Gelion plc (GELN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to the Gelion Plc investor presentation. [Operator Instructions]. Before we begin, I'd now like to submit a following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to Dr. Steve Mahon, Non-Executive Chairman. Good morning.

Good morning to you, and good evening to those who are joining us from Australia. We have a presentation team here. We're really reflecting on primarily on the annual results, but we reflect on the last year because it's approximately just over 12 months since we listed on AIM. And at that time, we really were -- came to market with a suite of battery technologies addressing both the high energy market and the high power market, both storage for utility [indiscernible] and for mobility devices. And we'll reflect on that today and talk about the developments in those spaces. But as a board, we remain as optimistic as we were on the day of our IPO about the prospects for our suite of technologies. One of the other elements we stressed when we came to market was around trust, and we were extremely respectful of the trust that the shareholders put in the company and the Board. And part of that has been and this year, it has always incredibly engaged hands-on in helping the company make the transition from laboratory to commerciality. And part of that change is putting in the right management. And we set ourselves a challenge of bringing or finding a fairly rare person, someone who has experience as a CEO of driving company growth and driving liquidity and shareholder returns, but also having deep factory market expertise, and there are very few of those people around. And we are fortunate that we have found one, and John Wood is very recently appointed CEO and I'll pass to John shortly. But John is now our full-time permanent CEO. It's taken us a little while to find the right question, but it's certainly worth waiting because it's a critical part of the success of the companies have the right leadership in place. So -- it's a great pleasure to welcome John to the team. And I'll hand over to John to take a lead on the presentation.

Thanks very much. It's a real honor to be able to lead Gelion and to steward your investment in Gelion. As Steve said, my history is all about -- has been all about taking the great technologies that are developed by teams in ensuring those technologies are adopted worldwide. You'll come to know me as an entrepreneur in the spirit of [indiscernible] 0 to 1, advice, rating the book on standard but basically when you look around the world today, it's a very small place. And if you want to compete in the innovation and technology space, you find quite quickly that you need to be one of the 1, 2 or 3 lead technologies and that requires a particular approach to commercialization. In the course of the presentation today, I'm going to share with you some of the things that you might expect from us in Gelion. This is a real opportunity for me as well as my work in launching technologies globally for the last 15 years, I've been involved in sustainability and particularly near energy storage. So as part of the energy storage community, I entered when it was quite early in the early stages. Shared the journey to this point, I have many friends around the world across that community. Gelion is a particular challenge and opportunity because we have 2 remarkable technologies on both sides of the community. We'll talk about that in the course of today. It's a remarkable opportunity for me to work with Thomas Maschmeyer and the team, and I'll talk later about the specifics of what we want to do with your investments. So I'll pass it now to Thomas to introduce.

Yes. So thank you very much for your support. As investors and for the trust you put in the company and the team, and we will do our very best to deliver, and we're very confident of doing that if we...

I'll introduce myself. Hi, everyone. Thank you for your investment. Good morning and good evening to investors in the U.K. and Australia. My name is Amit Gupta. I'm the CFO. I've been with the business for 15 months and we have achieved quite a bit in the last year and very exciting times to come.

Thank you. So as you know, the company was set up for to help support the green energy revolution and to do that with innovative storage technologies. And in terms of us being part of an ESG portfolio, we aligned very, very well with UN Sustainability Development Goals, as you can see here. So we really play strongly into a whole range of different areas of incredible importance and given the times we're in. Next slide please. In terms of key progress since the IPO, we've now established a senior team that we're very, very confident of. The Board is working together very well as Steve Mahon, our Chairman already alluded to. And we've now got a sector expert CEO with huge international reach, both in terms of offtake, in terms of manufacturing capabilities for our technologies. So we're really looking forward to his leadership and getting us to that next level. The other thing -- amongst the other things we've done is we've proven that the cells can be made not just in the lab by PhD students or by highly skilled individuals, but in fact, that can be made in the commercial environment. And we've transitioned out of the lab into a pilot manufacturing line that is in a commercial lead-acid factory in Sydney that was opened, and it's Commission ahead of schedule, and it was creating such excitement that the 2 Federal ministers of relevance, the Minister for Energy and the Minister for Industry came personally to open this pilot plant manufacturing line. So we are very well visible within the ecosystem. And those cells are assembled by just the normal staff that is working in the factory and making lead-acid batteries. The batteries themselves are going to be used in the Acciona Energia a trial that we have. It's one of the largest energy companies in renewables around the world. And we're looking forward to those tests, those trials, the undoubtedly fantastic results and to be able to share that with you in the coming year. The last point is that we've had substantial acceleration in the additives business. We've made a number of breakthroughs and able to go significantly faster than we thought we would be into the development of a lithium-silicon-sulfur battery technology, and we'll talk more about that in detail in the following slides. In terms of financial highlights, I guess, the 2 key points here are that we have no debt. And the other one is that we have had, as of the end of June this year, GBP 17 million in the bank, still as cash. So we feel we are very well resourced to execute on the strategy that we will be introducing to you in the next few slides. One of the other things, not just the senior team, but the team as a whole has grown, and we've been able to attract just fantastic talent, having done a little bit of a poll around the place, everybody is motivated by impact. Of course, you need to eat and have a salary. But really, people are coming to work because of impact, trying to make a difference, trying to really interact with that big challenge that we all face and push out those new technologies to help make a difference. So it's a fantastic team, highly skilled individuals, very diverse, many nationalities and hugely motivated. And we're all very proud to be associated with such a wonderful team. And now over to the business.

