Aquaporin A/S (00B.F) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon. My name is Krista, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Aquaporin Annual Results 2023 Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I will now turn the conference over to Matt Boczkowski, Chief Executive Officer. Matt, you may begin your conference.

Thank you. Welcome, everyone, to this presentation of the highlights of our annual report for 2023. We're very happy to be here with you today. And as was mentioned, we will take some questions at the end and we will also take the questions online. To begin, I just wanted to make a quick introduction. My name is Matt Boczkowski, CEO of Aquaporin and I'm joined here today with Klaus Juhl Wulff, our Chief Financial Officer, and we will both take you through the slides that highlight our annual report results. Maybe before we start, just I wanted to mention that some of the material that will be presented here consist of forward-looking statements, and it's important for our viewers and our listeners to treat this information as such. So here is a disclaimer that you can find on the topic. Now we have perhaps some new shareholders, some new viewers, some new listeners that are listening or finding out about Aquaporin for the first time. So just a very quick reminder of who we are. Aquaporin is a Danish company, of course. We are headquartered in Copenhagen just a little bit outside of it. We are listed on the NASDAQ Stock Exchange under the ticker AQP. The purpose of our company is to rethink water filtration with biotechnology. We are very unique in that regard. We're one of the few, if not the one of the only few, one of the only companies in the world that do that. We're 82 employees and all of us are working towards what we call our one core technology, which is Aquaporin Inside. With this Aquaporin Inside technology, which is based on the Aquaporin protein, we combine this with membranes or with standard membrane material to create more energy-efficient membrane products. And with this, we operate in 3 market segments in Residential Drinking Water and Industrial Reverse Osmosis and what we call in Market Development Forward Osmosis. Within that market development, our primary area is food and beverage. And so we will mention a few words about what we do in this space throughout the presentation. We are a global company. We have customers throughout the globe. We have -- we are practically all -- in every continent in some way, shape or form, with the majority of revenue coming outside of Denmark and outside of Europe, and that is possible through a key account strategy, which I will touch on a little bit in the presentation as well, as I give you an update on what to -- on what we have been up to in 2023 and what we expect in '24. We have a strong R&D team based out of Singapore, and we have offices in China, U.S., Turkey and of course, Denmark, as I mentioned previously. Now we operate in 3 business areas in: Residential Drinking Water, Industrial RO and Forward Osmosis. In industrial Drinking Water, it's really all about offering clean drinking water to consumers. So you can find us in households. You can find us in homes, in offices and so on. We market under the brand Aquaporin Inside, and we offer a brand that is differentiated to our customers, which then they use in the market to provide products that provide clean, healthy drinking water and with a unique positioning that is based on the Aquaporin Inside branding. In Industrial Reverse Osmosis, we take that same membrane, that same concept that we have and which we offer to the residential segment, but we offer it to industrial customers. So here, it's not so much about the brand, but it's more about energy efficiency. So in Industrial Reverse Osmosis, we have applications where we can save up to 30% of energy. In some cases, we save up to 60% of energy, and it's really about providing a more sustainable solution to water treatment. That water can be used for reuse. So you can think about wastewater treatment plants, where this water is then reused to diminish the environmental footprint, or the water can also be used in the municipal applications where the water is used for drinking purposes for instance. Then we have our third pillar of Forward Osmosis Market Development. And in this particular pillar, we use forward osmosis as opposed to reverse osmosis, which is the technology used in the other 2 pillars. And here in food and beverage, we concentrate different streams so you can concentrate juices, you can concentrate coffee. And the whole purpose is to reduce the volume of liquid that we are concentrating. And that has, on one side, an environmental impact because it reduces things like transportation cost. But on the other hand, it also allows you to produce new products. So our customers that are using our technology are actually able to develop new products or more innovative products that then they can sell into the market, and that has, of course, a positive impact on their revenue. Now one of the things I really wanted to spend some time on is to give you some of the highlights that we -- of our accomplishments in 2023. It's been a really fantastic year for Aquaporin. We've achieved a tremendous revenue growth, and Klaus will touch on that in a few minutes when we go through some of the financial information. But I think in the 3 pillars that I've showed, we actually had really significant growth in each one of them. Maybe just mention it real quickly, we had a 72% growth in Residential Drinking Water, 261% growth in Industrial Reverse Osmosis and 145% growth in Forward Osmosis Market Development. Now this is possible because of those events that we're going to cover on this slide. So for instance, if you look at the partnership in January that we announced with Philips Water Solutions. This is a company that is based in China. And by the end of 2024, we will be close to -- we will be present in close to 500,000 homes in China alone. That is a tremendous number. It's a tremendous growth compared to last year. We also took this partnership with Philips a step further and you can find us online today, for instance, in Denmark, where you can see the -- you can find the Aquaporin Inside Philips tabletop purifier. So it just shows you that this key event