Betolar Oyj (BETOLAR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Betolar's half year financial review. My name is Melina, heading our Investor Relations and Sustainability. As usual, we have Riku Kytömäki, our President and CEO; and Riikka Ylikoski, our CFO. Riku will go through our business review and also how we have progressed with our strategy, and then Riikka will dive into the financials. [Operator Instructions] Riku, please.

Thank you. Hello. Good day. I will go through the main events in H1. I will come back to some of these more in detail in the coming slides. First of all, according to our strategy, we've got a shift from the precast concrete products towards the higher-value structural products. We have an example later on, a product called hollow-core slab. In waste upcycling, we continued our productization and especially with the analcime sands, which is a side stream from especially battery production. Also, we completed the construction phase of our innovation center in Kannonkoski, mid-Finland. Ramping up of the facility is ongoing. We were selected as a finalist in Reuters awards in the responsible business awards category. Final results will come out, if I remember correctly, November. One of the customer examples over here, the Port of Aalborg in Denmark being one of our large-scale concrete construction projects using Geoprime products. Also, in H1, we got our patent. We have actually 2 patents about the energy storage that has expanded in Europe and in India market. Also, we got a change in the management team where our COO, Ilkka Iittiläinen, left the company to pursue opportunity outside of Betolar; and Tuija Kalpala joining latest November. That was after the H1 reporting period announced at the end of July. Here, a short summary about our activities divided now into these 4 streams. As said in the precast products, we have selectively made some piloting, especially in India and Middle East. Just to give you an idea, the amount of work done just in India, we got about 90 pilots completed during H1 with the customers we have there up and running. In construction elements, that is, according to our strategy, the focus area where we want to scale and expand towards higher-value, bigger-volume customers. And we have an example coming up about the hollow-core slabs. The R&D work and tests continued during H1. In the mining segment, we got solution development ongoing, also creating a strong pipeline of many customers, which we are talking to, negotiating with and talking about the piloting opportunities in the coming quarters. In the last category, waste upcycling, we've got a lot of R&D and testing done. And as said, analcime sand as a side stream from the battery production is one of those examples. Here, about the collaboration with Consolis Parma, our development partner. We have made several test runs successfully during H1 and which were done in their facility in Finland. With this kind of solution, we're able to reduce the amount of cement down to 5%, and that is the minimum required by the European standard. We could do it actually without cement, but this is the requirement coming from the standard. And the blast furnace slag was used as a binder there. And it's been increased to the maximum permitted by the standard. And by this, we can reduce the emissions up to 75%. And there are several companies showing interest here in Finland. One of those examples is YIT showing interest to this solution. And currently, we are looking with our partners with Consolis Parma to find a pilot case in a real environment, not in a factory scale, with a real environment to pilot and test this solution. And actually, in the next minute, we will show you a short video about how this kind of a structure looks like in a factory environment. [Presentation]

I think that was a very good example about the opportunities with the building and construction segment, massive big elements. And then both are widely used not only in Europe but also in Asia and other parts of the world. Here, another example of our pipeline -- innovation pipeline. We have secured a new patent on electrical energy storage. Actually, we have 2 patents over there. And this fits very well with our strategy, what comes to the waste upcycling. On the left-hand side of the picture, you can see the background of this patent and talk about our patent portfolio where we have granted already 5 inventions, and 8 more are in the process. This patent is really a breakthrough in the field of using waste as energy storage and especially in these circumstances where renewable energy -- amount of renewable energy is going up, some short-term kind of temporary peaks we might even cover from the electricity stored in a big mountain of waste. On the right-hand side, both news are not from Betolar, but showing the interest of this kind of a solution, referring to MIT, for example, where we have developed similar solutions. But I'm just underlining that Betolar has already European-wide patent, also in India, concerning the same issue. Also some headlines were in Finnish. Here, about the progress of our strategy. We have developed and productized, studied many side streams and currently over 10 selected industrial side streams, not only the slag -- GGBFS slag but also bio ashes, for example. In our new strategy, we have addressed to take a stronger position in the value chain through partnerships or investments. And here, we are creating and we have started a service productizing both side streams. And both services, we start to sell and they should come up in our revenues in the near future. In a third category, accelerating solutions development of large-volume, scalable customer segments. We just saw an example from the hollow-core slabs. That is not the only example we are working on. Of course, there are several other products in the building and construction segment where Geoprime solution can be used to reduce the CO2 emissions and put the amount of cement closer to 0. In the fourth category, we continued our commercial activities, especially in East India and Middle East. Of course, we still continue in Europe as well, but that was a special focus area, was, too, mentioned over here. And we took some steps forward in structural concrete for us as well in Asia, not only in Europe. The last category, we have mentioned a comment about the AI development where we utilize the AI to make the time-to-market shorter, developing the recipes faster as well as creating a service related to those side streams. And this kind of work has been ongoing over a longer time. But now in H1, these data-based, value-added services began in quarter 2 to help customers identifying opportunities, especially concerning the side streams. So that was a short summary of key activities in the H1. And now I would give over to our CFO, Riikka Ylikoski. Thank you.