Thanks. Next slide. The reason that I was convinced to join Gelion really is the opportunity to work with this exceptional man, Thomas and with what I've found already some truly amazing employees that have assembled inside of Gelion. Thomas is a modest man. He is regarded as 1 of the top 15 chemists in the world, and with the specialty in catalysis, which are the technologies that we are working to make these batteries happen. On my own side, as I said, I worked over the last 15 years in sustainability. In my work in sustainability, I worked for many years on the side of the business that was lead-acid, and we'll talk about relevance to the lead-acid industry of our zinc-bromide cells, particularly as we proceed. Also in the last sort of 2.5 years, I put just mine and family's money back in to sustainability and build an investment portfolio that goes across sustainability technologies with an emphasis in energy storage. The reason I raised that is that getting an exposure across and participation across all of the activities or many of the activities, leading activities that are going on in energy storage across the world. Against that background, the opportunity to work with Thomas and the team on these 2 core technologies is something that I understand very clearly. And I'm going to introduce it to you in that context. In many ways, what I've done to date has been training to step into this role. You'll recognize pretty quickly down the bottom, there's a number of 50 megawatts on 2010 and 17 gigawatts in 2020. And this is not to scale, but I'll explain that too. My engagement in energy story started in 2008. And that's really when the industry took off of energy storage supporting renewables growth. And what happened back then is we had the global financial crisis. And under the Obama administration, there was the ARRA program, the American reconstruction act. Department of Energy, when that happened under the stewardship that a remarkable man, Dr. [indiscernible], actually allocated $200 million to energy storage that was supplemented by over $300 million from private capital to set up 16 large energy storage projects in the U.S. I was fortunate enough to be leading a team at the time that provided the cells for 2 of 16 projects that grounded me in the growth of the opportunity. In this slide, it is built for you, what you would see is the remarkable growth that happened between 2010 and 2020 to the 17 gigawatts that were out there in that time. And me, as a participant in the industry, that was a staggering period of growth and innovation. What I want to draw everyone's attention to is what happens between 2020 and 2030. We got from 17 gigawatts to 358 gigawatts. These are actually numbers I shared at World Energy Storage Day, the session at energy storage presentation at World Energy Storage Day this year. And the relevant factor is that 358 gigawatts is not enough. So in the presentation, we talked about energy storage saving, we talked about what's happening in wind energy. We talked about what's happening to solar energy, and we talked about what was needed to buffer at all. That is a staggering rate of growth. We're going to need energy storage to do what we can because even at 358 gigawatts of energy storage, we're still going to be curtailing the amount of wind and solar energy that's being generated. That's the background that we're working against.

Those effectively in an infinite market for storage, if you can provide it at the right cost with the right performance, you are going to sell it.

