Capsol Technologies ASA (CAPSL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

February 24, 2025

Oslo Bors NO Industrials Machinery earnings 43 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Tone Bekkestad

executive
#1

Good day, everyone, and welcome to Capsol Technologies Q4 and Full Year 2024 Investor Update. My name is Tone Bekkestad, Head of Communications at Capsol. I'm joined today by our CEO, Wendy Lam; our CFO, Ingar Bergh; and our Chief Delivery Officer, Sam Thivolle. Wendy will start off by taking us through our Q4 highlights. Sam will then be presenting a deep dive on our CapsolGo demonstration units, what they are, why our clients invest in CapsolGo demonstration campaigns and the invaluable learnings the CapsolGo units provide in further developing our technology. Wendy will then take us through the operational review before Ingar presents the financials and Wendy concludes with some closing remarks. Please note that this conference is being recorded and will be published on our website. We will be taking questions at the end of the presentation, and you can type in your questions any time during the presentation. I will now hand the call over to Wendy.

Wendy Lam

executive
#2

Thank you, Tone. Good day, everyone, and welcome to our Q4 and full year 2024 investor update. Let me start by sharing what a typical carbon capture value chain looks like. This is an illustration showing a biomass energy plant that is producing heat and electricity and emits a large amount of CO2 in doing so. Some plants like this one can emit 100,000 tons of CO2 every month. 100,000 tons is the weight of a small aircraft carrier. This CO2 is invisible, but as we know, the effects are not. Capsol is providing the CO2 capture solutions to prevent that CO2 from going into the atmosphere. We do this in the form of full plant design for emitters like this one through a technology license. This CO2 capture plant can typically stand end of pipe next to the emitter. Our solution has the ability to capture CO2 concentrations from 3% to 30%. We can meet the industry standards of capture rate of 95% and even more and produce food-grade CO2 of over 99% purity. Once captured, the CO2 leaves the capture plant where it is transported and typically stored. While Capsol is not directly providing transportation and storage, we work with partners who do so. In this picture, you can see that CO2 would go to a port where it is liquefied and put on a ship, taken to an offshore injection station and then put into a permanent storage underground offshore. CCS projects like this are a much-needed solution to address the harmful effects of emissions, and Capsol is providing a competitive solution to addressing this need. A recap of who Capsol is for those of you just hearing about us. We are one of the very few publicly listed carbon capture technology companies in the world. We offer licensing of a combined CO2 capture and heat generation system in one. Our ability to reduce carbon capture costs of 20% to 60% is drawing interest from new customers across different sectors. This is mainly driven by our innovative method of inherent heat recovery in our capture process, which results in significantly lower electricity consumption than that of competing mature technologies. We have energy consumption of 0.5 to 1.5 gigajoules per ton. Our technology experience is built on decades proven chemistry, more than 15 years of R&D and over 17,000 hours of operating experience with our demonstration plants. We also have a mature project pipeline of over 17 million tons of CO2 capture capacity, and this is still growing. And we are just at the beginning. With that, let me cover our highlights of an exciting Q4. First, we have continued to show strong revenue and pipeline growth. We have almost 3x revenue growth and 45% pipeline growth year-on-year. That's proof of our strong commercial traction. This pipeline now has the potential of over EUR 200 million in revenue potential in FIDs in the next 3 years. Our tech is also verified by industry leaders. We've also been very pleased to see that the first scale -- the first large-scale CCS project with Capsol's technology, namely the Stockholm Exergi BECCS project, is moving towards FID after having secured financing a few weeks ago. Getting past that milestone brings our technology maturity to another level as we continue to work with large industrial customers like SCHWENK, Holcim, SUEZ and others. We also continue with initiatives to drive performance and value capture. While we're happy about the overall progress, we are never satisfied. To protect and further leverage our cost leadership, we've opened up an HPC or hot potassium carbonate R&D center in Stavanger during Q4. And we started a project to improve the HPC chemistry with bio-based additives with Stockholm Exergi, KTH Royal Institute of Technology and AirZyme. Finally, we are still running Capsol with a business model