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

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Aquaporin Annual Report 2024 Conference Call. Please note that this call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. I'd now like to hand the call over to CEO, Matt Boczkowski. You may now begin.

Thank you. I'd like to welcome everyone to this annual report 2024 presentation. As introduced, my name is Matt Boczkowski. I'm the CEO of Aquaporin, and I'm joined today with Klaus Wulff, our Chief Financial Officer. Before we get started, I just wanted to let you know that part of this presentation is -- constitutes of forward-looking statements. And therefore, we are putting that disclosure to make everyone aware of that fact. A little bit about Aquaporin before we get started to -- before we get into the details. So we're a company that is, as most of you know, headquartered in NymOelleve in Denmark. Our purpose is to rethink water filtration with biotechnology. We're one of the very few companies in the world that have this technology. It's a unique technology to Aquaporin, and we use this technology to enhance membranes, and we'll go into this in a few minutes. We have operations in Singapore, in Turkey, in China and also in the U.S. We are listed on the NASDAQ under the ticker AQP, and we have 76 employees from various cultural backgrounds, which, for a company like Aquaporin is important given that our business is global. Our core technology, which is called Aquaporin Inside is applied in multiple applications and in many different industries. We are a company that crosses this biotechnology with standard engineering. What this means is that we combine membranes that are in the market with our patented Aquaporin Inside technology. We then sell those membranes for various applications. We have many different patent families in terms of how we do this, how we separate the protein, purify it, add it to membranes, how we use those membranes and so on. The business areas in which we operate can be divided into drinking water, industrial water and forward osmosis market development. As part of forward osmosis market development, a big focus for us is food and beverage, and so we will focus on that area in this presentation. Our solutions are global. While we are only 76 employees based in Denmark, we do work through a key account strategy, which means that we select carefully the accounts that we work with, and we grow those accounts in a very collaborative way. That is something that has been true to Aquaporin for many years, and we continue our strategy by leveraging these collaborations. The 3 segments in which we operate, and I'll go with them one by one, starting with residential drinking water. Now residential drinking water typically focuses on enhancing water quality, safety and sustainability. The trends in the residential drinking water are really around advanced filtration technologies focusing on emerging contaminants such as PFAS. And we've seen a trend in decentralized point-of-use treatment. This trend is even present with some utilities who are now more and more focusing on actually looking at decentralized water treatment as a way to deliver clean water to consumers. This plays really well for Aquaporin as our focus in residential drinking water is really point-of-use systems. We do that again through a key account strategy by offering our flat sheet membrane with Aquaporin Inside to customers that use purifiers, and we do this through collaborations. We've mentioned quite a lot about our collaboration with Philips. We have mentioned quite a bit about our collaboration with Vestel. These are the customers that we worked with in 2024 and a number of other accounts that we've been developing. What we really want to achieve is be part of this growing market. It's a market that grows at approximately 10 years -- 10% year-over-year growth. We believe that with our brand and with our performance, with our membranes, we have a value proposition that is exciting to consumers in that space. Most of our revenue in residential drinking water is coming from China, and that is then followed by Europe. And we are having a number of discussions in the United States to also have our technology there. We are present in Denmark as well. You can buy our purifiers in stores like Imerco, and this is also part of our strategy to offer something close to our customers. Now if I move to industrial reverse osmosis, in this particular area, it's really all about energy efficiency. So we use the same technology that we have in residential drinking water, but in a much larger surface area. What this allows us to do is to offer energy savings to utilities, to water reuse applications and, in some cases, a wastewater treatment. We have a trial that we have been doing with the PUB in 2024 that has been going extremely well. We are looking forward in 2025 to completing that trial. We are observing not just with the PUB, but across the board with many different customers, up to 30% of energy efficiency delivered by our membranes. And that is something that we are very proud of, given that these membranes are a direct replacement for existing products. So what you see in the middle image here is a typical installation that uses reverse osmosis membranes. Aquaporin is able to service such an installation with a membrane replacement that is a direct retrofit. And so that is a big part of our value proposition in industrial water. Again, similar to residential, we work through a key account strategy. So we've signed a few important accounts in 2024, one of which is Brenntag. Brenntag is a global distributor. So we have been quite successful with Brenntag in Turkey, and we've expanded that relationship through -- in other regions such as Asia, but also in China through a letter of intent. The industrial water market is growing also at a rate of approximately 10% growth per year. One of the areas where this market is really growing is in desalination. In 2024, Aquaporin has not been present in the desalination industry, but we do know that this is a growing market, and we will be looking at using a minimal viable product approach where we will be testing 1 or 2 customers with our first generation of desalination products. So this is something that you can get some news from us on that in 2025. Moving to forward osmosis market