So looking under the covers in to understand where that energy storage is coming from. Now there are 2 main contributors to energy storage state, and they are the lead-acid industry and the lithium industry. They're both today roughly the same size. Lead-acid is actually slightly bigger in gigawatt hour terms, the lithium is slightly bigger in dollar terms. Between now and 2023, lithium will be an industry that is 3 times larger, but the lead-acid industry is still growing. Now I don't want to -- the little other initiatives that are starting as well like flow batteries and other alternate chemistries because there are other chemistries like sodium ion as well that are making a strong contribution. But basically today, the bulk of the energy storage in the world is coming from these 2 industries. Now when you look at the picture in front of you, I use this picture for a particular reason. On the left is the lead-acid industry and it's an industry where there's people and robotics. But basically, it's a bulk manufacturing type industry, large roles of lead, lots of assets moving through the plant. High automation, but not the same sort of manufacturing as we have on the right, which is the lithium manufacturing, which is much more of a clean room, dry room type approach, more silicon fab manufacturing when you compare it to the lead-acid world. So I just put this up to context to the world that we are working within. To context it a little further. This slide shows you on the left at the top is lead-acid battery. At the bottom on the left, well, that's a Gelion zinc-bromide battery. And you can see that the 2 basically look the same. On the right, you have a standard lithium-ion cell, lithium manganese cobalt -- nickel cobalt type cell. And down on the bottom, you have -- this is a representative of what our intended pouch format will be for lithium silicon sulfur cells that would be using our additive technology. So you can see that we've got a class of manufacturer and a class to cell that fits into both sides of our business. Talking first about the Gelion zinc bromide batteries. And these cells that you're looking at now -- First, what I really wanted to do here was to acknowledge that we -- to have this opportunity to build on what's been achieved by the leaders before me in Gelion, it's remarkable that Gelion has progressed to where the cells were made this year actually in a lead-acid facility. Made using different processes, but these were made at our facility, partner Battery Energy in Australia. And you can see they're representing production cells, which is a huge achievement. Okay. Looking at the lead-acid market then, the market today is large, and there are 3 main segments: SLI (starting, lighting, ignition), stationary, motive. We see opportunity for Gelion to be part of that ecosystem to build upon the strength of that ecosystem. Have certain advantages to build on. Firstly, our format is very lead-acid like. We offer a very safe chemistry, fire-resistant. Thomas has tested the batteries by putting it on hot plates to 600 degrees C. We have very high and low temperature tolerant without HVAC. Very relevant. One of the projects I mentioned back at the start when the energy storage industry was getting underway, one of those projects were awarded in the U.S. by the team I lead at that time, Sandia Laboratories did study on the efficiency of the system. We were 92% DC to DC efficient, 87% AC to AC efficient. But when it was -- efficiency was adjusted for the effect of air conditioning, just around 50% efficiency. So the ability to handle high temperatures with our air conditioning and an LCOE, levelized cost of energy, sorry, term is very important for energy storage. We have great cycle performance. We can use 100% battery discharge in cells typically, in a lead-acid world, unless it's a specific deep cycle cell more of, I should say, the charge of 20% to 40% that's being used. We can use 100% battery discharge without accelerated degradation. And a very important feature is that we can remain uncharged without accelerated degradation. So we can actually sit empty for months on it. Now I'm going to introduce to you just a slight pivot that I see Gelion taking. And I'm working with my team very hard on this at the moment. One of the strategies we're applying was to enter first the large-scale energy storage market. Now this is not resulting from getting presence of Gelion in the large-scale energy storage market. But what has happened particularly in the last year is that the hurdles in that market have increased as the competition has been the focus competition area in the sector. What does that mean customers are expecting 10 to 20-year 10-, 15-, 20-year performance. And they're expecting that the technologies that they deploy have a long history of operation and third-party independent tests. It takes a long time to enter that market. So there is slight refocus here that I'm looking out with my team, analyzing at the moment, what we're doing in our match to market? There's a lot of sectors in the lead-acid market where batteries are replaced much more frequently, maybe 1 year, 2 years or 3 years. So to enter those markets, we can enter those markets and support the ecosystem much earlier because we don't have to do such a sustained testing. Also, as I said, the large-scale energy storage market is the one that's in the most competitive pressure and you get the lowest payment per kilowatt hour whereas some of the other markets are much more lucrative. So one of the things that -- one of the approaches that we're taking are going to be taken forward with Gelion is to do very close match to market in the entrance of our technology to make sure that we're successful. This once again is following one of the better bills advice, which is often, when you're entering the large and small sector, where you can develop your strength from. So I just wanted to introduce that concept to you in this sector.

Those small sectors are still billion-dollar market.

The small sectors are billion-dollar markets and the very large markets. And by entering those sectors, we have opportunity to enter earlier taking less time in testing. And then we're still making ourselves more robust to the large-scale amount. So you can see from us we'll continue to update you on this as we progress. One of the things I do like to try to attain as the CEO early is our transparency from my team through my core and out to my shareholders all the way. So one of the things that I'll try and achieve very quickly with you is to clarify this and you understand the story all the way through and you understand how we're progressing. This is for Gelion cell. Basically what you would see when you see inside the cell is you'll see on the same parts that are in a lead-acid cell. It's just the zinc and the bromide, taking different materials, but basically, the construction of the cell is very similar with lead-acid cell itself. And this is also very important to understand. So when you context with this slide with what I gave you earlier, about the growth in the battery industry. This slide talks to what's happening to the metals prices as the industry is developing. And the good news is zinc and bromide those 2 lines right down the bottom of this slide. So we have an opportunity here as the industry grows to make use of the fact that there's going to be pressure on metal supply and that needs cost increases. So what are we trying to do? We're trying to maximize our use of those materials to increase our costs competitiveness while targeting the sectors where we can make the major impact and get the major gain. Thomas?

