Operator: Good morning and welcome to the Gelion PLC final results investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged, and they can be submitted at any time using the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Simply type in your questions and press send. Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll. I would now like to hand you over to CEO Matt Wood. Good morning.
Matt Wood: Good morning. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Gelion's 2026 results and strategy presentation. My name is Matt Wood, and it is my great pleasure to be the CEO of Gelion and to steward the company on behalf of our shareholders. I've spent more than 20 years in energy and materials, primarily focused on developing, scaling, and growing materials businesses, including in the battery materials space.
Matt Wood: Today, I'm joined by Amit Gupta, our Chief Financial Officer, who's a deeply experienced finance professional, who also brings experience in corporate development and M&A. Amit will walk us through the details of our 2026 financial results. I'm also joined by Louis Adriaenssens, our Chief Technology Officer, who has more than 20 years working in material synthesis and electrochemistry, including as the supervisor for chemistry for Panasonic at the Tesla Gigafactory in Nevada.
Matt Wood: Louis will present some of the fantastic technical progress we've made this year with our partners. I will then talk about Gelion's strategy and where we're going. However, first, I will touch briefly on who Gelion is, our mission, and what Nano-Encapsulated Sulfur is. Gelion is an advanced battery materials company.
Matt Wood: We are developing and commercializing a sulfur cathode material called Nano-Encapsulated Sulfur, or NES. In a lithium-ion battery, you can see on the screen there are two main types of cathode active material, that's on the left. They are called LFP, which is an iron phosphate-based cathode material, and NMC, which is a nickel, cobalt, and manganese-based cathode material. These are black powders.
Matt Wood: They are then mixed into a slurry or an ink and applied as a coating to a foil, which you can see in the center picture, and then dried and rolled to produce a cathode, which is on the right-hand picture. Our NES is a direct replacement for these cathode materials. It is also a black powder, and you can see that now in the left-hand picture. It replaces NMC or LFP, and all of the rest remains the same, the cathode coating and the production of the cathode itself.
Matt Wood: NES is a proprietary high-performance cathode material made from an abundant byproduct, which is sulfur, and which is a drop-in to existing battery chemistries and existing battery manufacture. Here, on the next slide, you can see our mission, and that is to establish our NES sulfur cathode as a compelling replacement for today's cathodes.
Matt Wood: We are pursuing this mission in order to provide a cathode market, which is in shortage, with a high-performance, cost-effective alternative that can be made through a domestic supply chain from an abundant raw material. This slide shows that there is, in terms of abundance, there is over 20 times more sulfur produced globally each year.
Matt Wood: A byproduct of the desulfurization of oil and gas, and its supply is geographically distributed, unlike LFP and NMC, which rely on mining and processing supply chains that are heavily concentrated in certain territories. There are two well-understood benefits of sulfur as a cathode. It has extremely high capacity to store energy, around four times that of NMC. As we have just seen, it is abundant. However, traditionally, there are several shortcomings of traditional sulfur cathode technologies.
Matt Wood: It is inherently low power, and it suffers from something called the polysulfide shuttle effect, whereby the sulfur in the cathode leaches out of the cathode into the electrolyte, and that causes a rapid capacity fade. The high capacity that you get drops very quickly. Other sulfur cathode technologies aim to mitigate this effect by redesigning the rest of the battery cell using bespoke components, such as bespoke electrolytes.
Matt Wood: Gelion has solved the polysulfide shuttle effect using something called nano-encapsulation. You can see the animation in the center of the screen. Effectively, we build a cage or a shell around the sulfur, which allows the lithium or sodium, depending on what the charge carrier is, it allows the lithium in and out, but keeps the sulfur in place.
Matt Wood: You can see in that animation that the yellow sulfur particles are being encapsulated by a black shell, and then the colorful lithium or sodium ions are able to shuffle in and out, but not the sulfur. Effectively, traditional sulfur cathode technologies mask the symptoms, whereas Gelion's Nano-Encapsulated Sulfur has cured the problem.
Matt Wood: This means our NES cathode provides high energy density, high power performance, stable cycle life, and a very broad operating temperature range, all from an abundant raw material. We like to say, by locking up the sulfur, we unlock its benefits. On to 2026. We have made significant operational progress in technology development, in market validation, and in setting up the path to scale. With existing partners, we signed an exclusive license with the Max Planck Institute.
Matt Wood: Our partnership with TDK has proven NES in pouch cells and continues very much on track. We had outstanding results from the drone mission demonstrator with QinetiQ. Louis is going to talk through some of the specific results from those programs shortly. We have also, in the past year, secured new partnerships which go beyond the objectives that we laid out for the year.
Matt Wood: In electric vehicles, we secured a grant-funded partnership with Nissan Europe to incorporate Nano-Encapsulated Sulfur into solid state batteries. More recently, we secured partnerships with a top 15 and a top five automotive OEM to evaluate NES in a wide range of electric vehicle battery chemistries, one of which is a co-funded program.
Matt Wood: We also announced our entry into the US market, in partnership with the National Lab of the Rockies, which is the leading federal institute in the United States for energy technologies. That program will both validate Nano-Encapsulated Sulfur's performance, and also provide a pathway to pilot scale production.
Matt Wood: Lastly on this slide, we have a funded JDA with Mitsui Kinzoku, which both provides commercial revenue in 2027 through their option, sorry, and through their option to negotiate a license for certain territories in Asia. That sets out a path for the commercial production of NES and associated license and royalty revenue when we get there. A lot going on, and a lot being delivered, but the key message is momentum.
Matt Wood: Momentum on technology, momentum on market validation in defense, in commercial drones, and in EV applications, and in setting out the path to scale and commercial revenues. Much of that has been announced since June, which we believe shows accelerating traction. It has all been done against the backdrop of strong financial stewardship, which has yielded good financial results, which you can see the headlines here on the screen. We are very proud of this. It has taken a lot of hard work, a lot of care and attention to detail. Let me invite Amit now to walk us through those financial results.
