Superconductor Tech (SCON) Announces the Receipt of Purchase Orders

AUSTIN, Texas, April 23, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Superconductor Technologies Inc. (STI) (Nasdaq:SCON), a world leader in the development and production of high temperature superconducting (HTS) materials and associated technologies, announces that it has recently received purchase orders from multiple customers for its Conductus^® 2G HTS wire. The backlog from these purchase orders along with other wire shipments that STI has committed to as of April 15, 2013 are expected to exhaust production capacity until at least the third quarter of 2013.

“Over the last quarter, we have experienced a significant increase in the number of customers placing orders for Conductus wire to complete their product evaluations,” stated Adam Shelton, STI’s VP of Marketing and Product Line Management. “Several industry leading, multinational companies have submitted purchase orders for wire to qualify in their product designs. This noticeable increase in demand is primarily from customers who are currently selling superconducting devices for emerging smart grid applications. With an embedded base in the legacy utility networks, our customers are well positioned to address the needs of the developing Smart Grid applications on a global scale.”

STI has been aligning its 2013 production output with requirements from strategic target customers who are committed to the commercialization of superconducting devices. Areas of high customer demand for smart grid devices include superconducting fault current limiters (SFCLs), high power transmission and distribution cables, and high-field magnets used in multiple applications.

Shelton continued, “As we continue to achieve greater performance and produce longer lengths of Conductus wire, our customers are securing our available capacity in order to receive sufficient quantities to qualify and standardize Conductus wire for deployment in their devices. STI’s near-term capacity is driven by the output of our pilot production RCE-CDR equipment that is designed to produce up to 100 meter wire lengths of HTS wire. While kilometer length production remains necessary to attain the expected commercial quantities, many superconducting applications like SFCLs and high-field magnets utilize sub-100 meter lengths of HTS wire. Several superconducting device designs utilize hundreds of HTS coils that are stacked in columns to form a conductor bank.

“Our RCE-CDR HTS wire manufacturing process provides the unique capability to produce Conductus wire in wide widths of up to 100 millimeters. While current wire suppliers can attain widths of 3 to 10 millimeters, our new pilot production equipment is capable of producing wire 10 times that width, which enables higher performance in the short lengths utilized for SFCL and other applications.”

About Superconductor Technologies Inc. (STI)

Superconductor Technologies Inc., headquartered in Austin, TX, has been a world leader in HTS materials since 1987, developing more than 100 patents as well as proprietary trade secrets and manufacturing expertise. For more than a decade, STI has been providing innovative interference elimination and network enhancement solutions to the commercial wireless industry. The company is currently leveraging its key enabling technologies, including RF filtering, HTS materials and cryogenics to develop energy efficient, cost-effective and high performance second generation (2G) HTS wire for existing and emerging power applications, to develop applications for advanced RF wireless solutions and innovative adaptive filtering, and for government R&D. Superconductor Technologies Inc.’s common stock is listed on the NASDAQ Capital Market under the ticker symbol “SCON.” For more information about STI, please visit http://www.suptech.com.

Safe Harbor Statement

Statements in this press release regarding our business that are not historical facts are “forward-looking statements” that involve risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and are inherently subject to uncertainties and other factors, which could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements. These factors and uncertainties include, but are not limited to: our limited cash and a history of losses; the limited number of potential customers; the limited number of suppliers for some of our components and our HTS wire; there being no significant backlog from quarter to quarter; our market being characterized by rapidly advancing technology; overcoming technical challenges in attaining milestones to develop and manufacture commercial lengths of our HTS wire; customer acceptance of our HTS wire; fluctuations in product demand from quarter to quarter; the impact of competitive filter products, technologies and pricing; manufacturing capacity constraints and difficulties; our ability to raise sufficient capital to fund our operations (whether through our equity sales agreement, registered direct offerings or otherwise), and the impact on our strategic wire initiative of any inability to raise such funds; the impact of any such financing activity on the level of our stock price; our ability to fully utilize our equity sales agreement as a source of future financings and the dilutive impact of any sales under such agreement, whether due to market conditions, our ability to satisfy various conditions required to sell shares under the agreement, the sales agent’s performance of its obligations under the agreement or otherwise; the impact on the level of our stock price, which may decline, in connection with the sales under the equity sales facility, registered direct offerings or otherwise; and local, regional, and national and international economic conditions and events and the impact they may have on us and our customers, such as the current worldwide recession.

Forward-looking statements can be affected by many other factors, including, those described in the “Business” and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” sections of STI’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2012 and in STI’s other public filings. These documents are available online at STI’s website, www.suptech.com, or through the SEC’s website, www.sec.gov. Forward-looking statements are based on information presently available to senior management, and STI has not assumed any duty to update any forward-looking statements.

CONTACT: Investor Relations Contact
         Cathy Mattison or Kirsten Chapman
         LHA
         +1-415-433-3777
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