Sure. So this is a picture of those 2 ministers, I mentioned. And that's the opening of our pilot line in Western Sydney. And I'd like to point out that why is it so interesting or sensible to go and partner with lead-acid companies, and that is because more than 70% of all our manufacturing processes are very much standard that asset manufacturing processes. The rest of it are unique to us. And largely connected to the different chemicals we're using, not so much that we have really sophisticated in different and difficult manufacturing steps as such. It's just somewhat different ones, but it allows us to retrofit and go into existing manufacturing capability. And we're really pleased that Battery Energy is our partner in this process.

Right. The Acciona Energia project, and this is a very important project for us just in terms of presenting our ability to deliver a system. You can see here -- this is a 14-kilowatt hour system that we -- model of the system that we will -- a 120-kilowatt hour system that we'll deliver to Acciona in Spain later this year. And we're actually using the cells here that were produced at the site that we're working with Battery Energy. And those cells for the 120-kilowatt hour side being produced now at the facility to be ready. So we'll be in Phase II, this Phase I is testing and qualifying the operation of the system. Phase II to will see the deployment of the system. An opportunity for us to demonstrate learn more about the production of our -- sorry, the operation of our batteries in the field. Now I want to be careful here to explain to you this is a first stage of the product with along with our match to market work and the feedback that we're getting from the field operation here and the understanding of the areas that we want to emphasize in the battery performance. We'll be following a technology plan through the course of this year in improving the cell, improving the cost dynamics towards having a commercially releasable cell as we proceed. All right. So the -- this year, what do you expect from us in Gelion around zinc Bromide, you can expect to start to get some feedback from the infield and laboratory testing of our zinc-bromide systems. I will share with you in updates as we proceed with our match to market and prioritizing the most going propositions. And we'll have manufacturing process development. This is all -- 2023 is a super important year for us in terms of preparation for commercialization in scale. Over to lithium-silicon-sulfur. Now how do I explain this to you? Well, I was really pleasantly surprised when I decided to get and proceed and work with a remarkable team at Gelion to understand where we sit. I'm going to go a little bit off script here and go sort of visual with you. So stuff I use from time to time, but let me explain. If I go to the next slide, and we'll come back to this slide in a moment. Okay. The electric vehicles that you drive in the market today lithium world is in that left bar sort of starting to go a little bit to the 1 in the middle. So what this bar shows is the energy density of typical nickel manganese cobalt base lithium-ion cells. Everybody wants to increase that. So over here on the right what we would be looking at is the effort to go to solid-state type cells. And the work that Gelion is doing on sulfur cathode is relevant in a solid state so context. But I'm going to talk today particularly to introduce you to a slightly different context. So the pressure is on the industry in 3 areas: performance, cost and safety. And the work that Gelion is doing on additive is relevant in all 3 of those things. So we want to get performance up here. What is performance up here. Well, if you get the performance up here and you increase the gravimetry, that's how much energy do you get per unit weight. If you want to get performance up here on gravimetric, then one of the approaches has been safety, but what also happened in the industry is the industry made progress on doing high silicon anode technologies. Now Gelion at the time of IPO was looking at being in our high silicon anode work, but that high silicon anode work is actually quite competitive. And so from a strategic point of view, the opportunity for Gelion is actually to work with that industry. But the high silicon anode companies, what they achieve is that they've got the energy density of the -- it used to be that the cathodes were sort of leading on energy density and then the high silicon anode guys pushed their energy density on the anode up. Now the actual energy density of itself is largely controlled by which is the less of the anode and the cathode, controlled by LiSiS. So the industry has progressed much more on the energy density of the anode. Gelion in its work in the sulfur cathode additives, we can't use all of the energy density advances that have been obtained on the silicon anode alone today. Gelion offers a path to utilize that advance by providing a sulfur cathode that has the requisite energy density match up. Now there's also most importantly, some really tight analogy in the way this has been achieved that means that it complements the work that was done in high silicon anodes very closely. Now here, we made a small sort of announcement earlier this week, which was the foundation announcement just so we could start to talk to you about this. But in stewarding your investment, it's important for us at this point to balance what we're doing on protecting IP with what we're doing in terms of commercialization to get market presence with what we're doing in terms of getting our team the free air and scope to actually achieve what they need to or what they're achieving. This is science, this is research. So research in many senses is tangible. Some things can't be controlled in research sense. We have some of the world's remarkable scientists that are making breakthroughs in this area and getting IP and we need to give them the opportunity and the environment where they can be most effective. So what does that mean to you as shareholders and particularly around messaging? Means I'm going to keep you as informed as I can as we advance. I mean at least I am going to try explaining the story to you so you understand it, so that when we update you it's relevant to you. So our announcement this week was a very simple one, I said, oh, we've got 300 cycles and we're still 80% on a half cell. It's a fairly bland announcement to a shareholder. But what it means is that that's a milestone in our progression towards later milestones. So the next milestone, our team will be working towards a full cell result. Now there are signs to be done, and there's still nuance to be managed as the team does that, but we are very confident we're on a right path. So I'm going to pass to Thomas and he might explain this.