development. Forward osmosis is a relatively new area in the industry. So the market estimates for forward osmosis are a little bit -- all over the map. They range from DKK 0.5 billion to DKK 1.7 billion as a market potential. That is something that if you just consider systems and membranes. However, in forward osmosis, there is the possibility to create a new product or to create a new superior concentrate. And this means that the market actually opens up to much more than the DKK 1.7 billion because you are creating a new product. So for instance, if you imagine that you're creating a new juice or if you're creating a new aroma, then you are entering the market of juices and aromas, and that is orders of magnitude greater than what we're discussing here. What does it mean for Aquaporin? Our technology is really well suited for food and beverage applications. This means that this has been the focus for us for the last few years. And in 2024, we advanced our collaboration with Gallo, where we continued developing solutions for the wine and juice industries. We've continued looking at niche applications in forward osmosis. So we have identified a number of applications that we would like to pursue in 2025. We've sold repeat -- we had repeat sales of small systems, which we call ESSENCE go. These are important units because they allow us to develop different applications that allow our customers to develop applications, which we can then scale up together to pilots and then to projects. So I think what I would like to highlight in FO market development is our strategy has been niche area, very much looking at food and beverage, and the successful continued developments with Gallo are going to be continuing in 2025. Now I'd like to move to a few key events and I'd like to highlight that took place in 2024. Starting with -- in March, we joined KitNewCare, where we enhanced kidney health care across Europe. This is through a collaboration. So once again, I mentioned collaborations at the beginning. This is again an example of how Aquaporin through collaborations is able to participate in many different types of partnerships, similar with the RESURGENCE project in April, that is also something that we joined through a collaborative effort. Of course, the big news for us in April was that we completed a successful rights issue, raising DKK 172 million. That fueled Aquaporin for our growth journey for the years that follow, including this year, of course. In May, we launched our brackish water reverse osmosis CLEAR series in China. You can see in the photo, this is the launch that took place in Shanghai. China is an important market. It's very price competitive, but being present in China, if we're able to be successful in China really highlights that Aquaporin is able to have a strong competitive price on our product. And that is something that we want to demonstrate to the market. In July, we launched a new version of our purifier with Vestel in Turkey. So again, this is an under-the-sink purifier that is branded for Vestel. We entered into a strategic distributor agreement in August, that is with Brenntag. We then signed a new contract with the European Space Agency in October. And we had quite a busy November where we expanded our partnership with Brenntag in China. We signed a letter of intent with them. We secured a milestone contract in Central Asia with CLEAR membranes. That was one of our largest contracts to date. And we also announced some promising laboratory results for Aquaporin Inside Generation 2. On the top of that -- just above that Brenntag circle, you see a glowing blue circle as well. It's the glowing protein. And this is the -- what we've been able to accomplish is identify it and see it through a different mechanism. And we've been able to use those discoveries to find a better way or an enhanced way to increase the protein density on our membranes. And so that's been a really key part of the development in 2024. Some of the things that are not reflected on this slide that I'd like to mention is we continued our business with Aqualia, and we continued our business with AquaShield. I already mentioned Gallo. So we, of course, continued with Gallo as well. And we sold a repeat number of ESSENCE go units. So I think these are some of the other events that I wanted to highlight for 2024. Now commercially, I -- on the commercial side, of course, a lot of you may be aware -- or are aware that we changed the guidance towards the end of the year to DKK 40 million to DKK 41 million. The reason for changing that guidance is a decrease in the orders from one of our key accounts that came very late at the end of the year. That was a very unexpected event. And we also had a delay of a forward osmosis project that was also due to the customer's adaptation of forward osmosis technology and the timing related to that. So that project, we believe, has slipped from 2024. We are hopeful that this project can realize in 2025, of course. But these are the 2 things that happened that actually caused us to revise and review the guidance and to decrease it. Now if you park that aside for a minute, the actual events and what we've accomplished in 2024 are really, really remarkable. We have had a really fantastic growth in industrial water. And if you look at the numbers, 192% growth is very much in line with the efforts that we put in with the launch of our products in China, with the work that we've done with some of the new hires that we've had and with some of the marketing that we've done and some of the case studies that we've published. So it's really, really nice to see that when we put that effort, we do see the results, because that means that the market is receptive to Aquaporin's value proposition. It's really a matter of identifying the right customers and getting the product in the hands of those customers. And the industrial space, the decision to purchase from being informed to piloting to trying is a slow process. So the fact that we've doubled -- or that we grew by 192% is really impressive. And so that's something that we are very proud of. The residential decrease of 55%, that is due to that decrease in orders from the key account. And the decrease in FO market development is due to that delay of the FO project. Now once again, if you remove those 2 negative sort of occurrences, especially in FO market development, we would