Amit Gupta: Thank you, Matt, for the great summary. In terms of financial results, as Matt summarized, we have achieved all the financial metrics, which is above market expectations. It is not easy. It takes a lot of careful consideration of all the development programs that we are running and the requirements for those. As you can see on the slide, our adjusted EBITDA loss was GBP 4.1 million compared to market expectations of GBP 4.4 million.
Amit Gupta: The increase is largely due to the integration services revenue. Last year, in FY25, we generated approximately GBP 900K of integration services revenue. There was almost nil this year, and Matt is going to talk about the strategy around the integration services business as well. A large part of this decline in revenue was offset by the grant income and the R&D tax credits in UK and Australia.
Amit Gupta: These are very important for a business like Gelion, which is deep tech and does a lot of development activity. This is non-dilutive funding, and it shows the support that the Australian government and the UK government provides to Gelion and their belief in the technology that we are developing. R&D expenses increased slightly. However, in FY2025, approximately one third of that related to zinc program, which we are not running anymore.
Amit Gupta: You can see in 2026 we are all in on sulfur and going further as well. All the money, all the capital is going to the sulfur development program. Overhead increased slightly. This represents expansion in territory. US entry, the recruitment of our Senior VP, Tracy Sizemore, in the US for global partnerships program, and you have seen the result of all the partnerships that we have signed.
Amit Gupta: The key metrics that I am sure everyone is monitoring for Gelion, and we do very carefully as well, is the pro forma cash and cash equivalents number, GBP 9.6 million at 30 June. This includes the R&D tax incentive as well as the grant income that we have earned but not received, so receivables. Even about 20% above the market expectations.
Amit Gupta: Again, I think this is the fifth year in a row where we have exceeded market expectations, and it has been done very deliberately, and we are very proud of the results. The summary is we are taking very good care of shareholder capital. We are tapping into non-dilutive funding as much as possible and trying to fund the development program of the business as much as possible as well. This slide summarizes our actual performance compared to market consensus across all the metrics you can see.
Amit Gupta: At adjusted PBT, it is 5% better than what was the consensus compared to the pro forma cash and cash equivalents, which is above 21%, and income being 17.5% above. The way we plan our business and the way we go through development programs and other activities in the business, we want to keep hitting these numbers year on year and very excited for what the next year holds for Gelion.
Amit Gupta: I will only focus on the bottom two charts on this slide. Grant funded R&D, you can see 63.2% of our development program was funded in 2026 compared to 49.8%. That is a significant jump. The grant programs are live. They are valid for the next couple of years as well, but we are not stopping there. We continue to look for additional programs that we can sign up for to continuously subsidize our development programs.
Amit Gupta: It is a very good use of that non-dilutive funding. The bottom right chart, which is underlying net cash use. Matt summarized all of the technical and the commercial progress that we have made, but we have done all of that within our expense kind of pool of capital that we allocated last year. When we came in October 2025, we communicated approximately GBP 5 million of annual run rate, so in terms of cash spend.
Amit Gupta: The good news is we have stuck to that number, and we have delivered everything over and above what we promised within that pool of capital that we had allocated. When I look back of what 2026 meant, it is a year of enormous achievements, technical, commercial. We have executed agreements which are co-funded, plus the JDA agreement with Mitsui Kinzoku. FY2027 is going to be a phenomenal year for us. We are at inflection point.
Amit Gupta: We start generating commercial revenues, although modest at this stage, but we will generate commercial revenues in FY 2027. As Matt spoke about the Mitsui Kinzoku potential licensing and royalty income as well. These are all pathways of us moving towards increasing commercial revenues in the next year or 2. Then who knows what 2027 has to provide to Gelion.
Amit Gupta: With all the traction that we have got especially in the last 3 to 4 months, we are expecting that to continue with new partnerships and programs announced as we execute them. There is definitely a lot of interest in the market space about what Gelion is doing. Thank you, and I will pass it on to Louis to take us through the technical program.
Louis Adriaenssens: All right. Thank you very much, Amit Gupta. The technical progress that I am going to talk through today largely looks at taking some of the phenomenal results from our NES material that we showed last year, and how we have taken those results and that material, and we have moved it towards more commercially relevant cell types, so pouch cells.
Louis Adriaenssens: And how we have done that with the facilities of our partners. We spoke a lot about our partners, and we are really proud of those partners. They give us a lot of capability, and these technical results essentially show how we are able to take those embryonic results that we had last year and turn those into something with much more commercial relevance. If we start with the panel at the left on this slide, this is data from TDK. TDK are our tier 1 cell-producing partner.
Louis Adriaenssens: What this data shows is the exceptional durability of our NES material. If you look at the green line, which goes horizontally, and that is very important, across from one side of the plot to the other, that green line represents the capacity. What I want you to focus on here is that as we go beyond cycle 100, 200, 300, that line retains a high degree of horizontal nature.
Louis Adriaenssens: What that shows is that as you go beyond those very important cycle numbers, the capacity fade is minimal. Very critically, we are not doing this at a weak C-rate. We are using an aggressive C-rate, which is actually designed to accelerate degradation. This is a 1C, 1-hour discharge, and 100% depth of discharge.
Louis Adriaenssens: I would like to highlight that this is in a pouch cell, a multilayer pouch cell produced by TDK at their facility in Japan and tested at their facility in Japan, backing up what we said a year ago about the durability of our material. Moving to the panel on the right, this is some recently announced data from our collaboration with QinetiQ, so this is part of the ARMD4 program, which has recently completed very successfully.
Louis Adriaenssens: QinetiQ are, of course, a UK-headquartered company with focus on defense and aerospace. What we were able to do with QinetiQ was actually send them our material, they assembled that material into a pouch cell at their facility, they tested that pouch cell at their facility.