Yes. So just to maybe recap. So in terms of the existing lithium-ion batteries in your phone, that performance is limited by the graphite in terms of energy density. So the NMC could do more. Putting lots of silicon into the graphite means that now the anode can do more and it's limited by the cathode by the NMC. And what we have been able to do is put in a sulfur cathode that now is able to liberate the full capability of the silicon anode. So we are close to double or more than double, depending on how we calculate, the energy density. And the beautiful thing is we don't need lithium metal and a solid-state approach. It's simply lithium ion using existing and manufacturing capabilities. And we don't get dendrites and we don't catch fire. Sulfur doesn't catch fire by oxidizing carbon. NMC can do that. And NMC is about 60% of the cost of the current lithium-ion battery. Sulfur is a lot cheaper. So we are safer, we are cheaper, and we have around double the energy density once we get the full cell built. So that's basically the story. And one of the things that we said that still needs to be really fine-tuned and optimized in these systems is electrolyte, the thing that is enabling the 2 electrodes to talk to one another. And we have made very good progress into starting to find electrolytes that can do that. Traditionally, a sulfur-compatible electrolyte will destroy the lithium silicon graphite side of the battery, will destroy the anode. We are starting to show that that's not necessarily going to have to happen. And we've got some electrolytes that are looking very promising and marrying the 2 technologies: the lithium silicon anode and the sulfur cathode. And we are confident that we will be able to update you with more and more progress on this.

What we say is, we're very excited about this. If you had one arrow to shoot at a bull's eye, this -- in the industry, that's what we would do. This is a very, very exciting technology. It's the goal that everybody is trying to attain. Increase the energy density of lithium cell means that you can increase the range of electric vehicle. It means that you can move towards use of electric [indiscernible], drones can go twice as far. Safer. Well, it's high energy density and safer and then lower cost. So we don't want to have a promise, but we want to let you know here we got to talk about the tail, we're going to be doing our utmost to work with the talent that we have in our team. And I know personally from launching technologies around the world. There comes a time when you look across the table and you see the light in the eyes of the development team, and you know that this is something very exciting. It leverages our capabilities very well. But we do have a lot of work to do, get insight to this research, watch for the announcements as we progress. It is a strongly contested part of the market. So it really is going to take mastery around the research and mastery around the commercialization.

Success will mean that we can replace more or less, the majority of the cathodes in lithium-ion batteries around the world, and that is close to an infinite market for us. So success is an extremely rewarding situation in this.

I'll walk you guys through the financial slides. So whilst you've heard Thomas and John talk about what we have achieved in the last year, I think it's a great progress from the company's perspective. We have done that whilst managing our cash balance quite closely. The result, actual results are -- we have outperformed on the analysts' estimates, which was basically finnCap Equity Research report on all measures, whether it's income, adjusted EBITDA loss or cash available at the end of the year, which is 30th of June 2022. So whilst we are making very, very good progress, significant progress on both the technologies, we have continued to manage our cash very closely reacting to what's happening in the global marketplace as well. This gives a little bit more further breakdown of the P&L. Obviously, the costs have increased since FY' 21, reflecting kind of your public company now, increase in the senior team that setting up the senior team to deliver results on both the technologies. I think on flat near midterm results, there was a one-off listing and other associated costs of GBP 4.7 million, GBP 3.8 million, GBP 3.9 million of that is the noncash share-based payment expense. And the remainder is kind of the listing cost with brokers and advisors. The message is quite simple. I think a bit of reputation there, strong balance sheet, a lot of cash still available to pursue all the opportunities that we have in front of ourselves. And no debt on the balance sheet. So kind of a really, really strong position where we are at today. A little bit further information on the cash flow, so I'll not repeat this, but just gives a further breakdown on how the cash flow looks like. I'll pass it on back to John to kind of conclude the presentation for us.