have grown actually quite significantly because we've had an increased in the number of ESSENCE go units that wily sold. We've met all of the milestones under the Gallo project. And we've sold an increased number of modules to customers that want to try forward osmosis in new applications. So that gives us a lot of confidence that we are bouncing back, in a way. We are continuing our growth trajectory in 2025. And Klaus is going to talk a bit about that when we go -- when we look at the numbers. We've seen growth in RO, as I mentioned, in ecosystems, and we've seen developments in U.S. and China that we are also quite proud of. The revenue hasn't come from the U.S. yet, but we are speaking with a growing number of key accounts and similarly in China. So we have set the stage in 2024 for growth. Moving to the technology side of the slide. I wanted to also say a few words on the Aquaporin protein formulation. Not only did we achieve a new way to increase the protein density and how we use the proteins to put them on the membrane. We've actually had a patent granted to us. We applied for a patent to secure this process of how we incorporate those proteins onto our membrane. And that is quite important because it marks a new sort of step in how Aquaporin does modify how an RO or FO membrane behaves. We've developed new products in forward osmosis, and we've deployed different commercial models. The commercial models are going to be tested in 2025. But at the end of 2024, we also took the decision that we also want to commercialize our FO solutions in a way that we can capture more of the value chain. And we want to capture more of the value chain at the customer level as opposed to at the project level. So that's a little bit different from what maybe others are doing in the industry, but we believe that, that is a nice and scalable way that can secure some of the growth for Aquaporin in the future. We scaled up production in both FO and RO, and we've expanded our reverse osmosis portfolio. So that, again, is solidifying our product portfolio for growth. And we do believe that we have the core components of a product portfolio that we will need for '25 and beyond. So we have a few more developments left in FO to have multi-generation or multi-element products, but we are getting there. And in 2024, most of the year was spent on that. We've opened an office in China. We have had a new hire in China. We've also participated in a number of different events and conferences where we've promoted Aquaporin, our products and our technology. Before I switch to the next slide, I just wanted to talk a bit about the photos that you see at the bottom of this. Starting from the left, this is a photo of our protein that we're able to visualize. The green slide is basically shows you how we're able to coat the surface of a coupon of a membrane with that glowing protein. So the green is actually all the proteins are on it, on that membrane glowing in green, which is not something that we've been able to do in the past. So that is really a big accomplishment. The third photo is a cartoon on -- of what this protein attachment looks like. So I think this is -- this should explain a bit better why we're so excited about this second generation. The next few slides -- or sorry, the next few pictures, these show the progress that we've made in forward osmosis, and all of that has occurred in 2024. So you can see that we have a new design for our FO unit. It's a modular design. Then we move to a multi-element design. So the one that is -- kind of looks like a little bit yellow, that is a multi-element design that is able to host many types of FO modules. That is also really important because it allows us to scale up to much larger projects. And then finally, to the right-hand side, is the office that we have in China. This is an office that we are actually co-located in a facility that is hosted by many different companies. But we have a physical presence from where we are able to hire people and have customer meetings and so on. So again, also moving in the right direction in China. Now looking ahead in 2025 and beyond, I wanted to just highlight here a few things that will contribute to the revenue in 2025, that we will be spending a lot of our time and attention on. So we're starting with a continued growth with Philips Water Solutions. Despite the revised guidance that we've had in 2024, Philips Water Solutions continues to be a very important account for Aquaporin. We are going to see growth with this account, and we expect revenue to continue in Q3 and Q4. We expect the development project with Gallo to continue as well through 2025. It is progressing as expected. We are looking forward -- or we would like to sign a new large flagship membrane customer in the U.S. with the hope of some revenue in 2025 as well. The project that slipped in '24, we would like to win it in 2025. So that is very much on our radar. And we would like to have one more large flat sheet account in China. China represents roughly half of the market in residential water. Yes, it's extremely competitive, but it's also prone to acceptance of European brands that allow products to be differentiated, and that is a sweet spot for us. Then looking a bit more at the long-term potential. Aquaporin Gen 2, or as we call Generation 2, Gen 2, as we call it, we would like to demonstrate this at the forward osmosis pilot level. We would like to create a partnership or a collaboration in new forward osmosis application or perhaps geography. We would like to implement a value-based business model with a key account. So we move that model from a spreadsheet exercise to an actual exercise that generates revenue for Aquaporin. We would like to test with 1 or 2 customers a prototype of a seawater membrane, and we would like to focus on expanding our collaboration with Brenntag, for which we actually hired someone very recently in Singapore -- in our Singapore office. So these are different things that we are going to be looking at with just some of the things that I've explained we have done in 2024. We're quite comfortable with what we set for the company, how we structured the company for growth. We're very pleased with what we've been able to accomplish in 2024 as well. And I'll pass it now to Klaus, who is going to walk us through some of the financial highlights and financial information.