that is fully funded. As for any business, CCS projects must be economically viable and Capsol is already making a contribution. On the left is a case example from the cement sector comparing costs of 2 approaches to carbon capture, transportation and storage and available incentives. You can see that the total cost of capture, transport and storage of the Norcem cement plant at EUR 187 per ton of CO2 captured is presenting a gap from the incentives on ETS or emissions trading system cost avoidance and low carbon premiums. The difference means that the project still requires additional subsidies. In the example beside this, you can see that Capsol's lower capture cost, represented in orange, driven by lower energy costs can already make a project profitable. For projects in biomass or waste energy where we can generate extra heat, additional revenues can increase the incentives, further improving project economics. When we look at the broader industry, we see a great opportunity for costs to continue declining with advancing technologies and greater availability of transport and storage. At the same time, incentives are expected to increase. For example, we see voluntary carbon removal credit markets paying a premium for CO2 from BECCS projects. We see increasing demand for low carbon materials and ETS is forecasted by multiple parties to be EUR 135 to EUR 155 by 2030, increasing the value of avoiding emissions. At Capsol, we are seeing these dynamics directly from our customers. Looking more broadly beyond cost advantages, Capsol brings other benefits to post-combustion carbon capture versus other options in the market. In the first category within HPC or hot potassium carbonate, we have already assembled the largest team with post-combustion carbon capture focus and have the most experience with industrial flue gases. We're also taking a unique power plant approach and our patent portfolio and experience instills credibility with our customers. Second, against amines who have the most traction for post-combustion carbon capture, we are offering a stable open-source solvent that does not lead to harmful emissions to the air or contaminate the CO2 it captures. Capsol also requires minimal to no water or steam and offers a fully independent end-of-pipe integration. Finally, over amines, Capsol has inherent heat generation, has lower capture costs and can easily integrate to take advantage of any extra heat that may be available to improve economics even more. Third, against other technologies, Capsol is generally more mature, has a cost and energy advantage and our open-source solvent gives our customers operational flexibility. Overall, Capsol provides a competitive advantage over other solutions and is the most mature alternative to amines. The result of advantages I just mentioned is that while the carbon capture industry is not moving at the pace the world needs yet to achieve various targets, Capsol is still seeing very strong pipeline growth. The global CCS Institute showed mature project pipeline growth of just 12% from Q2 '23 to Q2 '24, while Capsol in the same period saw 122% growth. We've done this by honing our value proposition of lower cost and safe solvent to target industries where CCS adoption is now really taking off, especially in cement, biomass and energy from waste. And we're present in the most advanced geographical markets where the required regulatory framework is in place. We also continue to work with leading industry partners such as Munters, Siemens Energy, Storegga, GE Vernova, Sumitomo Foster Wheeler and Petrofac. The strong traction you have seen from us in the past 18 months has resulted in a mature project pipeline with potential of more than 17 million tons of annual capture capacity. With a target of EUR 10 to EUR 15 per ton of installed capacity, this translates into a potential licensing revenue of EUR 260 million. As this revenue is triggered by our customers taking final investment decisions on their CCS projects with our technology, a question we've been asked by investors and analysts lately is, when can we expect the next FIDs? The short answer is that there are not many FIDs expected this year in our portfolio as most of our projects in our portfolio have more engineering work to be done. Next year, however, a large share of our pipeline can be FID ready. If we look at the next 3 years, 80% of our pipeline could reach FID, which means more than EUR 200 million in licensing revenues could be triggered. Not all of these projects will be developed in the planned time frame, but we are optimistic about the road ahead. Note that we also have a total sales pipeline with over 100 projects, which is growing every quarter and that it typically takes 12 to 24 months for a project to go from feasibility study to FID. I now pass to our Chief Delivery Officer, Sam Thivolle, who will take us deeper into how we are delivering for our customers and gaining experience.