that we've had in 2023 of partnering with Philips actually has, of course, revenue implications for us in China, but it even reaches our ability to offer products here in Denmark in our home country. Then as we progress throughout the year in the later part of January, we introduced the A2O Series. The A2O Series features 2 products, an under-the-sink purifier and a built-in water bar. Both products are also in the residential segment, and they allow people to really take matters in their own hands and to have access to clean, pure drinking water on demand in their homes or in offices or in their newly built kitchens. In February, we entered into a development agreement with a winery called Ernest and Julio Gallo. This is the largest winery in the United States, perhaps the largest winery in the world. They consume a large proportion of California's grapes. And the reason for entering into this agreement is to push the boundaries of what we do in Forward Osmosis. So by entering into an agreement with Gallo, we are working with a world-class customer to develop a solution for the wine industry where we can concentrate different streams that Gallo produces. And again, the benefits of that are both environmental, but also product-related. So a potential strong revenue stream if this materializes into products that we are offering into the wine industry in the years to come. And then we move into May, which is a milestone agreement as we secured with Aqualia. This is in the Industrial RO space, and this is one of the reasons why we've seen such strong growth in the Industrial RO space. Aqualia is an excellent customer. It's an excellent reference for us. It's the fourth largest water utility in Europe. They're a really close partner to us, and we've been working with them for a number of years. It's one of the examples where we turned a public and private partnership initiative into piloting and into a commercial activity. That is something that we have been talking about for the past few years as to how we're turning pilots into commercial successes. And this example with Aqualia highlights that exactly. In June, we announced a distribution agreement with EARTHY for India. This is important to Aquaporin because India is a really big potential market for us. There is a lot of water-related challenges and opportunities in India. So we hope to be playing a bigger and bigger role in that country as we continue growing our commercial footprint globally. In August, we went to space. We announced this on a number of different marketing outlets and channels. We went there with Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen and he tested Aquaporin Inside FO membrane to evaluate how effective is it at reusing water in space. The end goal of this experiment is, of course, to be entirely sustainable when it comes to water use in space. And we put ourselves in a very, very tight and a very, very restricted environment where you really have to -- you don't have any options for failing if you - you cannot fail in space. The consequences of failing in space can be catastrophic, of course. And if we are able to demonstrate our technology in that tight environment in those very sort of significant and strict rules and environment, then we are able to translate that into product attributes on earth, and we can push the boundaries of what we can do in Forward Osmosis in things like water reuse and things like water efficiency and things like a concentration. Then in August, we partnered with the Public Utilities Board in Singapore to develop a low-energy biomimetic RO membrane. The PUB, which is the Public Utilities Board in Singapore is a really known water utility. It's one of the most sort of renowned water utilities in the world. The reason being is that Singapore always pushes to get the forefront of innovation when it comes to water. So we were very privileged and very humbled to be working with them, and we've done this for a number of years. And in August, we were able to enter into an agreement that allows us to pilot membranes, which we've installed in 2024 in -- with our potential future customer, the PUB. And that, again, is a true testament of how we've been able to progress our technology throughout the evolution -- throughout the last few years. In November, for instance, we also participated in a couple of really important events. We participated in Aquatech and in a Bank of America innovation event to showcase our solutions. And we spent the majority of the last quarter of 2023 in optimizing our supply chain and also preparing for scale up and growth in 2024, which we're going to allude to when we talk about the guidance in a few minutes. Our commercial strategy, just a few words about this. We're a company that focuses on key accounts. The reason being is that we have a very collaborative approach, which means that the customers that we work with, we spend quite a bit of time with them. We spent quite a bit of time explaining the benefits that Aquaporin can deliver. We codevelop solutions. So for instance, that's the example with Gallo, the example with Aqualia. We want to make sure that we arrive at products that solve a very specific customer challenge. And then with those products, we can expand with that particular customer, and then we can build references, and we can use those references to repeat those applications with other key accounts. This has been quite successful for us. We -- our top 5 accounts contributed to roughly 90% of revenue for Aquaporin, and we expect this to continue in the future. So we have for a goal to continue expanding our key accounts in 2024. It's been a strategy that we've been pushing really, really hard with our commercial team. We've mentioned already a few times, I think, on the calls that our goal is to focus to do what we do well and to repeat it. And so the key events that I discussed in 2023 with the companies like Philips, like Gallo, like Aqualia, these are the types of companies, these are types of activities that you can expect to see in the future from Aquaporin, but perhaps with a few more key accounts as this is part of our growth journey. I will end the business part here. I'll pass it to Klaus, who's going to walk us through some of the financial highlights. And then after that, we will go to questions. Off to you.

