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Aspen's Thermal-Barrier Revenue Rose 54% From Q2, but Nine-Month Total Fell 40% Year Over Year

Original SEC filings show $8.4 million of first-half settlement revenue inside Aspen's Thermal Barrier results, complicating the supplier's reported rebound.

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Aspen Aerogels' Thermal Barrier revenue rose about 54% from the second to third quarter of 2026, but its reported revenue for January through September was approximately 40% below the same period in 2025. Original company filings add an important qualification: $8.4 million of first-half Thermal Barrier revenue came from recognition of a customer settlement, not contemporaneous product shipments. Two third-party transcripts of Aspen's November 5 earnings call additionally attribute to its CFO a statement that the Q3 total included $4.9 million of previously deferred GM-settlement revenue; the exact Q3 allocation has not been confirmed against Aspen's original webcast or a Q3 Form 10-Q. These are measures of reported revenue, not evidence that EV battery production fell 40%.12345678

Aspen reported $45.3 million in Q3 2026 Thermal Barrier revenue, up from $29.5 million in Q2—a 53.6% sequential rise calculated from rounded company figures. Compared with $48.7 million in Q3 2025, however, the latest quarter was still down approximately 7.0% year over year.234

Three quarters show the size of the gap

At The Charger combined Aspen's original quarterly Thermal Barrier figures and calculated the year-over-year changes below. All values are in USD millions; each displayed quarter is rounded to one decimal place.1234

Thermal Barrier revenue 2025 2026 Calculated change
January–March (Q1) $48.9m $16.3m −66.7%
April–June (Q2) $55.2m $29.5m −46.6%
July–September (Q3) $48.7m $45.3m −7.0%
January–September total $152.8m $91.1m −40.4%

The Q3 result was the segment's strongest reported quarter of 2026. Yet the nine-month total remains $61.7 million lower than the comparable 2025 period. Both the cumulative decline and Q3 rebound are arithmetic comparisons of Aspen's reported segment revenue, not settlement-adjusted sales or units produced.1234

What the settlement adds to the picture

Aspen's original first-quarter Form 10-Q expressly says $3.5 million in customer-settlement revenue was included in its $16.296 million Thermal Barrier figure. Its second-quarter Form 10-Q says another $4.9 million was recognized in Q2, with $8.4 million included in the segment's $45.773 million first-half revenue. That identified settlement recognition represented approximately 18.4% of the reported first-half segment total.56

This makes the composition of the first-half comparison material. Subtracting the disclosed $8.4 million from first-half reported revenue yields $37.373 million, but that is merely a transparent accounting illustration—not a company-published adjusted sales measure, and not a count or value of products shipped. The Q3 SEC earnings exhibit does not separately state the settlement amount. However, November 5 call transcripts published by Benzinga and earningscalls.dev both attribute to CFO Grant Thoele the statement that the quarter's $45.3 million Thermal Barrier revenue included $4.9 million of previously deferred revenue from the GM settlement. These are two renderings of the same oral earnings call, not independent first-party filings. The publisher transcripts were accessible through indexed text, but the issuer-hosted original audio and a Q3 Form 10-Q were not authenticated for this article. Accordingly, $4.9 million is a transcript-attributed Q3 claim, not an established SEC-reported allocation. No nine-month settlement-excluded sales total or physical-shipment figure is inferred from it.478

Thermal Barrier's share of total revenue also declined

Aspen's November 5 earnings exhibit reports $172.911 million in total company revenue for January–September 2026, versus $229.764 million a year earlier: a calculated 24.7% decline. Using the rounded segment-quarter sums above, Thermal Barrier accounted for approximately 52.7% of total reported company revenue in the 2026 period, down from 66.5% in 2025—about 13.8 percentage points. These percentages are At The Charger calculations, not independently audited segment ratios.1234

The Q3 results were Aspen's own earnings figures furnished with a Form 8-K, including unaudited financial schedules. Thermal Barrier revenue includes settlement recognition and may serve electric-vehicle and other battery applications. It cannot establish how many EVs, battery packs or physical thermal-protection parts were shipped, or demonstrate a comparable 40% decline in industry demand.4956

Sources

Footnotes

  1. Aspen Aerogels, first-quarter 2026 financial results, May 7, 2026. Original issuer release; Q1 Thermal Barrier revenue and year-earlier comparison. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  2. Aspen Aerogels, second-quarter 2026 financial results, August 6, 2026. Original issuer release; Q2 Thermal Barrier revenue and year-earlier comparison. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  3. Aspen Aerogels, third-quarter 2025 financial results, November 6, 2025. Original issuer-authored release through GlobeNewswire; historical Q3 comparison. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  4. Aspen Aerogels, third-quarter 2026 results, Exhibit 99.1 to Form 8-K, November 5, 2026. Original company-furnished SEC exhibit; Q3 segment revenue and unaudited consolidated nine-month amounts; not an SEC audit. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7

  5. Aspen Aerogels, Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2026, filed May 8, 2026. Original issuer filing, Thermal Barrier results discussion: Q1 $3.5 million settlement recognition included in the $16.296 million segment revenue. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  6. Aspen Aerogels, Form 10-Q for the quarter and six months ended June 30, 2026, filed August 7, 2026. Original issuer filing: Q2 $4.9 million and H1 $8.4 million recognized from the settlement, with the full H1 amount included in $45.773 million Thermal Barrier revenue. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  7. Benzinga, Aspen Aerogels Q3 2026 earnings-call transcript, November 5, 2026. Third-party transcript attributes a $4.9 million previously deferred GM-settlement component within Q3 Thermal Barrier revenue to CFO Grant Thoele. This is not original issuer audio or a filed financial disclosure; indexed transcript text was inspected, but full direct page retrieval was unavailable. ↩ ↩2

  8. earningscalls.dev, Aspen Aerogels November 5, 2026 earnings-call transcript, November 5, 2026. Separate third-party rendering corroborates the attribution to CFO Grant Thoele from the same call; it is not independent primary confirmation of the precise accounting fact. Indexed text was inspected; issuer replay and Q3 10-Q were not authenticated. ↩ ↩2

  9. Aspen Aerogels, Form 8-K filed November 5, 2026, Item 2.02. Original filing establishes the exhibit's issuer/provenance, not independent verification by the SEC. ↩