All right. So we've explained to -- started to explain to you the business. One of the pieces of feedback I've had from investors already is they would like to have more messaging, more understanding -- the way I'd like to achieve that with you is updates like this to talk about our business. So ideally, quarterly updates, at least, so that you understand is completely -- I would -- in an ideal world, the team, the board, the shareholders all understand the full picture of what we're working towards here. So progressive updates supplemented by announcements that you will understand. So if you understand the baseline and you understand what we're trying to do in our business, you got to understand each time we come out with one of these announcements to tell you how we've achieved milestones that progress the goals that we have shared with you. So '21, '22 IPO, the establishment of the manufacturing facility for manufacturing cells for our first cells and the proof point that these cells can be made in an industrial type context. This year, preparations for commercialization, all of the real detail that we need to do to build a successful business and to successfully commercialize the technologies that we're doing. So there is no way today to not be world's best, you must be world's best, and there is a lot of discipline and a lot of hard work to attain that, and we will be doing our very best to follow all of the processes that we need to achieve that for you. That will set us up then to the progression of the commercialization. 2 different battery technologies, 2 very different commercialization progress. So you will see differences about how we do that. The zinc-bromide, much more the whole process is in our control. The lithium-silicon-sulfur is going into the most competitive part, the most of the area of the industry, energy storage industry, where the most investment is being made around the world today, and it's right in the middle of that mainstream. So the approaches, the strategic approaches, the tactical approaches on the commercialization are going to be very different on these 2 businesses and the messaging that we share with you and approach to that will be very different as we proceed. So buckle in on that. We're going to do our very best to explain to you and keep that understanding as we progress. Well, great team, great scientists. We are today a guppy in a really big industry. We need to gather strength quickly given our ambitious goals, and we'll be trying to secure paths to do that. But I think we're well positioned, and we have some really great ingredients to work with in this dynamic market. Thank you. We'd be happy to take questions.

[Operator Instructions] If I may start with the first one. How important is the Acciona trial for you?

Trial is important. It just like the establishment of the manufacturer of industrial cells with Battery Energy was a proof point and a milestone attained by the company to show these things can be made in a factory. Acciona is an important trial for us in showing that we can make a system utilizing the cells. Now Acciona trial then also creates and builds on a relationship. What I will say is that it complements what we're doing and match to market in that particular business model. It's a trial, and it's an exploration of the technology as opposed to being it is right, and we're going to do 1 million of these systems, it's like trial. It provides a foundation for us then to combine with our match to market work and to take forward and to aim at applications that we can expand out commercially. Also informing our sale development so that we can do what's necessary in ourselves to get cost reduction and performance in the important areas to get the maximum out of ourselves. So it's a progressive step, one more progressive step for the company.

Next we've got here. One of the main challenges you see to scaling the business?

That's fairly obvious. I think we are a guppy and we've got 2 great assets. So the tactics that we're going to play on both sides are going to be different. So we're going to be drinking out of a claw holder. Start quite simply. To make sure that we harness the best of both these technologies while keeping things tight and not having distraction across the business. There is a -- we got a lot to do. There's a lot do on the science, the technology, the product, and there's a lot to do on commercialization and partner development. So yes, lots of hard work in there.

[indiscernible], I guess, happening that wouldn't be expected at that stage of technology development. So in that sense, we are starting with a really good starting point on 2 different technologies that are reasonably well advanced. And for which we have great hope to go all the way. And all the challenges are challenges, we would expect in the space, and there's nothing unique about that.

Next one we have here is when can shareholders expect to be getting some returns on their investment, especially for investment was part of the IPO?

So return on investment can come a number of ways. I guess, I'll answer the question first by saying the great way we can get shareholders a return on their investment is by stewarding the assets and the team that they've invested in to greatest purpose to make real commercial progress, to make real maximum realization of those technologies. Now how that then converts to shareholder return can convert in time to shareholder return in terms of participation in the income generated by the company. It can also convert to shareholder returns in terms of share price or inorganic things that happen as we progress. There are 2 areas that I want to concentrate on shareholder return. So I absolutely respect that that's what the purpose of being a shareholder is. The first one is I'm going to focus with the team and my board will focus on evolving the asset and stewarding the asset. The second thing is we're trying to get more visibility to the progression that's been made for those assets. Now that's reflecting 2 things. One is that, as I said earlier, we are a guppy in a big pond at the moment. And yet we have technologies that in their own context, are superimportant energy story. So to realize those assets we have to get visibility to Gelion and stature of Gelion quickly. That calls on marketing and messaging to achieve that. You can say across [indiscernible] that is that it also means that people across the stock market should become more aware of what they're doing as we progress that. So there's an aligned objective that for the commercial success in the stewarding the technology and that the team's creative effort we need to say more about what we're doing, we need to get people understanding what we're doing. So that will be part of our goal going forward as well.

Where is the sales focus now, i.e., which market segments, both in terms of client and geography?

I am going to bet on that one that I have joined recently. So I'm going to use that excuse again. But in this case, I have and when I joined on my first and the team -- a team in Gelion listening in, they know this because they're busy. This has been the focus since I've started. So what I'm sort of pivoting slightly there. And what I would like to do is to say to shareholders, the next update, I'm going to give you a whole lot more clarity on the specifics of the strategy in terms of how much the market and where we want to go. Not resulting from anything we've said in the past, but using approaches that can get us there at the end. In the broadest context, on the zinc bromide side, the goal is to complement what the guys are doing on lead-acid. So if we were super successful on the zinc bromide, what we would do is to work in partnership with the lead-acid ecosystem to actually provide products that extend upon what they're doing today and build out the future with them. Obviously, there's an art in that. And so we're analyzing which markets we can bring the most value to. On the lithium silicon sulfur side, it's the balance of getting the prestige and presence and reputation for our work and aligning that with some very powerful players in the industry in the right way that leads to a commercial advantage to all of the stakeholders in Gelion. That's what we'll be doing.

Great. When would the company be cash positive?

Cash positive is going to come out of the function of what I just explained in the previous answer. And I'm sorry, I'm not really trying to be direct here and not trying to --. If you look at those 2 things, you would understand 2 different commercial progressions. And this is -- through the course of this year, you'll see us as a Board wrestling with this from a strategic standpoint to come back to you and inform you as shareholders. There are many different ways that we could capitalize on both sides of the technology in our business. The different ways that we capitalize on those technologies lead to different results for shareholders and also have different cash impacts. Now, the work that I'll be doing in the first 3 months of my tenure will be towards clarifying that so that I can inform the Board and we can make strategic considerations to ourselves and to make the most effective decisions. The next 3 months will really be executing that. So you, as shareholders, as said with the transparency I'm trying to get basically we'll be updating you progressively as we go along. And that question about when will we be cash positive. That's one that we'll have to share with you as we progress. It would be inappropriate for me to try and make a projection today because it would constrain the strategic options that the Board and the company would have to achieve the best result for the assets that we're stewarding for you.

Maybe I'll add to that, John, is in technology growth companies, you can get unpleasant and pleasant surprises. And we've had a pleasant surprise. Lithium silicon sulfur was something at IPO, we thought it was 3 to 5 years out and within a year, we've made that progress. So you have to be dynamic and look at where is the best opportunity to deploy the company's resources. And this is exactly what John said. Given 3 months to understand how we best deploy our resources and it would be -- for us, we think we've actually got a -- we've accelerated one of the most exciting technologies that we see in the battery space. So it's incompetent us to capture that value for our shareholders benefit. And I think John will come back to the Board as he said and advise to somewhere he feels is the right way to maximize shareholder value here. So I wholeheartedly agree with what you said, John.

And next question, I think we've covered off, will the marketing process improve with more frequent press releases and publicly generally, which I think you've covered off pretty much in the last 2 questions. The next question we've got here, again, you have touched on the share price is more than half since IPO. Trading liquidity in the shares is very low, under 5,000 shares per day. The company has issued only a handful of RNS announcements since listing. It would appear to be a minimal effort to engage with investors, both new and existing. Is that because there's nothing worthwhile to say? Or will Investor Relations efforts pick up when the company needs to raise money from the market? I don't know if you've touched on some of these points here.

Maybe unfair to John because he's only been here a week and -- really the last year. I think our focus has really been ensuring that we have the right technology that we're making the right developments and we've got the right team in place. We absolutely recognize we want to be better at the Investor Relations and comms. And I think what John has repeatedly said today is that we will be better. We will update the market more frequently. And so you'll be better informed. What we hope is that gives people more reasons to buy because we know silence tends to be interpreted negatively. It shouldn't be in this case because what's been happening is we've been focused on getting the technology development, but we recognize that and we in to improve on that.

Next question here, probably for Amit. What is the current cash position? How much cash runway does the company have until a further fundraising is required?

Yes. So the cash position at 30th of June was GBP 17 million. We have around GBP 15 million still as 31st November. We are very well capitalized, as I mentioned earlier. However, aligning with John's messages, we are working on both the technologies. We have to identify what the right priorities are for the business, and we'll come back to all of you in terms of when we have an update on what the cash balance will look like in the near future.