Louis Adriaenssens: If you look at the data, what I want you to focus on is, I want you to focus on the black line, which is actually going across from left to right, the bottom black line. This black line represents the discharge of the battery, and it is that discharge which is involved in actually powering all the maneuvers that this simulated drone would undergo. Starting at the left, we have a 6C vertical takeoff.
Louis Adriaenssens: We are presuming this is a quadcopter drone. We have 6C, which represents the vertical takeoff of that drone. That pulse, that high-power pulse, actually allows us to do that aggressive maneuver. We then transition to an aggressive quadcopter cruise. That is a 3C phase there. When that 3C phase is done, the quadcopter cruise is done, we then engage in a vertical landing maneuver, which is again a 6C maneuver.
Louis Adriaenssens: These are incredibly aggressive cycles, and I want to highlight that it is not just one cycle. This battery was able to actually achieve 50 times of these cycles, showing that not only can we engage in these aggressive maneuvers, but you can actually then recharge the battery, and with the same device, actually do that again.
Louis Adriaenssens: From my assessment, considering that this is a battery that is capable of a fully domestic supply chain, so within that group of batteries, these results are really unique. These results, specifically the power capability in partnership with the durability of our battery, have actually raised a lot of attention from players who work in industries which make devices like the quadcopter drones that we have shown on this slide. If you go to the next slide, please, Emmett. As have our results from the National Lab of the Rockies.
Louis Adriaenssens: I will just give a brief introduction. Matt did a great job on that earlier. But a brief introduction to the National Lab of the Rockies. They are part of the US gov that which is focused on research development and application of energy storage and energy usage. Specifically what we are looking at here, is a phenomenal power capability again of our battery.
Louis Adriaenssens: What national labs were able to do was take our material, assemble that into a cell, and test that cell at their facility. Those are the results we are looking at here. Starting at the left, you have a 0.1 C-rate that corresponds to a 10-hour full charge and discharge. On the right, you have a 2C rate that corresponds to a half-hour charge and discharge. That is a 20-fold increase in rate.
Louis Adriaenssens: In doing that, we retain 92% of the capacity, going from a 10-hour charge discharge to a 30-minute charge discharge. Compare that to a standard lithium-ion battery, where you would be looking at retention of between 80% to 90%. We are able to make this battery with a fully domestic supply chain, and we are able to at least match, if not better, the results which are obtained using a standard lithium-ion battery.
Louis Adriaenssens: What is really important about this, especially these results of the National Lab of the Rockies, is that the National Labs actually represent a pathway to US government institutions and agencies. For instance, the Department of War. Critically for Gelion, it also represents a pathway to the actual procurement programs of those agencies.
Louis Adriaenssens: For us, this is a phenomenally important result, and we've been very happy with the traction that we've gotten from this result, both within the National Labs and beyond. At this point, I want to If you go just back for a second, please, Emmett. I just want to highlight that we've shown data from Asia, so Japan, data from Europe, so the UK, and also data from the United States. Remember that Gelion operates with a licensing model.
Louis Adriaenssens: The ability for our materials to be shipped to partners and work out of the box as advertised is absolutely critical. We're really, really proud of the fact that we're able to actually take our material, we're able to send it out to our partners, and we're able to actually have that material operate first time out of the box as advertised.
Louis Adriaenssens: It's critical to the way the company operates, and it's just something we're really, really proud of. I also want to point out that with all of these partners, especially with the national labs, these results are only going to get better. These partners have their own technologies, in supporting componentry, so for instance, the anode and the electrolyte.
Louis Adriaenssens: As we actually leverage some of those technologies, we expect that this performance is actually going to improve. So you go to the next slide, please, Emmett. We had ambitions that we spoke about, when we came out a year ago, 5 key ambitions, and we're really happy to say that we've hit every single one of those. I want to focus on the middle one. Progressing market fit with TDK, who are a tier 1 cell manufacturing partner.
Louis Adriaenssens: In doing that, we've kind of identified 2 key battery types that we're working on and developing towards commercial application. The first is a variant which uses our NES cathode and pairs that with a lithium metal anode. This would be a battery which is focused to defense or aerospace. We've talked through some of the performance there, so very high power, capable of 3C continuous and 6C pulse to do all of the aggressive maneuvers that are required for anything that operates in aerospace.
Louis Adriaenssens: High specific capacity, greater than 800 milliamp hours per gram of cathode active material. I want you to compare that to 200 milliamp hours per gram, which is observed for high performance NMC and high nickel. This is over 4 times higher specific capacity than those incumbent technologies. Excellent durability, 300 cycles under aggressive conditions in a pouch cell assembled with lithium metal.
Louis Adriaenssens: These are really phenomenal results. Of course, the wide temperature range that we spoke about before, operating down to -20 degrees Celsius and up to 40 degrees Celsius. Moving to the other cell format, this is a graphitic anode cell format. All of those performance metrics and performance advantages still apply.
Louis Adriaenssens: So we've got high power, high specific capacity, and of course, also a wide temperature range. But moving towards a graphitic anode, we're looking more towards a broader spectrum commercial application. So this would be commercial drones, devices, and EVs. Here we partner with a graphitic anode, which is a much more stable and safe anode compared to lithium metal. In doing so, we're able to increase our durability.
Louis Adriaenssens: So we are able to go to above 1,000 cycles, again, under very, very harsh 1C charge discharge conditions, 100% depth discharge, which brings us in line with where we need to be to actually operate in those markets. Pair that with the fact that our material is compatible with lithium-ion battery components.
Louis Adriaenssens: That means the electrolytes, the separators, and the anodes, and all of the machinery that is used to make those components and handle those components in cell assembly in gigafactories today. That gives us the opportunity to move our material forward as an actual drop-in. We do not need to retool factories. We do not need to make new factories. We can use the gigafactories that are available today. Because of that compatibility, we can actually drop in there.
Louis Adriaenssens: Additionally, a domestic supply chain, as Matt talked about before, we use sulfur and we use carbon, both of these byproducts of local industries. So for instance, oil refineries, which are available in most places in the world, giving the world, let us say, a democratic viewpoint in how they can produce their batteries. Last of all, just briefly touch on this, there is an economic advantage.
Louis Adriaenssens: We have had our batteries third-party cost modeled, and they come in at cell level, so not just the cathode active material, but actual wholesale level, 15% lower than the incumbent, with the equivalent performance. So that is a massive cost benefit, which pairs with all of the performance advantages. I just want to summarize and say that these are really fantastic results, and we have done this in a very, very careful and thoughtful way, as Emmett highlighted. We are very proud of them.
Louis Adriaenssens: We think it has been a great year for Gelion. With that, I will hand back to Matt, who will talk you through what our ambition is for the year to come.
Matt Wood: Thanks, Louis. Not only do we have a fantastic product, which, as Louis described, has been validated by leading players in our target markets, but there is also a significant commercial opportunity. I would like to spend a few minutes talking about where that is, what it is, and why we believe in it. So really, why sulfur and why cathodes? On this slide, we see some data from Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, a leading market intelligence and price reporting agency who specialize in batteries and critical minerals.
Matt Wood: The chart on the left shows the rapid growth in battery demand, and the chart on the right shows the global cathode market. We can see on the right that Benchmark forecasts that the global cathode market is in deficit in 2026, followed by a prolonged deficit from 2032 onwards.
Matt Wood: Furthermore, with the dominance of NMC cathodes and LFP cathodes, from a performance perspective, today in the market, there is an alternate cathode technology that combines high performance with manufacturing practicality and a lower risk supply chain. We have a large growing battery market driven by the macro trend of electrification of energy infrastructure, of mobility, of defense, which is served by a cathode market today that has unmet supply needs and unmet performance needs.
Matt Wood: There is a material opportunity for Gelion's NES cathode. To deliver on this, we need to focus. We need to focus our efforts, attention, and our resources on that massive opportunity. Today, we have three business units at Gelion.
Matt Wood: We have chosen to focus on our NES cathode business on the left, where we have a significant market opportunity, as I have just described, and have advanced to the point where we are poised to success. However, this means making prioritization decisions elsewhere in our portfolio. We have taken the difficult decision to wind down our integration solutions product offering.
Matt Wood: This unit was established with the aim of generating revenue from Gelion through the integration and installation of battery energy storage systems, or BESS, using third-party cells. However, after delivering successfully an initial project, the market has become significantly more challenging. It has become commoditized and oversupplied, and Gelion doesn't have a sustainable competitive advantage in that market.
Matt Wood: We have chosen to wind it down, which will save around GBP 800,000 per year, which can be redeployed to our core NES business so that we can continue to grow the amount of activity that we are doing in that business, without materially widening the operating envelope. Additionally, we have a battery recycling unit, and this is actually fantastic technology that Gelion has taken to the point now where it is also ready to scale, technically.
Matt Wood: But this will require meaningful investment, and it will be competing for capital with our NES cathode business. We are currently working through a strategic review to identify how this fits within Gelion and whether working with a partner could be a better path forward.
Matt Wood: We have chosen to put our strategic focus on our NES sulfur cathode material, and then within that NES cathode business, our strategic priority is on the applications and activities that will lead us most directly to commercialization. We call this strategy the drive to commercialize, and there are three pillars against which we are aligning our resources and our priorities. They are discovery, which is R&D, demonstration, which is market validation, and commercialization.
Matt Wood: We have chosen within that to prioritize commercialization ahead of demonstration and discovery. There will be more emphasis on commercialization, that is why it sits on the left, than on demonstration and discovery, but there will still be demonstration and discovery activities because they are still very important. In terms of what each of these entails, we will commercialize NES for defense and aerospace in lithium metal cells, as Louis described.
Matt Wood: We will commercialize NES for commercial drones, devices, and electric vehicles in graphitic cells. We will scale up our NES production to serve those programs, and I will talk shortly a little bit about how we intend to do that. Within demonstrate, we will narrow our focus to NES for solid state batteries for EVs, which has a really meaningful prize in high-performing EVs, but a longer time horizon, and still validation work to do.
Matt Wood: There are many, many other opportunities for Nano-Encapsulated Sulfur and nano-encapsulation technology. Our discovery efforts will focus very clearly only on programs where we have access to both funding and partnerships. These are really, really important. There are so many things we could do, and they are all very, very worthy things to do, and we believe that nano-encapsulation has a really strong role to play in many of them.
Matt Wood: We need to focus, and we can come back to some of those, once we reach commercialization of our NES. In the meantime, we will focus on discovery efforts around funded programs with partners. An example of that would be sodium-ion cells, because NES can act as the cathode very, very ably in a sodium-ion cell as it can in a lithium-ion cell.
Matt Wood: We are focusing on Nano-Encapsulated Sulfur, and then within that core business, we are focusing on commercialization in our target markets of drones and devices, which are nearer term, and EVs, which are a larger market, but more medium term. When we look at the progress we have made, we look at that strategy, and we look at our current activities, how does this all fit together?
Matt Wood: This is a little bit of an eye chart, but hopefully with the voiceover, it will make sense. The base of the house is a very, very strong IP foundation that is now fully in place with our own IP, with ongoing IP arrangement with, exclusive IP arrangement with the Max Planck Institute, and then IP that we have acquired both from Johnson Matthey, OXIS and OXLiD.
Matt Wood: Built upon that is the fantastic market validation work that the Gelion team has completed together with our partners, much of which Louis has described. In the market, we have programs underway with leading partners across all of our target applications in the right chemistries, and then feeding that will be a successively different scales of production. I will just sort of talk through that. We have lab-scale production today in Sydney.
Matt Wood: We are at the second scale of that production, and we are in the process of delivering the third and final scale of that production that will happen during this fiscal year, early in this fiscal year, and supported by our partners, you can see on the screen. That will provide us with sufficient material to keep feeding the market validation programs that we have in the top row of this diagram.
Matt Wood: They are hungry, and as they come, they go through successive levels of requirements. If you imagine the difference between creating enough material to put in several handfuls of cells for testing with one of our partners, that is very different to needing sufficient material to eventually put into enough cells that go into a pack and drive a car around a track, a test track. We will need to get to pilot scale production.
Matt Wood: Beyond that, we will get to commercial scale production, but we will do that with partners. One of those pathways is with the joint development agreement, the funded joint development agreement with Mitsui Kinzoku. That is an example of where we have a pathway to negotiate a commercial scale license and production.
Matt Wood: The pilot plant is important, but also it will give us the engineering package that we can license. So instead of licensing only technology, also licensing engineering packages. This is a really important step for us. Lastly, please, don't forget, go right back to the beginning. This looks very complicated, but it is actually quite simple. This is all built around and fed by one single black powder, a Nano-Encapsulated Sulfur. Amit, if you don't mind just clicking the build on the slide.
Matt Wood: The IP is around that single black powder. The validation work is using that single black powder. The market work with our partners is around that single black powder into multiple chemistries for multiple applications. When we go through that scale-up of successive levels of production ourselves and with partners, it will be making that single and very fancy black powder.
Matt Wood: I wanted to sort of bring it back to where we started. Looking ahead, what to expect next from Gelion. The executive team and I believe that actually it is very clear what we need to do. There is a lot to do, but we believe it is very clear what we need to do. It falls into two reasonably simple work streams. On our partnerships, we need to deliver against the milestones for our existing collaborations.
Matt Wood: We need to deliver the commercial revenue for those that have commercial revenue associated with them, and we need to add a discrete number of new drone and EV partnerships into that stable of market partnerships. On scale-up, we will deliver the increased lab scale cathode production, cathode active material production, our NES production from our lab, and that is underway so that we can continue to feed those programs in 2027.
Matt Wood: We will scale up our lab scale pouch production, pouch cell production, both in Australia and in the UK. That is not because we want to be a cell manufacturer, that is because we need to produce cells to be able to partner with our customers on validation. Then we will advance our project for the pilot scale production. So we will initiate that, and the first piece of which is early stage engineering.
Matt Wood: We think it is relatively straightforward. The last thing I would like to add is, having been now in the seat for three or four months, that we have a great team to get all of this done. You have met two key members of the team today, but we have a great team to get all of this done. I am extremely grateful to my predecessor, John, for various things, but the principle among those is the great team that I have inherited.
Matt Wood: I have total confidence in this team's ability to deliver the things that we just laid out on that last slide. In summary, we have delivered strong financials in the past fiscal year. We have done that whilst delivering continued progress on market validation and on our partnerships as promised, and in some cases, beyond what was promised.
Matt Wood: We have, I believe, a very clear strategic focus on commercializing our NES cathode opportunity and clarity within that on how we want to go and do it and what is most important to us as we make careful choices about our resources. We have fantastic momentum.
Matt Wood: We have built and continue to enjoy fantastic momentum in our target markets of drones, both defense and commercial drones, and EVs. Lastly, I would like to thank our shareholders for their support. There are many stakeholders that go into achieving all of this, but our shareholders are very important stakeholders among those, so we would like to thank you for your support. Now I would like to open it up to any questions that you might have.
Operator: Fantastic. Thank you very much indeed for your presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions using the Q&A tab situated on the top right corner of your screen. While the company take a few moments to review those questions submitted today, I would like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A, can be accessed by Investor Dashboard. Simon, at this point, if I may hand over to you to chair the Q&A, I will pick up from you at the end. Thank you. Hi, Simon. Please go ahead. Hi, Simon, can you hear us?
Matt Wood: So look, if we have had maybe a little technical glitch there, we can see some of the questions that are coming through on the chat. Maybe I can just moderate while we are waiting for Simon to come on. I think probably the best place to start, we have had a question around share price. The question was, why are we seeing such large fluctuations in the share price, and why have we had such a negative reaction to recent potential commercialization announcements?
Matt Wood: I will take this one. We are acutely aware of the share price. We watch it every day. But I do not dwell on the share price. We do not control it directly, and there are factors such as market liquidity and the macro environment that have a huge impact, and often, in the opposite direction to the progress that the company is announcing.
Matt Wood: We are focused on getting our heads down and building a great business. That said, we are taking steps to engage more with the market. To give some examples, my role, the CEO position with John's retirement, the board has taken the opportunity to move that to the UK to be closer to the market. I am now engaging more frequently both with our institutional investors, and we will be attending a number of retail shareholder events.
Matt Wood: That will include actually, even in November, the Yellowstone Advisory event, which I think is on 11 November, and I will be at the MelloLondon Investor Conference in London on 17 to 18 November. So be very happy to see people there. We will continue to look for those, both in London and outside of London.
Matt Wood: So yeah, just to recap, I do not dwell on the share price. Value will be created. Do we have Simon back?
Operator: Matt, so Simon's microphone is not working. Are you happy to continue chairing the Q&A there, Matt?
Matt Wood: Yeah, if everyone's happy to bear with me while I do, because I am reading and thinking and allocating at the same time. We have had quite a few technical questions, which is really encouraging. I think it shows
[Company Representative] (Gelion): Can you hear me now?
Matt Wood: Hi, Simon. Welcome.
Operator: Glad to have you back.
[Company Representative] (Gelion): Amazing.
Operator: Perfect.
[Company Representative] (Gelion): Okay, I was going to take the questions in order that they were submitted. The first one was, how much of a threat to your strategy are recent advances in sodium-ion?
Matt Wood: Great question. I will take this and then Louis, I will open up to see if you have got anything you would like to add to it. I actually do not see sodium-ion as a threat. I see it as an opportunity. The reason is that sodium and sodium-ion batteries, the ion, the sodium is the charge carrier.
Matt Wood: It is the element of the battery that moves between the anode and the cathode through the electrolyte, and it is the charge carrier. It works like a lithium-ion battery. It is just it is sodium rather than lithium. There is an anode, there is a cathode, and sodium has distinct benefits and drawbacks compared to lithium. Our material can work as the cathode in a sulfur, sorry, in a sodium battery, as it can in a lithium battery.
Matt Wood: It is actually part of our strategy, in the discover pillar, but it is just a little bit longer wavelength. Our nearer term focus is on commercializing NES in lithium systems for drones, EVs, and devices. Hopefully you saw in the strategy presentation that sodium-ion batteries are very much within our strategy. As I said, that is a great opportunity. We do not see it as a threat. Louis, anything you would like to add to that?
Louis Adriaenssens: I just second, I think, for the markets that we have highlighted in this particular presentation, sodium-ion battery is not going to be an applicable battery technology. For things that fly, you need to be lightweight and high power, and sodium is not going to provide both of those. The EVs that we are targeting, they can be competitive with absolute state-of-the-art lithium-ion batteries.
Louis Adriaenssens: Again, your sodium-ion batteries are not going to provide that level of performance. The markets we have highlighted to go into first, sodium-ion is not a competitor, but as Matt said, we very much do have our eye on sodium, and we see it as an opportunity for the future.
[Company Representative] (Gelion): Thank you. The next one is a first of a number of technical questions. How does the NES carbon structure perform under the intense pressures of calendering?
Matt Wood: I will gladly defer to Louis on these. Louis, please, you go.
Louis Adriaenssens: It is a real interesting question. The short answer is, I will tell you, I will give you a little bit of the history. When we first started making the material, we did try some calendering studies, and the first iterations of the material, actually, it did not work. I am very pleased to say now, that with the later iterations of the material, we are able to calendar it, and we do not see any drop in the utilization of sulfur.
Louis Adriaenssens: As we develop more and more, there will be. What we have found is that as our understanding of the material and the way we make the material advances, we have gotten much, much better at actually being able to design not just better electrochemical usage, but also mechanical properties such as hardness and mechanical durability, as well as those electrochemical properties, which are absolutely essential for things like processing.
Louis Adriaenssens: The short answer is, yes, you can calendar it, and as you calendar it, performance is largely the same as it was before.
[Company Representative] (Gelion): Thank you. Next technical question. You have reported 4Q areal capacity in coin cells. How is that translating to larger pouch cells nearing 10 amp hours?
Louis Adriaenssens: Yeah, sure. The most recent results or the most recent materials that we have shipped to TDK, they are all 4 milliamp hour per square centimeter cathodes. The results that we recently were able to acquire with QinetiQ, through the ARMD4, a component of that was using 4 milliamp hour per square centimeter of cathodes.
Louis Adriaenssens: The importance of 4 milliamp hour per square centimeter is that as you reach a 10 amp hour cell, you are able to actually hit or exceed that critical number of 400 watt hours per kilogram. That corresponds to a really lightweight battery, which is appropriate for things that fly. I suppose to answer the question, we are rolling that areal capacity out into our pouch cell development. There is a schedule of things that have to happen as you do that.
Louis Adriaenssens: We've hit that step, and we're continuing to develop that material on towards 10 amp hour pouch cells, in the not-too-distant future.
[Company Representative] (Gelion): Thank you. The next question is for sure for you, Louis.
[Company Representative] (Gelion): Regarding the September patents, how does the anode protection patent impact dendrite formation, cycle life, and performance for cells with lithium, metal, and silicon? Can you explain how the thermal control tech will impact cell-to-pack efficiency? Is the anode protection and thermal control tech being integrated and tested in full cells packs in existing partnerships?
Louis Adriaenssens: Yeah. So very good question. Specifically, the lithium protection layer, that is for an alkali metal anode, so that would be lithium or sodium. What that patent actually protects is the application on top of that anode of an initial layer, which functions to actually alloy with the sodium or lithium, which is plating or stripping onto that anode.
Louis Adriaenssens: And a second layer on top of that, which is an ionically conductive layer, but electronically insulating, which actually facilitates passage of the lithium and sodium onto that anode. What that does is it smooths out the plating and stripping, and it vastly reduces the tendency to form dendrites. So that's how that technology works. I would see this as being a really, really important patent for us, especially due to parallels and connections to what's happening in the UK at the moment around developing our solid-state batteries.
Louis Adriaenssens: It has a very, very strong connection to that. This is one of the patents that we acquired from Johnson Matthey through the OXIS portfolio. As we develop, we find that a lot of those patents are incredibly relevant to what we are doing at the moment. So there is a strong connection to where we are going in the UK with that patent, and that is roughly how that works. The other patent on the thermal management, what that protects is a way to cool or heat or retain the temperature of the batteries.
Louis Adriaenssens: What is specifically cool about it is rather than heating the pack and relying on the heat or the coldness to radiate into the batteries, you directly use the current collectors within the batteries, which are copper metal or aluminum metal, highly conductive, to translate that heat directly into the middle of the cells themselves.
Louis Adriaenssens: This is a very, very efficient way to transfer heat into the batteries. As we start to scale up beyond cell level and into pack level, that will become a very important technology. Again, this is one of the patents that we acquired from Johnson Matthey, the OXIS portfolio. Like I said before, we are seeing that a lot of those patents have a lot of relevance to where we are going.
Louis Adriaenssens: As a specific example of how that thermal management one might be useful, let us say beyond EV, where there is an obvious application, if you think of drones, and you think of things that need to operate in very extreme environments, so for instance, in defense, the ability to control the heat of that battery. Let us imagine you are at an incredibly cold temperature.
Louis Adriaenssens: Let us imagine you are doing something in the Arctic, right? You need to heat the battery. We have the power to operate that battery at a very, very low temperature. Let us say we are way lower than -20 degrees Celsius. Let us say we were operating at, like, -50 degrees Celsius, something like that. We can use that very efficient way to heat the battery. We use the residual power that the battery has. We transfer that directly into the cell.
Louis Adriaenssens: We heat that battery, and bam, our device comes to life. That again is a really exciting patent, not just from, let us say, commercial markets, but also for some more specific niche applications. That is how that patent works, and that is how we might be able to harness it in the future.
[Company Representative] (Gelion): Thank you. Can you give any idea on volume and packaging of this and how it compares with the established LFP and NMC cells?
Louis Adriaenssens: Yeah, sure. As a component of the work we're doing with one of the automotive partners that we've recently announced, we don't have actual measurements of this at the moment, so we're relying on modeling to look at that. This is a multi-phase program, and as the phases develop, the performance of the battery will become better as we get the assembly, the processing, for instance, the calendering that we talked about earlier, better.
Louis Adriaenssens: We anticipate this coming in the third phase of that project, somewhere between an LFP battery and an NMC battery. So it'll be more volumetrically energy dense than LFP, but likely be slightly shy of the volumetric energy density of NMC or standard high nickel cathodes. As we develop beyond that phase 3 and we get closer to full commercialization, that may change.
Louis Adriaenssens: But I think that's probably the best answer that I can give to that question at the moment.
[Company Representative] (Gelion): Thank you. A few questions here from Daniel. Scaling, you've kind of answered this. What changes in performance do you expect when scaling NES from small laboratory cells to commercially relevant sizes? Have you tested at those larger sizes, and how did the measured results compare with your expectations?
Louis Adriaenssens: Yeah.
Matt Wood: I will take the beginning of that question, and then I will hand it over to Louis. It is important to say the good thing, one of the many good things, but one of the good things about the way we make encapsulated sulfur is that there is no invention of any kind of new process technology that is required.
Matt Wood: There are several process technologies that could be applicable, and as we have tested the production of NES using different process technologies at different scales, actually the electrochemical performance has worked in each case. As we have done that lab scale through different process technologies at different scales within the lab, it tells us a lot about how we might be best placed to make NES, and it has given us a lot of flexibility of how we might make NES at commercial scale.
Matt Wood: We do not worry about that. The answer is, yes, we tested it at different scales using different process technologies, and it has performed. Really, the one thing we have to watch out for, in my opinion, as we look at scale to commercial scale is the final processing step as we think about particle size and that kind of thing.
Matt Wood: What is necessary there will be determined by which process technology we select. We will be working with really a leading engineering company as we go through our early phase engineering for commercial scale production, in order to help us solve those or answer those questions, or really solve those problems. In terms of whether the measured results and how they compared, Louis, I would have to defer to you on that.
Matt Wood: I think just to recap, we have tried this at different scales, we have tried it with different technologies, and at each of those it has worked, and therefore that would inform us that actually we have some flexibility on how we do that at large scale, and we do not have major concerns about that. Clearly, we need to do it thoughtfully, and we need to do it in a measured way with data. But so far the data has been very, very positive.
Louis Adriaenssens: I have got one thing I will add to that. I was very grateful for this question when I saw it come up. Regarding the test results that we presented from TDK, there is a variety of ways that you can cheat when you make a battery. You make a coin cell or a pouch cell, you can use very, very thick lithium metal anodes, you can use a huge amount of electrolyte.
Louis Adriaenssens: What is really exciting about those results from TDK is actually those are some of the later results that we have where we have removed those, let us say, artificial advantages. Those cells are made with an amount of lithium metal, a thickness of lithium metal, which is what we would expect to use when we are making a cell, which would be used, let us say, for instance, in drones, and also, without using flooded electrolyte.
Louis Adriaenssens: Our first foray into this and actually targeting some larger format cells and let's say more real-world cells, has returned very, very good results. Thank you for the opportunity to share a little more detail on those results from TDK.
[Company Representative] (Gelion): Cool. There are a couple of questions here, more than a couple actually, on when you expect to receive proper commercial orders and how you see revenue developing over the next 2 or 3 years.
Matt Wood: Yeah. I will take the commercial orders part, perhaps, and Amit, then I can flick over to you for revenue. There is nothing stopping us in getting to commercial orders other than time. I have worked in the material space for a long time, and battery chemistry is comfortably the most complex chemistry of any of the downstream applications that I have worked in plastics, in coatings, in rubber, and lots of other things, in drilling fluids.
Matt Wood: Battery chemistry is comfortably the most tricky, and it is comfortably the most application specific. That is why it takes time. The companies to whom we are providing our materials and partnership on how to get it working, it is working, but there is a very well-trodden path that you have to go through at different scales.
Matt Wood: That varies, the time it takes varies with what is the application and therefore what is the chemistry, and the approach that each company takes to that, the individual approach that it takes. It just does take time. It is not a great answer. It is not one that everyone is going to be thrilled to hear, but it takes time. As we march through that, so far, we are getting over every hurdle that is put in front of us. But we have to persevere.
Matt Wood: The second thing I would say is, ultimately, we would like to pursue a licensing model. There is a question in here that is related to this around downstream users. We are pursuing both, and it is really, really important in the battery material space that you do pursue both. We are talking to cell makers such as TDK, but also end application producers.
Matt Wood: Those are drone OEMs, and those are EV automotive OEMs, so you have to come at it from both angles. Ultimately, you can get to application end-use equipment manufacturers who will then, if they have got qualification capabilities as the ones we are partnering with have, they will then provide the pull-through to their battery manufacturer. We also need to work with leading battery manufacturers to show that it works and then get the pull-through from them to their customers, and it is really, really important that we do that with both. That is the pathway. Then Amit, in terms of expectations
Amit Gupta: Yeah
Matt Wood: I can give you the space to answer that question.
