QS: Upcoming Catalysts

I recently wrote a post called Anatomy of a Catalyst in my other blog where I explore the “how and when” for making event-driven trades. If you haven’t followed my other blog, consider checking it out. It’s a place where I take a higher level view on the world of investing.

Anyways, back to Quantumscape…

This is an exciting time for investors in Quantumscape, which is partially why I started this blog. Quantumscape management has said that the next 7 quarters (going through to the end of 2025) will be crucial for future of the company. I’ll try to list out the major milestones they’ve laid out, and their implications. Some of these may negatively affect their ability to survive as a company if they miss.

B0 Sample Delivery

Date: Some time in 2024

Implication:

B Sample delivery is the next major milestone in the sampling process. It proves that QS has a working commercial-intent cell (prototype version of QSE-5) that is being produced on commercial-like tooling and processes.

In addition, it’ll mark the completion of their Raptor production line set-up, which is the Gen 1 version of their fast separator manufacturing process.

Following A Sample delivery in December of 2022, the stock price nearly doubled in the proceeding 2 months. There was, however, very little movement immediately following the announcement. This may have been due to the press release being right before Christmas break.

After A Samples were released, QS guided to an 18 month cycle between sampling periods. This would put B samples potentially going out as early as this quarter (Q2 2024). It’s possible that we see movement on this in the next couple of weeks. I’d put Q3 as most likely, though.