Yes. I mean we're well-funded. This is a good place to be in an uncertain market is that we have cash through '23 and into '24. The only time we're going to raise capital really is if there's a good reason to do so if it's going to create shareholder value. So at the moment, we don't need capital. We're very well funded. But it is a very good reason that we can enhance shareholder value, then we'll look at it this is back to John's point again is once we have a chance to review the right commercialization part, we'll see what that part means. But really, the message to us is we do not need to go raise capital at the moment. And we're fortunate in that we're very well financed.

And you have to reflect that in terms of what's happening globally as well. COVID, Ukraine war, inflation look across the world, hard to find employees, you have to pay more to employees to get them to join the businesses, but we have managed the business really well in terms of where we are from a cash flow perspective. We are under what we're expecting our cost to be. So I think what I'm trying to align here is path of messages, we are very, very closely monitoring our cash balance and cash use.

Which I'll just say so in terms of the Board and the talent on the board, we've got Joycelyn Morton here, and she has been very, very effective in steering us towards not overspending, conserving cash being very, very diligent treating every dollar so it's very much our own dollar and that has been reflected really in the strong acquisition we have. So I'd like to thank Joycelyn for that one.

Joycelyn is Chair of Audit Committee for people who haven't met Joycelyn before.

Fantastic. I know we are coming up towards the end. We do want to -- I get a few closing comments from you, John. Perhaps we've got time for one more question, if I may. The question reads, when can we expect the commercial production and sale of Endure battery to commence?

Well, look, it's a very good question. And please let me answer that one this way. With the work that we're doing on match to market, my approach can be summarized as don't shoot till you see the whites of their eyes. Meaning that it's important that -- I don't loss -- I don't want to do loss leader type manufacturing approaches. I don't want to -- sometimes you will take small losses or taking sessions on the basis that you take your product to market. But I don't want to be using lots of shareholder capital by going to market. We've built the generations of the cell [indiscernible] too early or going to market -- into market segments that haven't properly qualified. So I'm pretty happy, I can say, I'm very happy already with the way that the Gelion team has responded on what I'm trying to do with match to market. It's been remarkable right across the company. So we've got one of our people's [ Jess ], who's the focus of that effort, but we've got impact from every employee really making their contribution into it. So we want to get it right. When we do that launch into commercial manufacturer of Endure products, we want to make sure that we're making the right cell. So out of that work, we're going to inform our technical team of what we need to do in terms of evolution of the cell that you've seen has been made so far. Before we have a commercial -- fully commercial cell for manufacturing and what we need to -- way our process engineering groups need to do on the process engineering side. So I will be updating you on our progression to that without any exception. But I don't want to give you a specific date today because again, on that point, I'll be putting my team's head in a noose that we are not prepared to do yet because when we do it, it will be informed by the outcomes of our match to market. The outcomes of our technology plan and in our process development plan and our marketing plan to enter the particular segment and the partnership relationships that I need to put in place to support that marketing push when we do it. So I know there's sort of a duck to a couple of questions today from specific quantitative answers, and I apologize for that, but I'm going to continue to progress the story and keep you informed as we go. I know that, that question about when will we be going into mass production of a product is important to shareholders. What you want to know is that when we do it, we're going to be on a successful path towards the successful adoption of whatever it is that we're manufacturing, and we're not going to be hitting somewhere that we have to resolve from later. So stay with that one and we'll keep you informed as we progress.

Fantastic John. Thank you very much indeed, and thank you to the whole team for the presentation today. You have covered off a lot of questions. There are a few more. And then, of course, the company will review all questions submitted, then we will publish responses where appropriate to do so. John, I think you have just concluded, but if there are any further words you want to add just before redirecting the attendees to give you some feedback, but...

No, look, I think I had the Gelion and the team, a lot of them are listening. Thank you for the Gelion team. Thank you to my Board, and thank you to the shareholders. We are a team together, and it's going to be the support of that team that hopefully makes Gelion successful and the impact of what Thomas and the science can do it. When I put up that graph about where energy storage goes, if you can substantially increase the energy density of lithium cells, you can achieve a lot of the goals, in fact a lot of goals that we need for energy sustainability around the plant. So this is a great impact investment being brought in and hopefully, we'll make it into a great commercial investment for you as well.

That's fantastic. Thank you all very much for updating investors today. Can I please ask investors not to close the session as you'll be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order the team can better understand your views and expectations. This would only take a few moments to complete and that is greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team at Gelion Plc, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That concludes today's session, and good morning to you all.