Thank you, Riku. So our business model is based on the ongoing Geoprime license fees and also chemical and other material sales with our Geoprime customers. It's volume-based. And also, we follow the customers' production via this, for instance, the chemical sales. And of course, now when we are entering into new areas like the building and construction market, the waste upcycling and mining, it requires a lot of development work and continuous piloting. So we have also introduced the piloting fees and the development and engineering fees to finance those activities. All the development activities are done together with the customers, and it's quite intensive work. During the first half of the year, our revenue was EUR 131,000. It is still quite modest, but it increased from the comparison period. As said, we have been heavily investing on the R&D, the commercialization and also growth in the strategic areas. And that resulted our operating profit to be minus EUR 7 million. From our cost base, about half of it comes from the personnel expenses, and our personnel grew nicely in the -- during the first half of the year. And the other part of the expenses comes really from the -- mainly from the R&D or the biggest portion is the R&D where we need to use external resources both in research and development area but also in the platform development. We had nice share of new customer pilots during the first half of the year and also the Q2. It concentrated mostly on the India and also Southeast Asia. There were some pilots coming from the North America as well. And still talking about our revenue. So from those customer pilots, we received certain piloting fees, but about 70% of the revenue was made from the ongoing customer pilots -- or ongoing customer productions. We have currently about a little bit less than 20 customers in production phase, and they are gradually building their capabilities to produce the Geoprime-based concrete.

Great. Then just to show what's coming up in the next quarter, we have some events coming up. So there, you can see a snapshot of those. But good. Thank you, Riku and Riikka. We had a few questions already come up. Also, by the way, if you want to send them in Finnish, that's also fine.

So let's start. Maybe this is for Riku. Are your customers sourcing their side streams by themselves? Or are you doing it for them?

We help customers identify the proper sources for the side streams. And when -- currently, mostly, they buy directly from both side stream sources. But in our strategy, we have said that we want to take a stronger position in the value chain. So it might be that in the near future, we will take some of that coming through Betolar.

Yes. Thanks. Then how many active commercial customers you have right now? You have had some of your commercial agreements in place for over a year now. What is holding these customers back from ramping up Geoprime-based production?

Well, we have about a little bit less than 20 customers now in the commercial phase. And of course, we are -- we started with the European customers quite heavily last year, and it has taken a certain time to optimize the recipe and finding the correct dosing systems and so forth. And now we have had nice progress in the -- especially in India, and we have managed to gain during this year a fair amount of customers there on the commercial phase. And of course, those are smaller customers but very willing to run the green transition.

Thank you. Then I think -- do you want, Riikka, to continue from this one? Do you need more capital in the near future?

Yes. We have been investing a lot to the company. And now especially during the first half of the year, we have been also investing to the Kannonkoski Innovation Centre. And of course, now when we are looking into the strategic direction and especially in the mining and waste upcycling area, so there, we will need also to look at financing opportunities.

Yes. Thank you. Good. Then there's one -- I think, Riku, you want to answer this one. What kind of projects were contributing on your revenue during Q2?

I think Riikka pretty well covered it already in her summary. So there are some existing customers ramping up little by little. It goes, of course, for the customers as well as they need to test product by product and kind of ramping up gradually. So it doesn't come overnight. But those were the customers we have earlier announced in our releases.

Good. Thank you. Actually, these were -- some of these were already answered also by Riikka previously. But hey, thank you. We have to also end here. So thank you for joining, and have a nice day.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.