Thank you, Matt. So the financials we reported this morning for 2023 showed a revenue of DKK 59.5 million, a growth versus '23 of 95%. This compares to a guidance we put out at the beginning of the year of DKK 50 million to DKK 70 million, so bang in the middle of the guidance. The EBIT result was a loss of DKK 93.6 million. This was compared to a guidance at the beginning of the year of minus DKK 105 million to DKK 95 million, so slightly better than our -- than the guidance and really a result of good product mix and not least also that we have a tight cost control in place. We had DKK 2.8 million in cash and cash equivalent at the end of the year. It was also why we earlier in the year said we would be doing a capital increase. And you've seen the announcement earlier this morning probably that we have initiated a rights issue process. But a little bit more about that later on. The revenue came around 65% from residential and 35% from more industrial areas. One of the key things of development that you see from the business is that we're continuing the growth path. In this chart, you have the black pillars being the revenue, and you see the guidance for '24 also, and I'll come back to that in a little bit more to that in a minute. But you are seeing that we continue a relatively linear growth trajection. And then you can read our prospectus, you'll also see that we anticipate to continue doing so in the coming years. The key thing to also note is that our cost base is kept very much stable. We had the same unchanged cost base in '23 compared to '22. '24 is expected to be stable as well, really not adding to our overhead costs despite growing revenue, again, coming back to the -- as a result of the key account strategy that Matt mentioned before as well. If you look at more of the details of the P&L, I want to point out a few things. We've achieved a gross margin of 32%. Here, we guided on the it will be above 30%. So again, we are very happy that we're delivering on commitment and with what we believe is strong results with the setup we have. We exited '23 with a very strong order book and also inventory situation to service this order. So there would be -- there was some working capital buildup at the end of the year. And we raised -- as I'll come back to it a little bit, we did raise cash in the middle of year to fund to 2023, so we raised DKK 74 million in February 2023. Looking at the balance sheet. It's very, I would say, thankfully, very boring, and it's a very stable year-over-year, which we seem to be a very positive one. One of the good stuff, good things to just highlight here which we also alluded to in the prospectus is that going forward with this optimization of the supply chain, we actually don't see that our working capital will grow at the same rate as revenue as we actually have optimization the task being put into this. Looking at the cash flow, we guided on tangible assets CapEx, so investment in intangible assets of DKK 10 million to DKK 15 million. Here, we only invested DKK 1 million. And it's not because we have not done what we had to do, but we are -- the optimization has given us some opportunities that we -- that kind of limit our need for CapEx. Going forward, we don't see big CapEx numbers in our numbers either, which also alluded to in the prospectus. And on cash flow from financing activities, as I said, we -- this is positive DKK 66.9 million -- DKK 66.7 million, sorry, which is impacted by the DKK 74 million that we raised in February, as I mentioned before. Looking at '24, the guidance we put forward is revenue in the interval of DKK 90 million to DKK 110 million. So continuing to, as I said, the growth projection we have had the last couple of years, a gross margin in the range of 30% to 35% and EBIT before special items, and there are no special items and anticipated at this point in time, of loss between DKK 85 million to DKK 75 million. One of the key assumptions within these numbers is that we do see that despite Residential Drinking Water growing in revenue numbers, the portion from Residential Drinking Water is actually decreasing, so that we only between 60% to 70%, more likely towards 60%. And we will see, as we also said before, and also again stated in the prospectus, we will see the industrial part growing quicker than the residential one. As we also said a few times when you saw on the graph and also here, we just want to outline that we anticipate cost to be on the same level as we saw in 2023. As the second announcement we did this morning was that we had initially said we would do a capital increase in Q2. We're now in Q2, and we have announced this morning that we are -- we have initiated a rights issue, and that was communicated at 11:00 Central European Time today roughly. We're looking to raise a gross amount around DKK 200 million. This is what we believe is sufficient to the best of our knowledge to actually fund the company to be profitable and cash positive. So in our view, this is the last round of financing that has to be done before we are self-sufficient to support the business. We have very good support from our existing shareholders, which we're really happy with. In the prospectus, you'll also see that we have -- around 2/3 of the amount is already committed to from our investors, and we've had really good dialogue with all of our investors, and most of them are actually also signed up for it and shows us a guarantee in the prospectus, including also one new shareholder and a few other ones that are also lined up that want to be investing in the company. Maybe before handing back to Matt, just a few key dates for this rights issue. Of course, you all know it's April 5 today, and this -- we've announced this today. This means that the game really starts on Monday. So you can trade the rights, either acquire rights or sell unused rights, if you would want to do it. That can be done in the period of April 8 until April 19. Hopefully, I mean, all of those who want to subscribe to new shares can do that in the time period between April 10 and April 23. We anticipate and I expect this timeline stays as we expect to be able to announce the result of the rights issue on the April 25. And hence, after that, we would see the first day of trading with the new shares on April 3 -- sorry, April 30. We feel comfortable also with our advisers that we will be able to raise the amount that we put out. And as I said, I mean, that would be hopefully to the best of our knowledge, last capital increase for us now. With that, I'll hand back to you, Matt.