Sam Thivolle

executive
#3

Thanks, Wendy, and good day, everyone. At Capsol, as Tone and Wendy mentioned, I look after the delivery of the engineering studies which we perform for our clients and I also manage the operations of our CapsolGo demonstration unit. I joined the company in December to ensure operational excellence in our activities by enhancing our practices, namely safety, control procedures and risk and operations management in general. Because as we work for larger clients, we have to comply with the standards of these multinational companies. You have also understood that at Capsol Technologies, we have built a technology platform for post-combustion CO2 absorption with potassium carbonate. And we have developed several applications of the technology, which defines the solutions we have for our clients. Our CapsolGo demonstration unit, the Capsol end-of-pipe license for full-scale plant and CapsolGT, which is our solution to capture CO2 from gas turbines. Today, we will focus on our CapsolGo program. But safety first, I am pleased to disclose that we had no lost time injury in the last quarter, which makes 2024 an accident-free year. We are working hard with our clients and our contractors to ensure that we maintain a spotless safety record in 2025. Commercially, it has been announced that we started 2025 with 2 new campaigns, an energy-from-waste project at Malarenergi in Sweden with Sumitomo Foster Wheeler and SCHWENK Cement in Lithuania, which is pictured on the right-hand side. This is a big one for us as it is our first campaign for a cement producer. Additionally, we are preparing for another cement flue gas campaign for Holcim in Germany, a project which we announced in Q4 last year. We are, therefore, very confident that our CapsolGo campaigns will sold out in 2025, which is a good sign, not only for the adoption of our technology, but also for revenue generation this year. But let's rewind a little bit. What is a CapsolGo? It is a fully electric demonstration unit, which we use to replicate the hot potassium carbonate carbon capture process at a client's facility. These CapsolGo units are made of 2 20-feet containers supporting a 40-feet frame on top. We can transport these to an emitting facility, assemble them and then operate under a rental agreement. A campaign varies between 3 months and 1 year and we take care of everything, installation, people, equipment, chemicals and then breakdown and transport. We have 3 of these demo units to which we can also add a liquefaction module, which is also a containerized solution. And it is this 30-feet container, which you can see in the middle. With this, we can capture about 1 ton per day with the option to liquefy CO2 and assess if we can meet Northern Lights standards or food grade specifications. But let's investigate more what we do with this. What do our clients get from a CapsolGo demonstration project? Very simply said, a CapsolGo unit is a tool to derisk a carbon capture project with hot potassium carbonate. Let me make the argument even simpler. What our clients spend on a demonstration campaign, they will save multiple times on a full-scale project. All emitting facilities are different, but what comes out of our process must be standardized CO2. So we have the bridge between these point source emissions, and then later, conditioning and transport. And as a result, we have to demonstrate that we can achieve high CO2 capture rates under various operating conditions, being biomass, energy-from-waste, cement, petrochemicals and other industries. This is why emitters use our CapsolGo unit to mitigate potential flue gas issues. What are the contaminants? How does the solvent behave with these contaminants? Is there an impact on performance? Are we observing corrosion? Can we quantify it? We use the CapsolGo to find answers to these questions early in the process. And a CapsolGo program can help identify CapEx improvement opportunities. And this helps us build valuable knowledge as CCS projects move towards full-scale implementation. Let me give you a simple example. Typically, our clients measure their emissions for reporting reasons, but they record average data. The variability can be seasonal, and we need to make sure that all cases are covered, but the changes can also be instantaneous. With the CapsolGo, we are exposed to short-term variations, and we look for the peaks, minimum and maximum. And without disclosing our client data, one lesson learned which has come in every campaign is that the flue gas was a lot less known than what the plant owners thought at the beginning. And the early detection of these specificities is one of the keys to a successful project later. Last point is on stakeholder engagement. Some of our clients use the CapsolGo demonstration unit as a communication tool for 3 reasons in no particular order. #1, to build social acceptance. #2, sometimes to get public funding. And #3, to secure internal support, because typically, if a plant manager can show a tangible successful demonstration at his facility, he or she is a lot more likely to get senior management approval. So this is about our clients. But what about us? What do we get out of a CapsolGo program? Again, a simple answer, business. A successful campaign is probably the best-selling argument to progress towards a license agreement with our clients. With 7 contracted campaigns, with more than 15 hours of run time on multiple flue gas configurations such as biomass, energy-from-waste and cement, we are by far the company with the most post-combustion flue gas experience when it comes to hot potassium carbonate. And I guess this is why our units make the cover of publications like the last issue of the CCS state-of-the-art technology report from the Global CCS Institute, which is the illustration on the right. The other argument is that the CapsolGo units are an invaluable tool to test our own technology. Between client campaigns, we run our own research and development initiatives. CapsolGo is, therefore, the platform used by our Head of Innovation to test the solutions which our team develops in our R&D center in Stavanger. With the demonstration unit, we can quickly do a reality check of the concepts we have developed in the lab. And by iterating these exchanges between lab experiments and pilot scale deployment, we are able to refine our models and accelerate our development. And this gives us a lot of confidence in our simulations. You have also seen our Q4 announcement to enter a joint research and development project with Stockholm Exergi, the KTH Royal Institute of Technology and AirZyme. The objective is to develop a bio-based promoter to enhance CO2 capture. And at some point, we will test this on real flue gas and it will be done with the CapsolGo. And we do this with other technologies or other suppliers, which will ultimately improve our Capsol end-of-pipe value proposition. So this is CapsolGo in a nutshell. One key to secure future growth for Capsol Technologies is to continue to innovate and deliver demonstration campaigns on time, within budget and without safety incidents. And I can guarantee we will work hard in 2025 to make this happen. Thanks, and over to you, Wendy, for the operational review.