Thank you, Matt. As Matt mentioned, 2024 was a year where we saw some challenges on the revenue side and realized a revenue of DKK 40.6 million. This is in line with the revised guidance from -- that we published in October 2024, and it's a decrease versus '23 of 32%. As Matt also alluded a little bit, too, the lower revenues mainly were coming from a lower revenue within the residential drinking water. During 2024, we, however, took a number of actions to reduce our cost base, and this meant that our EBIT before special items improved compared to 2023 and ended at a loss of DKK 83 million, which is better than the revised guidance announced in October 2024, where we set guidance out to be a loss of roughly DKK 90 million. And actually, the DKK 83 million that we realized is within the actual guidance, the preliminary guidance or early guidance that we put out at this time of the year last year. So we're quite pleased with that. Within that number, however, we actually also managed to write down DKK 6.2 million of old inventory. And we also wrote down IP for discontinued products to the level of DKK 2 million. So have we not done those things, we would actually had an EBIT that despite the low revenue would have been at the higher end of the guidance that we had set out at the beginning of the year. And that guidance was a loss between DKK 75 million to DKK 85 million. So really a strong cost base that has actions to reduce the cost base, helping us also going forward. We actually anticipate that this lower cost base is something we can expect to maintain in the years to come and even see a little bit further impacts of it as some of it will have full year impacts in this year and the year after. Looking at the development of our revenue and the cost. Yes, we had a setback on revenue in 2024, but the guidance without going in more details about it a little bit later shows that we're back on the growth track that Matt also mentioned to it as well. And it also means that with the lower cost base, we have actually lowered the EBITDA we need for us to go breakeven quite considerable. And this is a change -- a significant change in what we actually talked to our investors about at the time of the rights issue. And it also gives us improved and strengthened belief in the future going forward as well. So looking into more of the details on the P&L. As mentioned on the previous slide, we did have write-downs of inventory of DKK 6.2 million. This impacts the line cost of goods sold. So without that, we would actually had a better gross margin percentage. And in actual DKK, we had a gross margin -- gross profit amount for '24 very close to what we actually had in 2023, despite a lower revenue. There's a number of reasons for this. One is a better product mix. But also as we've alluded to in previous calls, we had moved to a new supplier and a new CMO setup and within our flat sheets, which has given us a better position in the market and also improved our margins. The cost savings we have done has realized from different actions, and they are impacting all cost groups. And we've seen reduced cost in all types of costs compared to 2023. This despite that we continue to invest in R&D, both with new products, but also in the second-generation Aquaporin Inside formulation that Matt also alluded to. The tax line continues to represent a tax credit given by the government for R&D investments, and our overall earnings for the period -- for the year is a loss of DKK 85.3 million. At the end of 2024, we had a cash position of DKK 77.3 million, of course, also positively impacted by the rights issue. Our balance sheet shows a decrease in tangible assets driven only by limited investments during the year. And the intangible assets represents that we continue to invest in R&D, as I mentioned. And in 2024, we had invested DKK 9.3 million in development of new products. And we also started depreciating some of these. Matt mentioned the CLEAR products. Those development projects were closed off in 2024. And depreciation has, of course, been started. The cash flow, as mentioned, was really positively impacted by the fact that we had the rights issue wherein a net amount of DKK 144.6 million of proceeds that helped us on the cash flow. Looking at the guidance for 2025. First I want to say we chose -- in 2024, we were giving guidance on revenue and EBIT and gross profit. For 2025, we will be guiding on EBITDA and revenue. The change from guiding on EBIT to EBITDA is driven by the desire to guide more on a result closer related to cash spent. So the guidance we have -- we are coming out with here is an expected revenue in the range between DKK 60 million to DKK 80 million compared to the revenue in 2024 of DKK 40.6 million. We expect revenues to come more or less evenly from the 3 business lines that Matt alluded to. So those are residential drinking water, industrial RO and FO market development. And for EBITDA before special items, we expect a range to be between a loss of DKK 45 million to DKK 55 million compared to a negative EBITDA in 2024 of DKK 63.7 million. So a solid improvement in our EBITDA results compared to what we've seen this year. So with that, I will hand it back to Matt for closing remarks before we open up for questions.