Amit Gupta: Yeah. Thank you, Matt. I will also cover, there are a few questions on cash, revenue, Mitsui Kinzoku, so I will cover all of them in one go. In terms of revenue expectations, as I summarized, and Matt summarized, we are expecting modest revenue in FY2027. I think we have to appreciate the last 3 or 4 months and the traction that we have got from funded agreements, and that is going to be largely our focus going forwards as well.
Amit Gupta: The more agreements we can enter in terms of funded agreements, the better for revenue recognition. It is harder to say today what the revenue will be in FY2028, say, for example, because you are working on a number of agreements at the moment, but Mitsui, there is a GBP 2 million funded JDA based on milestones.
Amit Gupta: We have invoiced the first payment to Mitsui, and we have received the cash already as well in the month of October. So it is a very good start from Mitsui Kinzoku program. The top 5 we have just signed, we have raised an invoice, it will go in the next couple of days and we will get paid as per the terms of the agreement in the next 30, 45 days. So these have all started.
Amit Gupta: We will continuously focus on this. Then there was a question on the CapEx raise. We just released our audited results, clear going concern. We have looked at cash flow under 31 December, so the auditors didn't have any concern. I have summarized about our current grant programs, which are there for the next couple of years.
Amit Gupta: We are looking for more grant programs in the US, in UK, in Australia, to continue to fund our development programs through this grant and non-dilutive funding as well. I hope that answers the question. In terms of analyst research reports, Longspur and Allenby, they both cover us. Longspur issued their report yesterday, so please go online on the London Stock Exchange website. The reports are available for everyone to download and read.
Amit Gupta: They have got their forecast as to how good they look the company is going to go. In terms of cash burn, I have summarized that we are looking at a £5 million annual cash spend, give or take. It will depend on the number of agreements, on the number of programs funded, what portion is funded, what is not. That is kind of the envelope we are looking at.
Amit Gupta: It will go up some years, it will go down some years. We have just spoken about the cost cuts in terms of integration solutions, the 800k of annual cost savings, which we will use to fund the growth of the sulfur program. We are still working within that £5 million estimate of the OpEx and CapEx combined. I think I have covered most on the cash burn, cap raise questions, Matt, and then I think we have got a couple of minutes, maybe, Simon, to cover what is left.
[Company Representative] (Gelion): Sure. I think we are bang up against the hour now, so let us do one last question. What are the competing technologies to your technology?
Matt Wood: I will maybe set this question up and then ask Louis to touch on this. The important thing for our specific technology, so you have got in-kind competition and you have got not in-kind competition. There are other lithium sulfur cathode materials out there. As I said earlier in the presentation, our material with the nano-encapsulation means we are solving the root of the problem. We are curing it rather than trying to mask the symptoms. What happens there is that our material is a drop-in cathode material. We are providing to people and selling people the value proposition of sulfur and a drop-in cathode material.
Matt Wood: We are not selling people a redesign of the battery. A lot of sulfur chemistries, but also others, say, "Well, if you'd like to take advantage of the benefits of this thing, here is how you would have to redesign the other components of the cell." They would be selling a cell chemistry, and we would be selling a cathode active material.
Matt Wood: They are sort of in-kind competition in sulfur, but actually offering something slightly different. There is certainly room in that gigantic and underserved cathode market for both of those things. Then in terms of not in-kind competition in the cathode market, I mean, fundamentally, a battery has a cathode, an anode, a separator, and an electrolyte, and several other things.
Matt Wood: But, that is the architecture, and so when we look at that, the main competitions we said are NMC, and there are different flavors of that, largely with higher and higher nickel contents. Then LFP, and there are some flavors of that as well. So those are the principal competition.
Matt Wood: There are other alternate cathode materials out there, but they do not have the traction maybe that sulfur has, generally speaking. Many of them also come with the sort of redesign or the gymnastics that you would have to do from a chemistry perspective. We could go for a long time on the specifics of each of those. With this company for our shareholders, we do not need to fully displace them. We need a modest share of an enormous market that is dominated by two principal things.
Matt Wood: Therefore, there is room for Gelion's NES, for other sulfur technologies, and for other cathode technologies. Louis, I do not know if there are any specific cathode technologies that you would want to flag at this stage.
Louis Adriaenssens: No, I think it is a beautiful answer. I think that the proof of our ability to compete in that market is all of the collaborations that we have managed to enter into. Many of them that come with funding, and that have very, very serious long-term positive consequences. That is not easy to do, right? Batteries is a tough market. What we have been able to do in the last year is really get people to see it and believe it, and it operates out of the box first time, as we say. So yeah, there is competition. I think you did a really good job of laying out the market. We are right there, Matt.
[Company Representative] (Gelion): Okay. Matt, I think we're going to have to call it a day there. If you could sum up what you'd like investors to take away, we can then close the presentation.
Matt Wood: Thank you, Simon. Well, look, thanks to the team at Gelion, especially Amit and Louis, for today. But I think the key things that I'd love people to take away from this are absolutely fantastic progress in the market with the validation and moving to qualification, which is the path to commercialization of NES. We've done that with very sound financial stewardship of the company's money. We've achieved an enormous amount without overstepping the boundaries, and in a way that's yielded results above consensus expectation.
Matt Wood: We now have absolute crystal clarity on where we're focused and how we're going to go about that. We have absolutely fantastic momentum in pursuing that. Those are the four things I'd like the people to take away. Great progress operationally, sound financial stewardship, clarity on strategy, and great momentum. With that, I would just repeat, thank you very much.
Operator: That's great. Matt, Amit, Louis, thank you very much indeed for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close this session, as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback, which helps