Thank you, Klaus. So this is -- this annual report highlights some really key things that we've been working on really, really hard at Aquaporin, primarily the growth. We said we're going to be on a growth journey. And this is the third year in a row that we delivered on this promise to the market, to our investors, to our employees that we are on our growth journey, and we expect that to continue. And so that's what you can expect from us in 2024. Just being a bit more specific about that, you can expect growth in the brackish water segment. So this is the Industrial RO segment. Growth in China is going to continue. China has always been a big market for Aquaporin. It's the largest residential -- one of the largest industrial markets for -- in terms of water treatment. We are continuing to advance really exciting applications in Forward Osmosis. So that is also something that we're pushing. We're continuing our focused strategy, our strategy on key accounts. I've got to say that I've now been with Aquaporin for -- as the CEO of Aquaporin for over 2 years, 3 years since I joined as the Chief Commercial Officer role. The company is on a very, very exciting journey. I think the -- our path is very well laid out. Our strategy is really solid. And I'm very, very excited about what lies ahead. I also wanted to take this opportunity to thank our investors who have been standing by us for many years and also our employees and our customers, of course, the different stakeholders and partners. We've been very fortunate to work with a lot of really wonderful people and customers who are giving us a chance to prove a technology to prove that we can accomplish energy efficiency goals. The water industry is really conservative. It's not an industry where it's easy to get into and to become a leader and to become one of the -- become sort of a new and successful company. We have some customers that have given us a chance, and I think we've delivered with those customers. And we're going to -- we want to work on more and create more customers that are -- to that image. So again, a big thanks to everybody who's been trusted -- who's put their trust in us, and we are super excited to continue on the growth journey that we've been on. So we'll conclude our presentation here, but we're very, very keen to answer any questions that you might have. So I will pass it to the operator here. And I think you can put the questions online or live in the presentation through your phones once they get unmuted. Thank you very much, everyone.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Thomas Bowers from Danske Bank.

