Betolar Oyj (BETOLAR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Betolar's Capital Markets Day 2025. I'm very happy to be here today and excited to talk about very interesting topics today. But special thanks to people in the audience for coming here today in Helsinki and also our audience online. So I'm Tuija Kalpala. I'm the President and CEO of Betolar. And I will firstly talk about the disclaimer. So this is just a note about the forward-looking statements. On our agenda today, we will talk about -- firstly, I will share a little bit about Betolar's journey from pavement stones to green cement and why this new innovation that we have related to metal extraction, why is it relevant? And why is it related to what we are doing. Then followed by Olli Kilpeläinen, he will be talking about how we have been accelerating the business with data and AI-assisted material research. Then followed by Jyri Talja, our Chief Growth Officer, who will be talking about this new innovation that we have, which we published about a month ago regarding this extract of critical and strategic metals and producing this new type of green cement, which we are very excited. And I would say the main focus today is related to this metal extraction. And then followed by our CFO, Mikko Wirkkala, who will be talking about the financials, and then at the end, we will have the question-and-answer session. And people who are online, please use the chat box and please send questions through the chat. And of course, the audience is here. So of course, welcome also to ask questions at the end. So before I get started about our journey, I'd just like to talk about briefly about our management team, and we have just expanded it. So we have a fourth member now in the management team. Jyri Talja is our new Chief Growth Officer, who just joined the team. And then we have Mikko Wirkkala, the CFO; and then Soila Soderstrom, our Senior Vice President and General Counsel, who is also present here today. So then talking about the Betolar story. So everything started almost 10 years ago, 2016, when Betolar was founded in Kannonkoski, Central Finland, small town by our founder, Juha Leppanen. And he was -- he started the business doing pavement stones and very fancy, like a designer type of pavement stones. And shortly after he recovered that it can be done with geopolymers so that we could do this new type of pavement stones and different kind of concrete products without using cement. And that's how it all started. And soon after then first patents were filed and then granted. 2021, we were listed on NASDAQ's First North Growth Market. And at the same time, also the data and AI focus started, and we'll talk about that briefly and how it has helped to accelerate the business throughout the years. And then going forward, there was more looking at globally the market opportunity for Betolar and really for the cement-replacing solutions. And we started developing also other things, not only pavement stones, but looking at different kind of elements like hollow-core slabs. And really, we had -- 2024, we already had extensive production readiness in low-carbon concrete products, which means that at that point, last year, we had passed all these rigorous tests and met all the standards that are needed for these type of products. But the big thing really, I would say, happened last year when we had the breakthrough in metal extraction, and we had the first successful test in Kannonkoski, where we have a laboratory and our innovation center. And that's -- it started a little bit earlier than that, but our innovators in Kannonkoski, they started really looking at what can we do with different kind of waste and sidestream materials and how can we extract the metals out of it and how could we produce a clean type of sidestream that could be utilized in construction, just like the typical slags GGBFS that we are typically using as a replacement of cement. And then also last year, we shifted the focus also more towards the mining, and we had our first pilots and first customers in the mining area. And this year, it's really the metal extraction proof of concept that we have now. And Jyri will talk about it a little bit later. But really, our vision and mission. So this has been slightly changing from the beginning and especially now that I would say about a year ago, we changed a little bit our focus, well, more to mining and metals side, but also more towards sidestreams. So I would say a couple of years ago, we were really focused on talking about geopolymers and how we can capture the value through different kind of licensing models and selling the recipes to our customers. But now we have been a little bit taking a little bit more kind of different kind of approach that we're really focusing on understanding what are these industrial unutilized sidestreams that we can use because the challenge what has happened in the market is partly when we were founded, the GGBFS, so the slag that comes from metal plants that is used today as a cement replacement quite worldwide quite like typical commoditized material. So the price has come up and it's more or less the same price as cement and also the availability of the material is not the same. And we see that going forward, there will be even less availability. So for us, it's very critical that we have these type of sidestreams that we can utilize for our products, which is really the Geoprime and this technology that we have. So what we really want to be? We want to be the partner for zero waste. And this is very important because this is really the core of what we are doing. We're trying to turn the waste into valuable materials and really create the value from these industrial sidestreams and reducing emissions. It's still there. We want to reduce the emissions by replacing cement with low-carbon circular solutions and really enable this circularity and reduce the waste. So then talking about really our strategy still a little bit more. So as I mentioned, so the strategy is really to focus on mining metals and the sidestreams, but now also even more to the recovery of metals. But really, I would say that there's 3 boxes here that these are very important. So the first one is really turning these industrial sidestreams into value. And when we talk about industrial sidestream, we're really talking about the materials that are waste, unutilized and those materials that others are not interested in. So we are interested in the materials that others are not and turning that into value. And as part of that, last year, we introduced a new service, SidePrime, and Olli will be talking about this SidePrime analytics service a little bit more. But that's also a tool to our customers that we can offer and help them to identify and see what kind of value their sidestreams has, and we have been doing this for several customers already. And -- but at the core in the central, we talk about the cement-replacing solutions. And this is the Geoprime that has been almost since the beginning. And Geoprime is our branded name. So in order to be successful in the middle box, it means that we need to have the sidestreams that we can use. And as a solution, it's also this recovery of metals and green cement. It's all linked. And what we want to really offer is these low-carbon solutions that are also cost efficient. We know that today, it's very difficult to sell green solutions with a premium price. So we really need to have also cost-efficient solutions for our customers so that we can make this change, this green transition, in construction and mining, and it requires that we have these alternative materials that can be used to replace cement. And then lastly, the recovery of metals and green cement, and we'll talk about this a lot today. But it's really the core of what we are doing because it will help us to produce the green cement. And the green cement is what we want in order to get forward with the Geoprime sales. And as a reference is, so what we have been doing right now and what we are offering as a company. So for mining and metals area, right now, we have cementless paste backfill solution. We have already a couple of reference customers on this area. We have the shotcrete that we have been talking about the past year. So last year, we developed low carbon shotcrete. And now this year, we have a cement-free shotcrete. And this is really an achievement because it's extremely difficult to come up with the technology how to do it but we were able to do it beginning of this year. Then stabilization of tailings is something we can offer to the mining, recovery of these valuable fractions, this metal recovery that we will talk about. And then, of course, site product management. So with that, we're talking about tailings, and we have a couple of projects ongoing on that side as well. So looking at how we can utilize the mine tailings and create value from that industrial sidestream. So that's really the core, understanding what materials we have, what we can turn into value. And at the end goal here is to have our own green cement. Construction area, we have existing customers that we continue supplying. These are anywhere from pavement stones to different kind of elements that we are offering. And then a couple of words about this exciting topic about the recovery of critical and strategic metals. And I tried to explain how this is now linked to what we are doing because a lot of people have asked us that, hey, why you are now in the metal sector? You're a company doing replacement for cement, but now suddenly, you're talking about the metal recovery that how is it linked? So we have developed as part of our research, looking for these sidestreams and looking for materials that we could utilize in our recipes to sell this Geoprime to our concrete manufacturers. So throughout different tests in Kannonkoski, Central Finland, we looked at adding different kind of sidestreams together, and these are sidestreams that are unutilized. So not the common sidestream that are already our products and are already sold, but those ones that are now ending up in the landfills. So how could we utilize those? And we found out this method how we can extract all the metals out from that and whatever is left is green cement. So this new method that we have will not have any waste. So we are able to utilize everything that we are processing. And at the same time, we are minimizing, or we are actually taking away the waste problem that different mining companies or metal companies have. So with this, we are really able to increase the yield of critical and strategic metals and even up to 99%. But Jyri will talk about the test and the actual proof of concept shortly. But then again, the green cement is the one that we are very excited and interested in that will come as a side product of this process. Well, depending on how you look at it, whether it's the metals or whether it's a green cement, of course, the metals have much more value than the green cement. And then, of course, the zero waste that we are solving the problem in many places, and we're talking about huge quantities of waste materials that we are able to utilize and increase the value or changing the value from negative to positive. So then -- more or less the same things that I already mentioned, but it's -- for us, the target really now moving forward is this metal extraction innovation and really the metal recovery and recovering all the metals, and it means that we can also increase the nation security of supply because now we have more critical and strategic metals. And there's -- so far, we have been testing nearly 10 different kind of metals that we are able to extract. And as a side product, as I mentioned, it's the green cement. And the ultimate goal with the green cement is really that we can utilize this material in our Geoprime recipes with our customers, and we're able to provide now a material that is cost efficient. And of course, hoping that we have a new standard soon for green building practices and even lowering the cost of construction. And then all this will lead to increasing sales of Geoprime with this cost-efficient recipe. So that's the ultimate goal, and that's how these all are linked. So in order to be successful with this green transition in mining and construction with the cement replacement solutions, we need these waste materials, sidestream materials that we can extract the metals. The metals has a value for the metal companies. And for us, it's the green cement, so we can move forward. So that's about now my presentation. And next, I will welcome here Olli Kilpeläinen. He will be talking about now about the data and AI and how that has been helping us to accelerate the business and how we are utilizing it. So Olli, please welcome.

