Gelion plc (GELN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, and welcome to Gelion plc interim results investor presentation. [Operator Instructions] Before we begin, we'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to John Wood, CEO. Good morning, sir.

Good morning. Great to be able to update you on this fine London day. It's been a big period of time to Gelion. If you'd like to just advance -- please do read the disclaimers. I won't be reading through them each individually, but do read the disclaimers. I'd like to start here by introducing my team. Well, we've got a number of people presenting today. But even before that, with the progress that your company has made in the last 6 months, I'd like to make a special call out to the Gelion team. I'd like to call out the scientists. I'd like to call out the engineers, accounts and finance, our people in culture group, our project management group, our IP, our data analytics group and a huge call out to the commercial team, who have been absolutely crushing our positioning and messaging to support the end caster engagements and the supply chain engagements that we are increasingly making. So Gelion team, you're trick and magic. All right. Moving forward, we are going to introduce the team, starting with our founder, Professor Thomas Maschmeyer.

Yes. Hello. Welcome this morning, I'm the Founder, Professor of Chemistry in Sydney University and looking forward to sharing our greatest and latest with you this morning.

Louis?

Yes. Hello. My name is Louis Adriaenssens. I'm the CTO of Gelion, joined about 4 months ago. Prior to that, my battery experience came from working at the Tesla Gigafactory, where I was a Supervisor at Chemistry. And prior to that, I was an academic with research focusing on super molecular chemistry and electrochemist.

And Amit.

Hi, everyone. Morning and good evening in Australia as well. My name is Amit Gupta. I'm the CFO of the business.

And I'd also like to acknowledge our Non-Executive Director, Joycelyn Morton, who runs -- also leads the -- chairs the Audit Committee for us and provides exceptional service thereof.

Thanks, John.

Thank you. All right. Your company, Gelion is a battery technology company. When you understand the world of batteries, it is an amazing, fast-growing place. So there's a total addressable market out there of already USD 2 trillion by 2030, and the market is scaling from there. There are 2 main participants in that market. There's the lead acid ecosystem and the lithium sulfur ecosystem, and they make up the dominant proportion of the battery market today. Lithium -- the lithium ion sector is the fastest-growing sector at the moment. About 3 years ago, the 2 sides were about equal. I think by 2030, it's going to be about 5x larger than the lead acid side while the lead acid side is moving up at about 2% or 3% per year. So your company, Gelion is participating in both ecosystems. We're taking our next-generation technologies. In the case of the lithium ion sector, we're introducing the lithium sulfur technology, a very safe, high-performance and low-cost technology. On the lead acid side, we're working to introduce a zinc-based cell to go a bit further than what lead acid does and to introduce some very important performance enhancements around temperature and sustainability. Your company is working across the biggest slice of the market. So we have mining and refining that then comes to materials. In developing our technologies, we are developing additive materials and cathode materials. We're developing cells. We're developing packs, and we have technology in the area of recycling as well. Now the first 3, to us, the core business today, the recycling assets came to us when we did the Johnson Matthey IP acquisition last year. We're considering how to best derive value for our shareholders with that particular asset at the moment. This is a slide that I put up at the last investor meets company to set out our goals and where we are headed. I'd like to come back to say what we said we're going to do and where we are, in fact. So it has been a busy time. I think the last 12 and particularly the last 6 months have been absolutely extraordinary. The company now, it's positioned enormously strongly in the lithium sulfur market towards leadership. And we've done that through the good efforts of our own team, the remarkable creativity of the scientists working with Professor Maschmeyer. But also, we've done that by inorganic activity. We picked up a remarkable portfolio of technology from Johnson Matthey that was generated inside Oxis. We accelerated our own lithium developments in Sydney and then we acquired a wonderful group of people to come join us from the OXLiD team. And then following that, just to round it out, we went and did a deal to do joint development with Ionblox, an extraordinary group of people out of San Francisco. Our next goal was to unify that all, bring it together in an impactful way to show our progress. We're very pleased to be able to get out a couple of announcements to you in the last few weeks. The first announcement that we got out, what's particularly important, and that was the announcement where we had exchanged anode materials with our partner Ionblox and cathode materials. We sent them the cathode materials. They sent us the anode materials. And we've made good progress on that, which is one of our very high objectives in the first stage, and we'll talk about the 3 announcements later on. On the zinc side, sorry, not ready for the zinc yet. One thing I do want to highlight, and I want to bring emphasis to before I get to zinc, on the lithium side is I had on this diagram last time I presented our safety test. The safety testing is something that we're doing internally, and we're very happy with. We've actually added something additional to this which is manufacturing simplicity. And we're very pleased that Louis will be able to talk to that a little bit later in the presentation, but I do want to draw attention to it because it's going to be an important part of what we're doing. And then the next 2 objectives on the lithium sulfur side, towards strategic partnership and work towards enhancing our ability to provide a prototypes to end customers and to the supply chain to start to build the press, the technology. Now over to the zinc side, and we have been making good progress. Big call out to the team there who have been methodically implementing TRL while they've been also engaging in strong creative activity to make progress. We had said we're going to do some power cell testing, credit with that team. They actually pushed a bit further, and we've been testing in a prismatic format. It brings us to where we are today. Now I want to call out that Gelion is a busy place right now. I mean, this is a team that is absolutely crushing it, working and making extraordinary breakthroughs in the technology in difficult areas. So what we're doing at the moment, at least, is prioritizing the investment with most of our investment towards the lithium cell for -- while we're continuing to develop the research side of the zinc program. What I'm doing at the moment is engaging in a commercial and technical study, basically looking at optimizing the utilization of the company's resources to the shareholders' gain. And I've got to say right at the moment, the company's positioning for leadership in lithium sulfur, which is one of the most exciting technologies on the planet. And so we're developing the zinc out carefully as we're accelerating the sulfur [indiscernible] to lithium cells to sustain our focus. Next slide. Louis?

All right. Thank you very much, John. So sulfur has a variety of advantages, and Gelion specific approach to sulfur aims to take those advantages, make absolute most of them and also find other things where we can engage our company to make something incredibly competitive. So if you think of sulfur, sulfur is a cathode material that has an exceptional capacity for [ lithium ]. And this translates to very high energy density in the batteries that are made with sulfur. Now our technology allows us to use proprietary electrolyte in a very small quantity. And the effect of that is, is that we reduce the weight of the battery. So we maintain all of the energy storage because the electrolyte is not actually participating in that, is merely facilitating the transfer of the lithiums from the anode to the cathode and vice versa. To maintain all of the energy storage, we're cutting our weight. And in our case, that translates to a targeted energy density that's going to be about double of what's currently available with standard and conventional lithium-ion batteries. So if you think of a high-performance lithium-ion battery at the moment, you're looking at around 200-watt, 250-watt hours per kilo. Our batteries are targeting 400 to 450-watt hours a kilo. And we've had some announcements out recently that show we're very much going in the right direction here. Now that's just a number. Why is that number so important? Well, the reason is if you can double your gravimetric energy density, it means that you can half the weight of the battery. That opens up applications that require very, very light batteries, and it also adds performance and other ecological benefits to applications such as EVs, where having a lighter battery will affect those advantages. We also are targeting improved safety. There's 2 key components here. One involves an initiation of a thermal event and the other involves a fuel that would then turn that thermal event into something very dangerous. Now in our case, we're using a sulfur cathode, which is much more stable at high temperature than your standard lithium-ion battery cathode. That means that the initiation process of that thermal event is vastly reduced in likelihood. And if it were to occur, the fact that our electrolyte is nonflammable means that there's no fuel available to that initiation for them to actually burn. So that's very good because it means that our batteries have every chance to be exceptionally safe as well as very high performance. From a sustainability perspective, rather than working with rare metals or metals like nickel and cobalt, we're working with sulfur. Sulfur is readily available almost everywhere in the world. And as a consequence of much easier mining of sulfur, availability of sulfur, we're looking at about a 30% reduction in carbon life cycle from the application of a sulfur-based cathode. And when we come to the next slide and I talk about some of the manufacturing efficiencies, we'll touch on the carbon life cycle a little bit more. And the last one, which I purposely saved for last, is the cost. So the bill of materials cost savings, we estimate to be about 45% at the cell level, right? That's at the cell level. That's an enormous amount of savings. So -- I mean, if you give me the next slide, I'll speak a little bit to how we're actually going to make that happen. All right. So if you consider a standard, a conventional lithium-ion battery, there is a pregigafactory step during which the cathode active material must be manufactured. This cathode active material is arguably the most important component that goes into the battery, and it is very expensive, but very, very important. Now traditionally, these cathode active materials, like LFP, NMC, NCA, are produced using materials such as nickel sulfate, which are ethically questionable in how they're produced, where they're obtain from and how they're extracted. And those materials are exposed to a very, very high energy process in order to create the cathode active material. And the combination of those effects means that, that cathode active material is traditionally, in the case of NMC or NCA, about 50% of the bill of materials of your battery, mind you, 50% in that one material. And that's a problem. In the case of lithium sulfur, it's a little bit better because rather than using nickel sulfate, cobalt salts and things like that, we're using sulfur. But your traditional lithium sulfur battery -- traditional lithium sulfur cathode will employ sulfur, but it will also employ what's often called a super material. And super materials are [ good ] because they're super, but they're not so good because they're often very, very special act. It can be difficult to make and they're expensive, right? And those are all disadvantages. Now that super material and that sulfur is taken through a process which can be analogous to what's done to create the standard lithium-ion battery cathodes. That super material and that sulfur will be exposed to high energy in the form of very, very rough forces, in the form of very, very high temperature in order to create what's called sulfur [indiscernible]. Now in our case, our technology, right, has allowed us to develop a better way to make the cathode, a cathode which performs better from a scientific perspective. And what I mean there is a cathode that protects that prevents the fatiguing process of the sulfur in the battery. And as a consequence of that, our batteries not only have excellent performance but they also have excellent cycle life. When we're designing them, in order to get that excellent cycle life. And all of the patents that we purchased from Johnson Matthey recently, they protect that scientific approach to getting excellent cycle life. And within those patents, it's given us a lot of freedom to operate and a lot of states, and so we've looked within that space to see if we can address some of the manufacturing issues that I discussed previously, specifically around that pregigafactory step where you're either making your cathode active material or combining your super material with your sulfur to make this little concept. And what we thought is can we use something that's not going to employ all of those heavy forces? Can we use something that's going to kind of more elegantly assemble itself? And this hark to a concept in super molecular chemistry, which is known as self-assembly. And essentially, what you try to do there is you try to engineer a desire in the materials that you put in to create your product. And you engineer that desire into your material so that when they come into contact with each other of their own will without any forces, without any high energy, they translate and convert themselves into the product that you want. And recently, we've had some excellent results, which show that we're very far along in the way to achieving that. Now if you think of the effect of that on the actual gigafactory, our approach allows us to render that pregigafactory step obsolete, right? So you no longer have to rely on factories, which are making LFP, NMC or NCA, which are globally concentrated in China. You are now using our materials, which is sulfur available everywhere, and a mildly reengineered carbon, which is already supplied in large quantities to the battery industry, right? Both of those can be made readily available almost anywhere in the world. You take those and rather than employing them in that pregigafactory process, you put them directly into the mixes, which are already in the gigafactory, right? So you take that pregigafactory process, which is expensive, which is energy intensive, which is ethically questionable, you make it obsolete and you drop simple materials directly into the gigafactory. From the application into the mixer, you put your 2 materials, you put crucially water and a couple other ingredients, and that goes through to make the cathode, which then goes through in the end to come to battery. The application of water here is really essential. By getting our self-assembly process to work in water, and this is one of the reasons we're so excited about it, we avoid the need to use toxic organic solvents. So specifically, the one that's often used in gigafactories is N-Methylpyrrolidone. It's a very nonvolatile compound, which means that it boils at a very high temperature, and it is also very toxic. And because it is also expensive in addition to being toxic means you can't just put it down the drain, you have to recycle it. And that recycling process is very beautiful, but it's also very costly. It accounts for about 30% of the energy costs of running the factory. So that's another energy savings, and it's another way that we can save on the carbon footprint and the carbon life cycle of our process. So in doing that, we've created a cathode which is a long life cycle cathode. It doesn't fatigue in the way traditional lithium sulfur does. We've created a cathode, which you can make directly in the gigafactory without any pregigafactory process. And what we're looking to do now is we're looking to marry that cathode and our electrolyte with a series of different anodes. Now one of those anodes is going to be lithium metal because that has applications, which are important and I'm going to talk about on the next slide. Another one of those analysis that we're really excited about at the moment is a silicon suboxide anode. And this is what we're doing with Ionblox, who are the world leader in preparing this material and crucially have technology that allows them to prelithiate that material, which allows us to marry our cathode with it. Now what's really interesting about silicon suboxide is that it is already used, is already a component of the anodes that are in EV. So if you buy many of the Teslas and many of the other cars in the world, EVs, that [ adapt ] battery will already contain silicon suboxide. And that's critical, right? That's critical because we can say that, that anode material has actually been proven. Has been proven for years in cars, and it gives every indication that, that battery will be marry up after -- with the silicon suboxide and be very high safety. In addition to that, we're looking to future-proof our technology. So protected lithium anodes are a very hot area of research. There's billions of dollars being put into them. They haven't been cracked yet but we've licensed some IP from OXLiD, and we're looking into developing that protected lithium anode technology. If that works, that's wonderful. We'll be able to take that protected lithium anode and marry it with our cathode and make batteries using that technology. If someone else cracks it before us, well luckily, Thomas' lab generated the electrolyte and the cathode so it's almost anode-agnostic. That means if we have to marry it with lithium metal, if we have to marry it with silicon suboxide or if we have to marry it with the protected lithium anode, there's every chance it's going to work really well, and we're very excited about that technology. Okay. So I talked about lithium metal, lithium silicon suboxide and the protected lithium metal anode. Where they're going to go? So the lithium metal is probably our shortest route to market. And if you look at the bottom left-hand corner of this slide, you'll see a drone and you'll see a satellite. Here, because of the issues with lithium metal that are associated with historical safety concerns, you can't really put that battery in anything that's going to be manned. But because it is exceptionally high energy density, it is very, very good for applications and things that need to fly and are non-manned. So for instance, drones. And there's a big USD 20 billion market there that we'd love to tap into with that technology. If you look at pathway to the top, the limit -- the silicon sulfur battery, as I described before, we're using an anode that's specifically already been proven in EVs and we're marrying that with our cathode, which is high safety and we're designing it to be high cycle life. And obviously there, we're looking to put that in things that are going to be manned. So critically, we're really hoping to get that into the EV market and other kind of manned-vehicle markets. And then the last one is the protected lithium metal anode. We will be looking to target the same markets as with the lithium suboxide. My anticipation is that market will open significantly after lithium suboxide. But in order to future-proof our technology, we're making sure that works so that when that is fact, we can get on that technology as well. Now back to John.

So thank you. Thank you, Louis. I think as you see, we're pretty excited about what the team is achieving. Now we've assembled one of the most amazing IP and technology portfolios to achieve that into [ underpinning ]. 2023 was a huge year. The acquisition -- first acquiring the IP from Sydney University, then the work that we did to -- Amit was great, working with me to actually secure the Johnson Matthey IP, accelerating our own lithium research, convincing Adrien at OXLiD to join us on our campaign forward and reaching out to Sujeet at Ionblox. Then provided the 65 patent families that we have surrounding the core proposition that we are working on to attain significant value inside of Gelion. We see a future to high energy density, safer, cheaper batteries in lithium sulfur. And Amit, where we are right now, you can now see the significance of the first announcement that we made and, indeed, combining it with that most recent announcement about the 395-watt hours per kilogram. You see, those announcements were confirmatory of all of the earlier transactions that we did in 2023. We did those transactions in order to get to where we can take leadership in this industry. There are 3 announcements that we made. The first one of those was towards attaining 400-watt hours per kilogram. That was very important for us to actually validate that. And we did that with what we call a Gen 2 Oxis technology. The second announcement in the middle or the second part of that first announcement, the one in the middle, that's our NEXT-GEN technology now. That technology actually came from OXLiD, the advancements that OXLiD had made and also with input from our Sydney team. Super important, we call that the NEXT-GEN. And what that confirmed to us was that we were doing solid to solid conversion in the cell. And that's what Louis was saying, takes the pressure of the cell and sent us up to have a long life cell. And then the Ionblox or the announcement -- the component of the announcement where we talked about the third thing, which was that we saw indications of stable cycling on what we're doing in the silicon -- lithium silicon sulfur. So Thomas, would you like to show them -- to comment?

Yes. Yes. So really, these 3 pictures show that our judgment was correct, and our conviction was correct in going along the path that we've chosen. So we've shown that the IP that we acquired from Johnson Matthey is very producible in our hands. And we got that out as our most recent announcement, and that is something good for the share price. And what you see in the middle there is the next version of our batteries, which has all of the improvements in it and really the synergy between the teams in terms of the way we develop our own sulfur cathode and formulate, as Louis was saying, based on the water-based story and tweaking also electrolytes and so forth. So that's going to be announced in very deliberate steps as we move through the testing cycle, and I hope you enjoy the announcements we have been making. So it's about one a month for the last 12 months. So we're trying to keep you engaged and the market engaged so you can look forward to more, hopefully, fantastic announcements from us. And the Ionblox element is, of course, the first pairing of a silicon suboxide anode with a sulfur cathode. And that's quite a breakthrough in itself. And as John was saying, the stable cycling that we were testing for is clearly indicated, and we will again announced, as we go through the very deliberate testing program, what those results are. And this is a lot of progress. When we took the company to IPO, there was a lithium sulfur element to it. And from what we just said, that's quite some progress in those 2, 2.5 years. And that's possible because, really, synergy is coming in very strong to play. And Synergy is a word that is often bandied about quite easily and not so thoughtfully. But in this case, it really showed us that the synergy between the OXLiD team, the Sydney University team, the Gelion Australian-based team and our partners at Ionblox is really, really showing that we can, together, accelerate our progress dramatically. And that's where we got to now, and we'll be seeing this as just the beginning of it. Next. And you may think, well, so you've got great technology, how are you positioned in terms of protection and IP? How is my investment protected? And really, we are in a sweet spot. Just like Goldilocks, not too hot or not too cold. So there is a competitor who is valued a bit more than $1 billion or so, and they have an approach where the chemistry happens in the electrolyte. So they need quite a lot of electrolyte and everything is dissolved to work. And that inherently limits the energy density because the electrolyte requires weight or adds weight and adds volume. So that is a downer, so to speak, on that technology. And also if something is dissolved, it can also precipitate. And sometimes it precipitates where you don't want it to and the -- as Louis was saying, the sulfur cathode becomes more fragile over time and lifetime is hindered. On the other side, there's a company, LG Chem, that's a very large one, of course. And they're using a complete solid-state approach. And what that means is no liquid, and they just put all the componentry together as films and squash them very tightly. But if I put 2 films together or 2 sets of materials together at the atomic level, there will always be some gaps. And if I'm an ion that has to jump across that gap, I need energy to do so. And that means that the battery overall will be not running as efficiently as otherwise would be the case. The way around it is to put external pressure on to the battery to force those gaps to be absolutely minimal. But that's an engineering challenge, to have large battery packs under huge amounts of pressure for these batteries to work. So what we've done is we are also solid state in terms of the sulfur conversion, but we put a little bit of liquid to fill those gaps. And what that means is, in that liquid, the lithium ion is able to move backwards and forwards between the electrodes. But there's not enough liquid for the sulfur to dissolve and we are forcing the sulfur into a solid-to-solid conversion path. And therefore, we are sitting in the middle. And the academic literature is basically consistent with our view that this is the way to go, and the large patent portfolio that we acquired from Johnson Matthey is covering that space. And we have a lot of freedom to operate, a lot of protection in that space. And if either of the 2 companies at the extreme end want to play in the middle, they will have to contact us and see what we can do. So your IP is pretty well protected.

So the company has established a position with strong technology, strong IP in one of the most important part of the battery industry sector that's moving very fast. And I guess this is the time to say thank you to our shareholders who have stood beside us and behind us, with us, but also thank you to those who contributed to the round that we raised last year in order to be able to do some of these transactions. Also I would call out our directors who showed their personal confidence, our Founder and our Non-Executive Directors and your CEO. All dug in pocket -- into their pockets alongside the shareholders to contribute 10% of our last raise. It's been an exciting period of time. It's only going to keep up that cadence going forward. So there are some very important results coming up around the work that we're doing on protected lithium anodes. There's work and there's results coming up on our silicon sulfur. You'll see progress. We're implementing a laboratory in the U.K. at Oxford, so our team is currently up at Nottingham. But we're implementing a purpose site at Oxford. We will be implementing capabilities to produce more prototypes and units so that we can get it out into the supply chain. Lots of testing and then advancing our program continuously towards commercial scale-up, so a very strong effort inside Gelion. Looking at our zinc technology. Zinc is also a very, very important chemistry with huge potential with the abundance of zinc and safety of zinc. It's a very low-cost material, very sustainable, safe material. Our team had been working on a very important target. So we set ourselves some rigorous goals around safety, energy density and cost. It's fair to be said that there's quite a few people trying to generate new battery technologies, and those that succeed have to be truly excellent. And that's what we're working towards here. So a big call out to that team who were being very diligent in their testing. So we have advanced our cathode material working with University of Sydney in partnership. Professor Yuan Chen, thank you very much. We have been testing that in various cells, and we've generated BMS capabilities as well. I've now got this technical and commercial study going on to look at the fit of what we've achieved to the market, talking directly with leaders across the industry to make a plan about where we do -- where we take this from here on the zinc side with coming inside a company that has so much going on at the moment with our lithium sulfur activities as well. Gelion is an extraordinarily creative and effective team.

Okay. So on to the financials now. I think last year, you heard us talking about our cost savings initiative that we implemented once John joined the business. I think the results will demonstrate that these results are -- the cost savings are actually being realized now. What I have presented here is the 31st December '23 results, so 6 months ended 31st of December and the comparable period. The good -- the very good thing about the results are, on a comparable basis, our adjusted EBITDA losses are approximately 29% lower than the prior period, which is fantastic given the conditions around macro and macroeconomic conditions. And you hear globally how companies are using their cash much, much better. So all the cost savings initiate we have implemented are now being realized. From a cash perspective, we've got GBP 7.5 million at 31st of December 2023. I think this is largely result of -- this is just, to an extent, the result of the cap raise that we did in November last year. This is just kind of a reminder on the cap raise and the use of funds. So we raised GBP 4.1 million in November. Most of the cost is going towards the OXLiD acquisition, around acquisition costs, deferred consideration, transaction costs and also OpEx and CapEx. And John spoke about the new Oxford lab that we are currently building. So this slide, what I've done here is I've summarized the cash use for the last 6 months. And this is on a cash basis, not an accounting or accrual basis. So we used approximately GBP 2.4 million between July and December, of which approximately GBP 1.2 million went back into the business in the form of investment in the IP portfolio and PP&E. We are a tech company. IP is very important, so I think it's very, very important for us to maintain and continuously grow our IP portfolio there. The remainder of GBP 1.2 million went into R&D, other expenses, employee expenses and the likes. I would like to note that this is net of R&D tax incentives. So our R&D tax incentive claim is launched post year-end, so post June, and we launched it last year in the second half of the calendar year '23. The money was received in December, so this is net of that early tax incentives that's kind of government funding that comes from the Australian tax authorities. We also spent GBP 2.1 million on one-off nonrecurring acquisitions, so OXLiD acquisition and the transaction cost associated with the cap raise and the acquisition as well. So the key message and why I wanted to show this slide is showing how tightly we are running the business, how lean we're running the business. We're taking out every cent that goes into the business. This brings home all the cost savings initiatives that we implemented last year. If you look across all the charts, employee expenses, R&D and business expenses and compare to December '23 to December '22 numbers, you will notice a significant decline and kind of reiterates our messaging that we are taking care of the funds that's been invested in Gelion, and we are kind of a really good custodian of your cash. On the right-hand side, the chart shows the IPs. So this is where our funds have been utilized. We are saving money and using that money to put into strategic acquisitions, strategic, kind of making strategic moves to take the business forward and making us really very strong. John?

All right. So you've had a very technical presentation today, with a lot of technology that we've spoken for. You're interested, of course, in the commercial aspects and how the value is increasing in your company and how that value will be reflected at the end of the day, in the value of your shares and the market capitalization of the company as well. We are a technology company, and we are doing advanced technologies. The progress that you will see is, first of all, the enormous value and progress that has been made in the last short period of time, with these inorganic transactions supplemented by the creative work of our team. That has established a very important core differentiation in a very important industry. That was really hard work by our team, and they've done a magnificent job. They have positioned us as a leader. What happens next? What happens next is you start to be recognized. So that starts to be seen in external endorsements. So you will see, first of all, test results being published, showing what the company is achieving. We'll be doing that to inform you, but we'll also be doing that to inform the market. We'll be working on strategic relationships. So that external endorsement and evidence of that external endorsement in the form of communications will come before we get to Stage 3, and Stage 3 will be revenue and commercialization of the products. It's the way that value develops in a company like Gelion. And we are fixated at making sure that we achieve success for you as shareholders, for us as shareholders and also to achieve the substantial impact that this technology will have. So 2023, a huge year, a big jump into 2024 already, validating the work that we did back in 2023. You will see us continue our focus on communication with you. We will be talking to you. We'll be talking to the industry. We'll be getting out now and starting to do the industry conferences to let everybody know about the technology achievements of Gelion, the importance of our IP portfolio and why the supply chain and the end customer should be selecting Gelion as their lithium sulfur and then their Zinc partner. So thank you all for the honor of being able to represent you as the CEO of this company and to lead this remarkable team. I have a lot of questions that have been submitted. I'm going to do my very best to get through these questions and answer them as frankly as I can because we got a lot and relatively quickly. So let me just gather this, so that I can get these questions going.

Question number one is will the gel battery get to be commercialized? And if so, when and in what space? Can you give a guide as to what the profit target per share is? So the gel battery has transformed. When we did the original zinc bromide battery, we've now moved away from using bromide or bromine in our cell to a new formulation. Will it be commercialized? That's the study that I'm talking about, that I'm engaged with in the moment. So I'm looking at what the team has achieved in the implementation of its new cell chemistry and where that fits in the market. And I'm looking at the value of investment into what we've got there and the market targets alongside the value of the investment that we're putting in other areas and our focus at the moment. So I will be coming back and answering that question probably in my next investor meets in about a quarter or maybe even half out. Next question. It's encouraging to see the possibility of achieving 400 watt-hours per kilogram with the Gen 2. There seem to be claims that the Chinese are achieving 700 watt-hours per kilogram and almost -- also suggestions that lithium-air batteries could -- well, lithium-air batteries is not going to get the 11,000 watt-hours per kilogram. Is this a concern? [ Humphrey ], look, there's always going to be competition. Where we're taking lithium sulfur at the moment is not only towards high gravimetric energy density. It also happens to be a path evolution of lithium-ion technology. All technologies have their day. And when they're in place, people think it's never going to change. So you think today that the intercalation cathode approach used with lithium-ion batteries will never change. I'm happy to put my hand on my heart, say where I sit at the moment, I believe that the conversion chemistry in sulfur cathodes could be a better path for the whole industry. And we're going to find ways into a whole lot of markets in that. So am I worried? I'm Probably inspired. There's plenty of competition in this industry, and there's plenty of room for us all to be successful. What is the target application for Gelion's lithium sulfur batteries? How close is commercialization? There are families of applications. The first cell that we'll end up releasing will be what we call an unprotected lithium metal anode-sulfur combination. That's what we're prototyping at the moment. That's what you're getting results from. So it's a great cell, but it does have some area for risk that is higher than the risk profile until the lithium metal is protected that you'd want in a car or anything that's carrying people around. So the first applications will be for things that can fly like drones that we'll put the unprotected lithium metal into. The next set of applications will be where we're working with our lithium silicon sulfur. Now lithium silicon sulfur will not be quite the same energy density as lithium metal. Sort of maybe if you call lithium metal a target, somewhere up around 450, maybe a little higher. Then your silicon sulfur -- lithium silicon sulfur target is probably about 350. It's still extraordinarily high energy density. But it brings with it a path to very high cycle life and very high safety. And I like those things because there's a whole lot of markets for it out there. Gelion has achieved a high energy density milestone by fabricating a 395 watt-hour cell. So how many cycles were tested? Not a whole lot in that one, and the reason is that we're doing a pouch cell testing at the same time as we're doing coin cell testing. We do the pouch cell testing -- we accelerate on our coin cell testing to get ahead of the play, and then we backfill with our pouch cell testing. However, the particular approach that we use have been implemented by Oxis and at Oxis, I think, it was 100 to 150...

On -- around 100.

around 100 for that particular formulation. That's [indiscernible] the continued decline in share price is very alarming. When will we finally start selling product and hopefully see a recovery in value? So I did sort of try to finish -- or to answer that in my summary, which is you will see, I hope, improvement in recognition of the importance of what we're doing as we come out with these test results. So first, you'll see the test results, and hopefully, that will let everybody know that you've got an investment in a winner. Secondly, you'll get affirmation by people who are able to do credential diligence to say, you know what, these guys are on the right track, and I want to work with them. And then thirdly, you'll get to where we have got our products ready for revenue. Will we undertake another capital raising in order to actuate commercialization in one or other of its batteries? Very highly likely, we will probably be raising more capital as we progress. Will either of the Gelion batteries be suitable for construction of a mega-type best battery energy storage? I guess I've just got out 2 words for that. Hell, yes, that's the goal. So we want to be there. But we've got some work to do first, and we've got some things to overcome. Will I be able to buy Gen 5 storage batteries? It's interesting, [ someone called ] on Gen 5 there. From a home solar use in Brisbane, Australia, how much will they cost? Can't answer that question yet. Will you be able to buy them? I don't think Gen 5. It might be a later gen number before we get the products in shape, ready for market. So I'll be a bit wishy-washy on my answer, but I'm working on that challenge that's been set. Why did you go and list your shares on the AIM? I might be getting into trouble with AIM if I read this one out. It's a terrible financial market, minimum trading days. Company should list shares on a different exchange such as the ASX. Well, I'm just going to give a shout out to Cavendish, who do a really good job of working it pretty hard for us. All markets have swing cycles. There's good times and bad times. We want to get the best outcome for our shareholders, whatever. So we're working hard for you wherever we're listed. Will you partner with a company of note to bring your IP technologies to the world? Answer, hell, yes, we want to do that. So we've got to do our work to achieve our goals and to respectfully earn our right to partner with such players, but the intention is absolutely. In the light of -- in July 2023, we confirmed Gelion is moving away from utilization of bromine in our zinc prismatic cells. We'll be actively conducting research in alternative cathode direction. Why was this change made? And what are the advantages of taking this change in direction? What were the attractable rate gain? All right. So we moved away from the zinc bromide approach because we got caught in a trap where we couldn't deliver cost, safety and performance, all 3, at the same time. That was the basic thing. We had to pass to -- we had to be careful with the chemistry, and it was important that we were able to sequester bromine properly inside the chemistry. And to do that, we either had to substitute safety or substitute costs or substitute performance. We weren't comfortable that, that was the best application of your investment funds that you've entrusted us with to continue pushing down that direction. So we pivoted a little bit onto a path with our zinc technologies that we think is very promising and definitely is a path that would get certification earlier and scale earlier. The other consideration is that while we've been doing that, our lithium sulfur work has been taken off. And so that's putting increasing focus on our investment. The results of the research study for the zinc hybrid battery is supposed to be released in quarter 1. How many more months will it be before a definitive finding will be released? So I mean I can give you back that the zinc hybrid battery is -- research program has been progressing quite well. The team has been making good progress against all of the goals that we have set. How many more months before we get a definitive answer? What I'm trying to do at the moment is, even though that research is continuing, I'm trying to do the commercial analysis at the same time. So on a personal basis, I'm reaching out to the battery leaders, the battery manufacturers, battery equipment manufacturers and the battery material manufacturers in that sector to try to come together with a full plan. Will the zinc bromine battery technology -- well, no, the zinc bromide battery will not [ move ]. Yes. We do have a prismatic cell. So let me say there are others out there, out in the world doing zinc bromine flow batteries and where we had our challenges there in a different world, they're doing some good things. But in our prismatic format, we saw that we had some challenges. So the zinc bromide implementation, we do not intend to make publicly available, although we are today still working on the zinc hybrid technology, working forward. While I welcome the news of test results concerning new pouches and cathodes, Gelion is in need of a product that can be sold now. The company was floated on the back of promise on the Endure battery with a production factory in Sydney. The Acciona trial has exposed a deficiency of this design. Is the Endure battery now remedied? And will it be produced to shareholder once Gelion will be in commercial as well as an R&D entity. Hey, this shareholder wants to know if Gelion could be a commercial as well as R&D entity. We're very focused on being a successful commercial entity. We are a battery technology company. And to achieve that, we have to make sure that our battery chemistries are robust, certified and competitive in the marketplace. That's 100% of our goal, so I'm lining up with whoever wrote that particular question. That's what we're moving towards. However, sometimes when you're on a journey and -- you're on a journey, you have to go to the other side of the course, so you have to pivot and you have to move quick. What is important to me as a shareholder as well as to you as a shareholder is that the company is prepared to take the decisions that the company needs to take in order to be successful. Now we could have continued to beat our head against that and use our shareholder funds to try to make something that we assess we could not make successful within a reasonable range of investment. So we did pivot. Unashamedly, we have pivoted, and we have focused our investment in a different way. And I actually call that out that and I understand this is history, but I want to call it out as a strength in the company and particularly a strength in our founder, Thomas Maschmeyer, and the directors who were prepared to make the decisions that we needed to do rather than just push on when we shouldn't have. So it's a good future for Gelion. When is the battery system anticipated to be a home -- for home storage? We're concentrating at the cell level at the moment. There's quite a journey ahead before you're going to see that in your home. So we'll be doing the work, as we've set out, to prove the technology, to get the industry support. And then there's a supply chain in the battery industry, a very complex supply chain. It's cell manufacturers, materials manufacturers, pack manufacturers, and we will be inserting our technologies into that supply chain. Once you develop cells and packs, how much testing will then be applied? Lots. And I assume the testing will cost. So how realistically could real revenue be away? That's an astute question. There is a lot of testing. One of the reasons that we've put ourselves on the path that we have is that our products in their chemistry are safe. So even at the technology stage, we're designing our products to pass through the testing quickly. That's essential. But yes, there will be testing on all of our technologies, lithium sulfur and zinc. All chemistries need testing. It takes time, and it can months, and it can take years. Are you happy with the EASA and FAA approach to regulation both for EV tolls and for certain unmanned drones, on their impact on timing to adopt new battery technologies given the difference in approaches between these regulators? You said the EU or the U.S. have better target market for aerial applications. I'm not going to be flippant on that. [indiscernible] I'm going to tell you that there's lots of other markets other than the EU and the U.S. as well. So another way of asking -- another way of rephrasing the question, which was applied directly to EV tolls is you could apply that to EVs, electric vehicles as well. When you look at the battery industry and you're introducing your products, there are certain areas that are very high regulation, and there are certain areas that are lower regulation. Our goal is to enter the market with safe products into applications that don't need the extensive times of a regulation even as we're preparing the regulation for the other markets. Have you seen any claims against patents or have you had to make any against others? I think Professor Maschmeyer mentioned that we feel we've got a domain in which we have freedom to operate -- or that's my interpretation. So I will say we feel that we've got a domain in which we have freedom to operate and also some degree of protection. Now we have a substantive patent portfolio. Others have substantive patent portfolios. I think the best way to say this, the way it works, at the end of the day, there will be certain number of players and a certain number of participants that we'll be able to co-operate. The area that we're trying to develop our protection is very important, so we think we've established ourselves as a significant player. On the zinc battery development, is the company still moving away from bromine? Yes, we are. Are you able to [indiscernible] on the issue? As I said, the one thing I do want to call out is the issues that we were addressing was issues specific to prismatic use of bromine. And in particular, I would say it was prismatic use of bromine in the format that we were working. So I don't want to -- I want to be careful on this because there are other people out there that are working in the area, and I'm not casting shade on the chemistry in that way. But it was the problem of being able to do safety, performance and costs at the same time. Next one, how long will the cash last? We need to raise more cash before sales are sufficient to cover running costs. Yes, we will. I anticipate that we will. We will need to raise more cash before we have sales sufficient to cover running costs. How long will the cash last? At the current -- in our half yearly results, we pointed out that the current run rate, we're out to about January next year. But in the next few months, we see a lot of information coming out, which should be establishing the value of our company to the external world, and we're certainly working very hard to increase presence with the people who recognize that value. Is this really my last question?