Yes. I have a couple of questions. I'll just take them one at a time. So just kicking off with the OpEx outlook. So it seems like a very modest growth going forward here. But I'm just wondering whether you could give us some directional guidance on sort of breaking down the SG&A and R&D spending growth, how that will look towards 2027? I see that, especially the R&D spending is down year-over-year here in '23. So I'm just a bit curious on how that will move going forward. I'll kick off with that question.

Thank you, Thomas. We anticipate that the R&D costs will decrease slightly. I think you'll see -- I mean, if you take the SG&A, I mean, the administration cost is going to be very flat. We might see a small increase over time in our sales and marketing costs, offset by us being even more focused in our way of driving R&D and also driven by the fact that we have a lot of products that are just -- and projects that are just coming to the end of the development phase, also allowing us to reduce some of the R&D costs. So there will be a dynamic between those lines, overall, giving us a relatively flat cost base.

Great. And then second question is regarding the new CMO. So maybe if you could just to kick off, give us sort of an indication on how we should think about the gross margin impact for the near and the longer-term? And then secondly, maybe if you could add some flavor would be extremely helpful on how we should see the change on product selection going forward. So I remember some quarters ago, you highlighted that you did see potential for around 40% gross margin eventually. So I'm just curious whether this change in CMO confirms this or maybe it leads to changes in the mix that you maybe are now focused more on growing the top line, so all sitting a little bit by lower margin products. So how should I think about this?

Yes. Thank you, Thomas. So indeed, the change to CMO accomplishes a few things. Of course, so the first driver for us to look for a CMO has always been from a risk perspective. Being a company that depends on CMOs, we want to make sure that we have a network of CMOs in place that allow us to deliver products and should there be any unplanned events like you do in any kind of risk management situation that happens to a CMO, then we have a second -- potentially a third CMO. So by having this second CMO now, we -- this means that we have mitigated that risk quite significantly. So that's one of the things that I think is important to mention. Yes, the second part on the margin, we have -- this has also been a task for executive management to identify a CMO that helps us to expand our margins. And indeed, that's the case. And we are looking to grow our margins. This year, we're guiding on 30% to 35%. Of course, our goal is to maximize this as much as we can. And the biggest impact on the margin from this CMO is going to be seen on the Residential Drinking Water as well as Industrial Drinking Water -- or Industrial Reverse Osmosis. So that's where you can expect our margins to improve. And as a result, the mixed margin is also going to improve a bit. So that's -- I can share that with you. And then, of course, the other thing that improving as CMO does is that it makes our prices more competitive in the market. So we keep some of that benefit for Aquaporin, but we also pass some of that benefit to our customers. And it's a bit of a profitability versus revenue gain. So we are able to go after a larger number of customers with more competitive prices. So that's a balance that we're now able to strike better than before with the new CMO onboard. And that is also something that was quite important for us to continue unlocking the growth in Aquaporin for the years to come.