Welcome on my behalf as well. My name is Olli Kilpeläinen. And as Tuija mentioned, I'm going to talk about how data and AI are a real differentiator for Betolar. Then I'm going to go a bit more into detail of what it actually means, how do we use these technologies in our day-to-day work. And finally, I will also link this that how we are accelerating the whole business and creating further business through data-enabled services. You could say that we are working in a rather traditional industry. I mean, construction, mining, infrastructure, they are still considered reasonably traditional. However, as you heard, we have taken approach that is truly AI native from the beginning. And this was actually recognized by a study done by Business Finland and AI Finland released just earlier this year. And they placed us in a rather prestigious company, as you can see, along with other AI native scale-ups and listed AI start-ups. So we are quite proud of that recognition. Then you heard Tuija mention Geoprime a few times. So just as a reminder, regular concrete is basically aggregates, meaning gravel, sand, cement and water. And cement is the part that is causing a lot of CO2 up to 9% of the global CO2. So what we want to do is replace the cement. And what that means is that depending on the customer we have at hand today, we are finding local industrial sidestreams, one or multiple, and then adding our Geoprime activators, our solution. This is the so-called mixed designer recipe, as you heard from Tuija. So it means that we have to always find a combination that is fulfilling this particular customer's needs and also, of course, for example, the lower CO2 need. And for that purpose, we are actually accelerating this material research, this finding, these combinations with our AI-powered data platform. And data is actually very valuable for us. As you heard, we've been already collecting it for multiple years. So basically, we have done the choice from the beginning to actually consistently invest in data collection, making sure that the coverage is good and first and foremost, the quality is there. It's not just any data. If the data is not properly collected and curated, it has no value, but we have chosen to put a lot of emphasis on this. And as a result, we have collected a database that is today covering over 100,000 different physical measurements. Note, these are really measurements done in a laboratory. And these are already covering over 1,000 different materials that we have tested. That is quite unique because it's really tied to real experimentations done in a laboratory scale. I claim that no one in the world has this kind of unique data asset. And that has enabled us to actually build artificial intelligence and data science techniques that is combining our expertise in physics, chemistry, material science and of course, artificial intelligence. So this is a clear differentiator from, let's say, your regular company in the market that is addressing these similar concerns. And it's all about continuous learning. So whenever we get a new project, a new material sample to our laboratory, we need to learn from that. So we are starting by gathering information. Even though we are talking about artificial intelligence, of course, we do real physical experiments still. And every experiment, we gather the data. We make sure the data is gathered and properly curated, so it is usable. And then we do the material research, which I'm going to dive a bit deeper soon. But we use the data that we have learned from previous rounds to make the science more accurate. And once we have finished the research in the laboratory scale, we can go to a customer site, for example, a mine site. And then we make sure that this material mixture works in their processes. So we make sure that the customer has no issues taking the material into use because we can make sure it fits in their workflow. And therefore, we learn. We learned about this combination of materials in these particular processes. And again, next time when we have a new research project, our database is larger, we have more learnings, we will be more effective and the throughput will be even better, better results and faster turnaround. But because everyone is talking about AI and data nowadays, I want to go a bit deeper. So I'm going to dive a bit deeper and tell you what it actually is that we do so you understand this a bit better. So let's imagine a process where we are studying now a new material. Where we start is we want to understand what kind of materials are available there, for example, based on geographical location of our customer. So we gather public information about power plants, metal refineries and other industrial sites that may be producing sidestreams. We have a wealth of this data available. Additionally, academia is also doing a lot of material research. We want to benefit from the research done by others. So we're also continuously paying attention what is being done in academia and world out there and again, curating the most relevant research done out there. And we combine this information. So we used nowadays large language models, which we have augmented with this curated data, this really useful data that is meaningful for us, so curated with our expertise. And that means that our researchers as well as our business people have access to up-to-date information and can easily with natural language, ask questions, write in the chatbot and learn about the materials, very useful and speeds up our regular work day-to-day a lot. Then when we jump a bit further and we go to a specific material that we are studying, let's say, we found specific sidestream that is near a specific customer, then we need to dig deeper. And of course, like I said already, we do need to do some physical tests. We need to understand what are the elements, the crystal structure, so forth. And all of these tests take time. But the good thing is that now that we have been collecting this data from the experimentation for a long time, we can actually start simulating the results. So while we are still doing physical tests, we no longer have to do each and every test because based on certain findings, we can simulate how the material behaves. This lowers the cost and especially lowers the time that we have to take with each and every material. And we also use a technique called clustering, which means grouping materials. So when we receive a new material, our algorithm is telling us that this is similar to something we studied in the past. This again helps our scientists to jump ahead. We know this is similar to something we have used before, so we can go ahead and get again faster to the next stage. And the next stage is then exactly creating that mix design recipe, a combination of materials. And in reality, when you are combining different size, different chemicals, the amount of possibilities is vast. So there's a lot of different combinations. And if we would go to laboratory and create all of these combinations one by one and wait for them and test, that would take a lot of time. So again, our collected data is helping us here a lot. So what we can do is we can actually use our artificial intelligence to again model the mixture and