Yes. Thank you, Klaus. I think if you look at 2024, I think we can look at it and say, yes, there's been -- we've had a small -- or a street bump in terms of the revenue. However, the company has really, really put a lot of different measures and actions in place, so that we closed the year as well as we could. This included a number of different cost control methods. It included things like a very tight control on budget, but also setting up our success for the years to come. That was always a big part of what we wanted to do. And when you're a young company that is in a growth mode like we are, in a scale-up mode, it's really important to focus. And this -- in 2024, one of the things that we have not mentioned maybe in this call is that it was also a time where we focused tremendously on a few specific accounts and a few specific applications. And really, I've got to thank all of our employees and our investors for their trust because I do believe that we came out of 2024 a stronger company, with the right tools and with the right people and with the right technology in place to see growth in 2025. And I think the guidance that Klaus communicated really reflects that, that we are able to exceed what we have accomplished in 2024 with what we're targeting for '25. Now so I just really wanted to thank you for listening, thank our employees, shareholders, stakeholders for being on this Aquaporin journey. We are very excited as to where we are, what we've accomplished and where we're going. And it will be now a pleasure for us to take any of the questions that you might have.

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

Yes. I have a list of questions here. So maybe just kicking off with the drinking water and the AquaShield collaboration in '24. So I'm just wondering, was this sort of a onetime revision of the actual demand for flat sheet? And would you say that the collaboration is the main growth driver here for drinking water in 2025? And maybe in addition to that, I know that AquaShield had some -- at least some regional exclusivity for China, Australia and other regions, to my understanding. So given this setback, have you -- or are you able to find other partners for drinking water solutions for these regions? Or are you still in that due to the exclusivity agreements? And then just on forward osmosis, I believe you had around DKK 15 million, DKK 20 million included for 2024 in the outlook for that delayed FO project. So your guidance here for 2025 implies just over DKK 20 million midpoint for in FO sales or you meant to say DKK 10 million plus year-over-year. So can you maybe just add a bit of color on this, how to make the outlook from '24 to '25 sort make sense here? And then maybe just on the second-generation Aquaporin Inside formulation, can you maybe just add a bit of color on the improvements, for example step-up in energy savings potentially? So is there anything here that imply that this sort of could be a key inflection point for a potential new partner opportunities? So has the first generation, has there been some limitations that has hindered you in getting a lot of partners on board here?

Thank you, Thomas. I think I wrote it all down, but let's take it from the top. So starting with drinking water and AquaShield. So what -- I can't comment exactly to the level of how much we revise or how much less flat sheet we sold to them and things like that. That is because that is their sort of information as well. But what happened is, over time, we've sold products to AquaShield, and they were -- they basically had an inventory that built up that allowed them to use that product in 2024. And so they didn't really need at the level of inventories that they've had as much product as they had forecasted. And what they do is when you forecast how much flat sheet you need, you look at how many -- what will be your installed base of your purifiers and how frequently they will be replaced in the market and also what is your mix of under-the-sink and tabletop purifiers. Under-the-sink purifiers take 5x more membrane than tabletops. So what happened with AquaShield is that the success that they've had was predominantly on tabletops. While that is good for AquaShield, it's not the best for Aquaporin because it consumes a bit less -- quite a bit less membranes. So that is one area where there was less flat sheet usage. The other thing that's happening is, often in China, people don't really actually purchase replacement element. They purchase replacement purifiers. And so that also has led to an impact on the demand as to why AquaShield did not see the demand that they had forecasted. So these are some of the reasons why we've had less products sold to them into 2024. Now that being said, the collaboration is quite strong with them. And just recently, we met, we discussed the future of our collaboration. We are on track to sell in Q3, Q4 what we had forecasted for this year. We expect the growth to continue with AquaShield for the year after. So things are back on track. We just have to deplete some of -- they have to use some of the inventory that they've built up. We believe this is going to happen also because they are introducing new under-the-sink purifiers. It's a category that they want to grow more in. And as I said before, it's going to take about 5x more membrane. So what happens to the exclusivity, right? We had an exclusivity only in China with them, not Australia. AquaShield or Philips Water Solutions is able to utilize Aquaporin, our material and our branding everywhere in the world. But exclusively in China, we are partnered with them. What we are going to do in China is we want to maintain, of course, the uniqueness of the brand. And the strategy is to introduce perhaps another player in China, and that's what we're looking at right now. We're trying to carefully select who will be the key account that we would like to introduce Aquaporin to in China. And we have a number of international brands that we are discussing this with. What's really important is that this has to be a premium brand. And so that is also part of the strategy, and that's what you can expect to see from us in 2025. Moving to the question on forward osmosis. One of the things that I wanted to comment is that this project that was valued at roughly DKK 15 million, I think you mentioned, in 2024, we are still in the process of finalizing the size of this project, and it's oscillating anywhere between DKK 10 million and DKK 15 million. And this has to do with the customer's requirements for flow rate, for quantity and so on. And so that is one of the reasons why it actually might be a little bit less than it was anticipated in 2024. Nothing material, just a small difference. The major reason why maybe not the full amount is going to be recognized even in 2025 is that a project typically takes anywhere between 9 to 12 months. And we can only recognize the full revenue at the time that the commissioning is completed and the project is fully signed off. So we may only be able to recognize the revenue of this project partially in 2025. That is also one of the reasons why there is not a full contribution of that project into the revenue number of forward osmosis. Regarding Aquaporin Gen 2, we -- I can only share with you what we've published, right? So what we published about Aquaporin Gen 2 is that we do see at the lab level some really interesting improvements in flux. So what the team is working on right now is to further identify what is causing those increases in performance that we're seeing, and that is part of the normal sort of development that we do, right? We load the coupon with protein, but it's not just sprinkling protein. You put a lot of polymers on it. You put a lot of other chemicals. And so we have to really, really well understand how the different constituents are impacting the increase of performance that we see because that's going to be really important to then figure out how do we replicate this at the manufacturing level when we move to a CMO to implement that. It's easier for us to do this on the FO membrane because we control everything in-house. We have the fibers. We coat it here. We can test them here. We can visualize things here. So that's why we are going to be focusing on the forward osmosis membrane. As soon as we have indications of repeatable enhancement of performance on an FO fiber, then we'll be able to translate this into how can we make this happen on a flat sheet. So I can't comment on how much improvement in rejection or how much improvement in energy efficiency we could see. It's just too early for us to tell at this point.

Great. And maybe just a quick follow-up here. So you highlight that you aim to onboard at least 2 new high-potential flat sheet accounts during '25. So my question is just, is this a consequence of the change of supplier, making you able to set a more competitive price? Or is it -- is this more tailored solutions you are working on here?

It's actually -- it's a bit of a combination. So yes, it's because -- given that we have a new supplier -- or a new partner for the flat sheet, we -- our prices are more competitive. And so, of course, this opens up different channels, different areas, different customers that may have not been possible previously. Also quality and performance has improved. We haven't mentioned that very much, but we actually have a better flat sheet stability now. We have a very, very low reject rate from our customers. Normally, there's always a certain level of reject rate when you sell flat sheet. That is extremely low for us right now. I would -- in the low single-digits low, so that's really excellent. And there's also a timing issue. So in order to bring a new large brand, it's a couple of years of development. That's how long it takes to -- from an initial conversation to testing, piloting and then trialing their products. Then there's the co-branding discussion or ingredient branding, where they would put our name on the product. So it really is a combination of many factors. The idea is that we would like to have one account in the U.S. and then one more in China.

Your next question comes from the line of [ Hakan Hemet ] from Danske Bank.

Hakan Hemet, Danske Bank. I have a couple of questions from my side. So if we could start with your guidance, could you elaborate on your revenue visibility looking into '25? How much revenue, so to speak, in the book? And how much is expected to come from new orders during the year?

Yes, no problem. So yes, out of the guidance of DKK 60 million to DKK 80 million, I would say that when we look at -- the way we look at it is we assign different kinds of probabilities to opportunities that we see. What I would consider as closed plus 1 in high probability, I think we're closer to the kind of the DKK 30 million, DKK 35 million. If you then look at adding a certain level of our medium level of opportunities, you're increasing it quite significantly to about DKK 40million, DKK 45 million. So that's what I would say we look at in terms of opportunities.

But I just wanted to elaborate on that, We set out the guidance DKK 60 million to DKK 80 million because that we believe we are comfortable getting that. So it's normal that you have a maturity coming -- increasing on accounts. But we will not put out that guidance if we didn't feel very comfortable with those numbers.

Got it. And maybe then looking at the midrange of your revenue guidance compared to the midrange of your EBITDA guidance, this either implies a slight reduction in cost compared to '24 or improved gross margins. What are your thoughts on this? And what should we expect from your cost structure going forward?

It's a mix. Again, if you look at -- I also mentioned that we wrote down DKK 6.2 million impacting our gross profit in 2024. We don't anticipate that to be repeated in 2025. So that already would bring up the gross margin percentage to it. So that's one thing. There's also a certain scalability and some of it, of course, the more we sell, the better prices we get for what we do. So we do anticipate a slight positive development in our gross margin to it. On the cost side, we do anticipate that we will have a cost base in 2025 lower or close to what we had in 2024. And we will, as I mentioned, a little bit in the earlier part, we have taken actions in the later part of the year that will have -- will fully impact also into 2025. So we anticipate that to be the case. And as I have mentioned before, so we expect to keep that level going forward. We believe with the great colleagues we have and the great setup we have in the organization, we have basically the organization and level of organization that we need to facilitate us getting to profitability.

I have one more question for me. So how do you think of your revenue generation strategy from here? Do you expect most outcome from new partnerships or from leveraging on your existing partnerships?

It's an excellent question. I think we have a number of existing partnerships that -- with our key accounts that are going to continue growing. So maybe going back to your sort of initial question, I think a lot of the things that we consider sort of secure or we consider high likelihood is coming from the accounts that we've been growing and developing. So Gallo, AquaShield, Vestel Aqualia, PUB, those are the types of accounts that we -- Brenntag actually as well, we've signed recently. These are types of accounts that we are going to be developing, and they will create the majority of the revenue for Aquaporin. Now we are also going to bring a few new accounts online. And so these are the accounts that are going to allow us to get to the budget that we set or get to the midpoint of the guidance. There is one more thing that we also have that I wanted to maybe talk to you about. It's -- this idea in forward osmosis, what we're trying to do is to convert more and more to a value-based pricing model. And we haven't factored that into the guidance because I would consider that as a sort of as a trial, as a prospecting opportunity. But that is something that we also are looking into developing in the future. And again, it is something that can contribute to the revenue of Aquaporin.

But maybe just to elaborate on the later part. It's super exciting, but I think it also takes time to ramp it up. It's something that we see more contributing within the years come, I think, necessarily in 2025.

As of right now, we don't have any questions in the conference line.

So we have one question online from [ Jesper Agenda ] about, is there expected any new emission in 2025? Well, we have not communicated anything. We have -- when you publish an annual report, one of the things my auditors are very diligent about is making sure that we have cash for the next -- period of next 12 months, and we have that. As we also write in the annual report, when you get in to write -- read the details, of course, it's something we evaluate ongoing together with the Board and, of course, the executive management as well. And of course, also with my auditors, our auditors. So it's something we continue to look at and figure out what is the right thing for us to do. But for now, there's no decision, there are no plans for any emissions in 2025. So yes, I hope that answers the question. At least, that's the level of response I'm able to give you at this point in time. I think that's the only online question we have right now.

We don't have any questions. I'd now like to hand back over to our CEO, Matt Boczkowski, for final remarks.

Yes. Thank you very much. I really appreciate the questions. I appreciate everybody joining and listening to our presentation of this annual report for 2024. I really like to -- on behalf of everyone at Aquaporin to thank our shareholders and customers for their trust. We have a purpose to rethink filtration and biotechnology, and it's through the hard work of our employees, the financing from our shareholders, the acceptance from our customers that we're able to do so. So I really -- as we conclude this call, I wanted to thank you for being on our journey. And we're quite excited about 2025, and looking forward to speaking to you again. Thank you.

Thank you for attending today's call. You may now disconnect. Goodbye.