Okay. Great. And then maybe just a follow-up on the initial question I had on the R&D spending. So I know you've been working on also sort of you can say -- I'm not sure you were still called it second-generation Aquaporin Inside formulation. So I'm just wondering where this is. And then -- and I guess it's, of course, primarily to increase the density of the proteins on the sheets. But is there anything that we are missing here? And will this be something that we could expect you to have ready for pilot projects in the near-term given that you have finalized some R&D work leading to lower spending.

Yes. Good question. Maybe just one thing I'd like to mention is when we work with the protein, we look at it as an additive of course, that we put in a membrane that allows us to offer a biomimetic membrane of a certain performance in the market. When we talk about the second generation product, we are looking at many different aspects of how we can work better with the protein. How can we continue pushing Aquaporin Inside formulation, how can we create membranes that give you a better flux. And we are in the process of advancing this. We have some membranes that we are piloting already, and we have some other membranes that we are expecting to pilot in the June, July timeframe. So that's sort of the timeframe that we're working with when it comes to the second generation. And of course, it's a step, right, to go from a lab to pilot, from pilot to full-scale production. All that comes with its opportunities, but also with its challenges. So -- but I really hope that my -- the goal is to run some of those pilots in that summer -- end of summer timeframe. Sorry, I was just going to say there's a question online. So I don't know if you -- should we take them at the end. Maybe after the -- how would you like to go with that?

Let's do the phone questions and then we'll go to the online. Your next question comes from Johan Berglund from Danske Bank.

So my first question is regarding CapEx. Given that CapEx was so low in 2023, could you maybe give some indication of where this is -- how this is going to develop over the next years? Are we going to gradually go back to the DKK 10 million, DKK 15 million that you guided last year? Or how should we think about this?

Thank you, Johan. Good question. No, we should not -- we do not anticipate going back to that. I think some of the elements that we had in our CapEx guidance this year was actually resolved by identifying the new CMO, so there was kind of a need that was kind of made obsolete going forward, as you can also read in our prospectus, we actually don't anticipate high CapEx. I think, if I recall right, we grow DKK 5 million to DKK 10 million, nothing bigger than that in CapEx. And I think that's even relatively on the high side. So I think look at what we have had of CapEx the last couple of years and I take that as a very good right thread of what to anticipate also in the next couple of years.

Okay. And just another question here. Given the challenges you had on the balance sheet, has this negatively affected your clients' interests for partnerships or -- and now that you're resolving this with the rights issue, can we expect kind of more new partnerships being announced in the coming year?

We haven't had any impact from that. I mean, as you also -- you can actually read it also. I think it's both in the annual report, but at least in the prospectus, we've had 2 of our very good loyal investors actually granted us loans. So we had bridge financing from Goldschmidt and VP Capital, which we are really grateful with. And that has allowed us to still operate normally only having DKK 2.8 million at the end of the year. To the DKK 2.8 million, I also want to mention there some relatively large payments that was coming in that was due just after a new year, so that also contributed to it. So I would say no impact on any customer relations in large and it would -- it's nothing that would impact the full year or anything with the guidance or anything.

Yes. And maybe I'll just add that being listed on the stock exchange has actually been quite a positive when it comes to partnerships that, for instance, with the discussions we had initially with Gallo, that is something that they value quite a lot. So there's a good amount of trustworthiness that comes with Aquaporin being on the NASDAQ in Copenhagen. And that's actually an indirect contributor to the trust that some of the partners place in us because they take that very seriously, which they should, of course.

And also with the, the number of cornerstones and key investors we've had that's been with us so long. Those elements has been really perceived very positively from our customers.

Okay. And just one final question for me. We all know that PUB is a very interesting partnership. Can we expect significant revenue from this partnership this year, given that I believe it was a 1-year pilot period that we're going to do before being eligible to kind of compete for these -- when they change all the membranes?