then optimize the mix design. So we can, for example, based on again, customer requirements, of course, optimize, for example, lowest CO2 mix design or optimize towards a certain price point. And this again saves a lot of time, and it's not even possible to cover all the vast amount of possibilities without this kind of algorithmic approach. And finally, once we have selected a mixed design that works, of course, we need to verify it. make sure that it actually fulfills those needs the customers had. And for example, standards in concrete industry might require that you have to wait for 4 weeks, 28 days to see how the material behaves. And while this is still must do because of the standards, what we can do is we can actually predict with artificial intelligence the result. So in best case, on day 1, we will see if the mix design works or not. And as you can easily see, this can save up to 27 days per cycle, and then we can go back and alter the mix design. So huge benefits from, again, predicting in addition to running the physical verification. And from all of these steps, again, of course, once we have fulfilled the project, we feedback, and we learn. So our models, and these are models that we have ourselves built, are getting better. So every round, every particular material and customer case we are doing increases the value of our data asset. So how do we then use this data asset in more detail? As you heard, maybe our first and foremost driver is efficiency. So we need to be able to analyze more of these sidestreams. Tuija mentioned, it's really a big part of our future that we understand what kind of sidestreams they are. What are the characteristics? Can we use them? Do they, for example, have these valuable metals we can extract. So with the help of this data and AI, we can do this faster, so we can analyze more materials, and also, we can analyze more difficult materials. As you also heard, some of these materials can be quite complex. And without the help of these kind of tools, it would be maybe even impossible at least and doesn't make commercial sense to study them. But because of the acceleration provided by data and AI, we can do that as well. But in addition to being an internal driver, what we have also seen while we developed this -- so we did develop this for our internal use, but we have also realized that we can actually open same capabilities that are now our main differentiators, some of them directly for our customers to serve them better. And that's why we have now 2 different services that we are offering directly to our customers. And these are called Betolar SidePrime, which we launched already last year, which is really about identifying the sidestreams and their capabilities. And then we have a new service that actually it is the first time we are publicly talking about this. Betolar Optimize. And I'm going to tell you soon what that actually means. But Betolar SidePrime is really about, like I said, analyzing, understanding the value of a sidestream. So this is for our customers who have a potential waste stream. In best cases, they're actually taking the material to waste them, but they have to pay for that. But we can analyze and see does it have suitability to work as this kind of binder product to replace cement, for example, in combination with other materials. So this gives our customers access to this kind of high-value use cases like mining. Most of them have not even considered that their material could actually help mines become greener and provide value there. And because we have made this analysis now accelerated with data and AI, it doesn't require much, if any, human effort from us. It's mainly done by the machinery in the background. So we can also help our customers optimize their process. For example, energy power plants have a lot of things they can change in their process. So we can actually help them by running multiple analyses and telling them what kind of impact that has on the quality and eventually the value of their material. So very nice collaboration with our potential material partners. And then when we have analyzed the specific material or sidestream, we basically introduce them as part of the Betolar's material network. So even if we don't find immediately a use for that material, when we have a new project starting, let's say, a new mine opens that wants to use Geoprime technology, then we already have the data about this particular material in our database, and we can make a match. So therefore, we can tell the customer immediately that we have already analyzed the material that can be used and quicker jump to the next stage in our process, jump to forward business and support our mining. And that's why the SidePrime, while we are selling it as a direct service, it's still as the main driver is that we bring more materials to our database, and we then quicker can satisfy the customer needs in construction and mining. Then like I mentioned, we are just now talking for the first time about Betolar Optimize. As you saw from my previous slides, we are optimizing with algorithms and AI heavily how we build the mix designs. But of course, many of our customers have similar issues. Even if they're still using cement and doing regular concrete products, it's a complex process. So we can actually now offer them our optimization capabilities. So we can help them computationally with our AI to actually minimize the amount of binder material they need, whether it's cement or something else. And also this aggregate, so-called the gravel is actually one part that also affects very strongly what is the overall cost of a concrete product, for example. We can also help them optimize the aggregate usage and directly creating cost savings for them along with the binder usage. And of course, once we have built this kind of optimized mix design for a customer, we can also help them by introducing new sidestreams, for example, our higher-value slags. And there's also a problem in many concrete products when you switch to new sidestreams, which is early strength development. And that's also something we can fix with our optimization algorithm. And again, if you would run the same kind of tests manually that we are able to do with artificial intelligence, that will take much more time. So we can get the results up to 75% faster than with traditional means. So to sum up, I strongly believe that data and AI are a very unique and strong differentiator for Betolar. And we chose from the beginning that our approach will be data and AI native, and we are considering our data as a valuable asset. And of course, how we built this was the platform approach, continuous learning by always following our experimental AI-assisted research whenever we research new materials. And in addition to making more efficient research and making faster results for our customer, we have also opened direct services for our customers for sidestream analysis and optimization of the customers' designs -- in many ways, how we create value. Thank you for listening. And next, I'm going to invite my colleague, Jyri Talja, to the stage. He's going to tell more about the metal extraction, which, by the way, is also enabled by artificial intelligence. Jyri, please.

