Next slide, please.

NMC+ serial batteries have been shipped to the bus customers. The two major customers, one is Karsan in Turkey, the other one is Lion Electric.

We are also working on the integration project. You may ask, why is it different when you already have achieved a start of serial delivery to our customers in the bus area, where the batteries have already been integrated in the cars, and the cars are running on the road?

The difference is that the electronic communication into the buses, where we normally use the batteries together with the gateway that the customers buy because in some areas they have up to five batteries in the buses, they need that gateway, all this communication for this industrial and bus application, this has been realized. The electronic communication for the BMW i3 is a little different, and this is what we are currently doing.

Homologation for the bus is also M2 and M3 class for the ECE regulation, and we are also now doing the ECE R100 testing, Revision 3, for the battery to use it in a passenger car, that means in the BMW i3. We are working together with a company, [Mandrill?]

, who is able to do this integration, and they have now several hundreds of inquiries for older BMW i3 to get this upgrade, because now the old batteries have been 60 Ah and 94 Ah. The last version that BMW brought out from the year 2019 was the 120 Ah system, and now we are working to offer to the customers 147 Ah.

That leads for this car up to a range of 400 km, and we have a lot of customer interest for the retrofit together with [Mandrill?] company.

We have also started our first mobile storage projects. Integration is successful, and we are waiting also for other orders with this battery.

These smaller units, wherever you need to have a silent energy power, you can use these kind of containers and put them wherever you need them. We have also a lot of inquiries for this.

We hope that after the integration has been done already, that according with our customers, we will manage the ramp-up for this also in the next year. Maybe from the planning, we have the first sales also in this year on this kind of battery systems.

Next slide, please. Immersion-cooled battery is still going on.

We have here still a project with a German truck manufacturer, but as you all know, the automotive industry is now very much looking where they spend the money. That most of the customers have now running reorganization and restructuring programs on.

They all tell us we are still interested in this, but maybe not this year, maybe next year. We are also have seen the new Mercedes-AMG GT XX has already the first immersion-cooled battery in a serial application, and this, I think, will also show that this technology is feasible.

We are still working together with Castrol. We have been showing on a fair in Mainz the technology, and we have a customer interest for this, but as I said, maybe next year will be better for this technology, because all the OEMs are running cost-saving programs for the time being, and they want to, let's say, concentrate on these models.

I think some of you have also seen that the number of models has been reduced from the most customers, and so we hope that we will be able to bring this into a serial development next year. Next slide, please.

Please let me come now to our operational, let's say, increase, what is, I would say, really in good progress. That LION Smart has had roughly 50% of the turnover in the year '23 with BESS business.

Then technology has changed to LFP, then also there was a big pressure in the market in the year 2024, especially on NMC technology for BESS business. We decided, and I explained this last year, to work together with Leap Energy.

This is the battery daughter of Leapmotor, where we have a cooperation agreement signed. You can see now our first project here on the site.

We have made the project management for big containers. First container was 5 MW, 20 MWh, that means a four-hour system, in Finsterwalde, that has been realized.

We are now on the final grid connection, everything, all the tests have been passed so far. It's also a kind of co-location because there is a big solar field, and we expect to become operative working within the next weeks, so that we get then the permission from MITNETZ, that is the energy net provider, that we can use this system on the electrical grid.

We have also a second project with two containers, also a 5 MW system, that means a two-hour system. We are working there together with IBC SOLAR.

FAT, that means Factory Acceptance Test, is scheduled for beginning of September. Our engineers will then go again to China to do this test.

It's already running. Construction of the foundations has start.

Grid connection is expected then to be live end of this year, so that all the units, that means the containers, but also the power conversion system, you know that we need also the technology not only the DC side containers, but also the AC side, that means this unit who is doing for both direction, the conversion between DC and AC, that means the grid. There we have been working together with also a big Chinese company, but we are also looking now for European suppliers.

Some of you may have heard that the European Union wants to have, especially in the critical infrastructure, more European technology, especially on the software side and on the electronic components, and this is what we are currently doing as well. We are working on a third and a fourth project, also 5 MW, 10 MWh, and we hope that we can sign this also within the next weeks.

There is a bigger project where we expect the signing in 2026, and you see that this is now together with Leap, but also with other container suppliers, is already raising. Our preferred supplier, of course, is Leap Energy, but unfortunately we have not the Bloomberg New Energy tier-1 listing, what we expect within the next weeks to come, and then we have also more possibilities to do more projects together with Leap.

Next slide, please. Now I would like to show a little bit our team.

We really have a very good, strong BESS team now in place. We have three people in sales and business development.

We have a head of strategy who is really experienced, who has more than 20 years experience in the BESS business and also photovoltaic business. We have one business development for Italy, an Italian person working here in Garching and dealing with Italian customers.

We have not decided to build up an Italian subsidiary for the time being, we are doing this from here. We also hired a South Tyrolean technical solution manager.

He will start on the 1st of September, and we are still looking for additional sales management, and this may be then hosted in Italy. Italy is, for the time being, the second-largest market for BESS business within Europe, and according to the talks that we had also with bigger customers, I think we have very good possibilities also in that market.

Hildburghausen, as I said, with our already existing engineering capacities, we are supporting this. We have also had the possibility to go with our engineering team to China to train our service people, but also our engineers on these systems to know exactly what is going on, and this has been successful.

Also that we will be able to coordinate the, of course, whatever kind of technical support is necessary in the field. We are also working on long-term service agreements with our customers, where we also have to increase then our service fleet.

Of course, whatever is necessary, we are building up a system now where we are able to control the behavior of the cells, of the packs, and of the containers so that we have an early warning system if something is going into the wrong direction, and we can also guarantee the customers 95% or even more uptime. We also have been able to find people for supporting our mobility battery.

A new sales manager just started 1st of August. He has also more than 20 years experience in sales in the automotive sector, he knows the customers already, and we are looking also for strengthening this.

We have, and this is something that we have been talking last year, we have, unfortunately, been forced to reduce our activities in the United States. I think all of you know that the current American federal government is not really a fan of electric mobility, and they cut off all the subsidies, they even removed charging infrastructure in front of federal buildings, and therefore the market in the United States is much under pressure.

We still have customers in the US, but we have decided, because at the end, when we are coming to technical questions, we have to do it anyhow from here, and I think it's better to have the day-by-day communication from here, and customer visiting is also then handled from our German colleagues here in the sales team, together with Tobias Mayer. I think this is, the upper picture showed us also here on the fair, also together with the IBC people, and I think we are really on a good way there, and we are also working on further other business opportunities in this area to increase our sales base also, so that we will come hopefully also in the next year again to a distribution between mobility and BESS, what shows at least 50/50.

I would say this is an overview on that what we have achieved. We have been able to manage the transition to the NMC+ battery, we are now shipping the batteries to our customers, and we are also now increasing our BESS sales activities.

Only to summarize for you that we are on a good way. Thank you very much, and Jens, now I would like to hand it back to you for the Q&A.

Thank you.

Moderator

Thank you, Joachim and Tom, for the comprehensive business update. We will now begin with a question-and-answer session.

If you have a question, please use the Q&A function and I will read out your question, or please raise your virtual hand, and once your name has been announced, you can unmute yourself and ask the question. One moment for the first questions coming in.

We have a first question from Stefan Burger. One second, please, Stefan.

Mr. Burger, you can unmute yourself and ask your question.

Good morning. Can you hear me?

Joachim Damasky

Good morning. Good morning.

Moderator

Yes.

Yes, good morning. Two questions, please.

First question, obviously it is quite telling that for the past 6 months defense has been hyped and it is completely gone. Can you please explain on that one?

Second question is in the June 2nd, 2026 release it has been mentioned LION Smart expects a significant share of the 2027 production capacity to be contracted at an early stage. Production capacity on the homepage is mentioned with more than 2 GWh when I inquired that in June, if this is still the case and what it means when the company says that the production capacity of 2027 a significant portion will be contracted at an early stage.

Does that mean the 2 GWh? Consequently, the numbers have been removed from the site, and there was no update on what the capacity now is with the new production facility or whatever the machines.

The question is, what is the production capacity from 2027, and can you elaborate a little bit more on what has been mentioned already on this June 2nd? Again, the defense would be very interested in what happened to that, since it has been hyped quite huge in the past 6 months.

Thank you.

Joachim Damasky

Yeah. Let's say it in this way.

The defense is still a major portion of that what we want to do in the next year. We have applications running with defense companies, but it's not that we changed anything on our business plans, but we decided, because everybody can read this, to do it, let's say, a little bit on a lower key.

That everybody can load down this, and currently we are also shipping cells not on vessels, but also on the land line through Russia, and this was the reason for us also to say, let's be a little cautious. Honestly, we are still working on this, and we have currently also good projects going on there.

You have been seen this mobile storage issue, Mr. Burger, that I've seen there.

This is also an application this is possible also for defense usage, and it's coming also from this area, but we do not want to show this in this very prominent way to reduce the risk a little bit more. We are also looking for the ramp-up next year.

We have very good applications, and as it's not only the Bundesamt für Ausrüstung in Koblenz, it's also other areas in other countries who take some time for their decisions, but we are expecting to get these contracts in the next year. Coming back to the second question is that we, as LION Smart, we're doing the production line changes in different steps, so that we on the one side, because I think I mentioned it before also, that we now need more money for pre-financing.

We have to pre-buy or prepay the cells before they leave China, and therefore, in according to that what Tom already said to a very consequent cash management, we have been now bringing our manufacturing line, as I said, with a sometimes semi-manual process of the cell stacking on let's say a possibility that we can produce easily for the rest of this year 2,000 packs. We are doing also the necessary changes that I explained already for all the other things that we can also run the manufacturing line also latest mid of next year in a full-automated possibility, so that we can easily produce then within two shifts per year 8,000 or also maybe 10,000 packs, the production capacity would not limit us on this kind of pack.

As I said, it would be not a big issue to increase this. As we said in the beginning, the 2 GWh was, let's say, related to both BESS batteries and mobile batteries.

As we now have been able to change the BESS to this LFP Chinese manufactured containers, but also battery packs, we do not expect to run this kind of cell technology under for the BESS business competitive circumstances or environment on our production line in Germany. The prices from China are very low, we are now putting our manufacturing line to that maximum of battery packs what we expect for the mobile business.

I hope this is okay for you as an explanation.

Moderator

Thank you, Joachim, and thank you Stefan Burger for the question. If you have any further questions, please again raise your hand or to use the Q&A function.

We have another question from Sarah Hellemann. One second, please.

Sarah, you can unmute yourself now, and please ask your question.

Sarah Hellemann

Yes, thank you very much, and a nice morning to you as well. Just a question on residual inventory from the older battery pack version.

Is there significant inventory left, and what are the plans with that, if the case?

Joachim Damasky

Thank you for that question. I would love to have more inventory left because we have customers where we sell modules, for example, for, and they still had not the change to change their BMS to the new cells.

We have in stock only that what we need to have, and this is also calculated on the BMW exchange rates, our spare parts. We have no residual stock left for our customers.

We would be able even to sell more of the older batteries if cells would exist, but unfortunately they are not existing anymore.

Sarah Hellemann

Thank you very much. What would be current potential bottlenecks to ramping it up even further beyond these 10 to 11,000 packs?

Joachim Damasky

We would have possibilities also to do some changes to come to the same manufacturing volume, but welding, for example, is something where we now working with one robot. We have another welding robot there.

As soon as the system is running, this bottleneck also can be changed. Also the automated stacking, and maybe I should explain a little more.

In the last batteries, the cells have been glued together, cell by cell. Now we have a so-called swell pad in between because due to the higher energy density, electrochemical changes lead to a little bit a blowing up of the cell.

To achieve at least the same lifetime, even better, we have a different process. These swell pads have been glued together.

This is the semi-manual production, but anyhow we do plan now to put this to the fully automated production then next year. This would be, let's say, a further possibility to increase this production.

If we really would have more demand from the market, then we would have to build up a second line, what anyhow would help us then, because I think you know all that the production line has now a certain age. We have been taking over this production line from BMW.

Of course, we are able to manage all this even with the electronic components, but a new production line would also maybe look a little different. For the time being, we would be able with that what we have to come back to the original number of batteries that could be sold.

Sarah Hellemann

Do you expect higher CAPEX needs in next year and the year after?

Joachim Damasky

This is a very good question, and we are discussing this also internally and also with our board now. The issue is working capital.

In the beginning, the cell prices or the cell cost is roughly 50% of our turnover. The more we increase our turnover, the more working capital is needed because, as I explained, if we ship them and we have then 12 to 14 weeks the batteries on a ship and we have to prepay, of course, then we have to have a higher working capital.

Of course, this is a logical thing, and this unfortunately is not only our problem, it's also the problem of all battery manufacturers, because the cells are not allowed to leave China without prepayment. Yes, of course, the more turnover, the more working capital we need, and this is directly related.

Sarah Hellemann

Thank you very much.

Moderator

Thank you, Sarah, and we'll now continue. We have a question coming from the Q&A section from Torsten Holting regarding the working capital swing between Q1 and H1.

In Q1, operating cash flow benefited from favorable supplier terms, whereas Q2 saw a reversal due to required supplier prepayments. Did the payment behavior in Q1 cause suppliers or credit insurers to reduce your payment terms in Q2, and how will this requirement for upfront cash impact your liquidity during the heavy H2 production ramp-up?

Tom Schmidt

Actually, as you stated, we do have those firmer conditions on the supplier side, but again, as explained, if we don't see ourselves as a financing partner, but as a manufacturing entity, one approach to, let's say, buffer it is to persuade our customers to also undertake prepayments, and we have been successfully achieving it in the last weeks. Customers have to prepay, so that's one matter.

Also, in a way, we have these most recent political environments, but also businesses now learned to maneuver with these conditions, and also banks, and we are pretty confident now also speaking with new finance partners, with a new house bank, to get to other, let's say, more flexible financing conditions. Let's say guarantees, convertible guarantees, letters of credit, just to improve our working capital situation.

Moderator

Thank you, Tom. Currently, we have no further questions.

If there are no further questions, we would like to close the call now. Thank you for your attendance, and if you do have any further questions, please reach out to the investor relations team of LION at any time.

Thanks a lot. This concludes the call today.

Bye-bye.

Joachim Damasky

Thank you very much. Bye-bye.

Tom Schmidt

Thank you. Bye.