Wendy Lam

executive
#4

Thanks very much, Sam. Let me start the operational review with a summary of the commercial traction we have had since end of Q3. Since then, we have signed 6 projects, all with large industrial clients, all of whom have a portfolio of carbon capture needs in their organization. Working from the top, we have progressed our work with a cement plant in Europe from feasibility to a pre-FEED. This is for a large international cement provider. Next, a large utility with operations across key European countries has engaged us for a study for a large-scale energy from-waste-plant. Next, Holcim signed on for a Capsol demonstration campaign for a plant in Germany as part of a wider collaboration. They are the second cement provider to decide to test Capsol's HPC tech at their site, as Sam has mentioned. SUEZ, a circular solutions provider for waste and water has engaged us for a feasibility study for an energy-from-waste plant in France. And at the beginning of December, we also signed on our first project with an international energy company for one of their refineries. Finally, a new German cement producer signed on for a feasibility study with us at the end of Q3. These projects represent the kind of interest we have had from the market. Zooming out with a view of the last 12 months, we have seen a 45% growth in our mature project pipeline with up to EUR 260 million in pretax profit potential. The breakdown of these projects in our pipeline include; first, engineering studies. We have 12 million tons of capture capacity represented here in our paid projects with clients. Second, our CapsolGo demonstration units represent 3.85 million tons of capture capacity supporting customer adoption. And third, our license agreements at 1.35 million tons of capture capacity represent this contracted revenue growth we have for the future. Overall, we are seeing steady growth. And as said earlier, we are engaging with larger customers on their carbon capture needs. I want to share another view of what sectors are behind that growing pipeline. Capsol is emerging as the preferred technology across multiple industries. Just under half of our pipeline is with biomass and energy-from-waste at 7.8 million tons. In this sector, in addition to having lower energy consumption and a safe solvent, our ability to generate extra heat for district heating is what makes us attractive. In cement, where we are growing quickly, we have 8.5 million tons of capture capacity in the pipeline. Customers here like our lower energy consumption numbers, the easier plant integration and no need for additional steam. Finally, we are still positioned to take advantage of growing demand for CCS on gas turbines to decarbonize everything from gas power plants to data centers. The low concentrations of CO2 and exhaust of a gas turbine make capture extra challenging, but we can use the high-temperature exhaust to power our system in an efficient way and generate extra electricity along the way. We continue our work with leading gas turbine manufacturers here. Next, I'll give a couple of project examples from cement and biomass. In cement, we are very proud that Holcim will be one of the first to deploy a CapsolGo demonstration unit on a cement plant. In December 2024, Capsol signed a cooperation agreement with Holcim Group, one of the world's largest cement producers, building on an earlier engagement for one of the company's U.K. plants. As part of the cooperation agreement, a CapsolGo demonstration campaign was confirmed for a cement plant in Southern Germany starting in Q2 2025. This is the first step towards decarbonizing Holcim's global operations, and if successful, it could lead to a large-scale rollout of CapsolEOP technology. Holcim targets 8 million tons of fully decarbonized cement by 2030, representing a major commercial opportunity for Capsol. Within biomass, Stockholm Exergi's BECCS or bioenergy and CCS project is our first large-scale project coming to life with an FID soon. We booked our first licensing fee at the end of 2024 with this project. This project with our technology was validated through a number of key milestones. It secured EUR 180 million from the EU for large-scale implementation. It got its environmental permitting completed last year, derisking project execution. It also signed the world's largest agreement with Microsoft for carbon removal. And lastly, the Swedish Energy Agency committed EUR 1.7 billion in January 2025 for this project. The plant will capture 800,000 tons of CO2. This is bigger than the CCS projects for Norcem and Brevik and Celsio and Oslo combined. Capsol is now positioned for scaling up commercial deployment across multiple industries. Finally, as we look ahead, we are identifying a number of exciting growth possibilities for Capsol to create value. Building on our core base of experience, Capsol opened a new R&D center in Stavanger, Norway in Q4 2024. The center will expand chemical and process testing to generate proprietary know-how, while working alongside our CapsolGo test campaigns. The center will also support ongoing R&D projects. I give 2 examples. First, we are working on technology development with our industrial partner, Munters, on optimizing physical equipment inside the absorber and desorber towers of the plants. And second, as mentioned already, we are looking at how to optimize capture performance with a new R&D collaboration for bio-based promoters to make the chemistry of HPC work even better. The project was awarded of SEK 7 million from the Swedish Energy Agency over 2 years. Alongside core R&D, we're also exploring full project cycle service offerings for the future, including solvent supply, digital services and other expert services. In summary, we are taking a long-term view of the value creation potential of Capsol, building on our already robust technology platform. I now pass on to Ingar, who will provide financial highlights.