Ladies and gentlemen, I will speak today about our latest innovation of which we are extremely excited about. We have developed a method which enables us to recover, extract metals, including valuable metals, critical metals, strategic metals out of the very large industrial sidestream flow, typically like metallurgical slags. And what is very special in our innovation is that the method enables us both to extract the metals and at the same time, we do generate large quantity of green cement. So it's a very special combination by combining the extraction and recovery of valuable metals and at the same time, we get the green cement, which we really urgently need. So how did we end up developing something like this? Tuija mentioned a little bit in her part. But as we know, we need green cement. We need green cement for our applications and solutions, which we have for mining industry as well as for construction industry. However, there is currently only one major source of green cement available in the world. It is a commodity. It is commoditized and it is commercialized, and it is called GGBFS, which stands for granulated and ground blast furnace slag. But as we heard earlier, its availability is somewhat limited, and it comes with a very high price tag due to the fact that it's heavily controlled by the cement industry. So therefore, we started looking for other alternatives to get a hold of our own green cement. And then we figured out where the cement -- where new type of green cement could be originated from. And we got to the conclusion that ferrous-based slags make a huge volume at a range of 500 million tons per year. They could be used as a very good source for green cement. But however there is a drawback because they contain too much of metals. But only after a very simple processing, we reduce the metals, recover the metals and what is left is the green cement. So it's a very simple combination of making benefit of that and at the very same time, making another benefit of that. And that's the reason why we are so excited about it. In the next slides, I will spend some time with the technical issues. And then later on in my talk, we will discuss about the commercial potential and what it could mean for the company of Betolar. So the basic idea is very simple. We take a nonutilized industrial sidestream and we combine it with another nonutilized inside -- industrial sidestream. Basically, we are putting together a waste and other waste, do quite simple processing of reduction, reducing the system and what we get out is the metals and the binder and the green cement, excuse me. What it means in practice? The base case is such that there are a large number of waste slag in the world. And we want to use that waste slag, take it in a molten state because we want to utilize the energy content in it. Then we add another industrial sidestream, which normally is in a solid state. It can be preheated but typically, it is another metallurgical slag or it can be a hydrometallurgical precipitate or a leaching residue or it can be mine tailings, depending on the chemistry and the metal content because we have to combine together the chemistry of a system, which is needed for the green cement, and we need to get the metals and that will generate value for the operation of the system. So the trick is we have to know what to mix with what. And for this particular reason, an application, we utilize our artificial intelligence. So when we know what to mix with what, we can control the physical and chemical properties of a system that we are processing. And that enables us to recover the metals at higher rate and produce high-quality green cement. And what is an extra thing here is that when we select the sidestreams properly, we can combine the value more by selecting the sidestreams with high content or, let's say, high value of critical metals or strategic metals. And those typically can come either from slags or from mine tailings. And that way, by adding those to the system, we can also recover those valuable metals, including critical and strategic metals as well. We are a material technology company. We have a very strong IPR portfolio covering approximately 50 granted patents, and we have filed 8 patent applications just for this metal extraction green cement issue. And those filings took place very lately, just in early April this year. What benefits our innovation then brings along? First of all, one of the biggest environmental risks we have is the waste slags and waste mine tailings because of the leaching risk of metals and heavy metals. Also, it is an environmental risk from a perspective, but there is dusting. And if there is accommodation and housing nearby, it causes an extra risk. And definitely, it's not very nice to live next to it because it looks ugly. And thirdly, the economic issue is that the landfilling costs quite a lot of money because it's a very long, long trip with the problem. So it's a burden for the company. And with our innovation, we can completely avoid landfilling of such wastes, and that is quite something. Additionally, we can unlock the metals because there are lots of valuable metals inside the slags, which are wasted. And thirdly, when we do our processing, we get the green cement, which reduces the CO2 emissions of a cement because we can replace kind of a dirty cement, CO2 emitted technology cement with a very low CO2 emission product like green cement. We have worked about 1.5 years on a daily basis on this issue. There was a basic understanding on sidestreams and geopolymers and alternative cements or cement alternatives. And we started basically just making experiments because we wanted to know how things work in real life. And we still continue making experiments, but also, we have added a very comprehensive thermodynamic modeling to support our innovations. And we use the AI-assisted composition modeling as well. And as well, we do pilot test of systems, which we think and get information that works the best. And this is the way we process. And I just have one slide about this artificial intelligence. Here, you can see the 3 most common used alternatives for cement or basically, it's a Portland cement OPC, but the alternatives are GGBFS as well as the fly ash type of alternative cement. And our work is to optimize what is the best to do and when. When we take the slag, which is the main source of the green cement to come, we optimize the slag composition and other sidestreams in such a way that we can optimize from a respect of whatever we want to get out of the system. We can optimize the maximum profit. We can optimize the composition of the desired final slag chemistry. We can optimize the metal recovery rate and so on. So we have a very powerful tools to work with this innovation. So far, we have carried out a number of tests. We started with laboratory scale tests. We continued with bench scale tests. And then the next step is a pilot scale test. In every single step, we