Global Battery Supply Chain "US BESS Outlook: Analyzing supply" Bush

Research evidence excerpt

Global Battery Supply Chain "US BESS Outlook: Analyzing supply" Bush

Global Research

9 June 2026ab

Global Battery Supply Chain Equities

GlobalUS BESS Outlook: Analyzing supply

Basic Materials

Tim Bush

Base case supports strong margins Analyst

We forecast US LFP cell capacity rising from 85 GWh at end-2026 to 227 GWh by 2030, tim-d.bush@ubs.com

with utilization improving from 39% to 87%. For the next two years, onshore supply will +82-2-3702 8801

likely remain short of surging BESS demand, forcing continued reliance on “safe Cherie Miao

harbour” Investment Tax-Credit (ITC) eligible Chinese imports. From a company Associate Analyst

perspective, we expect LG Energy Solution and Samsung SDI to capture leading shares, cherie.miao@ubs.com

with LGES as our top pick (Buy) followed by Samsung SDI (Buy). Our US Auto team also +852-3712 2035

flags Ford Motor (Buy) as a potential beneficiary. Joseph Spak, CFA

Analyst

Margins could exceed 30% joseph.spak@ubs.com

+1-212-713 3089

We expect profitability to be determined by four critical factors: (1) speed of operational

optimization toward our Q-series teardown-derived onshore cost estimate of $86/kWh, Paul Gong

(2) tariff-inclusive Chinese landed cost (~$96 kWh), (3) full $45/kWh Production Tax Analyst

Credit (PTC) eligibility, and (4) the emergence of a pricing premium for fully ITC- paul.gong@ubs.com

+852-2971 7868

compliant onshore supply. In an optimized scenario, we see unit operating profit

margins exceeding 30%. We think the debate will soon shift to battery materials Kohei Takahashi

sourcing, as maximum allowable Chinese content falls sharply from 45% to just 15% by Analyst

2030E. In our view, compliant materials supply–particularly LFP cathode and graphite kohei.takahashi@ubs.com

+81-3-5208 6172