Ingar Bergh

executive
#5

Thank you, Wendy. I will take you through the financial highlights for the period. But first, I want to provide a short refresher on our business model and where we are in the implementation phase of this. The technology licensing model is built to leverage our world-class technology platform. It is capital-light with no major investments in plants or factories. We do not expose our balance sheet for cost overruns in projects. And we can scale globally with a relatively small team. Finally, it is a high margin model. We have pretax margin targets of between 40% and 60% on the corporate level. Let me bring you through an example on how this model is deployed in a project. Take a cement project with 1 million tons of CO2 to be captured per year. We typically start by delivering a paid feasibility study. And if this -- and if it's a fit with the progress -- sorry, and if it's a fit, we progress with more mature engineering studies. For these studies, we typically get paid between EUR 50,000 and EUR 500,000. If desired by the client, we also execute a CapsolGo campaign to further mature the project. A campaign typically lasts 6 months with EUR 150,000 to EUR 250,000 in revenue per month. The engineering work and demonstration campaigns go a long way to funding our operations. But the real value generation comes when we start generating licensing revenues. For 1 million ton per annum capture plant, we would receive a payment of between EUR 10 million and EUR 15 million, more or less 100% pretax margin. Until now, we have been working on the left-hand side of this project time line. However, as Wendy touched upon earlier, our project pipeline is maturing, and we are moving over to the right-hand side of the time line with our first license revenue booked in Q4 and opportunity for final investment decisions of more than 10 million tons per annum from our current portfolio over the next few years. Let me move on to the financial highlights of the quarter and full year. In Q4, we generated revenues of NOK 36.1 million, up by 2.25x relative to the same period last year. And for the full year, we saw revenues at NOK 94.2 million, up 2.75x from 2023. The majority of revenue is still from demonstration campaigns and engineering services. But in Q4, we booked our first licensing revenue, making it our first profitable quarter with a pretax profit of NOK 3.2 million. As mentioned before, the Stockholm license agreement has a significant discount versus today's license fee structure. The payment for a full price project of the same size would be sufficient to turn an annual profit. Let's have a look at cash flows for Q4. We started the period with NOK 66 million and ended at NOK 64.5 million, giving a cash outflow of NOK 1.5 million for the period. We invested NOK 3.1 million, mostly in the CapsolGo program, with now only about NOK 3 million remaining. This is down relative to our estimate in the last quarter. It is worth noting that even without the payment for the license fee, which is due in Q1, we had a positive operating cash flow of NOK 7.9 million for the quarter. This was down to a concentrated effort to improve the working capital relative to Q3. With the cash position, current cost levels and contracted revenue, we are fully funded to execute our current business plan. On that note, I give the word back to Wendy.

Wendy Lam

executive
#6

Thank you very much, Ingar. The milestones we expect over the next 6 to 12 months will derisk the path towards long-term goals and revenue potential, especially with new products and services for the future. Most immediate, we expect the formal FID of Stockholm Exergi's project, making Capsol's technology prominent in one of the largest biomass CCS projects in the world. We will look to fully book capacity on our 3 CapsolGo demonstration units. We are already 70% booked today. We will continue to sign licensing agreements within our mature project pipeline for projects with visibility of FIDs. We will also continue to bring CapsolGT to the market and continue to expand our global industrial partnerships. In summary, we are in an exciting time for the industry and for Capsol. Capsol's pipeline growth is outpacing the industry, and we expect over EUR 200 million of revenue potential in projects that can reach FID in the next 3 years. In new sectors, CapsolGT can unlock a large opportunity, decarbonizing gas turbines. We have a stable business and are fully funded in how we operate today. And what drives us forward even more is the promise of greater growth. We are enhancing performance of our base technology and our new R&D center in Stavanger and are already working on new products and services. Thank you very much. And I'll pass it back to Tone for our Q&A.

Tone Bekkestad

executive
#7

Now let's look at the questions we have received. The first question is, what is the status of your U.S. office? And do you have a comment on the new U.S. administration?

Wendy Lam

executive
#8

Thanks for the question. As some of you know who have followed us, we did open up an office in the U.S. based in Houston last year. And I would say, despite a lot of the ups and downs of what's going on in the U.S., we have not changed our direction at all. We still believe that U.S. and Canada will be a very attractive market for CCS for us. We have -- what we've done in the U.S. already in the last year is raise our awareness, raise the awareness of the market for Capsol. For example, we are already going back there in a couple of weeks for CERAWeek, one of the premier energy conferences in the world. And at that conference, we have been recognized as 1 of 6 energy innovation pioneers out of hundreds that have been evaluated. And then second, with this opening of the office, we've added some more staff, seconded an engineer from Norway so that we are more directly addressing customer requests and inquiries about work with Capsol for the future. So we are still very optimistic about North America.

Tone Bekkestad

executive
#9

And then there's a question regarding GT. So what is the market outlook for your CapsolGT solution?

Wendy Lam

executive
#10

Yes. CapsolGT, as you know, it is providing the market an option for clean power and specifically clean gas power with gas turbines. What we know despite the ups and downs of the politics in the world, we know that energy demand is growing and constant. And we have said before that CapsolGT is big market is going to be in the U.S. and we still maintain that view. We do see growth of energy with gas being not only a transitioned fuel, but also a destination fuel, which means that carbon capture is going to be considered quite more in order to provide a clean source of power for our customers. And we are having conversations about that already. In terms of the market size, as you -- some of you know, we are offering a solution for open cycle gas turbines. And we know there's over 3,000 open cycle gas turbines out there already today that are creating emissions where our solution could be suitable. So we remain very optimistic about the GT market.

Tone Bekkestad

executive
#11

Then the next question is, some analysts argue that the cost of emitting CO2 remains far lower than the cost of CCS, preventing projects from reaching FID. Based on your engineering work with emitters, what is your view on this?