Yes.

No joking. Go for it. Here we go. Thank you, everybody, for the questions. Do you now see yourself a pure technology company? And will that company -- will that be a -- manufacturer be a third party to us? Hell no. We are not a pure technology company. We are a commercial company, which is the last question. But to answer that question as well as I can for you, we are implementing technologies. We aim to make those technologies the best in class and to have those technologies protected by IP. We then intend to take those technologies into the commercial marketplace, into the supply chain. We intend to make cells. We tend to put cells in packs, and we intend to resolve materials that are used in cells that go into packs. How that will be commercialized to the benefit of the shareholders, there will be instances where we will sell cells. We will sell packs. We will sell systems. There will be instances where we will sell materials to other people, in gigafactories who will make cells. And we will -- provided they put offers lucrative enough for us to be able to reward our long-suffering and supportive shareholders, likely license to some of the biggest players where it's appropriate. So the intention is a commercial plan that reaches across and maximizes the return from the wonderful work that our team has been doing from the supply chain for our shareholders. So thank you for your support, and we'll keep our head down and keep focused on developing success from the wonderful assets and teams you've entrusted us with. Thank you.

John, thank you, indeed, for answering every single question as always from attendees. And of course, any further questions that could come through, the team will review those and will publish responses where appropriate to do so, on the Investor Meet Company platform. John, I was going to ask you for a few closing comments, but I've just given those, unless there's anything further you'd like to say. But on that basis, look, thank you. Thank you and the team for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close the session. You should now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order the team can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a moment to complete, and that's greatly valued by the company. On behalf of Gelion plc, I would like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That concludes today's session, and good morning to you all.