increase the magnitude by 10 to 20x bigger. And based on the information we have, based on the test results, we have been able to recover 99% of chromium and nickel. And it is very essential because they are valuable metals, and there are slags with relatively high concentration of valuable metals. So it makes up a business case. In addition to those chromium and nickel, there are other critical and strategic metals of which we have information and experience that we can recover. Those metals are listed here. They are cobalt, manganese, phosphorus, titanium, vanadium as well as lithium. But I'm sure that we will find new metals on the list as long as we do further development. But currently, we have a very ready system for treating slags, which contain chromium and nickel. So what it then takes in real life to take our innovation into use? Not much. The processing itself is quite simple. We need a vessel in which we do the reduction. And as a reductant, we can use basically any material to do the reduction. And then it needs granulation. That's pretty much all it takes. So it's quite simple. And there is no rocket science. All the pieces, key pieces of equipment are off-the-shelf equipment. And based on our calculations, the CapEx it requires starts from about EUR 40 million, goes up to maybe EUR 150 million depending on the case and capacity and complexity. But anyway, it's not much compared to the revenues the company can get out of it. So in many cases, the calculated payback time can be as short as 1 year, which is exceptionally short in this type of a business. So let's then take a look at the global business potential related to ferrous-based slags. Why ferrous-based? Because they account for approximately 90% of the slags we have in the world. And that's pretty much because of that magnitude of steel production, close to 2,000 million tons per year. So there are about 1,100 steel plants in the world. And when we add ferrochromium and stainless steel, there are approximately 1,200 operational plants in the world. And from those plants, there are nearly 500 million tons of slags, which could be utilized as a base for recovering the metals and generating green cement. And if all those slags would be treated, it would make up approximately 50 billion tons -- excuse me, EUR 50 billion worth of green cement in the world. And at the same time, if we operated all those available slags, the value of recovered metals would be minimum EUR 150 billion per year. There are huge numbers, but we have to bear in mind that in these calculations, we're taking into account all the available sidestreams of ferrous-based slags in the world. But at the same time, it also has a very important environmental impact because if those slags would be treated by our method, it would then result in a production of about 10% of the overall global volume of cement. And when we produce that type of amount with very low CO2 emission, it would result in a global reduction of CO2 emissions by about 1%. The figure does not sound too big, but the effect is very, very big. So we discussed about the potential of slags. And that is the main source because the slags are in molten state, and we want to use them as a base material because they have the energy because they are molten and at very high temperature. In addition to that, there are a huge number of mines in the world, open mines and closed mines. So active mines number is about 10,000. And the number of closed mines is somewhere around 2 million. And when we estimated the amount of tailings out of those, and then we selected that maybe 1% of those tailings could be used in our processing, that amount is still huge. It accounts for something like 200,000 million of tons of material suitable as a sidestream in our processing. Of course, that amount is so huge, but it would take extremely long time, 100 years, 500 years to treat it all. But anyway, there is a good source, which we could utilize in order to recover more of critical and strategic metals, which are of an extreme importance for European Union today. And the value -- estimated value of the metals in those tailings can easily exceed EUR 20,000 billion. But those figures are enormous. It's very difficult to understand the order of the magnitude. But anyway, the idea is that mine tailings could and should be used as a sidestream to be combined with molten slags in order to recover critical metals and strategic metals. What then could be the potential of one single customer? Here, we have an example of a ferrochromium plant. It's not a real case, but there are companies who produce ferrochromium and generate about this amount of slag, 0.5 million tons of slag. Typically, the chromium content in slag is relatively high because of the production process because it's a submerged arc furnace. And when we have, let's say, 0.5 million tons of slag, we add the other sidestream in order to control the chemical and physical properties, as I explained. So we take down the liquidous temperature, basically operational temperature. We take down the viscosity, which enables then the settling of the reduced metals in order to reach -- to get a high recovery, we can produce something like 550,000 tons of green cement. So as a rough estimate, the amount -- volume of a slag, you can add 10%, and then we have the volume of green cement from the system. From one plant treating or generating 0.5 million tons of slag, the value, the revenue value of a green cement out of the plant is at a range of EUR 50 million every year. So it's a very substantial amount of money. And the value of extracted metals in this particular case is at a range of EUR 120 million, and this is the case for a ferrochromium plant. If we think about a steel plant, a steel converter slag, the slag amount in case if it was something like 0.5 million ton, the value of a green cement is at the same range, the very same. But then what is the value of the metal? It depends so heavily, so strongly on the metal contents. Not the content of the iron itself because it is quite invaluable, but the contents of our metals in this slag. And especially like we have here in the Nordics, we have very, very high concentration of vanadium, which is our critical metals, then the value of the metals of one plant could exceed that EUR 120 million per year. So we are talking about very big numbers. And if the revenue of a green cement is EUR 50 million, our profit margin would be roughly half of that. In order to summarize, we have developed a method which has huge benefits. We can recover metals, including critical and strategic metals. And at the very same time, we can generate green cement at very, very large quantities. And I think this is a perfect example of how circular economy works at its best, mix waste, waste, get out valuable product and valuable product at zero waste generated in the process. Thank you. And next, I want to invite our CFO, Mikko Wirkkala, to talk about the financial issues.Thank you.

Let's then move to our financial section. I will cover first our historical performance, then our financial targets. And the third part is then our ways how we are going to reach those targets. But first, the historical numbers. As Tuija mentioned there in the beginning that our company is a relatively new company and -- but still, our -- we have been able to grow our net sales year after year. And for example, last year, we were able to grow our revenues over 48%. And we are planning to continue on that road going forward. And this year, we are expecting our revenues to exceed the numbers from 2024. Then if we look at our historical EBITDA numbers that in the past years, we have had very heavy development focus. And with that development focus that we have had cost levels over EUR 10 million. But last year, that we were able to complete quite many of our actions on that front. And at the same time, that we went through quite heavy cost reduction program. There, we went through that every single cost item, what we have had, all -- and look at those and if they make sense to have it in the company right now in our current state. And then we also reviewed that what we need going forward. And after those actions that we have nowadays, a brand-new, renewed cost base, and you can see also the effect already there after the first quarter. And then our financial position, the liquidity and undrawn grants. The situation at the end of the first quarter was roughly EUR 12 million. And this number then includes our cash, which was roughly on a level of EUR 10 million in undrawn grants. And here, the grant from Business Finland is playing a major role there, and there are some EUR 2 million left to be drawn. Then if we look at our market areas and our focus markets and also the markets that -- where we have company presence. We have legal entities in Finland, which is our mother company there. And then we also have a legal entity in India. And our revenue last year, Finland was making the biggest part of our revenues, but also Europe was consisting of 39% of our revenue. And already now that we have other countries outside of Europe, then making almost 1/4 of our revenues. And we are focusing on different markets there. So of course, our home markets are really close to our heart, but then we are having the focus market, especially the new ones where we have in North America, the first customer in Canada. Also, we are looking at the customers on the Australian side where we also have the customers in there. And also Middle East, Europe and India, where we are having operations already today. And then moving from history to our financial targets. Our first financial target is to achieve positive cash flow from the operating activities by the end of 2026. And the main ingredient of reaching this one is growing sales. And here, we have already existing solutions. Tuija was covering those in her part in the beginning, and we can sell these already today, and we are doing that one. Then also, we have the sidestream sales. And we have been doing that one already in India in small scale, and sidestream sales that we are also looking for increasing that one. And with these actions, combined with our lean cost structure and -- which we are intending to keep lean in the future as well, we are planning that we are reaching our financial target of reaching the positive cash flow. Then our longer-term target. The longer-term target is then to achieve EUR 1 billion in revenue and 30% EBITDA margin by the end of 2033. And this target is our ambitious target, meaning that when we have reached our first target, we are not settling down. That is not enough for us. We want to continue growing. And we want to look for big ticket items like metal extraction so that we are capitalizing value out of those ones, and then we are going -- moving towards our long-term target to reach EUR 1 billion. And what is the road map then towards these targets? So we have divided this to 3 parts or 3 phases. So Phase 1 is cement-replacing solutions. And these are the solutions that -- what we have been discussing earlier today with -- by my colleagues. So basically, the solutions, is it hollow-core slab or mining solutions, then paste backfilling, shotcrete or then services like SidePrime and optimizing services. So these are what we are able to sell already today, and then we are accelerating the commercialization and sales of these ones. And that's forming the Phase #1. Phase #2 is then the sidestreams. So when we have created first the solution, then that means ingredients. And we are able to then provide more ingredients to that one, not just the recipe, but also providing the slag to our customers. So that can then make the part #2. And then Phase 3 or Part 3 is then the metal extraction and own green cement. And here, yes, you can see in the illustration, the growth potential is quite huge. So here, as Jyri was explaining that very well, so we are planning to get the value out of the metals and also the value out of the green cement. And the potential already with one customer, what Jyri was explaining, it's EUR 170 million with that example customer alone. And we believe that there's enough money to be shared between the partners. And then depending on that, how those actual commercial negotiations go is that what is our share, what is the customer share. So we believe that there's huge growth potential. And also then if we combine all these 3 phases and look how we are going forward is that the Phase #1, it's first creating the demand. It's the -- creating the demand for low-carbon solutions so that we have the customer base there ready. Then when we are adding the sidestreams as part of our offering, so we are also then increasing the demand and the -- and also that we have our own customers who are using our sidestreams. And then when we move to our Part 3 metal extraction, own green cement. With that one, we have already a demand and customer base in place, and we can then have a quicker capitalization of our solution. And this doesn't come from -- free. This, of course, needs a lot of work there, increasing our capabilities, and we have been doing that all along by now. And still, the work is ongoing, and we are planning to capitalize this innovation. And very shortly, as we have also some new people in the call, so mentioning that Betolar is an investment. And here, we have our share price from the beginning, from the IPO. And you can see the trend, how it has been moving during the recent years. But I also would like to highlight there that looking at this year alone, so year-to-date, our share price has been going up for -- by 52%. And also, I would like to highlight here about our shareholders. Our shareholders have been long with us and especially that the top 5 and also that many others outside the top 5 companies that are investing in us thus have been with us for long. And if you look at the top 20 investors on our web page, you can see that the same names have remained there, and some people have also increased their share in our company. The major shareholder is Nidoco, Virala. They are owning 28% of our company. And our founder, Juha Leppänen, is having also a big share. And then Ajanta Innovations, Ilmarinen and Voima Ventures have been our long-term investors. And I will end my part here with our priorities. So our first priority, short-term commercial acceleration, increasing the sales. Second priority is the long-term value creation through metal extraction and own green cement. What Jyri was just explaining, we are planning to capitalize this one, and we are putting, really, effort to make it happen. And the third part is the liquidity management and making sure that we have enough money to execute and implement this plan. And with these words, I would then like to next invite to the stage, Soila Soderstrom, and we are moving to the Q&A.

Yes. Thank you. Then to questions and answers, last but not least. So I welcome you in the audience to ask questions, what you may have. And of course, you there online to present your questions through the chat. So first, in the live audience, we have one raised hand here, so please wait for the microphone so the voice is heard.

Anssi Raussi from SEB. I have a few questions. But first, on your CapEx estimate, talking about this metal extraction CapEx, EUR 40 million to EUR 100 million and was it EUR 80 million. So how would you split that? And like explain that CapEx estimate a bit more in detail. Like what would it require from your customer?

Okay. Yes. Thank you for your question. The scale was -- is pretty large. But of course, it depends in the case we have to treat 200,000 tons of slag or over 1 million tons of slag because the capacity then significantly affects the CapEx as well. And also, there is a need for a granulation. Some plants already have a granulation readily available, some does not have. So there are issues like that. And then what is really affecting the CapEx is also the existing plant layout because that can easily add some extra cost, depending on how close of the source of the molten slag, our treatment can take place. So things like that affect quite significantly.

And basically, if you try to think about your typical customer, how much would they have to invest initially just to try this method?

Do you mean like testing in a demonstration scale?

Yes, testing and the first scale before scaling up, of course, at some point.

Then we are talking about a value of about EUR 1 million. Plus then, of course, it takes -- we need an engineering consultancy company to do the engineering part. And now we have finished [ FL1 ]. So it has to take a pre-feasibility and a basic engineering prior to making the final decision for the capital investment. And that cost is -- I would get -- I would estimate that cost to be approximately EUR 1 million to EUR 3 million maximum.

And you mentioned the decision-making. So what kind of lead times we are talking about from first meeting to agreement and...

Optimum, 2 years. Maximum, a bit longer.

Okay. And maybe about -- lastly from me about this slag in metal extraction process. So who owns that? So is it still owned by your customer? And when you utilize that utilizable slag, does your new customer has to be close to that one, so you have to operate locally?

There is no final decision who will be the operator of a plant or that part of our metal extraction process. I would say the most logical operator would be the very same who owns the plant and who makes the CapEx investment. But that is not a necessity. It can be [ own/our ], it can be contracted outside or in some cases, it could be also Betolar. So it's case by case.

If I may add on that one. So basically that the volume from one example customer is so large that it's more than the nearby demand most likely depending on the plant location. So most likely that will lead to a situation that -- where some exporting also to other parties will be needed. And depending really much on that, where the steel plant is located and what is the local demand nearby.

If I may add, the quantities of green cement are so large that one plant could easily cover 50% of the total demand of Finland. So there has to be a possibility to export.

Tom Saarinen from Inderes. In the -- in addition to the capital expenditures, what would be the biggest operating expenses in the new metal extraction?

Energy.

Energy?

Energy. But it depends because the heat balance is what determines the operational expenses. We take the molten metal, the molten slag. And depending on how much cold or preheated material is needed to be added to the system, then the system temperature goes down. But we can easily add like 15% without a need for heating. But of course, there is a reduction process. And reduction process is always endothermic, so it consumes energy. So there is a need for energy. But in many cases, the energy requirement can be quite small. But if there is a need to add more of, let's say, cold material, then we need energy for heating. But the total operational expenses are reasonable. We have calculated different cases, business cases. So we are talking about [ facts ], 20 million per year for the whole processing.

And you're extracting the metals from slags not from the tailings?

Well, the slag is what is molten. And then we add the tailings, and they do melt. So we have this molten system from which we do a reduction. But the tailings add valuable metals to the system, which we can then reduce and recover along with the other metals.

And if I may add one comment there as well is that also that when majority of the material is already hot, so that's saving energy. So the additional energy need is quite minimal. And now Jyri was then explaining the minimal energy need that -- what is then increasing the OpEx. But then one of the groundbreaking thing is that really that we are then processing the -- were material already. And then you can imagine the amount of energy, what would be needed that if we would then start heating up the cold material.

Yes. We have also calculated -- if I may add here, calculated cases where we would start directly from cold materials, and that consumes quite a lot of energy. So then we are talking -- if we have -- are talking about 1 million ton of material to be melted, then the OpEx is very large. We are talking about close to EUR 100 million per year. But then if the value of the metals we are treating is high enough, then it will compensate the additional to what is needed. So the base case anyhow is that we have a molten slag, which normally comes at the temperature of 1,650 up to 1,800 degrees. We can easily add selected sidestreams in a certain amount that it reduces the operational temperature. We can operate at significantly like 250 degrees lower temperature without adding any energy. And that is the trick, so we can save energy there. And because we know -- the trick is that we know what to mix with what. And that is what really makes a difference when it comes to heat balance, which is energy, which is same as part of the operational expenses. Of course, there is labor, there is maintenance and things like that, consumables, reductants and so on. But it's possible to have quite low OpEx at all.

Still, if I may. Regarding your unique data set, have you considered monetizing it other ways than the services you currently have, for example, like selling the data itself?

Thank you for the question. Of course, we have considered that. But what we think that we basically get more unique benefits from the data itself. So we want to keep our data platform proprietary. So what we have chosen now as the approach is that we rather give the insights, which come through the services to the customers, not the data directly because that would, of course, open competition. But of course, that's something that we are continuously considering, but that has been the approach so far.

And lastly, now that metal extraction is kind of in the heart of your strategy, is construction interesting more on the side of your focus?

Yes, that's a very good question. So I would say not really. So it's still there. We have customers that we are serving. We have several projects ongoing. For example, the hollow-core slabs that we are doing and commercializing now together with Consolis Parma, that's one example. But we have many others. In the Middle East, we have some customers. In India and so on. And of course, in Central Europe. So of course, we continue serving these customers. But what is the really exciting part here is that now that we are hopefully getting our own green cement, so we can use our own green cement and utilize that in these existing customers and hopefully new customers. And this way, we're able to also make sure that our solution is cost competitive and lower the cost so that customers don't need to pay premium to turn their production into greener, low-carbon solution, but they can actually have a very attractive, price-wise solution. So it's all -- it all comes together. So we are still continuing with that, and it's the same. We talk about the Geoprime, that's a brand for our solution. It's for construction and also mining. So we're also selling the same technology to the mining companies, and we continue doing that. But this is -- I would say, this is like an add-on, like significant value add-on to our existing business. And with this, we are hoping to really accelerate also the Geoprime sales going forward.

So hi, [indiscernible] Investments. Sorry, as a rather basic question, I'm new to Betolar. But -- and please correct me if I got this wrong, but if I understood it correctly, you are collecting a database of about a couple of hundred steel plants and a couple of thousand mines and what's -- what are the contents of those rubles and then building the AI cookbook to mix those together. But could you say a few words about the logistics of all this? Because how many different sidestreams would you end up mixing together? And is it like from 20, 30 places around the world that you have to transport to the plant?

Yes, that's a very relevant question. So for each of our projects -- so we have -- globally, we have customers in different regions, so we are always trying to look for local sources. There's no point and the logistics will -- many times will tilt economics by delivering materials from another side of the world to another end. And of course, the CO2 emissions are also -- well, needs to be accounted for. So we're always trying to look for the local sources. And that's why our recipes that we're developing to each customer is unique. We have to. And that's why we're using also the AI so that we can enhance and make it more efficient and faster to develop these things because we know that we have to customize it because we need to have the local sources. And that's also a way to keep it cost efficient.

If I add still that, basically, of course, we mix together different kind of sidestreams as well. So for example, if we have a customer in a certain location in the world, we are looking at what are the industries there. And it can be also, for example, energy plants. For example, we are dealing, of course, with slags, like you heard a lot from my colleagues, but also from ashes in energy production, for example, and heating. And those are materials that usually are -- well, they can go to waste or so low-value use, but we can also use those in the mix designs. So we combine slags and other sidestreams together, and that's part of the thing. And that's why also the number of sidestreams around the world is significant and remains so. And this green cement is basically simply adding one very critical, the most critical sidestream for us in the future. But in a way, the same logic continues.

Anssi Raussi from SEB again. One more follow-up from me and it -- just trying to understand your revenue-generating model in metal extraction business. So is it based on volumes, maybe fixed prices? And also, if you think about typical ferrochrome mine in Finland, what kind of negotiations you could have with these kind of companies -- company because they have to be your first and only client. So if we talk about 50% profit margins, I don't think that's maybe reasonable, if you know what I mean?

Yes, we understand your question, and it's good. So of course, yes, the next step for us is to continue and have discussions with these different metal companies and come to an agreement how we're going to move forward. For them, the value is really in the metals. And we understand, and it's part of their process, and that's how it should be. For us, what we are interested is the green cement and capturing the value from the green cement. But of course -- at the same time, of course, we know that the value from the metals is significant, much more than what it is from the green cement. So of course, in order for them to utilize our method, we, of course, are expecting that we get some cut, some part of it. But thinking about 50-50, yes, maybe it will not fly. But this is something that -- it's our next step then to have these discussions and see how we can move forward. But as I said, our interest is really in the green cement and capturing that -- value from that because we need that for the Geoprime sales.

And if you think about the time line going forward, like when could we hear something possibly about the first deals?

So conversation starts now. So this is something that we are now making a business plan. And as Mikko mentioned already, so priority is sales, sales, sales. So we are now moving forward and having these discussions with metal companies. Not only in Finland, but also globally. So our intention -- we are a start-up, and we are in a growing phase, so we don't have any time to waste. So we are really now moving forward quite, I would say, aggressively so that we can really generate the sales. That's our intention. We want to capture the value of this method as fast as we can.

Okay. Are there any other questions from the live audience? I guess not. Then I will continue the questions that we have received online. And of course, there are a lot of questions about the metal extraction. So first of all, there is a question about the timetable. And we just discussed about the first contract, but what about other steps that we need to now take?

Well, there has -- well, as I mentioned earlier, there needs to be quite a lot of engineering, and engineering takes time. Typically, one step of an engineering process takes 3 quarters up to 1 year, if we are talking about feasibility study. And then there is a basic engineering, which can easily take about, again, 3 quarters or 4 quarters. So we are talking about almost 2 years prior to the final decision for investment. That takes time. But it all depends because we have also quite a patent pending regarding one very simple, widely used piece of equipment in which the processing could take place. And that does not take much time. It could be very easily integrated into an operational plant in such a way that it would not disturb the main operation practically at all. And that could be kind of a short track. And the environmental regulations would not be kind of slowing down the process. So that might take place quite shortly, even within 1 year. But that's quite -- that's a speed track.

Okay. Then about the green cement. So what are you planning to do with green cement, metal factory solution? Sell it by yourselves or something else?

Yes, yes. So this is already what we discussed. So green cement is the one that we are interested in so that we can commercialize that and utilize this in our own customer projects where we're selling Geoprime to construction and mining industries. And I think we are running out of time.

Yes, we are. Just a couple of questions still, but one for Olli. So what language models do Betolar use right now? So -- and will Betolar use European language models and AI solutions in the future?

Okay. Good question. So of course, we are using foundation language models. And yes, we are using American-built. You say built language models. But like I said, we have augmented that with our own data. But currently, we are using the normal foundation models. But of course, as we know, there's a lot of good development about new language models that might be European built. So of course, we are continuously following that development and then can consider switching to those when they become more mature.

Thank you. Okay. Maybe we will just wrap up this session. Thank you for listening. And oh, yes, last words?

Yes. So really thank you, everyone here, for coming, and very good questions, and also our audience online. Thank you for the interest towards Betolar and hope that we can continue the dialogue. So if there's further questions, please do not hesitate to contact us after, so we're happy to share more information about our technologies and our way forward. So thank you a lot.