Wendy Lam

executive
#12

I'll say a couple of comments and I might ask my colleague here, Sam, to also comment. When we look at everything as it is today, ETS where it is today, I think it can be easy to come to the conclusion that the cost of emitting is just -- is lower. But all of our customers that we are working with are looking at the long-term. We have seen various estimates, and our customers believe that the ETS price is going to be over EUR 130 per ton of capture. And at the same time, the cost of capture is also going to decrease. So we are already seeing that our customers are looking at that long-term and the case for the long-term is definitely there. So that the cost of emitting in the future is going to cost more. We also have voluntary markets driving the dynamics as well and making the economics work better for CCS. Maybe I'll ask Sam to maybe comment on what you are seeing with customers.

Sam Thivolle

executive
#13

Yes. Beyond that, the way we can help our customers improve the business case is first with the engineering studies where we do an early risk mitigation of their projects. We talked earlier about the CapsolGo demonstration unit. That's really the reality check that we do. We talked before also about the laboratory to improve our correlation of simulations and predict cost and performance in general, which means we can reduce the design margins and then have a better cost. And the final one that we see is on partnerships, because by ensuring the optimal integration of the technology, we will ultimately reduce the cost for our clients. These are 4 levers.

Tone Bekkestad

executive
#14

Next question is, you mentioned a pipeline with significant licensing revenue potential in 2025 to 2027. How does the prospects look like to convert this pipeline into firm sales in the same period? And questioning the lead time necessary from contract is signed until FID triggers license revenue.

Wendy Lam

executive
#15

I can take this and then I'll ask Ingar, our CFO, to also comment. The question around converting pipeline to firm sales in the same period -- let me first say that everything that is represented in our mature project pipeline is representing paid work with customers. There is a broader pipeline behind that mature pipeline. We can safely say over 100 leads that we filter before we take things into that mature pipeline. So by that activity already, we have already filtered the, we'll say, the most attractive projects that have the most likelihood of getting to FID. We get inquiries from all over the world and we do make a point to focus our efforts on projects that have more FID likelihood. Ingar, maybe you can comment a little bit on the typical time line of the FIDs based on our work.

Ingar Bergh

executive
#16

So I'll also build a little bit on what you said of our pipeline, mature pipeline of 17 million tons per annum. We see a viable path to final investment decision for projects representing more than 13 million tons per annum over the next 3 years. Now not all of these will necessarily happen or go to us. But at the same time, we see our pipeline is growing rapidly. And the ones not going to us will be replaced by new and exciting projects. Historically, developing carbon capture project has taken quite a bit of time. We see the time line from they coming to us doing a feasibility study until reaching FID will be shorter, predicting between 12 and 24 months typically going forward for this.

Tone Bekkestad

executive
#17

Then there's a CapsolGo question. Do you still have ambition of acquiring another CapsolGo unit dedicated to the U.S. market?

Sam Thivolle

executive
#18

Maybe I can take this one. But first, we want to make sure that we serve our existing customers as best as we can. And how do we do that? We do it by developing robust procedures and by having processes in place that will ensure consistency in our performance. And this is what enables us to scale our operations. So having said that, I can answer the question with the right customer, the right opportunity, the right commercial model or partnership, we could invest in a new CapsolGo demonstration unit.

Wendy Lam

executive
#19

Maybe I'll also add to Sam's answer that when we look at other markets, we have the opportunity to introduce, I will say, different versions of CapsolGo to meet the needs of that particular market. So that also goes into the consideration and can also help us qualify even different elements of how Capsol can operate in the market.

Tone Bekkestad

executive
#20

And do you have a sufficiently large organization to handle expected growth ahead or will you have to scale up to meet future demand?

Wendy Lam

executive
#21

That's a great question. We've experienced quite a bit of growth since the last year. As you know, we have raised some capital last year to expand the organization. And we're definitely sized right now to handle the growth that we see in our immediate business plan. However, the market is very interesting. And the further we proceed with the work with our customers, the more opportunities we are seeing for various growth paths ahead. So while we are sized sufficiently today to handle the growth, there will be other things that we will evaluate to potentially accelerate and even be more aggressive on growth in the future.

Tone Bekkestad

executive
#22

Thank you very much. That was all the questions we had. So thank you to everyone who sent their questions and who have watched this Q4 presentation. And thank you to Wendy, Ingar and Sam.

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