Yes. So there is revenue from the PUB coming already. So the products that have been installed at the PUB, it's not a free trial or anything like that. It's a trial that has a performance clause in it. And that allows us to recognize a certain amount of revenue in 2024. And most importantly, this puts us as an approved vendor this year towards the end of the year for any projects that will be done or that will be tendered for the PUB. And that is really significant because those projects, in some cases, have up to 15,000 or even 16,000 membrane elements. So just to put this in the context of, let's say, very large competitors of Aquaporin if you look at some of the largest water membrane companies in the world, winning such projects is a really big deal. So the fact that Aquaporin is able to compete on those types of projects or will be able to compete by the end of this year, it's a huge, huge, huge accomplishment because not many companies get the chance to bid on those large projects. There's really a handful of companies that are on approved list. And so we will be one of them. So I think this year, I wouldn't expect a very high revenue coming from the PUB, but I think we will be invited to bid on projects. And if we're competitive in terms of price, if we're competitive in terms of performance and the service that we provide, you can expect then if we win those projects, revenue that could be significant in '24 -- '25.

Okay. And just a follow-up question on that. Are there a lot of projects going to be tendered in 2025? Or...

I don't have the knowledge to the exact number of projects. They're -- because it's municipal, they end up being public tenders. We have -- we know of 4 different tenders right now. So just -- I think that is just to show you sort of the size of -- the magnitude of how many of those sizes of projects there are. And then there's also the replacement, right? Because you replace projects -- membranes every 5 to 7 years. So it's not just for new projects. There could be some replacement projects as well. So our -- my kind of on the commercial side, if we can bid 4 to 5 of those large projects, then that will be a good number of projects that we will be -- for which we will be bidding our membranes. That's what I can expect in '25.

We have no more phone questions at this time. Do you have any web questions?

Yes, I do. There's one question coming online. And so I'll read the question here for everyone. So what is the cost per water volume produced with Aquaporin technology compared with traditional competitor technologies for the residential consumer segment? Now I've got to say that it's actually really difficult to answer because there's a lot more that goes into producing water for the residential consumer market than the membrane. Our membrane goes into purifiers. Those purifiers have a certain performance. And it's -- you would really have to take the exact same purifier, the exact same membrane called everything constant and run a test side by side to see how much this would differ. And on a consumer product, the flow rates are extremely small in comparison to what you see on the residential side. So maybe if I can answer this question on the kind of industrial side of the business, we're expecting up to 30% of energy efficiency. So this you can translate that into then savings in terms of how much is a kilowatt hour of electricity and so on. But you can expect something similar if you were to scale this back down all the way to the consumer market, but it's just so little when you fill up your glass of water that the difference is really just a few split of a second in terms of how quickly you fill up your cup. So I would say if you -- it's up to 30%. And I think that's something that you can expect similarly when you look at the consumer segment.

No further questions online as we see it right now.

We have one further phone question. Your phone question comes from Johan Berglund from Danske Bank.

So this is a very specific question. I'm just wondering regarding guidance. What's your assumptions around square meters of membranes sold to Philips Water Solutions? If you can elaborate on that.

You know what, I don't like to elaborate specifically to one account because that gives a lot of sort of information that would be deemed kind of confidential and we don't want to tell potentially our competitors that kind of information. But maybe what I can share with you is that it can give you a range that in 2024, you can expect that we will be somewhere between 1 million and 2 million square meters of membranes sold.

We have no further questions in our queue at this time. I will now turn the call back over to Matt for closing remarks.

All right. Thank you very much. I really appreciate all the questions. It's always great to hear with our shareholders and people interested in Aquaporin what they're wondering, what they have on their mind. So thank you very much for all of you who asked questions. And I hope if anybody had questions that they didn't want to ask here, I will put my CFO on the spot. He welcomes all your questions. So please feel free to reach out to us. Just as we wrap this up, again, I just wanted to say thank you on behalf of everybody at Aquaporin for your support. It's been really a great year, and we're looking forward to an equally fantastic 2024. Thank you very much.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect.